Drum Travel Gig

Mint Condition profiled by Dwight Hobbes

Mint Condition Profile

Dwight Hobbes

Mpls/St. Paul Magazine archives

 

St. Paul–based Mint Condition isn't your run-of-the-mill international R & B superstar ensemble. The group draws raves and sells out venues throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe. Still, they're not what you'd expect.

The album Meant To Be Mint established them in 1991. Their eagerly awaited seventh album will be released in August, with a single from the album dropping in June. Meanwhile, fans travel far and wide to catch Mint Condition in concert, flying in, say, from Japan, when the group plays the Bay Area, and from such diverse points as New York and Texas when they play the Minnesota State Fair. Band members are in their thirties, but their appeal crosses generations, extending from scene-savvy twentysomethings to senior hipsters.

The fan appreciation, says Mint's frontman/vocalist/drummer who's known only as Stokley, "[is] humbling. I give thanks, man, to God, for being able to move people that way." As to why a die-hard fan named Caprice jumped on a jet in New York City to watch the group play in St. Paul, she gushes, "They're great performers. [Few] musicians play their own, real music. With a message." True enough. In a genre glutted with formulaic groups directed by trend-savvy label execs, Mint sustains the legacy of Sly & The Family Stone, Earth Wind & Fire, and Kool & The Gang, legendary R  & B bands known for both nailing down a groove and giving food for thought.

"My Sista," off Mint's last album, Living The Luxury Brown (the first on their own label, CagedBird Records) intones, "You weathered the storm through everything / you're always ever-lifting me." This is a tribute to the mothers, sisters, grandmas, and aunties who see to it that youngsters don't stray from a moral path. "Gratitude," from the new album, honors the institution of family, acknowledging that it takes not only a village but lineage to raise a child.

Caprice says of Mint, "They don't conform to musical society"—which is to say they don't produce soft-core videos of women with barely any clothes on. Mint's videos of romantic cuts such as "What Kind of Man Would I Be" and "Breakin' My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes)" feature lyrics and images aimed above the waist.

The band's very existence goes against today's grain. Jeff Allen (sax and keyboards) says, "We kind of carry the torch. Not many [R & B] bands are left." Appropriately, Mint Condition plays on Interpretations, last March's release of national artists paying homage to Earth, Wind & Fire. Mint contributed a sterling cover of EW&F's "After the Love Is Gone." Mint bass player Ricky Kinchen says, "It's an honor to be on this CD with artists like Chaka Khan and Lalah Hathaway, doing material by this historic band."  FYI: Also in March, Mint Condition performed at premier Twin Cities venue Myth with Cyndi Lauper, Lifehouse, and Soul Asylum for a benefit for ailing local legend Wain McFarlane (Ipso Facto, Wain McFarlane & Jahz).

And when they're not playing or making records, they don't trash hotel rooms, do revolving-door rehab, or leave a trail of paternity lawsuits. Spare time, they say, is better spent.

Stokley studies languages, recently completing an intensive five-month Spanish course at the University of Minnesota. He also goes wandering around the globe. "I love traveling," he says, "and culture." Of his fascination with foreign tongues, he explains, "It makes me understand people. And gives me empathy for somebody coming [to America]. If you're in their territory, you wouldn't be so quick to say, ‘Speak our language.' Sometimes, when people aren't speaking your language, you think they're less-than. Or dumb. They know their language and at least some English. You know one. It's about understanding peoplehood. If the world did that, there'd be better decisions about what's goin' on."

Keyboardist Lawrence Waddell earned a pilot's license and is concluding a mathematical sciences degree at the U of M and the University of Illinois. "Mathematical sciences is the degree," he says. "I got inspired by reading developments in quantum physics and relativity theory. There's a lot of creativity in it. Discovering the ways of our universe takes imagination." This from someone who admits he was "pretty much brain-dead throughout [high school]." Having grown up in inner-city St. Paul, he says, "Whatever your background, your circumstances in life, [you can't] let it put boundaries on your dreams. You are what you will yourself to become." Brain-dead or not, Waddell says he graduated from St. Paul's Central High "because I had the wrath of my parents" to deal with.

Allen studies criminal justice at Concordia University in St. Paul, because, he says, "I've long been interested in being a homicide detective." He thinks about opening a private agency. "Maybe [I'll] mentor at an existing agency," he muses. "[Get into] something interesting like locating runaways or missing children." Even if his fourteen-year-old son wants to be a basketball player, Allen insists the boy follow in at least one set of his footsteps. "I always told myself I'd finish college," he explains. "And, when my son becomes of age [and] is makin' decisions for himself, he shouldn't have to work at McDonald's."

