Skip to main content
Sounds like: Morris Day and the Time, having tired of battling Prince and the Revolution, taking to motivating people to dance with religious intensity.
For fans of: KC and the Sunshine Band, Controversy-era Prince, Parliament and, to a lesser extent, Funkadelic.
Two years ago, things were looking pretty bleak for Stevie Ray Mays. He was diagnosed with both types of diabetes. He had extremely high blood pressure. Doctors came from all over the hospital to look at the medical anomaly. "When they showed me my kidneys," Mays says, "they looked like jellyfish with streamers." That's when his physician decided that, to help get Mays' blood pressure down, it was in his best interest to put him into a coma.
Before all this, Mays, who counts blues singer Norman Sylvester and the late soul singer Linda Hornbuckle as cousins, had been an accomplished bass player. He played with jazz institution Thara Memory and pivotal Portland funker Calvin Walker. Mays even claims Miles Davis ripped off one his bass solos.
But, expectedly, going into a medically induced coma changed Mays' life. After coming that close to death, he awoke with a new resolve. He decided to get healthy, adopting a pescatarian diet and giving up processed foods. And, after having been a sideman for his entire career—Mays won't say how old he is, but he attended Washington and Adams high schools, which both closed in 1981, before graduating from Jefferson—he decided to embark on his own project.
He chose the name Ultra Van Krome, after a hallucination he had during a teenage acid trip while looking at a psychedelic box of laundry detergent. The album, due out this week, is titled Cyber Funkist. It's an apt name: It's full of stuttering bass pops, ferocious synth squalls, rivet-tight drumming and blazing, "Let's Go Crazy"-style guitar leads, played by another of Mays' cousins, Marlon McClain of legendary local R&B act Pleasure. The cover depicts Mays as the titular Van Krome, wings sprouting from his back. He says they're meant to symbolize his resurrection: "If I swoop in and catch you sitting down, those wings are gonna cut you in half," he says.
SEE IT: Ultra Van Krome plays Peter's Room at Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., on Saturday, Feb. 28. 9 pm. $5 or three cans of food. 21+.
WWeek 2015