Today on CityGuessDC, my co-host Bridget and I got to sit down with Big Tony Fisher from
the seminal DC GoGo band Trouble Funk.
He talked about growing up in DC, getting his start in the heyday of GoGo and what life
was like for a musician back when GoGo was treated with suspicion instead of being celebrated
as DC's official music.
Today is Thursday May 25th, I'm Michael Schafer and here's what DC is talking about.
It's the part Bridget, I am so excited because today a bomb is going to drop on CityGuess,
or I should say the bomb is going to drop on CityGuess.
We have Big Tony here from Trouble Funk.
So glad you're here.
You want to drop the bomb?
On the CityGuess crew.
Yes, I love getting started with a nice Trouble Funk reference.
How are you all doing?
We're so excited to have you here, Big Tony.
It's a great pleasure to be here.
So tell us about you, your GoGo band is one of the best, I think you would probably say
the best, GoGo band there is.
I've seen you guys since I was a kid.
I watched you out there, old 930 club the night before I went away to college.
But I don't know anything about your background.
Where'd you grow up?
How'd you get into playing music?
We're going to go that far back.
I picked up my first guitar around the age of 11 years ago.
And I was playing professional by the time I turned 15.
As a matter of fact, I was playing in places I shouldn't have been.
I was playing in night clubs at the age of 15.
There was a club over here in Georgia Avenue called the Part 3 back in 1975.
And I used to play with this guy named Johnny Barnes.
I was always big from my age.
So they used to call me Big Young.
The Big Young will be going to take a break, don't go over there by the bar.
What was that like being just a teenager in these places where you really shouldn't have
been making music more presumably a bunch of adults?
It was a great experience.
I mean, it was good money back then.
I mean, even back then, I was like, that was a lot of money.
I was making 75 hours a night.
So 1975, that was a good money for me.
You know, for kids that grew up in the projects of South East, South South.
I was happy.
Who first turned you on to playing instruments?
It's weird you ask that because I'm self-taught.
The way I got into this is really, really crazy.
I'm working on the book as a matter of fact.
I've been working on it for quite a while.
It's called Big Tony in the World of Trouble.
It talks about my musical background when I was 11 years old all the way up until Lisa.
And actually got my first guitar.
I found it.
I'm kind of a sorter.
And he's an air quotes, everybody.
I can hear the air quotes when you say found it.
Yeah.
So the truth is, someone had got evicted.
And I didn't know what he was calling the eviction again.
I just seen a whole lot of stuff out there on the side of the street and the sidewalk.
And people was going through it picking up.
So I'd seen the guitar.
I got the guitar and decided to hit on back down to the house.
Because this is like someone like going towards the radio park.
It was a high-rise building.
Long story short, the guy that got evicted was on his way up to you.
He said, hey, will you go over back in time?
I can't tell this.
He was good.
Yeah.
I guess, you know, he had a good reason to be bad.
He was like, I can't.
You locked up.
I'm the kid.
I know better.
So then I'm scared there.
I'm trying to help get back down the years.
And he called me back.
He said, come here.
And I went back and he gave me the guitar.
He said, yeah, the next time I see you, you're going to learn how to play guitar.
I'll take it in the back.
That is amazing.
And I went home.
And I just started listening to everything that was musical.
I'd turn from the TV, see if I could find music.
And I'll just try to imitate everything that I hear.
One day I was watching TV, and I think Johnny Ted, doing some type of country show was a performance.
And he was sitting on the stool, playing the guitar.
And he was playing, I walked the line.
And they had the camera on his hand.
And that's how I learned how to play.
I learned how to play that.
That's the first thing I learned how to play on my guitar.
Why did that stick with you?
What was it about that song?
I think it was something about the way he put the camera on his hand.
It was like, it just came natural for me.
It was like picking up that guitar was kind of like a connection.
And I was doing things on the guitar back then that I didn't know what it was, but it was
like if I heard it, I could play it.
So what was going on in DC in music in those days?
Like the people you were hanging out with, what were people listening to, what were you listening
to and be influenced by?
I was hanging out with nobody when I was 11 years old.
Technically, I grew up in North West from like an infant on up to about 11.
And from 11 on we moved to South Peace.
My mom moved to a project.
We got forgotten housing voucher or something like that.
My mom, she was handicapped as a teenager.
She was in a car accident that she had to have her leg amputated.
And she raised all six of us.
My dad wasn't in my life in our life at the time.
And we had a very strong mom.
She worked for as long as she could.
