Michael Cooper, iconic lead vocalist of the legendary funk and R&B group Con Funk Shun, joins Joe Kelley for a powerful conversation on Musicians Reveal. Cooper opens up about the emotional moment he experienced watching Silk Sonic perform the timeless hit “Love’s Train,” and how it reaffirmed the lasting impact of his music. He shares valuable insights into the importance of stage presence, artist aesthetics, and why first impressions matter long before a single note is played.

🎙️ Musicians Reveal with Joe Kelley is a podcast featuring legendary and emerging funk, R&B, and Prince-associated artists. On air since 1982 and now spanning five decades, the show was personally spotlighted by Prince on his website in 2004. He also gifted us the One Nite Alone box set in 2002 — before any media outlet.

From his early days backing soul legends like Rufus Thomas to leading Con Funk Shun to chart-topping success, Cooper reflects on the band's evolution, legacy, and their rigorous touring schedule that keeps the funk alive today. The interview dives deep into the creative process, musical influences, and the unbreakable bond between bandmates. If you’re a fan of classic funk, R&B, or just great stories from a master of the craft, this episode delivers in every groove.

🎧 More episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@musiciansreveal/playlists

🌐 Website: https://musiciansreveal.com

📻 Listen on Spotify / Apple: https://open.spotify.com/show/1rQAZZtdU2cZB6EeleSZ8J / https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/musicians-reveal-funk-soul-r-b-and-prince-associated/id1545165178

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

Con Funk Shun: https://www.confunkshunusa.com

Con Funk Shun Booking: https://www.confunkshunlive.com

Musicians Reveal Mixcloud station: https://www.mixcloud.com/joekelleyradio/

#MichaelCooper #ConFunkShun #SilkSonic #FunkMusic #MusiciansRevealPodcast

.

Who did this?

I said, I don't know.

I say, but it is released and it is out in the world.

And so I went back and I took a ride around the corner.

I listened to the whole song twice and I was blown away.

I was like, okay.

I was completely knocked.

My socks were knocked off.

Hey, this is Michael Cooper of Confunction and you are watching Musicians Reveal with Joe Kelly.

We're really excited today here on Musicians Reveal.

A legend in the music business.

Over 50 plus years, recording, touring, writing incredible songs that were part of my life in radio and my own personal life.

He's still doing it to it with Confunction.

Michael Cooper, finally you're on Musicians Reveal.

Thanks for coming by.

Thank you for having me, man.

It's been, it's been a minute, but thank you for having me.

Yeah, I mean that's, yeah, we got the gold records.

I tell you, the Zap band had gold records and my buddy Chris Jasper had gold records too.

So.

Yeah.

So what do you got?

Good background, right?

Make for a good background.

I know, yeah.

I mean it's like, what do you have behind you actually?

I mean, I mean that we could see, actually.

There's a, there's a couple of goals from Confunction, Spirit of Love, and then I've got a gold here and a platinum for Pebbles from the Pebbles album.

I have song or two on there and of course the first Bitco Secrets up there and Love Shine.

And then on the other way, on the other side of the room over there is all the others.

That's right, yeah.

I mean it's such, such a distinguished career and, and you still tour in the band?

You got some dates this summer, right?

You come into Midwest or Ohio?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I, it's funny, I don't have them in front of me.

I should have had my other phone here for prompt.

But yeah, we're, we've got our usual 30 to 40 date tour that we do every year.

Right.

And the phone just keeps ringing, man.

The phone keeps.

We get older, the phone rings more.

Well, I mean, it's what I grew up on.

We're watching people play their instruments, dancing, looking sharp on stage, and you guys bring it 100 like that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're, we're always dressed this way.

The people come, they pay their money, right?

They, you know, they don't want to see you standing up there in the clothes you went to 7:11 in.

You know, they pay their money, they want to see a show.

They want to see a show, feel a Show and hear a show.

Right.

Who inspired you to.

To go with that kind of, you know, business and looking sharp in the music biz?

Quite a few.

I would say the first would be the OJs.

Okay.

And the whispers.

The OJs and the whispers.

Even though Confunction, we have a horn front.

We have horn horns in the front.

Right.

These guys are singing groups.

The impact of how you look, that was almost a third of your show before you sung a note as you came on and how you looked, you know, you had the audience, boom, you grabbed them right there.

