{"id":3334,"date":"2011-08-10T01:11:45","date_gmt":"2011-08-10T08:11:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3334"},"modified":"2011-08-10T01:12:18","modified_gmt":"2011-08-10T08:12:18","slug":"sharon-jones-the-dap-kings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/sharon-jones-the-dap-kings\/","title":{"rendered":"SHARON JONES & THE DAP-KINGS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

SHARON JONES & THE DAP-KINGS<\/h1>\n

One of soul\u2019s leading ladies brings the boys back home<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The master funkateers in the\u00a0Dap-Kings have earned mainstream attention over the last several years\u00a0for their work with big-name artists like\u00a0Amy Winehouse and Jay-Z, but their one true leader is soul singer extraordinaire\u00a0Sharon Jones. Their new album together as Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings,\u00a0I Learned the Hard Way<\/em>, is the fourth of their almost decade-long collaboration\u00a0and their first since 2007\u2019s critically acclaimed 100 Days, 100 Nights<\/em>. Augusta, Ga.,\u00a0native Jones, 53, took a break from a game\u00a0of Wii bowling at her home in Queens to talk about the new album, her band\u2019s extracurricular activities and her definition of soul.<\/p>\n

Were you surprised when your music began attracting a young audience?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, I wasn\u2019t surprised. When the Dap-Kings\u00a0were doing the 45s [a series of singles the group released in the early 2000s<\/em>], the audience was the young college students, the underground. The only thing with us, we never gave up. We stayed with it. Why do you think everybody came to us? Why do you think Amy and [producer] Mark [Ronson] and Jay-Z and all the rest of them wanted to come and get this sound we had? \u2019Cause we got the sound and we don\u2019t vary from it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a few years since Winehouse borrowed the Dap-Kings for her <\/strong>back-up band. How do you look at <\/strong>that now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The whole thing took me a little by surprise. The Dap-Kings didn\u2019t even know what was going on when Mark came to them. Actually while they were out with Amy, a little opportunity came for me, the movie, so it all worked out. [Jones appeared in 2007\u2019s<\/em> The Great Debaters.]\u00a0 But I don\u2019t think they gave us enough recognition. There should have been a thing: \u201cDap-Kings really had the sound that we wanted. I listened to Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings and that\u2019s what inspired me to come on out.\u201d But they wouldn\u2019t say that, of course not. But they sort of got us turned on to a bit of a different audience. It helped us\u2014that\u2019s how I look at it. I wish her the best to get back out there.<\/p>\n

What do you say to critics who think your music is too retro?<\/strong><\/p>\n

They can say whatever the hell they want to say. We go in the studio to make good-sounding music, and we\u2019re sticking to soul and what we do. They want pop, hip-hop, then go somewhere else. Don\u2019t\u00a0talk bad about us. We\u2019re doing what we want to do. You don\u2019t like what we\u2019re doing?\u00a0Move on. If I\u2019d lived my life listening to what people had to say\u2014too big, too short, too fat, once you pass 50 you\u2019re too old\u2014I wouldn\u2019t be where I\u2019m at right now.<\/p>\n

In the 1980s you worked as a <\/strong>guard at New York\u2019s notorious Rikers Island. Anything from that experience affect your music?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That just taught me to not be afraid. But\u00a0it didn\u2019t take jail to show me that, because\u00a0I never would have gotten the job if I\u2019d\u00a0been afraid. I live in the ghetto, been raised\u00a0in the ghetto. People try to rob you, all\u00a0this kind of stuff. But I\u2019ve learned you look\u00a0people in the eye, you don\u2019t show\u00a0no fear, and that\u2019s the thing that gets you\u00a0by. That may have helped me, because\u00a0I can\u2019t show no fear on stage. You get up there\u00a0and show fear, everybody in the audience\u00a0will know it. They\u2019ll feel it. You got to go\u00a0up with confidence. You got to take\u00a0 control. And the Dap-Kings, when they see me in control and they see me\u00a0feeling good, they feel good. When the\u00a0audience sees all of us feeling good, what you got going on? A big room of\u00a0everybody feeling good just feeding off of\u00a0each other. To me that\u2019s the definition of soul.<\/p>\n

\u2013Richard Cromelin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SHARON JONES & THE DAP-KINGS One of soul\u2019s leading ladies brings the boys back home The master funkateers in the\u00a0Dap-Kings have earned mainstream attention over the last several years\u00a0for their work with big-name artists like\u00a0Amy Winehouse and Jay-Z, but their one true leader is soul singer extraordinaire\u00a0Sharon Jones. Their new album together as Sharon Jones […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[49,970,2374],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3334"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3334"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3337,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3334\/revisions\/3337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}