And I was one of the reasons why I started getting out trying to make money so early because
I was the oldest and I wanted to help her.
So I just felt like I had at that point, I had to be the man of the house.
But getting back to the music thing, you know, when she played a big part, by the way, because
she always, she saw a lot in me that I didn't see her myself and she always told me that
you're going to be special.
You know, she's got to love all my kids, but you're going to be the special one.
You're going to be a star.
You know, and she is still that thought in me and it's like I always dreamed real big.
I used to tell my friends like friends that I went to school with, we'd be out there.
You know, when you're young, you see cars, that my life cars, that, yeah, that don't be my
one day and blah, blah, blah.
And we would talk about things like what we're going to do when we get older and like, I
would tell them things like, one day I'm going to play at the Capitol of the Center and they
were like, laugh at me, you know, they would be glad to crack it up, you know.
Wait, did you ever play at the Capitol Center?
I not only played at the Capitol Center several times, we headlined the Capitol Center.
Nice.
You know what I'm saying?
And just for the record, eventually they dropped the bomb on the Capitol Center.
Hey, turn it down.
Absolutely.
Sorry.
You had to do that.
Oh, I'm glad you did.
What would little Tony say to see big Tony hit all these milestones that you used to dream
about as a kid?
Like, what do you think you would say to your younger self if your younger self could see
you now?
Well, we did it.
All the things that I dreamt about, I actually accomplished it.
And I did so much more than I actually dreamed.
I never, I never actually dreamed of traveling the world.
You know, I never dreamed about, I couldn't just comprehend what it was to travel to work
like me, you know, and I've actually traveled the world.
I mean, we performed everywhere, Japan, Germany, Amsterdam, Italy, Sweden, Spain, and France.
We went to it all over the world, you know, and, and you did, and don't have to pay to do
it.
No, actually, to do this, I just age to do it.
That's like, come on now.
You know, yeah, I had three gold records and two platinum.
We're the most sampled group.
Who would have thought the most sample group in hip hop history?
I was going to say, what are some of your favorite hip hop songs that have sampled your songs?
Some of my favorite hip hop songs.
I got to go number one on my list is the public enemy, like the power.
So they sampled you on that one?
Yes.
I think that's like one of the funkiest tunes of all time.
And then Will Smith, the Will Mimeum album, you know, he cut up there to pump me up.
So many people, for example, everybody named Mamma, the example, pump me up.
That song has been, you know, artists like George, Michael Sampler.
Oh my God.
I'm a B. Riley, the Beastie Boy, N.W.A.s new dog, Dr. Dre, man.
I say we've been sampled over 200 and almost 300 some tracks by Major Artie.
Can you take us back to the, so you're this kid who's got a found guitar and watched Johnny
Hashplay on TV.
And this is like right at the beginning of Google.
Chuck Brown is a thing, but a lot of the other bands haven't formed.
Tell me how you got into GoGo, how the band started, how the sound started.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
It's a good one.
I'm glad you asked that.
I used to go see this group called Trouble Banding Show around 76, 77, down and across the
park.
Trouble Banding Show was a top 40 R&B cabaret band.
And there was a bass player by the name of Gerald, the guy that's last day.
He lived in Burj Farm, which was like not far from where I lived.
And I taught Gerald how to play bass guitar.
Gerald wound up getting a gig with Trouble Banding Show.
That's forward Gerald.
He did something that pissed Rio off.
Rio was the founding manager of Trouble Banding Show.
He came out my house one day and asked me, did I want a gig plan with Trouble Banding
Show.
We did a show at this place called the Club of Burn at the, and Palmapog Mill.
And the show was like from eight, from eight till 11 30 or 11 o'clock, something like that,
the cabaret.
And after the cabaret, I noticed when I left out the building, there was a line going all
the way up the side of the building.
And I was like, what is all these people doing out of here?
The show is over.
So I went back in and I talked to the owner of the club.
He said, we're getting ready for the go-go.
Chuck Brown, the soul searches, is going to be playing from 12 to 6 in the morning.
Wow.
I was like, exactly.
Wow.
12 to 6 in the morning.
I said, man, do you ride up up there around and check it out?
And he said, no, not at all.
And that was my first go-go experience.
Now keep in mind that this is back in 77, 77, I was 7 years old.
I'm 62 and that's you do the math.
Yeah, that was my first go-go experience.
And keep in mind, back then, there was no such thing as go-go music.
Go-go was just a, it was just a fantasy.
Hey, man, where you going tonight?
I want you to go-go to see Chuck Brown, the soul searches.