So your job was made a lot easier and, you know, and you felt comfortable.

I always liken good uniforms and good show show outfits to a pair of pajamas you can wear on the stage because half your work is done.

You can just relax, you know.

Yeah.

Get the sound check done and just take it to the stage, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I was watching the other day.

I.

I've watched the whole movie a long time ago, but the Watt Stacks movie with you and the guys who eventually became Confunction and Rufus Thomas.

I gotta ask.

Ask it right off the bat.

You guys are teenagers, right?

Absolutely.

I.

I think at that time I had just turned 21.

So we had a couple of guys still in 19, 20, 21.

Okay.

Yeah, we were.

We had just gotten to Memphis.

That was our first.

That was our first professional gig backing the Soul Children.

And Rufus Thomas was our first professional gig.

And we didn't know what the hell we were doing, but we.

We faked it very well.

What was the process for him to hire you as the band?

Well, Rufus never hired us as a band.

We were hired by the Soul Children.

Okay.

And paid by the Soul Children.

Okay.

And Rufus was so hot that, you know, pretty much every band in the city of Memphis knew his music.

However, we were touring with the.

With the Soul Children.

And Rufus would book himself or call the promoter and say, hey, that Soul Children bands know my music.

I'll just come through and I'll do a couple of songs and, you know, you.

You hit me in my hand with some bread.

So he didn't bring a band or nothing.

That's.

Now he.

He had other gigs, I'm sure, where he had a band show up and they did a full show.

But he had that kind of relationship with me and Felton and.

And Norman, the leader of the Soul Children, that he could just show up with his hot pants and his.

And his pink boots or white boots on, right.

And the audience would go crazy and he would just walk out on Stage and, you know, it was just like you saw in Watts Stacks.

Right.

That's the way it would be any given night throughout the South.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

The crowd's response.

Did he get in trouble for calling out the people to come down on the.

On the floor, or was that, okay.

Well, what you gonna do?

Yeah.

103,000 people.

You don't see it all, by the way.

On the movie, there was a lot of crowd control and a lot of.

A lot of pausing to get that.

Get to the music.

So it was a lot worse than what you see.

Okay.

When he said, y' all come right down.

Right from the second he said that, it probably took us another five or six minutes to start the song.

Oh.

Because the.

The police had to get them to back up because the fence wasn't doing any good.

So they just had to get everybody to back up.

And so on watch Stacks.

They edited it so it looked like we went right into the music.

Hey, they did a good job.

It was still.

You got the.

The total feeling of it.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I got.

How come you're not wearing the hat you wore during Watts Stacks?

You still got that one?

Well, no, and I.

But on.

On Amazon, I can have one in 24 hours.

We call them apple hats or Camelot hats.

Okay.

And.

Yeah, and they.

We.

The.

The 70s real name was.

Was an apple hat.

I don't know why.

And the guys that did.

The Soul Train dancers and all the guys that did the.

The Camelot dance and ju.

Wore those hats, they grab them and spin them around in the dance and bring them back.

And it was just one of those things.

And so a couple of us decided to, you know, grab that and take it to the movie.

Yeah, it was a good choice.

I saw the poppers and the lockers wearing them.

Yeah.

It must be the guys you're talking about.

Yeah.

So you start pretty much on the.

One of the biggest stages ever.

Maybe the biggest one you ever played on.

Or close to it, Right?

Close to it.

We've.

We've played a couple that.

You need a phone, use your cell phone to talk to somebody.

I'm telling you.

Yeah.

Those festivals, football stadiums.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think I saw you.

Well, some that were double.

They were double.

You know, while you're sitting on one up on one side, an act would be playing on the other.

So the attention would just go from left to right to left to right.

That's probably one of the biggest stages I've ever played on.

It was in Cleveland at Big Jazz festival.

So.

Yeah, but no, that was big stage, big one.

And this past summer you played the fool in Love Festival.

And yeah, with the rotating stage and you're singing around.

That was the first time we have ever, ever done anything like that.

And I'm sure those people were the first time for them too.

Right.

What you probably didn't see is that there were many stages.

I counted at least five or six stages throughout the parking lot of the.

Of the.

What's it called us?

The Sofi.

Sofi Stadium.

Yeah.

