Legendary trombonist and Prince collaborator Michael B. Nelson joins Musicians Reveal with Joe Kelley to share inside stories from the NPG Horns and the making of The Hornheads’ all-horn album Fat Lip. From working with The Purple One to recording the standout track “Chiquita Comb Banana,” Nelson dives into the artistry, discipline, and groove behind the Minneapolis sound. Recorded in 2005. Presented as archival content.

🎙️ Musicians Reveal with Joe Kelley is a podcast featuring legendary and emerging funk, R&B, and Prince-associated artists. Prince himself spotlighted Musicians Reveal on his website in 2004 and gifted us the One Nite Alone box set in 2002 — before any media outlet.

Nelson opens up about the challenges of recording an all-horn a cappella album, the precision it demands, and the deep musical connection among The Hornheads. He also reflects on Minneapolis as a creative hub and previews their Fat Lip release show at the Dakota Jazz Club.

00:00 Introduction of Michael B. Nelson

01:34 The Journey of Creating New Music

09:02 The Whirlwind of Touring

16:27 Musical Inspirations and Influences

17:28 Exploring the Minneapolis Music Scene

24:34 Exploring the Influence of Broadway on Contemporary Music

🎧 Listen & Subscribe:

👉 Full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@musiciansreveal/playlists

🌐 Website: https://musiciansreveal.com

🎙️ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1rQAZZtdU2cZB6EeleSZ8J

🎙️ Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/musicians-reveal-funk-soul-r-b-and-prince-associated/id1545165178

🔔 Subscribe on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@musiciansreveal

📻 Mixcloud: https://www.mixcloud.com/joekelleyradio/

#Prince #michaelbnelson #Funk #NPG #hornheads #MusiciansReveal

From the latest CD from the Horn Heads.

Fat Lip is the title of the cd, and that's the song Chiquita Comb Banana.

And our special guest, he's been a great friend of the Up Room, and he was here, I believe, last year, and always a busy guy.

And he's the leader of The Hornheads founder, Mr.

Michael B.

Nelson.

So we welcome you during Minneapolis Music Month.

Of course, we play your music year round, but nice to have you during this time.

Thanks a lot.

Thanks for having me.

So, Fat Lip, we were talking.

It's out but not officially released.

But this is another outstanding cd.

In the tradition of your band, tell us about putting this one together, and what are the plans in the next few months?

Well, as individuals, we're so busy doing so many different things that we actually, this is.

I think it's almost seven years from our last release.

It's hard to believe, but we finally just decided we had some new music that we've been playing and over the past couple years and said, you know, we got to record.

And so I just buckled down and spent about six months writing and getting together.

And in fact, I was still writing up to the last week of when we were recording.

I was still finishing the music.

And it was, you know, we just kind of squeezed it in around our schedules.

We were fortunate enough to find a place where we could set up our whole.

Our setup and just leave it there and then come in for two, three hours in the evening or whatever, and nothing would change.

And so it was really a luxury.

But so we kind of.

Our plan was to get it done before we went and played a jazz festival in Brazil.

And we made that deadline.

But since we've been back, I just haven't actually done any work in releasing the album and putting it out.

So we're planning on doing a CD release party in May and finally getting a chance to get out and perform the new music.

Any venues that you're scouting for the CD release party, or is it set?

We're gonna do it at the Dakota Jazz Club, which is in downtown Minneapolis.

They moved there, I think, last year, and it's just a beautiful club, and it's really a great environment for.

For live music, and they actually have really great food there as well.

So it's.

It's a great club, and we're looking forward to it.

Now.

Now, you mentioned getting, you know, the group inside the studio and having it sound right.

What.

What's for.

For an acapella horn section to make everything sound great.

What.

What is Some of the most crucial things, recording a record.

Well, you know, it's.

It's funny because when we.

When we play live, it's very easy and.

And, you know, we just.

We just fall right into it.

When you get in the studio and you put the headphones on, you become a little more critical.

And what happens is when you.

When you first start out, or at least in our case, we were just a little tight and in the bad way and a little tense, I guess, is a better word.

Right.

And so things.

Although, you know, for most people probably would have been fine, it didn't have the relaxed sense, the looseness with the tightness.

It was.

It was just all.

It was just a little too tight.

So it took us a while to get that going.

And, you know, when you.

I mean, we've certainly recorded enough with other people with rhythm sections and things like that.

