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CEA 2003

Glory B
Legend Bootsy Collins remains a vital, forward-thinking artist

TRIBUTE BY MIKE BREEN

It’s safe to say that, of all of the musicians to come out of Cincinnati, few have helped shape the face of popular music as much as William “Bootsy” Collins. A true original, he’s one of the primary architects of Funk, and the music he’s been a part of has monumentally fed into everything from Rock & Roll to Hip Hop.

Bootsy Collins Photo By Doug Trapp

Born on Oct. 26, 1951 in Cincinnati’s West End, Collins formed his first band, The Pacesetters (with his brother “Catfish” on guitar), in the late 1960s. The group replaced James Brown’s backing band and recorded seminal sides with the Godfather of Soul for legendary Cincinnati-based label King Records, where Collins had been working as a studio musician since he was 15.

Collins was just 17 when he joined Brown, kicking off a “Hall of Fame” career with a bang. Collins, though uncredited, is even believed to have written Brown’s sassy smash “Sex Machine.”

In 1972, Collins, having discovered hallucinogenics — which didn’t please Brown at all — found his way into George Clinton’s groundbreaking Funk clan, Parliament-Funkadelic, which innovated with a twisted mix of Funk, Hard Rock, Soul and Psychedelia. It’s there that Collins developed a look and stage presence that would become his trademark. To this day, Collins’ look — star sunglasses, the star-shaped bass guitar and outlandish, glittery outfits — is one of the most identifiable in popular music.

Collins became the bandleader in 1976, when he released Stretchin’ Out in Bootsy’s Rubber Band. Among other hits, his song “Bootzilla” (from 1978’s Bootsy? Player of the Year) was an R&B chart burner, showcasing his more dance-floor-friendly side.

With his playful bark upfront, backed by, of course, a mammoth groove and trippy, unpredictable song sculpting, Collins has been releasing futuristic Funk manifestos ever since. Glory B Da’ Funk’s on Me! The Bootsy Collins Anthology, an expansive collection of his solo/Rubber Band work, was released by Rhino Records in 2001.

Collins was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 for his role in P-Funk, but what’s refreshing about Bootsy is his desire always to be forward-thinking creatively, never resting on his laurels. To this day, he remains as vital and “contemporary” as ever.

His career over the past couple of decades has also been incredibly diverse. He’s cut Jazz and Bluegrass-influenced albums. In the ’90s, his voice and mug were splashed all over MTV as part of the Deee-Lite hit “Groove Is In the Heart.” He gave local-guy-done-good Kenneth Edmonds the now-permanent nickname “Babyface.” He’s helped his son launch a Rap career and mentored local groups Shag and Freekbass. He’s backed Punk impresario Malcom McLaren, worked on Broadway, jammed with Gov’t Mule and chilled with disciple Snoop Dogg.

Last year, if you turned on a TV, you likely saw and heard Collins as a part of the massive “Dr. Funk” Nike ad campaign, and his collaboration with Fatboy Slim on the song “Weapon of Choice” was a huge MTV hit last year as well.

The Funk is everywhere these days. And so too, it seems, is Bootsy.

What’s next? Well, fittingly, it’s already here. Bootsy’s latest project is the ambitious “guest artist”-riddled CD, Play With Bootsy, released Nov. 19 on WEA International. The record features heavyweights like Snoop Dogg, Fat Joe and Fatboy Slim, as well as a host of new faces, including Cincinnati’s One. (See Bootsy’s Web site, www.bootsycollins.com, for the latest updates on his career as well as merchandise links.)

Unlike some artists from Cincinnati who find fame and never look back, Collins has retained strong ties to his hometown, working in his home recording studio with choice local talent and making the rounds at various social functions.

He’s a hometown hero who actually seems to be happy about where he’s from. And Cincinnati is certainly happy and proud to call him one of our own. ©

Hanging in There
Dale Hodges has had a lifetime of choice roles, wants another

INTERVIEW BY RICK PENDER

Although she’s been acting for many years, building a resume with enough accomplishments to make most actors green with envy, Dale Hodges is hesitant about receiving a lifetime achievement award.

Dale Hodges Photo By: Jon Hughes / photopresse

“I mean, can I have another lifetime, please?” she jokes in her clipped British accent. “It’s like I’ve got to retire.”

Hodges, in fact, says she’d much prefer to be earning an “I Hung in There” award, since she feels that’s a better summation of her career. Nevertheless, the League of Cincinnati Theatres is recognizing her artistry at the 2002 Cincinnati Entertainment Awards with a “Hall of Fame” award.