And not all of them were revolving stages.

I think maybe three or four were involving stages and.

But we had a 15 minute show.

You had to, you had 15 minutes to set up whoever was playing on the other side that get.

That was your 15 minutes to set up.

So whatever you had set up, that's what you were going to use.

So anything that wasn't plugged in and ready to go, find a way without it.

And we had great crew.

Our guy KC is our tech guy, he had it all mapped, you know, halfway set up before our turn even came up.

And once we got up there, we share of course, shared the drums with everybody.

But we got up there, we got set up in 15 minutes.

And when the stage revolved, man, we were absolutely ready to rock.

So.

Yeah, because I watched another minute.

Yeah, it was great.

You knocked it out and the fans were into it.

And I've watched other performances from that festival and some, some didn't have it as set up as you guys.

There were some sound issues that I saw.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's get back to the.

Really when you guys were knocking out those gold records, I think it was like a period of five albums in a row.

Yeah, I think starting with, with Secrets.

Right, Starting with Secrets all the way out to I think to the max.

To the max.

That was the first not to go goal until radio discovered Love Strain.

Oh, okay.

So it had a.

Had a rickety time getting past, which, you know, today would be a monstrous thing, but it had a hard time getting past the 400,000 mark.

We just didn't have a single.

You know, we tried, we released a couple things and they just didn't work.

And the people didn't respond to.

They, they bought the album and somewhere around 370, 380 it stalled and it took a couple of years for that album to actually make it.

And I think in some books it's still not gold, but it actually in sales reached the gold status and definitely.

A wedding song for a lot of people too.

Well, yeah, you know that, you know, I'm not going to jump ahead on your show, but that song, we.

Let's put it like this, we end our show religiously with that song, right?

Yeah, a whole lot of reasons.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

And you know, when you got that royalty check from the publishing on Bruno Mars, surprising you and.

And the world with Love's Train, you know, tell us about a little bit about that experience and.

And the publishing and what went on there.

Well, it's quite a cool, cool story.

I've learned to abbreviate it a little.

But the.

It all started with, like you said, a check showing up in the mail and from a company that generally does direct deposit.

And for some reason, somebody from the publishing company that acquired the song decided that they were just going to mail checks directly.

Okay.

No statement, nothing on the check about what it was.

For all you knew that it was from a publishing company.

And of course, I opened it up and it was huge.

And my wife and I looked at it.

We said, well, let's hold on to it for a while so you get an explanation.

You know, we don't want to go spend it or do something.

And then somebody calls up and say, hey, we made a mistake.

So that set for about a week and a half.

And then my phone rang Valentine's morning, and it's my daughter.

She said, have you looked at your text?

Which my daughter is a to the point person, but my daughter lingers.

I'm thinking it's bad news.

She said, have you looked at your text?

I said, no.

She says, look at your text and call me back.

Right?

So I scroll down and I hit.

I looked at the text and it said, love Train, right?

Blah, blah, blah.

I didn't.

And I said, well, love Train.

And I pushed it one more time and it said, Silk Sonic, Love's Train.

And I, as I looked at it, I wasn't at that time a fan of Silk Sonics.

I was a fan of Bruno Mars.

But I didn't know very much about Silk Sonic other than the song Leave the Door Open.

And when I hit the link and the music started, I listened for about.

About 10 seconds and then I stopped it and I ran out to the car and I put it on in the car and I let it play.

I stopped it about almost halfway through and I forwarded to Felton.

And I.

And I, in the text, I said, have you heard this?

And he took a while and he got back.

He said, no, who did this?

I said, I don't know.

I said, but it is released and it is out in the world.

And so I went back and I took a ride around the corner.

I listened to the whole song twice, and I was blown away.

I was like, okay.

I was completely knocked.

My socks were knocked off.

And lo and behold, Bruno Mars and Anderson Paak had recorded Love Train and dropped it as a special release on Valentine's Day.

And it just spread like wildfire.

In 48 hours, the phone had rang.

I think in 72 hours, we had picked up maybe three gigs, because radio all over the world show you how quick the Internet is.

Radio all over the world had picked up this song and started playing.

Was a.

It was a great feeling.

But it wasn't until the song was maybe out for about a month that we got a chance.

Our publicist, Ms.

