Joey Porter's Tribute to Sly & the Family Stone, June 9 at the Goodfoot

[June 13th, 2007] [FUNKADELIC TRIBUTE] Nobody's ever been able to touch the madcap funk glory of Sly & the Family Stone. Sly's mix of giddiness and political anger managed the tough task of perfecting the funk formula developed by James Brown and taking it to the next level. The result is a timeless body of work that has had an immeasurable influence on all urban music.

Saturday at the Goodfoot Lounge, hero worship was on the bill—and rightfully so—thanks to organist Joey Porter's Sly & the Family Stone tribute. Tributes can be a scary thing, but Porter's eight-piece ensemble, featuring musicians harvested from the local scene (of which Porter was a part for many years), presented a seamless tribute full of improvisation and booty-shaking greatness.

More importantly, the tribute managed a seemingly impossible task in a Portland venue: Almost everybody was actually dancing. "People don't dance here because it's mostly indie rock—it's not danceable," a sweaty Porter said between sets. "Shit, maybe there's not enough funky dance around here."

Porter—a former mainstay of the Portland scene as a member of Rubberneck, Five Fingers of Funk and Phat Sidy Smokehouse, as well the Porterhouse Quartet—recently moved to Boulder, Colo., where he leads the Joey Porter Quartet and is a sometime-member of the Motet. He booked the Sly show four months ago, and returned to Portland early last week to squeeze in a few hours of practice with the band. But the way the show played, it sounded like the group had been rocking the Sly catalog for years.

The show kicked off with a stomping rendition of the classic "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," with Jans Ingber and Paul Creighton handling the complex vocals. The band remained tight as it exploded into "Loose Booty" and "Babies Makin' Babies." Bassist Dan Scollard slapped and popped out some sexy grooves that left pairs in the front row unabashedly sucking face. Next, a high-energy "Dance to the Music" segued nicely into "I Want to Take You Higher" and "Everyday People." The same three songs were revisited during the second set, but they were tweaked down to a slow, crawling funk pace and accented by solos from trumpeter Chris Littlefield and saxophonist Joshua Cliburn.

The show, which ran for more than three hours, finished with a sing-songy version of "Sing a Simple Song." Grinning from ear to ear, Porter fired his fingers across the electric keys like an insane church organist hopped up on the finest PCP. When the show wrapped, Porter alluded to another, unspecified tribute in the near future. Judging by the reaction of the packed, sweaty audience and the near-perfect execution of the band, it couldn't happen soon enough.