This month The Cud visits with Bangor, Maine band River Bottom Funk –collectively Joshua Small on guitar, vocals and keys, Brad O’Brien on bass and vocals, and Mike Constantine on drums and vocals. Recently the band took some time out to chat with Evan Kanarakis about the music scene in Maine, their forthcoming plans, and some of their more ‘interesting’ road adventures (or was it misadventures?).

THE CUD: What can you tell us about the origins of River Bottom Funk?

JOSHUA SMALL: Mike and I had been playing together a good couple years ago in what was mainly a covers band — 

MIKE CONSTANTINE: The Frozen Swamp Chompers.

JOSHUA SMALL: Right. And basically it was just a matter of us deciding that it was time to unite with like-minded musicians who wanted to play their own material.

MIKE CONSTANTINE: Unfortunately the music scene in Maine is very small. Opportunities for originals bands to gig regularly are limited...

JOSHUA SMALL: So what we decided to do was take the covers music that had influenced us and that we enjoyed playing — but that also most importantly had integrity — and use those tunes in live performances as a way to support our original and studio work the rest of the time.

THE CUD: The equivalent maybe of ‘getting a day job to cover bills while we work nights on the real heart of what drives us’?

MIKE CONSTANTINE: Exactly. But it’s also the kind of music that would only make our originals material better while keeping up those live chops.

JOSHUA SMALL: Brad joined us in the band most recently on bass. River Bottom Funk has been at it on nearly three years now.

THE CUD: So how would you describe your music?

MIKE CONSTANTINE: Live we’re a cross between a little bit of soul, rock, funk, blues… and Slayer.

THE CUD: Slayer?

BRAD O’BRIEN: We’re a party band.

MIKE CONSTANTINE: And in terms of our recorded original material it’s a bit of a cross-pollination of all those influences and styles of music that you see in our live covers.

JOSHUA SMALL: I think the best way to describe our music… You remember what it’s like when you’ve gone fishing and you’re wading into the river there?… You step into the mud… And as you step into the mud all the bubbles come up and the air they’re bringing up smells all evil and funky and shit?

THE CUD: Sure.

JOSHUA SMALL: Man, that’s the River Bottom Funk. That’s where our music is at.

THE CUD: Maine certainly seems to have a thriving festival scene that you guys have been a part of…

MIKE CONSTANTINE: Definitely. We’ve played a couple times now at the North Atlantic Blues Festival (held in Rockland, Maine each year)…

BRAD O’BRIEN: The Maine Blues Festival in Naples…

JOSHUA SMALL: And actually this April we’re taking part in something called ‘The Road to Memphis’ at the Time Out Pub in Rockland. Basically we’ll be competing against other blues bands for the opportunity to get a spot on the stage at the Maine Blues Festival, and to get a ticket to Memphis to compete against other bands on a national level.

BRAD O’BRIEN: We’re also hoping to be a part of the Maine Vocals series of festivals over the summer.

THE CUD: It seems there’s plenty of musicians and an audience in Maine for musical styles like blues that you might not have traditionally expected to find as popular in the region?

JOSHUA SMALL: Well you know there’s the connection up here in Maine with blues and roots music and the whole French Acadian heritage which has ties to the Cajuns of the south. All those exiled Acadians from Eastern Canada and parts of Maine settled down in Louisiana. That’s the remnants of a rich musical heritage right there.

MIKE CONSTANTINE: And don’t forget that blues in Maine makes sense anyway… We’ve got the wilderness here of the oceans and the mountains and all the crazies that they can attract who get lost out in the middle of nowhere…

BRAD O’BRIEN: There’s the harsh extremes of climate… you’ve got mill closures and working class towns… This is a hard living, hard working part of the world.

JOSHUA SMALL: And at the same time even while there is something of a heritage and an audience for our music, what we play still isn’t really accepted as mainstream up here, though.

THE CUD: So what are most bands playing up here?

MIKE CONSTANTINE: In terms of original material it’s all Emo, hard rock and rap kinda’ stuff. Not much roots-based music.

BRAD O’BRIEN: And it’s classic and heavy rock covers which is what pays the most in terms of gig work.

JOSHUA SMALL: Right. For River Bottom Funk, even the most accessible tunes we play — think of songs by artists like James Brown or Gloria Gaynor — that ain’t exactly textbook party music for a lot of your average Mainers. We still sometimes get the occasional glance from audience members wondering ‘and what in the hell is this?’

THE CUD: The folks want their Hank Williams?

