Cosmic Goof Radio Featured Artist

P-Theory plays some funky ass shit. Based in Chester (UK), an old Roman city in the north of England about 20 miles outside Liverpool, Alex Campbell and Graham Kay founded P-Theory to create music in the vein of "Band of Gypsies, Funkadelic and all the other black rock / funk acts of the golden era of music." The pursuit of original funk/rock flavored with ol school flava eventually brought P-Theory to Plainfield, New Jersey and the legendary Kevin Goins band leader of Quazar and General Kane. With Kevin firmly entrenched in the role of funk-nasty-front man, P-Theory just released the album
"From the Hood to the Wood." Cosmic Goof Radio recently got Alex to sit down and answer some questions for our listeners. COSMIC GOOF: Who are you what do you play (in the band)? ALEX “ALI AL” CAMPBELL: I'm the musician and producer. We don't really have formal roles within the band as we all swap instruments and play most things but I guess I am playing bass on about 60% of the new album. COSMIC GOOF: Tell us about P-Theory. When and why did you start playing? ALEX: P-Theory has been playing under various guises for 14 years now. Me and Granny (Graham) put it together after we met through a mutual friend in the pub and we got talking. It was obvious as soon as we met that we were both guitarists from the same place as Graham worshipped at the altar of Jimi every morning and I was equally obsessive about Eddie Hazel. We were also both tone junkies and were really passionate about creating and maintaining classic guitar tones and equipment. It seemed totally natural that we should hook up so we did. After we had finished our guitar pissing contests (Graham won) it was clear that we had the same groove so we just stuck to our guns and tried to mould other musicians into our way of thinking. COSMIC GOOF: Where'd the name P-Theory come from? Why did you choose to fly your freak flag with that moniker? ALEX: We used to go under the banner of Pinocchio Theory which was a name our original drummer Andy Jones came up with after the Bootsy song. Andy used to re-iterate the Monty Python film Life of Brian word for word and was going through the “big nose” sketch during a break at rehearsal one day and mid stream he switched into a Bootsy impression and said “Don't fake the funk or your nose gots to grow” and then we all thought that Pinocchio Theory would be a good name for the band. After a couple of years we just shortened it to P-Theory as we thought Pinocchio Theory was too much of a mouthful COSMIC GOOF: Who are the current members of the band. How has P-theory evolved since its beginnings? ALEX: The core of the band is: Alex “Ali AL” Campbell – Guitars & Vocals Kevin “Ya Ya” Goins – Guitars & Lead Vocals Graham “Grandma” Kay – Guitars & Vocals Damon “Wiggles” Wilding – Drums We also collaborate regularly with Jake Jackson on Hammond and Andy Hay on drums / percussion and Gerraint Davies on bone. We were also delighted to welcome Marc McCoy to the board as our visual engineer as he is a huge part of what we do. I'd have to write a book to detail everyone has passed through the ranks over the years and tell their story (which I may do someday) but the founder members were me & Graham on guitars with Andy Jones on drums and Phil Sumner on bass. The reason why we have worked with so many musicians over the years is because me and Graham freely admit to being musical dictators and spent years trying to mould people into our groove. We've played with some fantastic muso's but unless they are instantly connected to our vibe and groove and we no longer try and explain it to them. That is the beauty of Wiggles, he and I grew up playing together and turned each other onto funk so he is the safest pair of hands ever and is a vital element of our sound as he just fits like a hand in a velvet glove. Same with Kevin, that boy is THE funk! COSMIC GOOF: As Funkadelic sang, "all that is good is nasty, and nothing is good unless you play with it, " do you ever feel this kind of connection to the funk? ALEX: Everyday, that's what we do! We don't pre-prescribe anything we do, we just let it flow and there is nothing we like more than to get down and dirty with the whole thing. The gritty and organic tones are a huge part of what we do and we have spent years perfecting them (although we never stop). To us, as soon as you over process the funk it loses it's funkiness, stick to the basics – slabs of wood plugged into old valves with some chewy (non digital) effects in the middle. That's how it all started and that's where its all coming back to.

