Roll of the Dice: 9 questions with Pete Miser of Five Fingers of Funk

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Roll of the Dice is a short interview format with a variable amount of questions. A Pair of dice is rolled and the total, between 2 and 12, is the amount of questions we can ask. All questions are given to the interviewee(s) at once, and no follow-ups are allowed. The interview may be lightly edited for content and clarity.

Returning with the original lineup for the first time in 25 years, Portland’s indie hip-hop architects, Five Fingers of Funk are gearing up for the release of Portland Say It Again (Pre-order). The album, coming 12 May from Kill Rock Stars, finds all ten members back on wax for the first time since 1998’s About Time. TGEFM is honored to have sat down with Pete Miser for this installment in our Roll of the Dice interview series.

Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. Congrats on the upcoming release of Portland, Say It Again. This is the first album featuring the original lineup since 1998’s About Time.  What brought about this reunion after 25 years?

Plain and simple, Portland Say It Again was brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. I live in Brooklyn but, in the height of the pandemic, my girlfriend and did our civic duty and sequestered in a small town in upstate New York called Rensselaerville. The town is so small that we didn’t have internet access and my cell phone didn’t get reception. I brought along a bare bones music production rig so I could still work. I also brought my archive hard drive that has files of everything I ever recorded. One day I opened up the files from a multi-track recording of a live Five Fingers Of Funk show at Berbati’s Pan. I chopped up the audio from an improvisational jam that we did, wrote some new lyrics and We Were Big In The Nineties was born. The next time I went up to AT&T Hill (that’s what I called the hill where I could get cell reception!) I sent an mp3 of the song to the guys in the band. That song led to the idea of creating a whole new album.

When you joined Five Fingers of Funk you were all pretty young, looking back now, what advice would you have for the young, up-and-coming acts today?

I’m always perplexed when a young artist asks me for advice about what path to take. Everybody’s path is completely different. What worked for me DEFINITELY won’t work for a young artist today. I mean, “go make a bunch of CDs and send actual postcards to your mailing list and buy a road atlas and a beeper” probably wouldn’t go very far in building a career in the age of Google Maps, streaming and social media!
Fundamentally, I would say, “assume you have a lot to learn and spend most of your time looking for the lessons in everything.” If you aren’t where you [think] you want to be career wise, it’s mostly because you haven’t soaked up enough game yet. Be humble. Assume the person that you’re writing off is actually teaching you something whether intentionally or not. 
Another fundamental thing is, know why you’re doing what you’re doing. If you’re a musician because you want to be famous, maybe cut to the chase and just work on being famous. Being a musician is a huge commitment to a craft and you may never be famous for it. Conversely, you can be famous without being good at anything other than self promotion. You don’t want to get ten years down the road of trying to be good at a craft only to realize that that’s not what you were in it for. I will be making music in some form for the rest of my life ’cause that’s one of the ways I like to spend my time. If being on stage at the MTV Music Awards or the Tonight Show was what it was about for me then my life would have been a waste. Those were just two nights in a long career. On the other hand, I’ve gotten to spend my adult life making music and not working for “the man.” The ultimate goal (for all of us) is to live a life well-lived. Make sure your actions are in line with that.

FFOF is such an influential act and means so much to so many of us. Does the high bar you’ve set for yourselves in the past help, hinder or affect your creativity today and to what extent?

Interesting question. I’ve discovered over the years that a huge part of being an artist is an impulse to keep raising the bar; to keep trying to crack the code of how to do “good” work. The unfortunate result is that I’m never satisfied with my own work. I constantly toss whatever I did on the pile and think “alright, let me try again and maybe I’ll get it right this time.” Virtually every artist I know has the same relationship with their work. It’s a good impulse to have if you’re trying to get better at what you do but your question makes me realize that it can hinder me in unexpected ways, specifically, in live performance. I haven’t been performing live much for the past few years but my standards for live performance are just as high as they’ve always been. I’m hindered by the fact that I don’t want to go on stage and suck so I don’t want to go on stage without tons of rehearsals and pre-production. The result is I just don’t end up doing live shows at all and more time passes and I get further away from it. So, yeah, I’m hindered by the standards I set for myself for sure. 

You’ve all been at this all for a while, what is your biggest regret? A gig you turned down, advice you didn’t take, what one thing do you wish you handled differently as a musician?