Tanya, hooked us up with a backstage meeting in Las Vegas with Silk Sonic.

Wow.

And we got a chance.

We were there for about four days.

It was during the Grammys, to go backstage and meet with Bruno and Anderson.

And it was the beginning of a roller coaster ride at that point that was gonna, as Salimar say, it was a night to remember.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, they came backstage, they acted a fool.

They just.

They came back.

They acted like we were the stars.

Well, yeah, you guys are like, we were the superstars.

I mean, like, you know, he comes in the room imitating me, you know, and I'm.

And I'm whipping him off on the butt.

Like, get off that floor.

Get up.

Get.

He's down on one knee.

Anderson's back on the wall with his hands over his face, like, whoa, these guys.

Guys are really here.

Yeah.

And we talked for a minute, and so finally, you know, they had to go on stage.

And so.

So Bruno said, well, man, are you guys working?

They weren't aware of.

They.

They thought we just dropped in.

I said, no, man, we've been working since day one.

We've never stopped.

I said, we've all we're doing, doing all kinds of gigs.

He.

He says, well, whatever you charging, double it.

I say, yes, sir, I sure will.

I say, we about to really be working now, my brother.

He said, that's cool.

He said, well, let's take some pictures.

Right?

Right.

And we took pictures and they go on stage.

And I go.

I go to my seat.

Dalton goes to his seat, and our wives are with us.

And they start this incredibly monstrous, earth shaking show.

And they get in, I think, the fourth song.

They get to the fourth song, right?

And they start Love Train.

And of course, people in the eyes.

9,000 people in the audience.

People in the audience who know the song know that it's their current hit.

They leap to their feet and they're screaming.

And the first thing Bruno does, he steps to the.

He's doing choreography, and then he steps to the microphone, right?

Obviously breaking with the choreography.

And he said, ladies and gentlemen, we got the writers in the house.

Give it up for Michael Cooper of Confunction, right?

And at the time, I hadn't noticed.

He didn't say Felton.

But Anderson picked it up a little later.

Okay.

And I'm standing on my feet.

I'm standing on my feet.

I'm looking at the stage, and they start.

They start singing the lyrics, they start singing the song.

And the whole thing hit me.

The whole thing hit me of exactly what had happened.

And I had come full circle, that this song that was never a single is now a single recorded by the biggest pop R B artists in the world.

And they were acknowledging us, and people.

All eyes were on me while I'm standing there.

And of course, I start bawling like a baby.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm standing there and I had.

Similar to this one.

And I'm.

I'm balling like a baby and my wife's holding me, and then all these people start getting up to come lay hands on me.

Levar Burton Mayor London Breed all these celebrities that were at the show got out of their seats and they wanted to come over and be a part of what I was feeling.

And it was unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

It was.

I cried and I laughed and I cried and laughed through the whole song.

And it was just.

It was a.

When I left there.

We left there, of course, and we were walking back to our hotel, the mgm, right across the street.

And all of we were in a kind of a group together.

And I remember picking out my phone and I.

I went to Facebook and I said, just.

Just leaving, Bruno.

Excuse me.

I said, just leaving.

Silk Sonic Concert I can't speak now.

I'll talk tomorrow.

Yeah, it was just I.

Every time I go to stay to talk to somebody, I would.

I would start.

Start to cry.

It was like.

It was crazy.

And then people go to funerals and they go to weddings and they cry and, you know, but when you can cry and laugh the same time, that's.

That's a blessing.

That's a blessing.

That means something very unique is going on.

You know, that.

My dad's funeral, I did that.

And they were cracking jokes and, you know, and of course, I look like my dad.

And I was standing right there in the front and all his friends were cracking fishing jokes and.

And I was of course, laughing and crying and laughing and laughing and, you know, and they were coming over hugging me and everything, right?

You know, but yeah, the Bruno Mars Anderson pack would have put a.

They put a thumbprint on my life.

And all those record companies and radio stations who turned a blind eye to that record and that song in particular, they were wrong.

You know, and the great thing about it, like I said, that the record was discovered.

The company decided not to make it a single because it would sell the album, it would help the album get closer to goal, right?

And.

But the radio stations had gotten hold to it and we.

So much so that we had to play it on Soul Train.

Dick Clark knew it wasn't a single, right?

