Grand Funk Railroad: The story behind ‘We’re an American Band’

Whereas many classic-rock trios like Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and ZZ Top put bellbottoms on the blues, Grand Funk Railroad goosed R&B to create their own sound. The result was a rep as one of the ‘70s’ best live acts, a nine-albums-straight run of gold- and platinum-selling LPs, and big hits like “We’re An American Band,” “Closer to Home/I’m Your Captain” and “Some Kind of Wonderful.”

Grand Funk Railroad formed in Flint, Michigan, as the ‘60s was turning into the ‘70s. Originally comprised of singer/guitarist Mark Farner, singer/drummer Don Brewer and bassist Mel Schacher, the band’s style of rock reflected their blue-collar Michigan surroundings. No cape-clad pretensions here. Just sweaty, longhaired grooves and celebratory tunes for days.

The band’s lineup in recent years features Brewer and Schacher, as well as former Kiss member Bruce Kulick on guitar, 38 Special expatriate Max Karl on vocals, and Tim Cashion, formerly with the likes of Robert Palmer and Bob Seger, on keyboards.

Fifty-four years after the release of their debut album “On Time,” Grand Funk is in the midst of a 40-show tour. Tonight, the band has a 7 p.m. show in Alabama at the Oxford Performing Arts Center. Complete tour dates at grandfunkrailroad.com. On a recent afternoon, Brewer checked in for a phone interview from his Jupiter, Florida, home. Edited excerpts below.

Grand Funk Railroad’s first number-one hit, 1973′s “We’re An American Band,” came seven albums into the band’s career. Don, what do you remember about writing and recording that song?

Don Brewer: All the earlier albums, the first six or six records we did, were really geared for FM underground radio. It wasn’t about making hit records. At that point, we didn’t care about having a hit single because we were having hit albums with album-oriented radio [a radio format often abbreviated as AOR]. The [disc] jocks on FM underground would play anything. They’d play Frank Sinatra and Frank Zappa in the same set, and then there was no concern about how long the song was.

But when FM radio changed, and we had undergone a major transition [of] firing our manager/producer Terry Knight. We were making the transition from being an FM underground band to being an FM hit format band. We had to come up with three-minute songs, you know?

I started going well, obviously I gotta come up with ideas, we’ve got to beat this guy [Knight]. He took all our money, he’s suing us, we were broke, and we had to make a transition to hit records.

So, we’re flying into towns all over the country [while on tour], and I remember looking down out of the airplane going, “We’re coming to your town. We’ll help you party down.”

And I wrote the song, literally around that line. I put in all of these little snippets and things that were going on, on the road -- “up all night with [blues guitarist] Freddie King” playing poker, “four young Chiquitas in Omaha,” “sweet, sweet Connie” and Little Rock – all these little stories together.

I really didn’t have a tag, and I was using three or four chords that I knew on my Martin acoustic guitar, and I put this format together -- verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, out -- because I felt that’s what all hit songs were. Put that whole thing together.

And then I came up with the tag “we’re an American band” simply because one day I was practicing the song and came out of my mouth, and it sounded great. [Laughs] You know, [sings] “We’re an American band,” that sounds great.

So that’s how the song came about. It was really out of need, we had to have a hit record and that’s it. I was just doing everything I could to put those pieces together to make it make a hit record.

That was a pretty big shoutout for “Sweet Sweet” Connie [aka Connie Hamzy, the famous Arkansas-based groupie who claimed to have hooked-up with rockstars including Keith Moon, John Bonham, Eddie Van Halen, Paul Stanley, everyone in ZZ Top, and many others]. Do you remember what her reaction was the next time Grand Funk came through Little Rock?

Gosh, she was thrilled.

I’m sure that made her feel pretty special.

I think it did. And she lived it for the rest of her life. [Laughs]

Don, were you aware The Black Crowes used the Grand Funk song “Are You Ready” as their intro tape for one of their early tours?

Well, I’d heard The Black Crowes were Grand Funk fans. Actually, their keyboard player, I can’t remember his name …

Was it Eddie Harsch?

Yes, Eddie Harsch. But later on, we brought their keyboard player into play on some of our newer stuff that we were working on, and we told us that, you know, when they were on tour, they would play Grand Funk videos on the tour bus.

What did you learn from your various stints playing drums with Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, starting back in the ‘80s?

I learned a lot by playing with Seger because when I was playing with Grand Funk, I came up with all of the [drumming] stuff that I did by myself. Those are all parts of me. And when I started playing with Seger, he’s got probably five or six different drummers on all of his albums. There’s this guy and that guy, and this guy plays like this, and that guy plays like that.