Dang. I wish I was more Zen and could act like I don’t have regrets but, the honest truth is I have a lot of nagging regrets. The biggest one related to Five Fingers Of Funk is that I lacked experience and wisdom. By default I was the band’s manager but I didn’t really know what I was doing, I knew how to work day and night but I didn’t know how to work strategically. In 1998 the intensity of ten guys in one van touring and releasing records independently with virtually no support wore us all out. I quit the band and moved to New York. At the time we were selling out venues from the Rockies to the West Coast and from Canada to L.A and I was taking meetings with major record labels. I recognize now that we were on the cusp of a big growth spurt that would have alleviated some of the tension through the guidance and support of seasoned industry professionals. I didn’t have the experience to navigate that period. I wish I stuck with it and at least landed us a record deal to see what that would have yielded. On the other hand, if I hadn’t left, I might not have gone on to tour the world with Dido and score films and blah blah blah so regret is a double edged blade isn’t it? Would I trade in what I was able to do for what I might have done? probably not. OK. I’m done with that question! (Until I obsess over it again tomorrow!)

The music industry in general has changed dramatically since the 90’s formation of Five Fingers of Funk.  What has been the most difficult to adapt to and where do you see things heading over the coming years within the industry and scene?

Over the past few years I’ve decided that I am at a huge disadvantage compared to artists just starting out now because I have a visceral memory of the “way things used to be” in the music industry. I try but I can’t really get it out of my head that people don’t really earn money off the sale of their music anymore. It used to be you went on tour in service of selling hard copies of recordings. Now the common business model is you release music to sell tickets to a show or, if you’re huge, you release music to prove that you’re cool enough that someone should cast you in a Netflix show or a Verizon commercial. In my day, being in a Verizon commercial would be viewed as a sell out move. You would lose fans over it. Now, that’s the whole career goal. I don’t know if I’ll ever fully get my head around that.
I don’t quite know where things are heading for the music industry. The barriers to making music keep falling. Anyone with the impulse to make a song can make one pretty easily now. You don’t need to be able to sing on pitch (autotune). You don’t need to understand harmony or chord progressions (preset loops). You don’t need to know how to write and record instrumentals (leasing beats, downloading tracks). Pretty soon A.I. will be able to do almost all of it for us. I really don’t know where that leaves us other than it cheapens the artist part of the equation and increases the supply side of the supply and demand relationship. Think about this: People go on Spotify and listen to hours of “chill Hip Hop beats.” Pretty soon, A.I. will be able to create and pump out decent “chill Hip Hop beats” endlessly until the user clicks “pause”. I would be shocked to find out that Spotify isn’t investing in A.I. software to create those tracks so they don’t have to pay all of those moody artists out there who want to pay their rent and…I dunno, eat. If you’re a fearful musician, that’s pretty scary. If you’re more philosophical like me, it just leaves you wondering what your role in popular culture is if A.I. can churn out decent music effortlessly at a pace you could never dream of. 

What effect, if any, have the cultural and political landscapes of the last few years had on this record?

Portland Say It Again wouldn’t be the album it is if it weren’t for the sheer madness of the past few years. Number one, it wouldn’t exist at all if I wasn’t pandemic sequestered in 2020. Number two, there are lyrics on the album related to what we’ve all been through. The song “Shorty’s Gonna Change The World,” for example, is a letter to my young nephew about the complexities of racial politics in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the strangeness of being young during the pandemic and the importance of his finding his way to political consciousness. It’s a direct reflection of the times.

One of our obligatory questions in these interviews also tends to be the one I have found most important on a personal level. Who are some bands on your radar that TGEFM readers may not know about, but you think they should know about?

I can’t speak for all of Five Fingers Of Funk but, for me, Tobe Nwigwe is one of the most interesting artists on the scene these days. Musically he’s phenomenal but, just as important, the way he has set up his career is inspiring. As far as I know he’s still operating independently after turning down offers from labels and he has a socio-political agenda of uplifting his community that is genuine. His Tiny Desk concert is ridiculously dope! 
I’ve been working with Dres from the legendary Hip Hop group, Black Sheep a lot over the past few years and I’m kinda stunned that he just keeps getting doper lyrically. He’s on the song “‘Til The Night Is Through” on Portland Say It Again. I’ve been listening to his music a lot as a result. 
Oh, De La Soul, of course! Trugoy rest in power. They were one of the most influential groups of my life. I’m psyched that their music is streaming finally. I listened to Buhloone Mindstate on repeat last weekend and shook my head at the genius of that album. 

Now that the world will soon have its hands on the record, what’s next for the members of Five Fingers of Funk? Was there anything I missed that you’d like to share or dive deeper into with our readers?

I have zero idea what is next for Five Fingers Of Funk after Portland Say It Again. Certainly we want to make more music together. The music these ten guys do as a unit is dramatically different from what we do as individuals. Five Fingers represents a unique musical outlet for us. I, personally, am trying to find my way into serious filmmaking. Producing, directing and editing our music videos was a step in that direction. Who knows? The future is unpredictable. I’ll see you when we get there!