And, you know, I don't even know how many albums we've done as a sectionist, the horn section, but to do the acapella stuff, it's a whole different level and a whole different feel.

So it just.

It took us a while to get comfortable.

And then physically, as horn players, unlike rhythm section, you know, rhythm section guys can go in and, you know, play for five, six hours and lay down, you know, say, all the basic tracks.

We physically can't do that because our music is too demanding and especially for the brass player.

So, you know, we just.

We had to take our time and, you know, until it felt right.

And once.

Once we got settled in, then things really started moving fast.

And then, like I said, since we were able to leave the microphones and the room set up just the way it was, you step back in there a couple days later and you don't have a change in the sound.

You don't have.

So there's continuity in the album and the sound of the group.

So Michael B.

Nelson is our special guest leader and founder of the Horn Heads.

And a lot of our listeners know you guys as the MPG Horns and working with Prince for so many years and recording with him, but you've done so much work with other folks like Janet Jackson, James Brown, Rod Stewart, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, and the list keeps growing because, you know, I see you guys on so many records, you know, whether you know, the whole group or some of you guys, and, you know, it must be nice to be in demand.

And what's it like, you know, when people contact you?

Do you get a feel for their music?

I mean, if some stranger musician says, hey, I Love you, be on my record.

That can be tricky and you know, because you, there are times when you don't know what you're getting into.

And also, you know, depending on who you're working with, you don't know what kind of working relationship they're used to.

Okay.

And so, you know, I find myself just kind of being real, you know, real careful and just feeling it out and getting a sense for what, what they want and, and, and also, you know, getting a copy of the music and make sure it's, it's something that, you know, that we can, you know, work with.

Right, right.

So, so when you were working with Prince, what was the initial, you know, introduction and him having you wanting to play on his records and tour, how did that start out?

Well, it started out really the idea.

And it's kind of funny because of course I wasn't in on the whole planning of this, but the way I understood it was Michael Bland.

Well, the band was rehearsing while Prince was over in Paris writing the Cymbal album during they were still rehearsing for the Diamonds and Pearls tour.

And so I guess the plan was for Michael to put together some kind of warm up act.

And it was kind of a thought that maybe it would be kind of a madhouse type group, only with more horns.

Okay.

And so that's how it started.

And Michael contacted us and, and we put together the five piece horn section and I rearranged about four or five of the madhouse tunes.

And then they just taped our rehearsal of that, sent it to Prince, and then he sent back a directive, he wanted a few more tunes of the madhouse tunes to do those.

So I did those and we rehearsed those with the band.

They sent a tape to him and then got word that he wanted to see us.

So we actually went over and at that time Carmen Electra's band was rehearsing and Carmen wasn't around, but they were working on her music.

And so we played with them a little bit and they videotaped us and sent the tape.

And then he came back into town and called us in.

We went into Paisley park and he came out and just, I remember, you know, he just quickly went and shook everybody's hand, went over to his rack, picked up his guitar and he just held up four fingers and the band broke into the song four.

I mean, immediately, you know, Michael just counted off.

And of course we weren't used to his routine when I didn't even know that's what he was doing.

All Of a sudden, they start playing.

Oh, oh.

He wanted us to play that.

So we're grabbing our arrangement and we start playing it.

And he just points at everybody to take a solo.

We jammed and.

And then did that for a little while.

Then he started kind of messing around with some of the tunes I think he was working on for the Cymbal album and throwing some horn parts.

And we did that for, I think it was about six or seven hours without really much of a break, which is typical of him.

And then we took a short break, went in the studio and recorded for another five and did Sexy mf.

And we also.

I think we might have done the horns for.

Oh, Shoot.

Oh, Willing and Abel.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

And so we put horns on that.

And later we.

I think we did a little video for that too.

But so that was kind of our first experience.

And then we ended up working with him and Carmen at the beginning.

Then we were rehearsing with both bands and.

And, you know, it was within a very short order.

All of a sudden, you know, the tour manager saying, well, we gotta get your passports together because we're leaving for Japan in April.

We're going.

Oh, my God.

You know.

Yeah.

Wow.

It just.

It was really a whirlwind, and it was really intense and really hard.

But, you know, it was one of those things that even though you worked 12 hours, when you got done, you were still.

You were buzzing from the experience.

You know, it was just like, I can't believe that just happened.

You know, I mean, you guys had that stretch.

