Ep 27: Patryce “Choc’let” Banks! [GRAHAM CENTRAL STATION]

“Keepin that funk alive, to me, there’s no more of an important mission.” So declares PATRYCE “CHOC’LET” BANKS, cofounder of one of the most important bands in all of funk history: Graham Central Station. “That’s my mission,” she promises. “To keep the funk alive until the wheels fall off.” And she has been doing just that ever since the formation of the band’s classic lineup with her former boo, uber innovative Sly & the Fam bassist Larry Graham, along with drummer Willie Wild, keyboardist Hershall Happiness, organist Robert “Butch” Sam, & guitarist David Dynamite. Together they hit the ground running from the jump. Word got out immediately that the band was superbad—folks would even get dressed up just to check out their rehearsals! Their constant practicing and performing at spots like the Orphanage in San Francisco led to the creation of their groundbreaking self-titled debut—(Choc’let’s personal favorite).

Yet even the most diehard funkateers might not realize that, before it was called Graham Central Station, the band was originally called HOT CHOC’LET, formed as a project for her to get down with while Larry was on the road. But after Graham had finally decided to relinquish his Family Stone membership, he joined the group, which then became his namesake. Choc’let wasn’t mad about the new moniker, though. “I was with it because… how could you go wrong with Larry Graham in the group?” she says. “I think it was even my idea maybe a little bit.”

Graham’s breaking away from the Sly camp meant GCS could seriously get to work. “We would rehearse all the time,” remembers Choc’let. “Almost every night… And we were just getting tighter and tighter.” And audiences were easily falling in love with the band’s celebratory intensity. “The music that we played was deeply infused with gospel music,” she confirms. “So that gave it the feeling of a revival… because of the way that it makes you feel and the way it gets you caught up.” In fact, audience members from the West Coast to Philly to D.C. would bring tambourines, whistles, and whatever percussion instruments they could find in order to get in on the action. “They’d be playing along with us,” she confirms.

Choc’let, like the rest of the band, felt fortunate to be a part of things. “All of us were younger, the whole group,” she explains. “Larry was older, successful. Everybody was just glad to be around him, glad to be in the situation.” And naturally, they all assumed that it was a family affair and that Larry had their back. But according to her, this proved not to be the case.

For one thing, she found out that Graham had decided to reserve all songwriting credit for himself, regardless of what his bandmates had contributed. In Choc’let’s case, she had written a lot of her own stuff. “Practically every verse that I sang, I came up with,” she says. “All of us did, the whole group… We all had input on the lyrics and the music.”

But lack of credit wasn’t the only problem. There was also the lack of money in their bank accounts, despite the band’s increasing popularity and success. “He purposefully made sure that we did not get the money we deserved,” Choc’let says of Larry. “He had us on a salary… In the meantime, Larry had all the trappings that comes with having money, and some of the members of the group couldn’t even afford to pay rent or have a car.”

What’s worse, drugs and domestic abuse pushed the limits of what she was willing to put up with. “If I hadn’t been so young, I probably wouldn’t have stayed in the relationship as long as I did,” she admits. But it wasn’t so easy to walk away from all that hard work. “I had gone through so much,” she says, “building this group up from us playing high school proms to playing all the major venues in every city in America, then going overseas and all that… I had invested so much blood, sweat and tears, literally, into this thing that it was hard for me to let it go. But I just got to the point where it was just not worth it anymore.”

So the mighty Fonkstress struck out on her own, recording and touring with major artists and her own creations for a span of decades. Nevertheless, after all these years, Choc’let wouldn’t let any old grudges stop her from playing once again with the surviving members of GCS. “I would for the sake of the funk,” she says at the prospect of a reunion. “Generating that energy… That’s the only time I get that feeling… When I’m up onstage [with] the energy that passes back and forth between the audience and the band... If I can experience that again, I would do it.”

In the meantime, Choc’let holds it down all her own. Her latest appearance on Aced Out—her third—is a superfunk extravaganza. In addition to another great interview, she performs not one, but TWO Bay Area funk classics live in the studio with Jay, Ace and other members of the Funkanauts fam. And in case you were wondering, the answer is yes—she brought her Rhythm King aka F-U-N-K Box.

In this back-to-to school, in-person interview, Choc talks about why she thinks Sly was a better bandleader than Larry, the highs and lows of her reunion tour with GCS in the mid-90s, and why she dislikes the album version of “I Can’t Stand the Rain.” She also reveals how Willie and Hershall originally came up with “The Jam” at rehearsal, how she recruited her old friend Butch to join the group, and why the Bay Area brand of funk has never been duplicated.

Produced & Hosted by Ace Alan
Cohosted by Jay Stone
Executive Producer: Scott Sheppard

Featuring:
Patryce “Choc’let” Banks — vocals, funk box
Randy Gallerin — drums
Ocea Savage — keys
Jay Stone — guitar, vocals
Ace Alan — bass, vocals

Sound Mixing, Video Editing & Graphics by Nick “WAES” Carden for Off Hand Records in Oakland
Filmed by Alexander Lim, Harvey Lozada & Patrick Aguilar
Website, Art & Graphics by 3chards
w/ thanks to Donald Horne