‘We Want The Funk!,’ a history of funk music from Independent Lens and PBS, premieres on April 8 at 8pm on KERA TV 13.1. To mark this debut, KXT is shining a light on the funkier parts of North Texas music history, beginning with someone who is helping to keep the genre alive today: Jeff “Skin” Wade.
Between his roles as local music impresario, Dallas Mavericks sideline reporter and radio host, Jeff ‘Skin’ Wade is a man about town in North Texas.
And as his Eastwood Music Group continues adding to the funky catalog of North Texas music, Wade said one thing has remained constant since he first started as a white suburban kid in the Dallas hip-hop scene: The quality of music, and musicians, here in the area.
Born and raised in Richardson, where his jersey hung for a while in the rafters of the Huffhines Recreation Center, Wade said he has called North Texas home, “except for a stop in Austin to go flunk out of college.”
Even as a teenager, Wade knew there was something special in North Texas, even if the city’s music scene mostly remained a secret across the country.
“A lot of the kids in the Dallas scene came out of Booker T. (Washington High School), or they came out of the church. (Robert) “Sput” Searite, who’s an exceptional drummer – his mother helped start God’s Property with Kirk Franklin and obviously won a bunch of modern gospel Grammys. So, there’s a lot of players that came up in the church here in Dallas, and that informs a lot of the scene and a lot of the connections.”
And there’s also that town to the north.
“A lot of them also came out of Denton,” Wade said. “Snarky Puppy, for example, is this mixture of some of those church people and some of the (University of North Texas) people and they became this, like, funk jazz phenomenon that’s won a zillion Grammys, right?”
Wade stressed that musical education available in North Texas is as special as anywhere.
“The level of musicianship is really, really high, and there’s a lot of people that have gone on to be, you know, music director for somebody,” he said. “People don’t even know they’re from here, but this is where they’re actually from. So, the level of musicianship in North Texas is just amazing.”
Hip-hop grind provides musical education
Before getting involved in more soul-based music that would become coveted across the pond, Wade started his performing career in an adjacent genre: hip-hop.
“When I was in high school, we would rap poorly – that’s what we grew up with, and it was very influential,” he said. “You’d think you could do it, kind of having fun. And then when the Beastie Boys came out, you felt like you could kind of be a part of it even if you were the suburban white boy.”
Reflecting on his musical origins, Wade is still stunned by the kind and welcoming nature of the Dallas ‘90s hip-hop scene.
“It was the most blissfully ignorant thing that you can imagine,” he said. “We were going to places we had no business going. And as I look back, I think about how amazing the group of people and that scene were to accept us.”
That scene – and his nascent career making beats – helped shape what evolved into his current musical tastes.
“I naively started stacking records and trying to figure out ideas,” Wade said. “I got turntables, but it wasn’t until I met a guy named Kenneth, a.k.a. K-Phlx, at Bill’s Records and Tapes in Richardson. We connected because we were looking for the same types of records to sample, and he had an amazing ear and feel for the technical parts of production.
“Kenneth showed me how to use a sampler, drum machine and all that – helping me understand how to actually make (the beats), to get where you can take the things that you’re hearing in your head and actually implement them.”
Wade also called out the record that crystallized his desire to make music and not simply consume it.
“The thing that made me think that I could make beats – or want to make beats – was the first De La Soul record,” he said. “There was a bunch of sample sources on it of songs that I grew up with.
“I didn’t grow up with James Brown music or Stax music. But when the De La Soul record first came out, it had Hall and Oates on it, it had Steely Dan – those were songs that I knew from growing up. So, hearing those songs rearticulated the way that they were, the way that stuff was sampled and used, it just sparked it for me, and made me think: ‘Wait a minute, this is making sense to me now!’”
This love of hip-hop pushed Wade from the sampler to the stage, performing in a rap group which included longtime friend Ben Rogers, now his co-host on “The Ben and Skin Show” on 97.1 The Eagle.
As he built experience, the gigs got larger. Wade and crew opened for MC Lyte and House of Pain at what would later become the Bomb Factory. Wade’s future wife actually attended the House of Pain show years before they met – but he remembers the audience not initially knowing how to react.
“We went up there, we did our set, and we got no reaction from the crowd, good or bad,” Wade confessed. “I would describe it as people going to the zoo to see a new exhibit and just looking at it going, ‘Yeah, isn’t that creature strange up there?’
“But they didn’t know how to process it. It was almost like, ‘Man, my gut instinct is that I’m supposed to hate this, and it sucks – but it kind of sounds good. But these guys don’t really look very cool. I don’t even know what the f— I’m looking at right now!’”
His performing career also provided the opportunity to be introduced to the now-legendary Erykah Badu – and, in turn, introduce her to an even bigger crew.
“We were doing a freestyle gig on Lower Greenville – at the time, that place was called Rebounds,” he remembered. “Our DJ Del Furious was the house DJ, and Ben and I were in (the) group together. And the other host was Erykah.
“DJ Del put on The Roots – the instrumental of The Roots’ song ‘Proceed.’ Erykah improvised the melody and lyrics of what was to become (her hit) Appletree over that. She wasn’t aware of The Roots yet.”
Rap and soul segue into funk
As years have passed, Wade has still maintained – and expanded – his interests around making music. Wade and Josey Records managing partner Luke Sardello started the Eastwood Music Group several years ago, producing thunderously funky records for Bastards of Soul before lead singer Chadwick Murray’s tragic passing in 2021.
Last year, Wade – with Bastards of Soul bassist Danny Balis – formed the Silver Skylarks and released The Number One Set and Sound. This harder-driving funk record was the direction they were hoping for the Bastards of Soul.
“The goal on the Silver Skylarks record was, me and Danny had been talking about a lot of the demos (for) Bastards of Soul. Their third record was going to be a real funky record, like harder funk. And we were going to evolve their sound, but we never got to make it. The third record was the unfinished material. It wasn’t the new stuff we were (hoping) it would be.”
Revising those demos revealed the possibility of creating something Wade would have loved to stumble onto all those years ago at Bill’s Records and Tapes.
“Danny had a lot of really hard funk demos, and we were trying to figure out what was next with our musical lives,” Wade said. “I was like, let’s produce this out … the goal production-wise was to make a record that if I had found it, I would have been ecstatic, but at the same time, we didn’t want to make a record that just sounded like it came out in 1978.
“We wanted to have things that were touchstones to still make it modern. And so there there’s a lot of different influences on it. But overall, it’s essentially a record for B-boys.”
As he looks at the local music landscape now after years navigating it himself, he does wish it was easier for talent to break through.
“That’s the case with any industry: Everyone wants to be able to make a living doing what they love,” he said. “If you spend time creating something, you just want it to be seen or heard or felt. It’s really hard to break through and get more than your immediate circle to hear it. I don’t know what the solution is.”
For now, Jeff “Skin” Wade’s devotion to the funk craft shows no sign of slowing.
“We’ve got another little single coming out in May, featuring Ronnie Laws – of the famous Laws family in Houston, and Earth, Wind and Fire – playing sax and flute.”
Click to learn more about We Want The Funk, Funky Friday and other funky offerings from KXT.
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