I can remember, on the Act 1 tour playing radio City, and then we were just out.

Played the Apollo, like a few hours after that, or a day or so.

Right.

Yeah.

I think it was three days at Radio City, and then the next day was the Apollo.

Right, right, right.

And that was probably one of those moments when you get, you know, you're still a buzz, even though you're working tirelessly.

Well, yeah.

And, you know, it's like you get to different venues and certain ones, you know, elicit that kind of reaction.

I mean, you know, I can.

Radio City was one of them.

The Apollo, also, that was.

That was an amazing gig.

And then, you know, Wembley Stadium.

I remember playing in the cricket ground in Sydney, outside.

Oh, wow.

And playing well in our, you know, first show at the Tokyo Dome and our first show in Australia, too, in Brisbane.

I remember those very vividly.

And the whole.

This.

The, you know, the kind of thing where when the.

When the first tunes counted off and the curtain drops and you know, it just makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

You know, it was just the intensity from playing in front of a crowd like that.

You know, that was.

You know, those crowds in Australia were as loud as you can imagine.

I just.

It was amazing.

And of course the European crowds, you know, playing Wembley and those two are.

Were pretty intense.

So, yeah, it happened really fast and he hardly had time to think.

And we'd do the rehearsal and then I'd go home and we'd have basically kind of sketchy, kind of what we did at rehearsal, horn charts.

And I'd stay up all night cleaning them up and revoicing and.

And just kind of tidying things up.

And then we'd get.

Come back in the next day and we'd be ready to go.

And that was something, you know, that he really appreciated, you know, because he doesn't want to wait for anything.

Right.

And for a five piece horn section to keep up with them for the most part was.

I don't know that he expected that, you know, So I think that's why we stuck around so long.

Yeah.

So many records.

We'll be delving into some of the stuff you worked on with Prince and the mpg and you know, I wanted to get into a song before we get into it.

I'll let our listeners know The Hornheads website bonetobewildmusic.com B O N E, the number 2B, the letter B.

Wildmusic.com and you can go to CD Baby.com.

just type in hornheads and it'll direct you to all three releases.

I think you have the all three up there.

Yep, yep.

And hornheads is one word too, so.

Right.

Search it.

Sometimes it separated kind of screws things up.

So.

Yeah.

So people can get the CD and put a review up there and you know, a song.

Tell.

Tell me about things left on set.

We'll get into that from the new CD Fat Lip.

Well, why'd you record this and tell us about in the studio?

You know, it was, it was actually one of the first original songs I wrote for the album.

The first songs that I did for the album did quite a few years ago were the Stevie Wonder medley and the west side Story medley.

But this one, I was actually up at the lake cabin, my fiance's lake cabin, and we were just having a little vacation.

It was very peaceful up there and there was just something about the mood that, that the quiet mood.

And I started messing around and writing that song.

And it was actually intended to be the Introduction for another song in the album called Lady Dude.

It was supposed to start out slow, and then going into that and as I worked on just kind of took on a life of its own.

I just kind of heard Dave Jensen, the soloist on that wonderful flugelhorn player, and I.

I started just hearing his voice as carrying the feature of this music.

And I didn't have the title when I was writing it, but as I finished it, just the feeling of it and the sense of it, the way it kind of hangs at the end, that's what it, you know, that's kind of what led me to the title.

So it was almost like the music dictated the title, but I didn't have the.

The initial intent from it, but it.

And, you know, that was actually.

Ballads are, you know, they're fairly easy to play technically, but we had to spend a fair amount of time to get a comfortable place that it was.

That it was emoting, that it was, you know, that it was living and breathing.

And that's with all the music.

And you can't.

With our group, you can't hide behind rhythm section or anything else.

It's all out there.

So you had to be pretty, you know, pretty comfortable with the feeling of the song before we recorded it.

So we'll take a listen.

And this is from Fetlip, the latest CD from Hornheads.

My special guest right now, leader and founder of the great group Hornheads out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Michael B.

Nelson with us.

And we will come back after we listen to Things Left unsaid.

This is WVOF 88.5 in Fairfield, Connecticut.

The upper room with Joe Kelly with you.

And that was another great song from the latest cd, Fat Lip from the Horn Heads.

It's called Things Left Unsaid.

My special guest is Mr.

Michael B.

Nelson, still residing in Minnesota.

And do you live in the city or live a little bit out?