That word go-go was originated by Smokey Robinson.
We took that terminology and gave it a totally different meaning.
Yeah, yep.
So first came the atmosphere, then came the beat which was created by Chuck Brown.
Chuck Brown came up with this beat that he could play in between top 40s.
Because, and this is a conversation between trucking up because we became very good friends later on at the years past.
You know, we started off as robberies.
I give one to that in a minute.
But Chuck Brown came up with that beat.
And the reason why he came up with that beat was because, like, if you get the people on the floor,
Chuck had this thing about knowing how to control the people.
That was the answer.
As far as when he wants them to dance, when they don't want them to dance.
And which was very smart.
So he created this beat to play in between the top 40 songs because he said every time they-
You stop.
It takes a while to get them back on the floor again.
That's brilliant.
Yeah, it was very, very, yeah, you're the brilliant guy.
And the reason why he called it a go-go beat, he said because it never stops.
It just keeps going and going and going.
Go, go, go.
Yeah.
You know.
So then what happened was we wound up opening up for Chuck and for about a good three months.
We didn't dance.
They just looked at us like we spent some foreign country.
They was like, and we was playing really good top 40s.
We was playing a lot of the stuff that Chuck Brown was playing.
But the difference was we wasn't playing that beat in between.
So one day at rehearsal, like, well, I'm actually leaving something out.
You know, after everybody were going to the dressing room and they were part of the thing as
a wider people in the dressing, blaming it on each other.
They were leaving.
I would stay there and I would sit on the side of the stage and I would try to figure out
where is it that they're doing that we're not doing that makes these people react to where
they do.
And one day I got a light bulb when all was like, it got a lot to do with how intimate
Chuck was with those people.
It was like, it was like he'd do everybody in there.
And he would talk to them like the conversation where I have it now.
He would call people names and like being, if you called your name, that means you was
popular, you were somebody.
So I got to know some of the people.
They didn't know me, but I got to know them.
And I told Rio, I said, Rio, I think I know what it takes to make these people dance,
but I'm going to need a microphone.
So Rio's like, what the hell?
We tried everything else.
Let's try your way.
See what happens.
And when Rio put that mic in my hand, the rest was history.
And we came up with our first original group.
It was called Row With It.
That row became very popular with all the bands.
Right now to this day, the band still played that role.
That's bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger,
bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.
Yeah, that came from up.
That's so cool.
Yeah.
So let's flash forward a couple years and it's the 80s.
And Gogo is a big deal.
And it's at least in DC, everywhere.
You can hear it on the street corners with bucket drums and so on.
You guys are playing all over the place.
There was a time when the government and the respectable people and so on were saying,
well, this is vile and dangerous and so on.
And let's crack down on it.
What was that like?
Well, it was a crazy scene, man.
The media was really, you know, Donald Trump would say fake news, you know.
But it really was fake news.
The media was like really, really hard.
The media was blaming Gogo for everything that happened.
And it really had nothing to do with Gogo.
It was like, these things are going to happen with Donners.
Yeah.
As a matter of fact, I think Gogo took such a bad rap like that, man.
We should have gotten more credit for getting these kids off the street and giving them
something to do and a plate to go and just have fun.
Right.
I mean, for what you say about your early life, it sounds like you didn't have any time to
mess around because you were so busy learning instruments.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
So, you know, again, I was just fortunate to find out in the early age and like the guy
gave me a special gift.
You know, so that kind of kept me off the street unfortunate for some actual little brothers
I lost to the street, you know.
And I have so many friends that I've lost to the street growing up.
I'm just so grateful to this day that guy gave me this gift to just share with the well
and show me another way out.
Must be so weird now to watch the media and the government say, well, now, you know,
Gogo is our official music and you all are the biggest heroes in the UK.
So we went from, okay, well, this happened at the Gogo.
That happened.
Somebody was shot and killed, you know, and they're all just stuff that happened after
the Gogo.
Yes.
And after the go, we don't have no control over what happens after they leave.
It was crazy.
We was on tour in the UK and I called that home and they said that there was a shooting
out after a show at the Washington Coliseum and trouble front was performing.
We wasn't even in the country.
Why do you think you were so, it was so villainized?
Like, why do you think it was so easy to pin these crimes and things on this Gogo
band, even if you weren't even in the country?
Like, what do you think was going on there?
I can't be for sure, but I do know from experience, sometimes people fear, but they don't understand.
Yeah.
And Gogo was like a really, it was one of those movements that, I mean, it was underground,
but it was big and they were spreading like a disease.