MIKE CONSTANTINE: Completely. But at the end of the day even if what we play isn’t their most traditional favorites, we get gigs and we get by playing in Maine on the fact that our musical chops are good enough to bring a party to the stage every night that’ll win ‘em over whether they wanted Hank Williams in the first place or not.

THE CUD: Looking ahead, what’s in store for River Bottom Funk?

MIKE CONSTANTINE: Well we continue to play all over Maine, all the time. We’ve got a regular Thursday residency at Carolina’s Sports & Spirits here in Bangor.

JOSHUA SMALL: And we’re hoping to have a CD out within the next few months. We’re in the studio working on new material as we speak.

THE CUD: Last of all, got any tales from the road you’d like to share with our readers?

BRAD O’BRIEN: (laughs) Not that you can print!

JOSHUA SMALL: Well it’s not really a horror story or anything, but in terms of a gig that was just so much fun even though it looked like it might be a horror show from the outset…

MIKE CONSTANTINE: Ah, the wedding!

JOSH SMALL: The wedding…

MIKE CONSTANTINE: Basically this band we knew — heavy metal — had inexplicably been hired to play at a local area wedding in a small town not far from Bangor, but they didn’t feel they would be well suited to a wedding gig seeing as they were metal and playing Judas Priest songs and stuff, so they suggested us to the wedding folks instead. And we got hired.

JOSHUA SMALL: The directions we were given to this place from the outset were just crazy. It was completely in the middle of nowhere. The old dude — the father of the bride — spoke in a really thick Maine accent and over the phone was like, “So you’re gonna’ go down this dirt road and then when you see the three legged dog — there’s gonna’ be a three legged dog there, see — you’ll spot a house and some broken down farm equipment by the side of the road. You wanna’ take a right there…”

MIKE CONSTANTINE: “ — And is you guys comin’ in a 4WD? You might find you get washed out right about there as there’s water on the road but hell, if you can, just keep on going… Soon enough you’ll come to a burnt out farm — that’s right, a burnt out farm — you can still see the ol’ foundations there though, they didn’t go an’ burn away, so you take a left there, see... Head a bit further down the dirt road and we’re right there.”

JOSHUA SMALL: And with respect, this was one of the shabbiest sorta’ weddings we had ever seen… I mean there were about fifty people in attendance but the reception basically took place in what was a working garage. There was tarpaper on the sides, oil cans and grease stains everywhere. They’d even poured out sawdust on the floors.

MIKE CONSTANTINE: In a couple spots they’d taken strips of carpet out of the trailer they lived in and laid it down over the really bad oil patches in the garage so they wouldn’t get oil on the hem of the bride’s white wedding dress… These good folks had literally been married in there in a working garage, alongside a rusting cherry picker and a whole lot of grease and exhaust-stained nudie pictures on the wall. Amazing.

JOSHUA SMALL: The wedding feast consisted of a roast pig — tasty, mind you — but which was served up in an old tarp that had been used to cover up their snowmobiles during winter, and then the whole thing had been laid out in the back of an old pick-up truck.

BRAD O’BRIEN: So it was basically a roast pig buffet served out the back of an old broken down truck in a field…

MIKE CONSTANTINE: But what a party. They were so good to us. From the moment we arrived they really looked after us. Anything we wanted we got it — all you could eat and drink. When we finally got up and played, everyone really loved our music. They were jumping around and dancing in that garage like crazy… It was just a really unique kinda’ party.

JOSHUA SMALL: And then, to cap it off, later on in the evening we’re taking a break between sets and the father of the bride starts talking to me at length about his wife’s car that is parked nearby, this old bomb of a thing. Now I know nothing about cars so I just keep nodding politely for a while and smiling, until finally I offer up the only thing I know to ask about cars that came to mind: “So can the car do a brake stand?” Without skipping a beat, even as we’re in the middle of his daughter’s wedding reception which is taking place a few feet away in his garage, this guy jumps into the vehicle and just starts revving up the car like a madman, skinning the tires bare and sending smoke pluming into the air to the roar of a straining engine. Everyone from the wedding was out and cheering… Man, that was some gig that night.

MIKE CONSTANTINE: Well it had to be a good party. I dislocated my finger that night. Don’t remember how, exactly, but I know I was having a good time.

River Bottom Funk can be found online at:http://www.myspace.com/riverbottomfunk Check the website for forthcoming gig dates, or you can check them out live every Thursday night at their regular residency- Carolina’s Sports & Spirits in Bangor, Maine.