But he knew that your most popular record on the to the Max album is Soul Train.

You guys are gonna, you know, we did play one of the singles on.

On the show, but we.

He says, you gotta place.

You gotta play Love Train.

You gotta play it.

I just wish there were good video copies of Soul Train and American Bandstand that were out there.

You can enjoy yourself.

Right.

You just reminded me of my mistake because I did say.

I meant Soul Train and I said Dick Clark.

Yeah, I wasn't going to interrupt you.

Yeah, I'm glad you.

I'm glad you caught that.

Yeah.

I said Dick Clark because I was thinking of American Bandstand and of course it's Don Cornelius and that crew are the ones that convinced us that we had to come do Love String.

And you were just hanging with his son, Don Cornelius Jr.

Right?

Yeah, yeah.

Just out on the boat.

Yeah, on the boat.

You do a lot of cruises too, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

We're going out again on the Tom Joyner cruise this October.

Yeah.

Okay.

Hey, that's one of the questions I wanted to ask you.

I saw this.

This might have been 20 years ago.

It was like an all star jam at Tom Joyner's party.

I think it was the SOS band.

Charlie Wilson was up there.

And you can function.

You were up there.

It didn't sound like a train wreck.

Like a lot of these groups would get up there and do it.

How did you guys put it together?

Sounds so good.

That's a.

That's a undertaking that.

You know a guy named Bobby Harris and James Alexander, those two combined the.

The Marques and the Dad's Band and Confunction and made this one and.

And the SOS Band and made this one big giant, you know, 14 to 17 piece band where it was called the United We Funk All Stars.

And we played at least three of each of our hits.

So we're talking about a two hour non stop show where one lead singer would come up, drop back, pick up his horn or guitar, whatever that person played.

Another lead singer would come to the front and we would be performing these hits throughout the show.

And of course we were blessed to have Charlie Wilson representing the Gap Band Music at that time.

And that made it Freight Train.

That made that.

That was what you saw with Tom on stage and everything.

We had rehearsed it and rehearsed it and rehearsed it and that made it a complete carnival ride once we started that show.

And if you knew all that music, you were not only in awe, but you were captivated.

You couldn't believe that that many guys went through that kind of trouble to duplicate the other's music so that it would sound authentic.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, mission accomplished.

That was something.

Oh yeah.

And we took it on tour.

We played that show probably 30, 40 times.

Wow.

Hey, also, we lost a couple greats recently in the business.

Wayne Lewis of Atlantic Star, who you did dates with, and Sly up in the Bay Area.

Sly Stone.

Yeah.

Did you have encounters with Sly or.

Of course you did Wayne Lewis.

Well, yeah, I'll start with Wayne, Wayne.

Wayne Lewis and another good friend of ours, Chicago Mike.

But Wayne Lewis and I were on stage a few weeks ago at the Maple House in Atlanta.

Wow.

The Atlantic Star function and was.

He's such a pleasurable, cool, stylish guy.

He's a stylist type of a guy.

You know, just his style.

When he moved from one side of the room to the other.

There's a, there's a process there.

Wayne Lewis was just a very stylish musician.

And you know, that whole show, to lose both him and Chicago Mike, we were all backstage together and then to go home and these guys are gone kind of.

I don't know.

I don't go with the Omen theory.

I don't believe in that.

But it was a little too close for comfort and is very, very painful.

You know, what's his.

Dwayne Wiggins of Tony, Tony, Tony.

A few months ago.

Very painful feeling to be at my age and have these guys so much younger than me pass on.

It's just.

Yeah.

Scary.

Very painful.

And you, you lose a powerhouse like that.

You know, we can all think back, you know, to Luther and, you know, and Rick and you could just go one after the other on the way back.

And Michael Jackson, of course, Prince.

Yeah.

You think, how in the world do we move on and keep moving on?

How do we keep going?

And we.

You just.

Then your whole.

The answer to your own question pops in your head.

You just do.

You know, they expect you to, and your fans are expecting you to, and you just put one foot in front of the other and you keep on going till you can't go no more.

Yeah, you got the next showing you, you know, and your voice.

I.

I wanted to ask you the secret of you keeping your voice.

You're still hitting those notes.

I mean, I love strain.

That's not an easy one, I'm sure.

To sing.

What, what, what.

