By Martin Popoff

As the press release, in part, sez, “GRAND FUNK RAILROAD to play Niagara Falls, June 27 and 28. Grand Funk Railroad will be playing the Fallsview Casino Resort, 6380 Fallsview Road, in Niagara Falls, Ontario on June 27 and 28. Show time for both nights are 9 PM. Tickets range between $25 and $35, plus tax. The venue phone is 888-325-5788. Click www.fallsviewcasinoresort.com for more information.

“We’re really sticking to what we’ve been doing in the past,” says original drummer Don Brewer, in conversation with BW&BK; earlier today. “We’ve got a few new songs we’re doing in the show, like ‘Bottle Rocket’, ‘Sky High’ and ‘Lightning And Thunder’, and we still focus on doing all of the hits… ‘I’m Your Captain’, ‘Closer To Home’, ‘Some Kind Of Wonderful’, ‘We’re An American Band’, ‘Inside Looking Out’, ‘Locomotion’… I mean, it’s a real Grand Funk rock ‘n’ roll show (laughs).”

Do you feel that there is a subtle politics to what goes on? You seem to use the American flag a lot!

“Well, we dubbed ourselves ‘The American Band,’ and that definitely came up ever since 1973 when the song ‘We’re An American Band’ came out. We’ve been kind of dubbed the American band. And yeah, sure, we play that up a little bit, but that’s really what we are. We’ve always focused on playing more small-town America. You know, we were always bigger in like Des Moines, Iowa than we were in New York City (laughs). That’s kind of who we are.”

Are the fans reflecting that back to you? Like is it really sort of a patriotic show coming from the fans?

“No, I don’t think so. We don’t go into overkill with it. It’s just part of who we are. And being from Flint, Michigan, and coming up in small-town America and playing all over America and having a song ‘We’re An American Band’, I think the fans identify with us as being the local guys who made it big.”

Even though Grand Funk have been pegged as a hard rock band more than anything else, it’s a little more complicated than that, says Brewer. “Well, coming from Flint, Michigan, we were really influenced by Motown and R&B; coming up. And when we were THE PACK and TERRY KNIGHT AND THE PACK, we did a lot of R&B.; And then when we became Grand Funk, when we went off and became a rock power trio kind of thing, that R&B; flavour came with it. And I really think that Grand Funk is a unique combination of R&B;, soul and rock. Whereas HENDRIX and CREAM and BLUE CHEER, a lot of those band, they were founded more on blues, whereas our band was more of an R&B; band that cranked it up and turned up the muscle.”

For a band that has sold 25 million records, it’s surprising how little people hear about Grand Funk, compared to ‘70s bands with even a quarter of those numbers… “You know, among the fans, the hardcore fans, there is that kind of opinion,” agrees Brewer, “but I think over the years, people have really identified us with a few songs, like ‘I’m Your Captain’, ‘Closer To Home’, and especially ‘We’re An American Band’, ‘Locomotion’ and ‘Some Kind Of Wonderful’. But a lot of the stuff we were more well-known for in the ‘70s has kind of drifted away. It’s maybe just part of the time period. But I think people still do talk about Grand Funk. I hear a lot of musicians that identify with Grand Funk and they go back and check it out.”

Do you think part of it was that it all happened in such a big hurry, i.e. the records were released so close together – I mean, 11 studio albums in seven years! Not to mention two double live spreads…

“Yeah, we were definitely a ‘70s band. The lifespan of our catalog covers only really ‘69 to ‘76. After that we did another, actually two records, in the early ‘80s, which are really obscure. But really, most of the music we created, the type that we represent, is about six or seven years.”

As for the future, Brewer says that the band “continue to work on new material. We have new things that we do in the show, but we don’t have any immediate plans to do a new record, no. We just really haven’t found the right situation for us to go for it right now. I mean, there is such a disconnect between radio and classic rock, but it’s really difficult to get out there. Sure, we can put something together and sell it on our website, but that’s not really what we’re interested in doing. We would like to get some sort of distribution, some way to get the music heard, which doesn’t really seem to exist anymore…”

Click www.grandfunkrailroad.com for more information.