When I’m learning all of his material, I’m trying to cop all of these things that all these different drummers are doing, and make it sound like Bob Seger, but also be able to put myself into it. It was really a challenge and really interesting to me to be able to kind of transform what I do and make it fit in the Bob Seger mode.

And it worked. I must have done altogether 10 or 11 tours with Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band. I thought it was great combination.

Former Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick has been a member of Grand Funk Railroad for more than 20 years now. What’s something different about Bruce’s guitar playing that comes through with Grand Funk than his playing with Kiss back in the day?

Bruce Kulick, I’ve known from my days back in the 80s when I was playing with Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band. He was playing in a band with Michael Bolton [called Blackjack]. And I was introduced to Bruce that way and my wife knew him too.

So [when Grand Funk was looking for a guitarist after parting ways with Farner], I looked him [Kulick] up on the internet, sent him an email and said, “Mel and I are looking for a guitar player. Are you interested?” He got back to me and said, “If this is really Don Brewer, sure, give me your number.” [Laughs]

Bruce is a great all-around guitar player, which is one reason I went after him, because he can play virtually any style of stuff and do it well. And he was a Grand Funk fan, which was the other reason that we hit it off. He loves Grand Funk stuff, and he plays it well and he puts himself into it. Like I was telling you, kind of difficult to take what other people do and then put yourself into it. That’s what I was doing with Seger, and I think Bruce has done that very well with this band, for sure.

Grand Funk’s cover of “Some Kind of Wonderful” is a great example of the band’s rock and soul sound. Any interesting backstory to the you guys deciding to do that song?

Mark, Mel and I were major R&B fans and that’s evident in Grand Funk Railroad because the R&B influence is very strong in the in the band. And it is rock. It’s kind of a souped-up version of R&B.

When we were coming up, we used to listen to the Black radio station Flint, Michigan that there was playing all of this great music. One of the things that they played all the time was the Soul Brothers Six [track] “Some Kind of Wonderful,” and so later on as we were progressing in our Grand Funk career, we started singing that song in the car from the hotel to the venue as a warmup song, a cappella. You know, [sings] “I don’t need a whole-lots-a money. I don’t need a big fine car,” and we’re all clapping in the back and then all the guys would sing the choruses.

Our manager at the time said, “Man, you guys should record that.” OK, we’ll record it. We went in the studio and really tried to cop the same feel that the Soul Brothers Six had with just drums and bass and vocals, until the middle of a song when the keyboard comes in, when it makes the change to, “Can I get a witness?”

And that’s all it was. That was the total instrumentation for the song. And it worked. Trading off vocals with Mark [Farner] back and forth it was kind of a kind of a thing that was done back then. Sly and the Family Stone were always trading off vocals for different members of the band. It was kind of the thing to do.

You’re a drummer who sings lead often. Other drummers who’ve done that well are like Levon Helm from The Band, Phil Collins with Genesis although he became a frontman, Ringo Starr would sing a tune on a Beatles album …

Don Henley wasn’t bad. [Laughs]

Incredible singer. But none of those guys played in bands that were as powerful sounding as Grand Funk.

Yeah, you know, I came up playing drums and singing at the same time. The very first band I was in, The Jazzmasters, I was a singing drummer, trading off leads doing Beatles covers, Chuck Berry, doing Rolling Stones covers. Learning how to play drums and sing at the same time, it just all came at the same time, so I didn’t have to concentrate on it, versus just do it.

I think if I would have started playing drums and played drums for about five years before I ever started singing, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. Because you’ve got your right hand doing one thing, your left hand is doing something different. Your right foot is doing something different again, and your left foot is doing something yet again different, and then your mouth is doing something totally rhythmic against all of those other things. If I had to think about it, I couldn’t do it.

What’s been the most surreal moment of your career? Was it seeing your photo up on the block-long billboard in Times Square promoting the Grand Funk album “Closer To Home.” Was it playing a show with Janis Joplin in front of 180,000 people at the [1969] Atlanta Pop Festival? Or maybe a late-night jam or hang with one of your heroes?

Shea Stadium. Selling-out Shea Stadium faster than The Beatles and playing that show and flying in on helicopters backstage. That was certainly the surreal moment. It was like, pinch me, is this real? A rock and roll fantasy moment, really.

Last question: Would you rather Grand Funk be known as a band with great songs or for being a great live band?

Oh, live. We’ve always cherished the live thing and still do. Getting an immediate response from an audience is where it’s at, for sure.

Especially when it’s a sold-out Shea Stadium.

[Laughs] Any place, it doesn’t matter. Being able to look at that audience and watch them progressively get more enthused as the show goes on, there’s nothing like that.

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