What are you doing to.

To make it happen like that?

I'll.

Let me ask.

Let me delay your question for a second because.

Okay.

I wanted to touch a little more on Slice Stone, if you don't mind.

Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Yes.

Sylvester Stewart, AKA Sly Stone.

And I.

I had the pleasure of attending the same junior college as him, a few years behind him.

And of course, the first time I ever heard of a Sly Stone was on KDIA radio.

Lucky 13.

Had no idea this man was so in touch with my hometown of Vallejo.

Had so many roots laid down there.

And I had no idea he was even a musician until he played his own record on kdia.

Okay.

And when he played his music on kdia, and of course, it was such a hit.

It was so.

It was such a big hit.

You know, we were kind of in a.

In a little vacuum because we didn't know.

We figured, wow, he's playing his own music, and I'm sure it's going to be a hit here in the Bay Area.

But no, it was a hit all over the country, Right?

Yeah.

And I don't know what else I can say.

I only had the chance to meet Sly one time.

One time in the studio.

I never met him backstage.

I never met him out and about, but I had a chance to meet him in the studio one time, and things have kind of died down a little bit for him, but he was still Sly.

It was, I think, his hit at the time that we were in the studio, the one where he sounds like he's half asleep.

He says, in the blood, it's a family affair.

Yeah, that was on the radio.

I remember as a hit while we were in the studio with him in Hollywood, California.

And we were just guests.

We were just guests.

And he knew all about us.

He knew all about confunction and we talked Vallejo and everything.

And all I can say, man, is that there are some people that are.

Yes.

Gone too soon.

In Sly's case.

Sly was gone too soon years ago.

Yeah.

Because if anybody should have been still out here jamming along with Smokey Gladys, you know, Patty, it should have been Sylvester Stewart.

Right.

Yeah.

And of course he.

He got out of here, you know, and he was, you know, he was doing.

He was doing.

Had a pretty rough, rough life going.

Yeah.

Going on.

And so we love him and we.

Our hats are off to the career of Sylvester Stewart.

Sly and Family Stones.

Yeah.

I had one chance to see him live.

It was Jocelyn Brown, Bobby Womack and Sly Stone.

I saw Bobby Womack and Jocelyn Sly.

It was so long that he was going to come on stage.

I left and I don't even know if he made the gig.

It was during that era.

Yeah, yeah, we had such a.

He had such a musical influence over many groups.

We even our song Fun, Fun, Fun.

We got the idea from.

From one of his songs with the same title.

Wow.

And you can make it if you try Fun.

All these things were.

Were in our musical heads as we began to start our recording career.

So, yeah, we.

We began to, you know, hire.

Had a very driving, stomping beat and we wound up doing Chase Me.

They weren't so much similar as that, but we did get the idea from.

Just keep the moot, keep the hammer hitting, going and going and going, you know, and people, eventually, they'll respond to that.

And so, yeah, slice.

We learned a lot from Sly.

Well, you got those busy summer coming up with all those gigs.

And I got to give credit to.

To the live performance by Confunction because I always love the bands.

I always love the bands who finish as strong as they do start.

And, and you guys, do you.

Do you still do the medley of other people's songs?

Yes, we, we.

Of course, that's in the bass solo.

So it's totally up to the bass player what's going to be played.

Okay.

But it's in the.

It's in his bass medley.

And, and there are shows where we only got like 30 minutes, 20 minutes where we don't get a chance to do that.

But when we got our full hour, yeah, we, we throw down and.

And we do a little Sly.

We.

We do a little slave.

We do.

We just.

We have a ball with it and we get a response out of the audience.

We're paying tribute, right.

And then we're moving on.

Right.

And the audience really, they really like it, they really dig it.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a great.

When you get a time to stretch out.

Yeah, yeah.

You can't keep EQ Young in one place.

He's, he's everywhere, right?

He's not.

Well, it's funny you would mention him because, you know, EQ has been replaced in Confunction by his first cousin.

Oh, I, I was gonna ask you who, who that guy is.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, yeah.

He, he, he left us to go be with Charlie Wilson and he had an illustrious two year run with Charlie.

It was great.

But there's a, there's a, if you can find it, there's a, a changing of the guard video on YouTube where during, I think it was October, about four years, his cousin was standing in with a black shirt on.