Hodges will be at the CEAs in the midst of a busy season that includes rehearsals for another year of A Christmas Carol at the Cincinnati Playhouse, followed by a dramatic workout in Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati (ETC) in February.

Since her arrival in Cincinnati in 1988, Hodges has, in fact, been in every production of A Christmas Carol. If you’ve seen the show, you probably remember her as the sprightly Mrs. Fezziwig or Scrooge’s timorous housekeeper, Mrs. Peake. This year she’s undertaken a new role for her, the Ghost of Christmas Past.

Her role most firmly etched in the collective memory of Cincinnati theater audiences is that of Dr. Vivian Bearing in the Playhouse’s February 2000 production of Margaret Edson’s Wit. Hodges played the imperious academic, a scholar with profound expertise in the daunting, complex sonnets of 17th-century poet John Donne. In the midst of a life of self-centered independence, Bearing is pulled up short when she’s diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer.

Hodges was absolutely perfect for the role, one of the best written for actresses in recent years.

“All I want to do is work,” Hodges says. “In New York, you’re submitted for a job based on your work. Here (in Cincinnati) there’s a sense of maybe we don’t have the ideal person, but let’s give her a read. You wouldn’t even get an audition in (New York). I’d never have gotten submitted for the role of the Fool in King Lear” at the Cincinnati Playhouse, the part that resulted in her current nomination for yet another Cincinnati Entertainment Award.

“With Wit, I would have gotten seen, but Ed (Stern, the Cincinnati Playhouse’s producing artistic director) took a chance on me because he’d seen my work.”

She notes that Stern saw she could carry a demanding full-length work when she performed Caryl Churchill’s Skriker at ETC in 1998. Hodges was ideal for the role in Wit, one of the most well-received dramas ever presented on the Playhouse’s Shelterhouse stage, extended for a week beyond its original run. Within a year she found herself repeating the role for another production at Actors Theatre of Louisville.

“I never did big roles in New York,” Hodges says, recalling her career there in the 1980s, when she worked steadily in supporting roles and as an understudy for several major productions including Equus, Skirmishes, Benefactor and Top Girls.

She loves the diversity of roles she’s been able to undertake on stages in and around Cincinnati, working with the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival (including playing Antonio, the title character in The Merchant of Venice), many roles for ETC (from an argumentative doctor in Going to St. Ives and the angry wife in Side Man to her recent turn as a dotty vicar’s wife in Bed Among the Lentils and a self-absorbed art collector in The Credeaux Canvas) and the Human Race Theatre in Dayton (where she handled two male roles in a memorable 1996 production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America).

Born in England, Hodges did some theater as a teen-ager in school, but it wasn’t until she spent three years with an amateur dramatic group in South Africa that she began to realize she might pursue a career onstage. She returned to England, where she attended a London drama school for three years.

She came to the United States in 1971, shortly after marrying an American. They lived in New York City, where she sought theater work, although they relocated to Cincinnati for a few years while her husband attended school. The marriage ended and she headed back to New York with an infant (her son, who’d been born at Cincinnati’s Christ Hospital), who made for additional challenges for a young actress.

But Hodges flourished, finding support roles and understudying assignments that fit her lifestyle, and she loved life in New York City. After a seven-year courtship, she married David Logan, an old acquaintance from Cincinnati, and moved here permanently.

“I knew I didn’t want to grow old in New York,” she recalls. “I loved it, but I wanted to find another place to raise my child. I wanted a private life.”

Indeed, Hodges’ life has dimension beyond the theater. Married to a man who manages a halfway house, she didn’t hesitate to speak up when Over-the-Rhine’s Drop Inn Center was threatened by the initial plans for a new School for Creative and Performing Arts. Recently she was in a peace march, something she did with her son — and which she recalled doing with him when he was a toddler.

When asked, however, Hodges says she doesn’t see herself as political in the common sense of the term. But she’s quick to acknowledge that keeping people’s imaginations alive is a political act.

“Live theater,” she says, “has a greater capacity to do that than other art forms, perhaps because of the collusion between performer and audience.”

Hodges is grateful for her career — and eager for what’s to come. She loves the chance to make things seem “more human, more universal, easier to understand. If I can offer that to an audience and in so doing they become more aware of their own humanity and are a little more thoughtful or compassionate or briefly relieved of their own worries, then I think that’s a good thing, and I’m very happy.” ©