Shake yo` ass

Excellent Gentlemen shows require just one thing–a willingness to get down and shake your ass. New York transplants Steve Swatkins, Jeff Sechs, Ehud Abadi and Drake Molotov incorporate old school funk and soul with classic hip-hop and impressive musicianship. Swatkins, the band’s ringleader, sat down with the Vanguard to talk about Excellent Gentlemen’s upcoming full-length album and how they broke into Portland’s competitive music scene.

Tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you get involved in music?My pops was a musician. He was putting instruments in my hand when I was very young. He was a guitar player, so he started me on bass so I could back him up. He was always playing the old Motown stuff, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder.

I grew up with that stuff, that old school vintage ’60s and ’70s soul. But at school, I was listening to hip-hop with my friends–A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul. The beauty of it is that it was connected. A lot of the samples they were taking were from my pop’s music. It’s got the banging beat behind it, so it made it really easy to incorporate all those elements.

Talk about how the band got started up.It didn’t really coalesce until early 2007. We were extremely fortunate in terms of how we were received, both by clubs and other bands. I get the sense that there weren’t a whole lot of bands out there doing what we were doing. Bands would ask us to open up for them, most notably the guys in Intervision and the dudes in Int’l Mail. They were very, very generous getting us gigs and hooking us up. As soon as bar owners started to notice we made music people wanted to dance to and feel good about, it was easy to get asked back.

When did you realize the band was on the right track?The first big show we played was January 2007 at the Fez Ballroom. That was a show Intervision hooked us up with. They asked us to close … they put themselves in the middle slot. They had a lot of people there for them. Some people were sitting, some people were standing.

We got up there. We were hyped. It was the first big room we played. We just went for the jugular. The dance floor packed up by the second song and stayed that way. That was the first time that we recognized that was a strength of ours, making a roomful of people want to get up and dance and lose themselves in the music. We want you up in our faces.

You guys are from New York. How is Portland treating you?Portland is amazing. Portland’s just a great city in general. People are willing to go out, pay a little bit of money, five or six bucks, to see a live band. It’s a different scene in general than the Northeast. When I grew up and was playing in bands, there’s a million little college towns all around New York and Connecticut and Vermont and Massachusetts. Out here, you’ve got to haul. When we travel, we go out to Boise, we go up to Seattle. It’s a lot of time in the van smelling the other dudes’ farts. Now that I’ve gotten used to it … the traveling thing has gotten easier. But Portland, we love playing in Portland.

Are you going to start touring more?It’s definitely something we think about. The objective at this point is to get new ears on the music. We’ve been scaling back a little bit the number of Portland shows we play to allow us to get out of town on the weekends. It’s been really rewarding.

As a business, we’re in the black. We bought the van we tour in. We financed a three-song demo ourselves. We have no personal debt associated with the band. I live with the guys so it makes it easier in some aspects. If we’re out of toilet paper, it’s like, dip into the coffers, we’re all going to use it.

Are there any plans for a new album?We’re about to hook up with Dave Friedlander, who was formerly at Kung-Fu Bakery. In his career, he’s engineered for Prince and Madonna. He’s a DJ and loves, loves, loves the soulful funk music. We connected with him and he expressed interest in doing a project with us. We couldn’t find a suitable venue until now. Next month we’ve got four or five dates at Klickitat [Band Camp] Studios.

We’ve been a band for two years but we don’t have a full-length album. It kills me when people ask for it and I’m like, I can’t give it to you. It’s ego as well as business. Every musician wants to have a product they’re happy with. I’m still like, we need the album today, we need it yesterday.

Excellent Gentlemenwww.excellentgentlemen.comNext show: May 25 at the Bitter End