“Right now my show outfits are in a closed box under my bed,” he says, a result of the pandemic that has changed the way his D.C.-based nine-piece funk and soul band operates. Weekly band practice has turned into weekly Zoom calls. They played a gig with everyone remote online and an impromptu show as a quartet from the top floor of Big Bear Cafe, to unsuspecting passersby.
Without live music, Detchou has turned to home recording, outfitting his Northwest apartment with a studio setup where he put the finishing touches on a collaboration with Soulive drummer Alan Evans, who co-produced Aztec Sun’s 2018 debut “In the Name of Everyone.” He’s even adopted a new stage name, Brother GoodLove, which made its debut on the single “As Far As We Know,” from Evans’s Crushed Velvet and the Velveteers project. Written last summer but recorded in April, the song befits our turbulent times and has a video — filmed in D.C. in June — that matches.
Isolation has also led Detchou to work on his first solo effort as Brother GoodLove, which Evans will produce, while Aztec Sun also begins work on recording its next album remotely. “As a creative, it’s exciting to branch out in this way and focus on myself as just a vocalist,” he says.
The 32-year-old Montreal native moved to Bethesda in 1998 and has written about the area: Aztec Sun’s infectious “Red Line,” for example, is about Detchou’s days of commuting from the Shady Grove metro. Given that he’s missing his bandmates, Detchou’s post-pandemic D.C. dream day puts music at the center.
I go for a run when everything’s still quiet outside. I live on 16th and Euclid streets in Northwest, so I like running around Malcolm X Park [also known as Meridian Hill Park]. After a run, I usually make good choices but dream day breakfast is just a smorgasbord of different things. It’s omelet, it’s breakfast meats, it’s sauteed vegetables, it’s fruit from the farmers market in Mount Pleasant, coffee from Southeastern Roastery, more water, a smoothie — all that stuff. Breakfast is one of the things that my wife and I cook together and we kind of catch up.
I would go and play pickup soccer at my old high school, Rochambeau, the French International School in Bethesda. Then I would come back, take a shower and think about some of my outfits for the day: one for when I’m running errands, one pre-show when we’re doing soundcheck, one for the show and then one post-show.
I start putting myself into that performer mind-set. We’re playing at 9:30 Club, and we’ve got just a massive production setup prepared. So I’m wearing outfit number one, going around the city. I might go shopping for a show outfit. For most of the Aztec Sun stuff, we all go to Macy’s downtown on G Street. I’ll scour the sale rack and look for the pieces that people might have passed over. If something doesn’t fit, I’ll take it down to my tailor, Stephen the Tailor, and he’ll make it fit.
For lunch, I’m going to do a sandwich from Sundevich in Shaw: the Havana — that’s what they call their Cubano. I dig their sandwiches and we used to go there when Aztec Sun first started.
I would go to the top floor of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. They have outfits worn by James Brown, Michael Jackson and Prince — a lot of funk and soul artifacts and heroes. Chuck Berry’s Cadillac is right there when you first walk in. I go there to just kind of soak that in, to think about the history of the music.
From there, I’ll drive to Aztec Sun drummer John Heinze’s place and we’re having a band hang/rehearsal. We’ll make food or talk and chill just to get into that community feeling going before we get to the performance later on that evening. We’re all there with our families and the weather’s nice. It looks like summer but feels like fall so I don’t have to be sweating all the time.
From there I’ll probably go home, take a nap, and maybe do another workout, or stretch and just relax. Prepare the body for the evening because the performance can get pretty intense — especially when I lose control.
In the early evening, I’ll get together with the band again to go down to 9:30 Club, [to] prepare the soundcheck. We’ll do a band dinner at DCity Smokehouse. I’m getting the ribs and wing combo with mac and cheese and brussel sprouts. I’m drinking a Port City Optimal Wit — that’s my jam.
Then we do our usual nature walk, which is basically a pre-show kind of ritual that we do where we walk around and chat and it helps to just kind of settle the nerves. We’ll walk along U Street, getting a feel for the city. U Street is buzzing, all the venues are open. They’re musicians coming in and out of places and people are just lining up for all the venues.
We are the headliners of a local festival. And all of our friends have played over the course of a couple of nights, bands like Gordon Sterling and the People, Knovo, Oh He Dead and more. There’s no opener for us and our set is part music, part theatrical, part social commentary. It’s like this orchestral movement through our repertoire of songs where we have visuals that show not only the city right now and sort of excitement around this festival, but also just kind of thinking about the history of the city, living through the pandemic, and the civil rights movement that we’re living through right now. It’s a compendium of everything that’s going on.
There’s also audience participation. Everyone is just in a vibe. Nobody’s paying attention to their phones because at this point, they’re tired of their screens and everyone is focused and there and present and safe. It’s being recorded, both video and audio, for posterity. It’s a beautiful evening. It’s a fantastic show, and everyone loves it.
We go out to the merch table, we’re meeting people and talking to people, and people are just talking about their experiences. It’s less about us being the performers. It’s more people sharing their own stories and how they relate to the music, how they’ve been doing and how excited they are about the future and about being able to connect with people. Our families are there, and we go back into the changing room and there is a mountain of 9:30 Club cupcakes waiting for us.
Then we go off to go to Boundary Stone for a nightcap and we’re just chilling there and we end up staying there so late that they close the restaurant but we’re still in there. It’s a raucous thing and someone pulls out some instruments as a sing along and it goes up into the night.