COSMIC GOOF: Describe some of P-theory's influences. What was Funk really flips your wig? ALEX: Obviously P-Funk are a huge influence although even then, we like to cherry pick from their vast catalogue, anything with Eddie or Billy Bass is good to go for us. We worked out a long time ago that its all about getting the right backline trio, the combo's as we call them. Everything comes from there, so if that ain't grooving and locked then forget it, but once it is…you can put anything you like on the top and its only ever going to embellish it. With that in mind our favourite combo's are: Eddie Hazel, Billy Bass and Tiki Fullwood - Funkadelic Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard – ZZ Top Jimi Hendrix, Billy Cox and Buddy Miles – Band of Gypsies Bootsy, Phelps Collins and Kash Waddy – Houseguests / Rubber Band / JB's George Porter, Leo Nocentelli and Zigaboo Modeliste – The Meters Larry Graham, Freddie Stone and Greg Errico – Family Stone Jake Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker – Cream COSMIC GOOF: Are there any new bands that give you the same feeling? ALEX: Our favourite “new” band is Drugs (click link) by far. They have a similar vibe to us but are more song orientated. COSMIC GOOF: Your creative output seems to have a sound associated with early Funkadelic. In what ways is your own music similar to that early Funkadelic sound and in what ways is it different? ALEX: I wouldn't say our output is “associated” with early Funkadelic it is just a banner that people use to categorize us. The parallels are reasonably obvious to us though as they were gospel / funk musicians trying to put their spin on the British blues rock sound and we are British blues rock musicians trying to put our spin on the funk. Our sound is similar because we both record the same way which is live with a full big stage sound, with cranked amps, but is different in that we have a faster tempo than they did and are probably slightly more structured than they were. I'd actually say our sound was more akin to the later output of that line up, the mid 70's vibe such as the stuff they did with the Temptations, the Commodores and Eddie's solo album….the Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On….to….Hardcore Jollies era. The other reason for the similarity is because Billy and I are both guitarists that switched to bass, and that brings with it a certain sound, as you approach the bass from a guitar players perspective. It makes you think differently, because when you are playing the bass it makes you think “if I was playing the guitar what bass line would I want to hear at this point in the song?” or at least it does for me, I'm obviously not trying to talk for Billy. This means that as a section you lock up better. There is less show boating going on, which is more sympathetic to the groove and makes the sound more swampy. Personally I have no interest in slap bass, and the only people I can listen to that have elements of that in their style is Larry Graham and Bootsy, but they don't slap like other players at all. I much prefer the deep and heavy “call and response” bass lines as I call them; where you set the groove up with a big note on the one and then play a fill at the back of the bar. That was Billy's groove who is my favourite bass player. COSMIC GOOF: Tell us about your latest release, From the Wood to the Hood. Can you explain where the title came from? What was it like recording this album? ALEX: No but I can tell you about our release “From the Hood to The Wood” LOL (everyone makes that mistake) We had the time of our lives recording that album. It was all written and recorded over a two week period in June last year. We locked out a studio (Castle Hill) that is an old converted brewery in the middle of the woods in a remote part of North Wales. Everything was recorded live with all the musicians, in the same room, playing live at the same time. We had recorded all the music in 2 days and then we laid the vocals on top. The title came from the fact that Kevin refers to his hometown Plainfield as the Hood, and it is the polar opposite of the environment we put him in over here. Kevin had never even seen a cow in the flesh before he got here. But although we appeared to be from two different worlds, it was clear within seconds of meeting that we were from the same root, regardless of colour or where we lived. So the only thing to do was to take it back to the root of the funk - from the root to the fruit COSMIC GOOF: Can you explain how you met Kevin Goins. What was it like collaborating with him? What influence has he had on moving you to create new funk? ALEX: We met Kevin through a dear friend of ours in Holland that introduced us to his manager. It was such a dream come true working with him, as the man is just pure raw talent and soul. He brought the gospel influence to what we did, and his incredible sense of melody. We only make new funk WITH Kevin! He is the frontman of PTheory, so it is way beyond some sort of one off collaboration. COSMIC GOOF: What was the first song recorded for the album? The last? What criteria did you use to decide which songs make the cut, which had the right vibe for what you were trying to do? ALEX: Those sort of decisions never had to be taken, the music wrote itself. We just jammed for 2 days. We ended up with over 18 hours or recorded music, so it was a bit of a marathon wading through it all. The only decision criteria for which things we worked on was….“Is the feel right?”. Therefore we just worked through jam by jam (from the ones we immediately liked) and wrote the lyrics (which were just conversations we had at the time) and recorded them. I'm sure there is still enough stuff left in the jams we didn't use to make another album, but that will never happen as we don't need it. We can do the same thing again tomorrow and probably better!