No, I'm right in South Minneapolis.

Okay, Right.

And, you know, soon to be in May city release party, an official release from For Fat Lip, but It's available@cdbaby.com.

you also can go to boantobewildmusic.com and check out the guestbook and the great biography of Michael and his great bandmates and tell us some of the bandmates and how they're doing.

Well, everybody's doing great and has, you know, a whole bunch of different things on their plates.

Like I said, we're all kind of doing our own independent stuff.

And then we come together as much as we can to do the.

The hornhead stuff.

But Kenny Holman plays the tenor and soprano sax.

And he plays actually both Kenny and Kathy Jensen.

The other saxophonists play all the woodwinds.

But in our group, they kind of.

I have them kind of specialized.

But then Kathy plays Barry sax and alto sax.

And then I've got Steve Strand playing lead trumpet and Dave Jensen playing trumpet.

And actually they both play flugelhorn as well.

And then I play trombone and euphonium.

Now, as playing horns all your life, do you listen to a lot of other horn groups or players these days?

Yeah, I mean, I pretty much grew up on a steady diet of Tower power, Earth, Wind and Fire, Blood, Sweat and tears, that kind of thing.

So I love funk horn bands, of course.

And then the more classic R and B stuff like Sly and Family Stone and James Brown, which actually I kind of came to a little later, since I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin, really wasn't the hippest environment.

So until I moved to Minneapolis, although of course, I knew who Sly and Family Stone and James Brown were, I really hadn't been that exposed to them.

And it was coming here to this town where I really got caught up more in the more traditional R and B stuff, you know, went back a little further and found all that great music.

Well, you know, for the size of the city, actually has a pretty good music scene.

Obviously, the Hornheads as an a cappella group, we're doing mainly jazz clubs, that sort of thing.

We don't play a lot in town because, I mean, I guess one of the things that could be improved is that the clubs don't pay all that well.

But that's not.

That's not unusual.

I mean, I was talking to a friend of mine who plays in.

Who lives in New York, and he said, man, some of the jazz gigs he plays, he can only make 20 bucks.

And that doesn't even pay for your parking and your trip into Manhattan.

And so we certainly do better than that here, so I shouldn't complain.

But there's actually quite a few venues playing jazz in this town, which is really nice.

And my fiance is Mary Louise Knutson, who actually wrote one of the songs on our second cd.

She plays with her jazz trio quite a bit.

She's related to Gordy.

No, she's not.

But Gordy has Played with her on occasion, but it's actually spelled differently, so she plays around town and actually has a better sense of the scene.

And like I said with the Hornheads, the players are so busy doing so many different things that probably the last thing that we get around to doing is playing jazz clubs, even though it would be really a lot of fun.

I mean, Broadway shows come through, there's session work, there's gigs that individuals go when they're out traveling and stuff.

So we're not really that heavily hooked into the live music scene.

I mean, we used to play with the TC Jammers quite a few years down at the Bunker, and that's still doing great.

The Mambos combo, those guys are still going strong on Mondays and I think Tuesdays as well.

So that scene is still doing what it's always done.

They always have a great scene down there and play a lot of really wild music with Michael and Sonny just, you know, taking it where no other bass player, drummer can go.

Yeah, we had Jelly Bean Johnson on Yesterday.

I think he was heading out to Debunkers to jam with them on, you know, the Payback with James Brown.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, man, I haven't seen Jelly in quite a while.

Of course, he was playing guitar in the TC Jammers when we were doing it.

But, yeah, now he's got a band with JB and the routine at the Minnesota Music Cafe.

They play Tuesday nights.

Playing tonight.

Yeah.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, he's.

He's.

He's a blast, man.

He's.

He's so much fun.

So.

So I know from our last conversation you're a huge Stevie Wonder fan.

Yeah.

And it must be just a great feeling to be able to put a medley together with three of some of his best songs.

And how do you narrow it down to.

To do that?

You know?

Well, that's why I said.

I mean, three of his best.

I mean, three of his best of how many?

I mean, it's.

It is really hard.

And I mean, one of the things that.

The other thing that I have to take into account when I'm choosing music is how I'm going to make it work with our format.

And so that's the other that tends to narrow it down.

I mean, the baseline on Superstition allowed me to.

Allows the player to play it and breathe, whereas if you did something like, I don't know, name escapes me.

But, you know, if it's something like that, you can't breathe, you can't play it.

