Freedom Affair members (front row, left to right) Brett Jackson, Shon Ruffin, Seyko Groves, Paula Saunders and Cole Bales; (back row, left to right): Dave Brick, Branden Moser, Chris Hazelton and Pete Carroll (Kyle Braun)
Fronted by singers Paula Saunders, Shon Ruffin and Seyko Groves, the Kansas City soul band recorded 10 new songs in the historic Royal Studios in Memphis
In the beginning, the spirit hovered over a wooden Coca-Cola box.
The spirit formed a foot stomping on the box five times, kicking off the groove for “Love and Happiness.” The wood-paneled walls and ceiling caught and held wafts of cigarette smoke rising above the heads of musicians and producers. Instruments, amps and cables were strewn around the feet of Al Green as he leaned into his microphone. The year was 1972, the room was Royal Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, and the spirit was the sound of Southern Memphis Soul being born again and again in that recording studio.
Fifty years later the spirit still hovers over that Coke box, and the scent of Al Green’s exhale still leaches out of the walls and lingers in the air. But it’s a new foot kicking off the groove of a new song, and it’s a new singer, Seyko Groves from Kansas City, who leans into the microphone to reincarnate a new Soul from the sound of this room. These new recordings in the historic Royal Studios will eventually form the latest album from Kansas City-based The Freedom Affair, to be released May 9.
But for now, let’s linger in the room. The warm tremolo of Cole Bales’ Telecaster eases its way in, followed by a simple stroke of Branden Moser’s bass and a whirling wave of Chris Hazelton’s fingers on the keys of Royal Studio’s resident Hammond B-3 organ. The groove of Dave Brick’s drums and the drive of the horns section will soon fill in the rest of the song. But not before the voice of Seyko Groves enters with a simple question and answer:
Is this paradise? I love it.
This is the start of “With You,” the first track of the new self-titled album. “Paradise” here refers to the presence of a lover and the warmth that accompanies their loving presence. But here in the studio, it’s possible that members of The Freedom Affair are also thinking of this room itself as a form of paradise. After all, their journey to arrive here has been the kind of combination of hard work and serendipity that often accompanies a sudden arrival in paradise and the sensation that you can’t always quite explain feeling at home somewhere you doubted whether you belonged.
Two years ago, while on tour in Memphis, the band members were driving past Royal Studios and decided to pull over and take a picture in front of the building. While they stood on the sidewalk posing in front of the historic home of their favorite musicians and recordings, the door opened. A man stood in the doorway, greeted them, and asked if they would like a tour. The man turned out to be Boo Mitchell, current producer of the studio and the son of legendary Royal Studios founder Willie Mitchell. Over the past half-century the Mitchells have recorded not only the majority of Al Green’s albums but also a high-caliber roster ranging from Chuck Berry, Buddy Guy and Ike and Tina Turner to John Mayer, Rod Stewart and Bruno Mars.
But it’s those early Soul recordings from the ’70s that drew The Freedom Affair to the sidewalk that day two years ago. It’s those grooves, those tremolos and waves, that are part of what brought The Freedom Affair’s sound together in the first place, and to be at Royal Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, together was visiting where the spirit first hovered over creation, where it all began.
Boo showed them the studio. They shared in the awe and impression of being in the same room where some of their favorite artists recorded some of their favorite albums.
That’s when they had the idea: Go back to Kansas City, scrap their current plans for a new album, and write an entire batch of songs that could only be captured and recorded in the same room where the tradition was born. They would return to Memphis to make a record. They took that serendipitous moment of Boo Mitchell literally opening the door for them and then set about the hard work of writing a batch of 12 songs worthy of walking back through that door.
To be clear, this is not mere nostalgia or attempts at a throwback style. Some bands work in various genres in efforts to replicate or imitate a certain style from the past; what The Freedom Affair is after here has less to do with replicating a style and everything to do with reviving a sound. Royal Studios is home to the widest collection of studio-grade vintage tape machines, and some of the equipment the band wanted to use for this album has not been used since Al Green recorded on them in the ’70s. Those analog machines in that particular room capture a sound that does not exist anywhere else and cannot be replicated through digital tools by peddlers of mere style.
You gotta work twice as hard
Just to get half as far
Still no guarantees
Even if you played it smart
These are the first lines of “Get My Share,” one of the tracks that stands out on the new album, partly because of its deep and seemingly endless groove, but also because its composition is by far the most collaborative among the band members. Paula Saunders confesses that she rarely pushed through her reluctance to join in on the lyric writing and mostly has preferred to just sing. But when drummer Dave Brick confronted her and fellow front singers Shon Ruffin and Seyko Groves with the challenge to take the phrase “get my share” and see what they can do with it, Saunders leaned in to the moment.
“When I heard Dave say ‘get my share,’” says Saunders, “I immediately had some ideas of what I wanted to say. As a Black woman in America, I know I can walk into a room of other Black women, say ‘You gotta work twice as hard’ and know that they will finish the second half of the sentence. That simply encapsulates so much of our life experience.”
In “Get My Share” the horns alongside the three voices singing in unison form a wall of solidarity that marches forward for three minutes, then the song seems to fade and end, until Hazelton’s keys wave back in and kick off another full minute of one of the best grooves on the entire album. Just when you think the song is over, it reinvents itself into a new form that you don’t want to end. You can’t help but wonder if that wall of unison and solidarity marching forward might actually be its own way of fighting for freedom, justice and love, one groove at a time, born again from the very source of its own sound.
In advance of the May 9 release of the album, available on vinyl and on digital streaming platforms (visit thefreedomaffair.com), The Freedom Affair will perform a record release show with special guests Julia Hale, and Katy Guillen & The Drive May 2 at the Madrid Theatre. Tickets available at madridtheatre.com.
