KC and the Sunshine Band Bring Funk to Grand Sierra Resort for Five Decades • Reno News & Review

If you want to talk about disco and funk, you can’t go far without mentioning KC and the Sunshine Band.

If the band’s dominance on dance floors everywhere in the ’70s with hits like “Boogie Shoes,” “That’s the Way (I Like It)” and “Get Down Tonight” wasn’t enough to cement their legacy, then countless commercials , sporting events and movies featuring the band’s music certainly did that. It’s unlikely that people will ever stop shaking, shaking, shaking their butts to the eternal funk of KC and the Sunshine Band.

The group will head to the Grand Sierra Resort Theater at 8:00 pm on Friday, November 8th. During a recent interview with frontman Harry Wayne Casey, he said that although the band’s biggest hits came in the 1970s, many younger fans were getting upset. tonight and every evening for their long disco. He mentioned one of the band’s performances in Europe.

“I don’t think anyone was over 30 and they knew every word to every song,” Casey said. “It just amazed me. I had to just stand there for a while and pinch myself. It was such a magical moment and I love seeing young people in the crowd. I love seeing everyone in the crowd. That’s when my happiest moments come.”

The series of uplifting party songs he is known for was created as an antidote to the times.

“I felt like the music had gotten really dark and the country had gotten really dark,” Casey said. “We were going through the first oil crisis here in the US and everything around the world, and I just wanted to create high energy music, and from side A to side B, as soon as you drop the needle, it was just nothing short of high energy and that’s all I could think about.”

Casey said he wanted to create songs like the ones he turned to for emotional support when he was younger.

“Sometimes I feel like these songs come from the darkest moments,” he said. “I think I’m writing to them to psyche myself out. When I’m in the studio, I don’t think about energy or anything like that; I just think about what comes out of my hands onto the keys and the idea of ​​the song. Anyway, I always loved dancing and fast music, even when I was growing up, but I’m a lover of words, so I really liked ballads that tell me something or soften something. When I grew up, you couldn’t talk to your parents much at all and you had to restrain yourself. Songs were a way to deal with emotions and things you felt without talking to anyone about it, and it still is. Songs help people heal in so many different ways, from breakups to things that happen in general around the world or whatever. There’s always a song you can play that will help you release those emotions and whatever you’re going through and help you find the answer.”

Casey views the songwriting process as an art.

“When I create a song, it’s like when artists create a painting and it starts with a white canvas,” Casey said. “You’re going to paint a landscape or an abstraction, and the only thing that’s different from writing is that you’re writing about feelings and emotions and things like that. Often it’s my own emotions and I’m going through something and it rubs off on other people. We are all so similar – more than I think many of us would like to admit – so we all share the same feelings, the same pains, the same happiness, the same good and the same the same bad things.”

Casey continues to write and says he has moved away from the more ham radio aspects of his previous numbers and is putting new energy into the upcoming mega release.

“I’ve been working on a new project for the last 10, almost 12 years,” Casey said. “It’s about 56 new songs, and my approach to writing them was a little different than some of the previous ways. I asked people to send me tracks, and I wrote melodies and lyrics to the track that was sent to me; some other things I created from scratch. I always wanted to try to experiment and do things like that. I think I was writing much more commercially back then, and probably not as lyrically as I have been writing lately.”

It took Casey a long time to change the band’s commercial sound, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t try.

“A lot of times when I tried to change, people didn’t want to let me change,” Casey said. “…After I left a record company, I brought something in and they said, ‘This doesn’t sound like KC and the Sunshine Band,’ and the minute I made it sound like KC and the Sunshine Band, they’ll say, “Well, that sounds outdated.” As I’ve gotten older, I’ve definitely felt like my songs have become more lyrical than ever.”

Casey said his upcoming new releases may not chart as well as his past funk jams, and the artist, now 73, is proud of them.

“I’m going to release eight albums—like, eight EPs—with eight songs on them,” he said. “My logo has always been a rainbow. … There are seven colors of the rainbow, so each of the EPs has a different color, and the final album consists of all the colors together. One will be released every month for seven months, and then the eighth month will be the release of all of them. My engineer, who I work with to this day, is Bob Rosa, he has worked with Prince, Michael Jackson, Celine Dion and a number of great artists. This is like the third time we’ve remixed them and they sound really, really good. I’m very excited about this. I don’t think I’ve ever sounded better and I think there are some great songs on here. There’s a fast pace; there is an average tempo; there are ballads and I’ve done a couple of covers.”

KC and the Sunshine Band will perform at 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 8, at the Grand Sierra Resort, 2500 E. Second St., in Reno. Tickets start at $39.50. For tickets and more information, visit www.grandsierraresort.com. This article originally appeared in our sister publication, the Coachella Valley Independent.

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