Robert Walter is a busy man. Between the Greyboy Allstars, Stanton Moore Trio, W.R.D. (Walter, Roberts, Deitch), his film and television work and god knows how many other one-off musical configurations, it’s safe to say he gets around. That he could do all of this and still find the time to revive his old band, the 20th Congress, seems astonishing. Yet the funkified gumbo of a group that was once home to drummer Joe Russo, saxophonist Cochemea “Cheme” Gastelum, guitarist Will Bernard and many more has returned.
The 20th Congress, who played their first gig in five years this past June during Walter’s four show residency at The Mint in Los Angeles, have recently made their way back to the studio to work on a new record. On top of that, the band will be headlining another gig on December 8—this time at the Brooklyn Bowl—with a lineup that includes Bernard and Gastelum, as well as bassist Reed Mathis, drummer Simon Lott and percussionist Elizabeth Pupo-Walker. We spoke with Walter about the new album, the revival of the 20th Congress, the future of the Greyboy Allstars, his love for New Orleans and more.
So tell me about this new incarnation of 20th Congress. It’s been a while since you guys hit the road. Has the band’s sound changed since you were last playing shows?
Well this is sort of a mixture. Cheme—Cochemea Gastelum—who’s been in the band forever. That’s our sax player, he’s been on all our records and he was in the first version of the band. And then there’s Will Bernard, who played with us for a long time—I guess sort of in 2004 through 2008. Then Reed Mathis, who I’ve known forever and also Simon Lott. I’ve been using him for a rhythm section for other gigs lately, and I’ve just been really enjoying playing with him. So this is the first time all of us are together in this configuration.
Did it take a while for you guys to get back in the groove or did things come back pretty easily?
Oh, it’s always pretty easy. All of us—even though some of the guys have not been playing in the 20th Congress—we all played gigs in a million different combinations. All of us have played together and have known each other well, for years. You know, it’s all in the family.
Tell me about the people outside of your band who are working with you guys on the new album. Is anyone else sitting in on any of the tracks?
The album is mainly me and Aaron Redfield, the drummer for Greyboy Allstars. Also Mike Andrews, you’d know him as Elgin Park from Greyboy Allstars. He’s our guitar player, but he produced the record and played bass and guitar on a lot of the record. Karl Denson is on a couple of tracks and Cheme’s all over it. Our percussion player, Chuck Prada, who’s been in the 20th Congress for years, is on it a lot too.
Let’s talk about the recording process in general. How’s it been going for you?
I like to do it kind of fast and dirty. We don’t do various over-dubs. There’s a couple things—everybody’s liable to put a tambourine on a couple things afterwards or something like that—but it’s pretty much live in the room. It’s more about just getting performances that we like, and we do it fast. The whole thing was recorded in four or five days.
We just go in and then it takes a while to mix and select which tracks you want to go on there and stuff. But, basically the recording process is real fast. In the morning I’ll go in and I’ll pitch the band a song and we’ll talk over what we want to do on it—everybody gives their two cents on every arrangement or whatever—and then we just record it. As soon as nobody messes up, that’s it. And there’s not a lot of fancy digital editing and no click track or any of that stuff. I like to play it, I like the spontaneity of a band playing. You know?
So with a band like this—that’s comprised of so many musicians working on so many other projects—is it hard to get them all together for a series of shows and an album?
Yeah, that’s the trickiest thing for me nowadays. When we started we were just a garage band, it was just us and nobody had any gigs and nobody had anything to do. So we would just rehearse all the time and go on the road. We were kids, so our entire life was devoted to one band. [Now] everyone’s grown up and is in demand— and those are the guys I want to play with. They’re really great players that I grew up with. So now it’s just a matter of scheduling. And everybody’s moved to different towns so it’s all of that kind of stuff. I think it’s worth it to wait until the people you want to play with are available, and there’s nothing like playing with people who you’ve known for twenty years.
Cheme Gastelum—who’s been playing saxophone with you guys—has been doing a lot of the R&B and soul thing with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings for some time now. How do the different musical backgrounds of different musicians come through in the studio?
All that kind of Funk 45 sound and old soul is always an influence on us and, when he moved to New York, Cheme kind of fell in with the Daptone people. I had been a fan of a couple of those records early on, and I think he was into that stuff too, so it made a lot of sense for him to move into that world. But as he’s been in that longer, he’s gotten better and better at arranging horn sections and doing stuff in the classic mode. I think he likes to go to my bands sound because it stretches out a little bit more and all that. All these things feed into everything. I work on a lot of film music now and that is subtly influencing the music we play with the band too. Any thing you do adds to the whole thing.
Could you elaborate on that a little bit? How has the stuff you’ve written for film kind of found its way into your repertoire and into the way you work in the studio?
Working on the film music is a lot more precise and there’s a lot of economy. You’re not making music per se, you’re making a film, you know what I mean? The music has to serve a purpose. It has to move the story along and it’s not about your fancy little thing that you thought of or your little music fetishes. You always have a higher purpose, which is to make the story better and make the audience feel more emotion about whatever is happening on the screen. So it’s just taught me to streamline, and cut things and not be afraid to edit myself more.
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