Okay, so I have to go through and go, okay, now is that bass line.

Can I set up a groove with the horns that allows that tuned to have a pocket and is still playable, physically playable.

And so that was kind of it.

I was just running through my CDs and going, okay, I'll write that one.

I love that tune.

That'll work.

Now that one won't.

I love that tune, but that's not going to work.

I mean, there's so many of them.

I went, I'd love to do this tune, but I don't know how.

Logistically, I can ride it and make it work for the hornheads.

And so the ballads, always.

I can work with those.

And I decided that I'd put a ballad in the middle.

I actually wrote the ballad probably two years after I'd written the other two songs in the medley and put it in the middle.

But yes, Superstition and Isn't she Lovely.

Just when I listened to them, I said, okay, I already had a.

I could conceptualize how they were going to work technically.

And then I just did the music thing.

And of course, we did put a little tag with Sir Duke on the end, which is a great tune, but just kind of a little nod to that tune as well.

But, yeah, Stevie and his melodies are so great that every tune you go.

One of the things about covering pop music is not all the melodies are that good.

I mean, they might have great lyrics, they might have great grooves, and they're still great tunes.

But for somebody to do it instrumentally, they're not necessarily going to work.

But that's not a case with Stevie.

It's like, every melody, the chords, the core of the tunes are just so rock solid.

It doesn't matter what format you do them in, they all work.

Yeah, it'd be nice.

The horn heads do some playing with Stevie one day.

Oh, man.

Yeah, that'd be wonderful.

Yeah.

Prince and him have a song.

I don't know if you heard the latest one.

I haven't heard it.

I heard that that was the case, that Prince is playing guitar on it.

Yeah, yeah.

It's called what?

What the Fuss and.

Okay.

Yeah, it's real funky.

Yep.

Yeah, no doubt.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We've been playing it here on the show, so.

Yeah, I'm sure you would dig it.

Yeah, yeah.

I'll check it out.

Yeah, yeah.

So we want to thank Michael B.

Nelson, who is always a great and interesting.

You know, I'm sitting here and I'm just like, man, I wish I could talk to you for a few hours.

Just, you know, you've got so much history to the play in.

I'm having a great time.

It's fun to revisit that stuff, too, and revisit the Prince days and, you know, it's an exciting time, you know, so.

And it's really.

We like where we are now, too, but it's really fun to touch on that trip.

It was great.

And you've got a great cd.

And we'll quickly touch on the inclusion of the west side Story medley.

How did you get drawn to the songs from west side Story?

Well, that actually came from kind of from a different direction.

We got hooked up with a performing arts series where you go into cities and, you know, it's the type of thing where they have maybe four or five concerts a year and you buy tickets for the series and it's a variety of different things.

And what I wanted to do was be able to give the audience enough variety because the demographic was from, you know, quite elderly people to fairly young.

And they were bringing us in to hopefully bring in some more young people.

But I didn't want to exclude everybody and just do kind of the funky stuff, like the tune I wrote, Noodle in, which was the Billy Jack Bitch horn parts, that kind of stuff.

Somebody who's 70, 75 years old isn't going to probably appreciate that much.

So the idea was I kind of just focused on four of my favorite composers, kind of from different areas.

Miles Davis was one, Duke Ellington, and then Stevie Wonder, I guess it was five.

And then the west side Story medley, which I thought this is out of the Broadway show repertoire.

But for my money, it's the best Broadway show ever written.

The music in that show is as good as it gets.

And so I loved that show.

And I thought, well, this would be a good one, that we can make it bring in some of the Latin stuff and it can work with our tightness and funkiness, but yet it's music that older people will recognize.

And so that's how that one kind of came into the show.

And then we just have so much fun playing it.

And we thought it was good for the album.

And it sounds great on this record, which it was a great record.

Official release coming towards the latter part of May CD release party.

But you can go right now to cdbaby.com hornheads one word and also bone to be wildmusic.com you can keep up to date with the horn heads and upcoming shows and the guest book.

And I gotta thank you, Michael B.

Nelson.

Oh, my pleasure.

Yeah, yeah.

It's fun.

Hopefully you can make it here east with the band and stop by the studios.

Got some nice studios here.

Love to do it.

Yeah, I hope we do.

So say hi to everybody else in the band.

Will do.

Yeah.

Thanks, Michael.

Cool.

Thanks, Joe.