Dancing on the eve of Labor Day means you can party without having to worry about work the next day!
The beloved D.C. go-go band Rare Essence headlines the third annual Summer Soul Music Festival at the Charles County Fairgrounds in La Plata, Maryland, on Sunday from noon to 8 p.m.
WTOP caught up with founding member Andre “Whiteboy” Johnson as Rare Essence leads a lineup that includes Northeast Groovers, DCVybe, The Kim Michelle Experience and All-Star Experience, as well as DJ Frisco and DJ Biggs.
“For decades now, we’ve always done a big show on Labor Day Sunday,” Johnson told WTOP. “This is the very first time that we’ve done this festival and this venue, so this is going to be a really big deal here. We used to play in that area a lot back in the ’80s and ’90s, some of the venues aren’t there anymore, but the people that live in that area, they travel up to D.C. and Prince George’s County sometimes, but we’re glad to be going to them this time.”
Johnson met his future bandmates as kids at St. Thomas More Academy in Southeast D.C., including Quentin “Footz” Davidson, Michael “Funky Ned” Neal and John “Big Horn” Jones. How did he get his nickname?
“I used to listen to a lot of pop music, which was rock music at the time, so a lot of Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Kansas, The Eagles, all of those groups, and all the music was guitar-driven. I’m a guitar player, so I would learn those songs and play those songs at band practice,” Johnson said. “They started teasing me saying, ‘You’re playing all that white music, we’re gonna call you ‘Whiteboy.'”
Rare Essence officially formed as a band in 1976, playing all the clubs in the D.C. area and moving to bigger venues, such as the Washington Coliseum, the Capitals Center and the D.C. Armory.
“They were just gigs to us. We had no idea because we were young. We just knew we were playing in a big place today, we didn’t realize the magnitude of what we were doing at that time,” Johnson said.
While E.U.’s hit song “Da Butt” went nationwide thanks to Spike Lee’s classic film “School Daze” (1988), Rare Essence’s song “Lock It” similarly went nationwide thanks to the soundtrack of Kevin Hooks’ comedy flick “Strictly Business” (1991) starring D.C. native Tommy Davidson and future Oscar winner Halle Berry.
“That was great,” Johnson said. “The record already had really good buzz on the East Coast and we were signed to Uptown Records, who Andre Harrell was one of the producers of that movie. He said, ‘I want to put one of the songs in that movie,’ so we were like, ‘Yeah, great, that’s fine.’ After he put it in, that’s what made it really national.”
After many live albums, the band’s first studio album was “Work the Walls” (1992), including a hit title track that came to be with help from a cement bench along the side wall of The Celebrity Hall, later known as The Black Hole.
“When we were playing a lot of the women would jump up on there and start dancing facing the wall, so that’s actually where the idea came from. We’re watching them and screaming, ‘Work the walls! Work the walls!’ — and it turned into a song,” Johnson said.
Their second album, “So What You Want?” (1995), was partially recorded at The Eastside Club in D.C., where they used to play every Wednesday night.
“The Eastside just had a vibe to it. Every time we walked in there on a Wednesday night until 3 in the morning, they jam packed in there and everybody was just all the way amped up. Plus it had a really good sound to it, the ceilings weren’t real high, there was a lot of wood, so that’s why we figured it would be a good spot for a live set,” Johnson said.
That same year, they joined the holiday go-go compilation album “Let’s Go-Go Christmas” (1995), doing for D.C. what Kurtis Blow’s “Christmas Rappin’” did for Harlem and Run-D.M.C.’s “Christmas in Hollis” did for Queens.
“The great thing about that is every Christmas since the release of that song and that album, they play those songs on the radio, so it’s great to even be part of the Christmas holiday,” Johnson said.
Evolving from “Body Snatchers” (1996) to “We Go On and On” (1998), their music continued to reflect the times as the song “Overnight Scenario” delivered lyrics that influenced Jay-Z’s “Do It Again” released the next year.
Meanwhile, their album “RE-2000” (1999) featured Redman on “We Push” and their album “Turn It Up” (2016) featured collaborations with DJ Kool and Raheem DeVaughn.
“We are going along with what’s current, we’ve always been able to do that,” Johnson said. “We’re from the ’70s, but you can’t sound like you’re from the ’70s in the ’90s, so we were able to morph into a ’90s sound, a 2000s sound. Even today, we make sure that we keep the band sounding current while still being able to do the classics.”
Today, Rare Essence has carved a spot on the proverbial Mount Rushmore of D.C. go-go bands, including the Chuck Brown Band, Trouble Funk and Experience Unlimited (WTOP has gratefully interviewed them all).
“It’s absolutely an honor to be a part of the first generation of go-go,” Johnson said. “We’re all following Chuck Brown’s lead. Again, at the time, we had no idea that it was gonna turn into what it turned into. We were just out there having a good time playing from clubs to school gyms to rec centers and out at the parks. We were just having a good time performing and this all morphed into a genre and it just kept us going decade after decade.”
Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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