3 minute read
Major Funk
Alexis Koome just arrived in the Yukon, bringing only her winter essentials: a stack of vinyl, a Knotty Trunk of vintage jackets and a new split board.
On Halloween weekend, the 202 opened its doors once again to decorated and colourfully clad Yukoners. A medley of costumes ventured through the snow that would finally stick and push us toward winter. Inside the soldout venue, local band Major Funk took the stage disguised as the cast from the beloved Mario Kart.
With their first song, the vacant dance floor quickly became a vibrating, pulsating entity of its own. Packed shoulder to shoulder through three sets, the audience yowled and hollered as special guests, backup dancers and Tshirt giveaways swept across the stage.
The show ended in a tsunami of cheers and applause around 1 a.m. as the sweaty crowd funnelled onto the street, smiling and satisfied, costumes half askew.
“That’s what we do, so it feels like we’re not living life to the fullest if we’re not packing dance floors,” said Etienne Girard, bass player and founding member of Major Funk.
In an interview the following week, I asked Girard about the band’s full-fledged return to the stage, after several years trudging through the many incarnations of the “Covid Era.” “[The lockdown] was really, really tough. When shows started happening again, everybody in town played for a year before we did because we’re a dance band … We didn’t want to play to seated audiences.”
Although, Major Funk was in no way idle during the break from sharing live music. The forced hiatus from filling dance floors didn’t slow the band’s dedication to their sound—it only redirected the ways it was expressed. “I think we’re a good example of people who [continued to] invest their energy. We did not stop working.”
With the nudge to focus on other aspects of running a successful band, the group looked carefully at the behind-the-scenes but equally important avenues of media and sound-tech.
“We got much better technologically. We invested and made a bunch of music videos and got some grants. We also bought a film-editing computer. So we came up with this strategy where we would pay for some music videos and we would self-release some.”
As our daylight in the Yukon now becomes increasingly sparse, Whitehorse’s grooviest dance band has already cued up a shimmering disco ball at the end of our winter tunnel. Along with videos of songs composed pre-pandemic, Girard says Major Funk’s time offstage provided space to polish brand-new material.
“[During the lockdown] we wrote and recorded an album that we are planning to release in March 2023. The album’s ready to go; now we’re just waiting for a good time to release it.”
The fresh collection will offer music tweaked and dialed with the group’s newfound abilities to self-produce. “I got into sound-teching,” said Girard. “I bought equipment so I could track our music and record it, and then we could do a bunch of our own sound. We learned how to use all the stuff and we got really good at it.”
Almost in sync with rivers freezing over, the movement curated by Major Funk’s live shows will take a brief pause until the anticipated album release. Come spring 2023, Yukoners will be able to lace up their dancing shoes to kick off the winter blues. n
PHOTO: Mack Smith
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