You know what I'm saying?
It was like, we didn't have natural distribution.
So we created our own little label, TF Records, and we distributed music as far as we could
take it.
But somehow, this music, I found out later, like, people were taking me to PA takes over
to the military, like boot camp and stuff, and they were taking us stuff like the college
and, you know, sharing the music and, you know, you know, it was great.
You know, and I got to say it was just ready.
But again, you know, there's a lot of money being made in Gogo and a lot of it wasn't
being taxed.
But, hey, if we take it out here, they really shut it down.
Right.
One of those types of situations, and like I said, you know, and the fortunate leader
in the evening, you had that crack epidemic going on.
I guess I should say some of the guys, the hustlers and stuff like that, they had favorite
Gogo bands.
And so, they became an easy target.
It's like, oh, if you want to find out what's on the way, he's going to be at the Gogo,
you know, checking out whoever, Red, and trouble fighting, trouble fighting.
You know, you can find them there, you know.
So if you had a beef and people knew that you liked that, that trouble fighting or
razz was your favorite band, you know, you can catch them at the show tonight, you know,
saying, and blah, blah, blah.
We even know nothing about that.
We was playing, we were the first Gogo bands in Georgetown at this place called the Paragon
II.
And we told the owners, they man, listen, can't let everybody in here.
The trouble party has always had a certain national appeal that came to different nationalities
in the house and that was the clientele that he had.
All kinds of people were in there, you know.
I mean, you had people, doctors, lawyers, all kinds of important people just wanted to go
somewhere and let their head down and enjoy themselves, you know.
But then it got really crazy and long story short, somebody wanted to get killed up in
there.
And Georgetown?
Yeah, in the place, right?
He got shot outside and he came in and died in.
Wow.
Yeah.
So, you know, little things like that.
But then the most recent incident, you know, is when they actually tried to mute the music.
That right there, I guess that was the final straw right there.
Yeah, I was going to ask, like, what do you make of the state of Gogo in DC today?
Like, what is the response been like?
Do you think people respect it?
Oh, yeah.
Gogo is stronger than Evan now.
It's a lot of great things getting ready to have him with Gogo.
But again, the trouble for me in particular, because I'm going to tell you, in the words
of Teddy Riley, it ain't over.
The party ain't over.
You have a girl?
The party ain't over.
We're getting ready to drop a new single followed by a new album.
We got a new album we're going to call it, Trouble for the Rebirth.
And a single that we're going to drop called Southeast Crank, which is a 52-old group that
came up out of Southeast, you know.
Great tune, great tune.
It's got a great storyline.
And it talks about the history of how we started out, you know, on the pots and pans.
And we went from pots and pans to national start on me and everything.
You know, it's a really good story and a great group.
A big time before we go, remind us of the title of your book.
It's Big Tony.
It's called Big Tony and the World of Trouble.
Will you invite us to your book party?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah, we're going to do some real big for that right here.
Wow.
Yeah.
And we're also working on a documentary, you know, a treble phone back because so many
go-go documentaries have been done.
And I mean, personally, I still don't think the true story has been told the way it needs
to be told.
So we're working on a treble phone documentary to release.
When you do come back and talk to us about it, all right?
Absolutely.
We're going to go forward to it.
Thank you, Tony.
Okay.
Thank you.
And before you go, here's some quick news.
The DC Council's Housing Committee Chair Robert White is proposing a 6.9% rent increase
cap on rent control departments.
And it's actually a compromise between landlords and housing advocates.
Council had approved a much bigger cap earlier this year, which infuriated tenant advocates
White did manage to secure money to help the city enforce the new cap, but he still needs
to get the council to pass it before its summer break.
Also the Elliott School of International Affairs at GW University received a $900,000
anonymous donation to expand the Uighur Studies Initiative that starts next fall.
The money will go towards added courses on Uighur history and arts, expanding research,
and adding an adjunct language professor.
This is all at a time when Uighur culture is under threat in China.
Finally, on Tuesday, a DC police officer was found guilty of using illegal chokeholds
in two separate incidents five days apart in 2018.
And another DC officer has been arrested.
This one for allegedly taking pictures of a woman in a bra and leggings without her consent
while conducting a search.
The officer pleaded not guilty and is currently suspended.
The police said that the police were not guilty.
The police said that the police were not guilty.
The police said that the police were not guilty.
The police said that the police were not guilty.
The police said that the police were not guilty.
The police said that the police were not guilty.
The police said that the police were not guilty.
The police said that the police were not guilty.
She was a great experience.