Ricky Kinchen, Mint's lone non–St. Paulite, hails from Chicago's South Side. He's oddly influenced for an R & B artist. "Really, I taught myself," he says. "The first song I learned was ‘Another One Bites the Dust' by Queen. Some of my favorite bands are from the UK—bands like Radiohead, Muse, and Led Zeppelin." Along more expected lines, he says he also listened to 1980s chart-toppers Donald Byrd and The Blackbyrds. "And, since I was always in my brothers' record collections, I found Chuck Mangione, Parliament/ Funkadelic, Band of Gypsys. Listened to everything I could." He ultimately arrived at his definitive muses, bass-playing icons Bootsy Collins (funk) and jazz greats Stanley Clarke and Jaco Pastorius. Photography is also one of his passions; he even shot the band's most recent album cover. He also shoots the likes of American Idol star Paris Bennett, The New Congress, Kip Blackshire, and rising gospel stars Darnell Davis & The Remnant. When Mint Condition toured Europe in 1997, he wandered the streets of Munich, Berlin, and Paris, taking pictures of the local architecture. "They were pretty good," he says, "so I decided to learn more."

Naturally, there are musical sidelines as well. Waddell, Stokley, and Allen have moonlighted with percussionist Wallace Hill and bassist Serge Akou as the Afro-Caribbean jazz quintet Joto. Tuesday nights, they get together at Babalú, which looks more like someone's living room than a nightclub in Minneapolis's Warehouse District. There the guys glide through Juan Luis Guerra's "Para Ti," Chick Corea's "Spain," and Thelonius Monk's "Round Midnight." Joto has an album in the works for CagedBird Records.

Hill has known Stokley for roughly the past decade and won a Minnesota State Arts Board grant for working with Stokley as his apprentice in West African and Afro-Cuban music. "It was twofold," Wallace says. "I've taught with and learned from Stoke." In addition to hitting the skins, their studies involved cultural discipline. "It's about respecting the traditions of drumming, breathing, and one's connection to [the] spiritual," Hill says. Stokley agrees: "Drumming, that's my heart, first and foremost. A few people have helped polish me off. As a musician. As a human. I met Wallace in St. Paul at the Youth League. He's got a wealth of knowledge [about] rhythm." Stokley also credits St. Paul Central's youth advocate Frank Warden, as well as Robert McClain from the Inner City Youth League. His father helped too: "After I pounded pots and pans long and loud enough, my dad was, like, ‘Sounds like he knows what he's doing—besides driving us crazy.' So, [Dad] introduced me to Panamanian percussionist Francisco Lloyd and said, ‘Take him!' Also, [Trinidadian drummer] Cliff Alexis taught me in high school."

Last year, O'Dell and veteran Prince sidemen St. Paul Peterson, Kip Blackshire, Kirk Johnson, and Jelly Bean Johnson formed the funkmeister group The Truth. "Me and Chance Howard [keyboards and vocals] wanted to do something," says O'Dell (who also goes by one name). "We looked for cats. I told [Mint Condition manager] Jeff Taube about it. I said, ‘Just don't bring no corny cats.' He sure didn't." Most hours outside Mint are devoted to his two daughters, ages seventeen and twelve. "Every last bit of my other time," he says. "They're first over everything. I do this job to take care of them."

Stokley and O'Dell take a keen interest in the rich pool of Twin Cities talent. In January, The New Congress opened for Mint Condition in Long Beach. Stokley says he was glad to help expose the barely two-year-old upstarts. "They're incredible, breaking in, discovering themselves," he says. He has also sat in with The Rule—AKA local singer-songwriter Ryan Leistman, who toured with Cyndi Lauper last fall. "Ryan goes from genre to genre, reggae to pop to funk," says Stokley. "Never misses a beat."

O'Dell lauds emerging R & B siren Erica West, who opened for The Truth's inaugural gig at Trocadero in Minneapolis. He occasionally backs her up at clubs and plays on her in-the-works album. "Erica is strong," he says. "She doesn't remind me of anybody who's out right now." O'Dell says of The Truth bandmate Blackshire (Kip Blackshire, The Eleventh Hour), "That cat has so much soul. Outside of Stokley, he's my favorite singer around the Twin Cities."

You might say Stokley backed into stardom as a world-class vocalist. "I guess so," the frontman agrees with hearty laughter. "I made songs soft and quiet. If somebody listened, I'd stop singing. I was too self-conscious." Eventually, he got over it, joining the likes of Stevie Wonder, Sly Stone, and Teddy Riley of Guy fame as one of R & B's most distinctive vocalists, and now he commands the stage with both abandon and authority. "I love dancin' and actin' the fool out there," he says. Mint Condition's 2006 DVD, Live from the 9:30 Club, shows the group onstage in one of their favorite stomping grounds, Washington, D.C. On the disk, Stokley captivates the audience with incredible charisma while his cohorts strut tough with earthy stage presence. With lush backup vocals and session-ace Terry Wesley sitting in on drums, the music mesmerizes.

So, offstage, why aren't these guys philandering narcissists living out a hedonistic stereotype? Allen replies, "We're a product of our upbringing.  Our parents instilled certain things within us when we were young."

Bottom line: These homeboys are making good in their own right.

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