And we, we ended the show, but we introduced his cousin and his cousin walked out and EQ took off his jacket.

They're both tall, 6 foot 2 skinny guys, put his jacket on his cousin hand, his cousin the bass.

And I looked, I said, and I said, are you ready to rock it?

And he looked over at me, said, yeah.

So we decided to play Chase Me again.

So.

Okay.

Just to show the power.

Lt Brian Latour, right?

Yeah.

It's a video to watch.

It's a really great video.

I'm going to do some homework on that one.

That sounds.

Yeah, yeah.

Because I've seen him play with you guys and solid as.

As they come, right?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And right Now I think EQ's playing with Ohio Players a little bit with Daz.

Man, he, he gets around now.

Yeah, he had a great, he had a great run with Charlie Wilson.

Right.

Yeah, I saw they did the NPR small, small desk kind of thing.

The concert.

Yeah, yeah.

With Charlie.

Yeah.

So, hey, listen, I gotta thank you, Michael Cooper.

You know, you've been a huge part of my radio and listening life.

You're all the songs you've written and can functions and your solo stuff, I mean, we didn't get into the solo stuff, but some tremendous songs.

Michael Cooper, you can search those out as well.

Four or five solo records, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

We had three monster solo records on Warner Brothers.

Prove My Love, Dinner for Two, should have been you, Baby's House.

We had some monster records on, you know, all top five.

And then they had two more albums that I did that I was executive producer on with a couple of different labels and we just had a ball as a solo artist, man.

That was another, that's another show.

Yeah, I know.

That's what I was saying, I don't mean to go so fast over all the topics, but yeah, we're.

I know, you know, you got things to do and well, well, I don't.

Mind saying I was blessed with three careers.

You know, my career with Confunction one, then my career as a solo artist with Warner Brothers 2, and then now again my career with Confunction 2.

Confunction 2 now has been together three times as long as Confunction 1.

So we're coming up on the 30 year mark.

Okay.

And that's rare together, right?

Like, oh, well, it's like, it's weird.

I love that phrase, get back together.

We have three originals in today's Confunction, Myself, Felton Pilot and Reverend Carl Fuller.

And we have some of the greatest musicians in the world surrounding us in the world.

Kirk Casey Clayton, keyboards.

You know, Brian latour, bass.

Ron.

Dr.

Ronald Moten on saxophone is a hoot.

Greatest sax player I've ever played with.

Of course, Escavito.

There is no Confunction album ever played without an Escovito playing on it.

Renee Escobedo and of course Aaron Green.

The great Aaron Green.

So we're on drums.

So we, we have put together a younger wrapping around us which gives us that longevity which is now we just got to be responsible.

And you said something about my voice that is a God giving thing that I don't drink, I don't smoke, I go to the gym as much as I can and I warm up prior to the show, my voice and I drink, I hydrate.

And that's the key to singing, trying to keep your, keep your voice.

Because a lot of people don't do that.

They don't, they don't hold on to that voice.

And I'm blessed.

You know, when you walk with God, right?

You can't go wrong.

And you've been doing it successfully.

So looking forward, hopefully you got some dates on the east coast here.

What's a confunction website again, two once the.

The big one is www.confunctionusa.com okay.

Confunctionusa.com and for those who want to book Confunction and all, everything you'll ever need is it at Confunction Live.

L I v e confunctionlive.com you got everything.

You got a list of the staging, the equipment, the, the, the bio.

It's great, great stuff to.

It's a, it's a hoot to go and, and go and check out Confunction live and confunction usa.com and you got.

The writer up there.

Everything Function Live has everything.

I love it, man, because some of the stage techs are walking around on stage with the Confunction live on their phones, where they just scroll over and they're looking at the rider, they're looking at the stage spot equipment list.

They got it right there.

And they're blown away because I that you have a copy of your writer.

I said go to confunction live.com.

follow the prompt.

Yeah.

And that you don't hear from them ever again, y' all.

You see them standing over there looking like, we know where everything goes.

Yeah.

I'm sure they appreciate it once they know it, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So have fun on the upcoming gigs and say hello to everybody in the band, okay?

I sure will, man.

God bless you.

Thank you so much for having me.

Honor Michael Cooper, man.

Take care.

You got it.

Thank you.