You’d been performing James Brown songs for decades before releasing your first record at age 62 in 2011. What kept you from giving up? My mother and my grandmother. My grandmother once gave me a piece of charcoal and said, “You take a piece of charcoal and you put it under pressure, that same piece of charcoal is going to be a precious diamond.” I believed my grandma, and I carried that all through my life.
It’s a blessing that I’m still alive on this day, and I think it’s the creator keeping me alive for some reason. So I’m able to keep the hurtful things that people do to me and look at them and smile and say, “I love you brother, I love you sister” and keep walking. A lot of people would have given up a long time ago, but I find strength. I know there’s healing, I know there’s love in a human being regardless of what they do or how they make their life. I still chose to go the straight and narrow pathway, and I find that strength through music.
What has been the most surreal moment for you over the last five years? I did a tour down South someplace, and it was an all-day festival and there were about 2,000 people. It was pouring down rain, and I went to grab the mic and I got electrocuted. I felt the electricity flow through my body. And [guitarist] Tom Brenneck said to me, “Charles, come on, come off the stage.” And I said, “No, Tom, these people have been waiting in the pouring rain to see us, I gotta give them a show.”
So we played, and then I went out there to the people and I said, “If you guys can stand in this rain to watch me perform then I’m gonna come out there and get wet with you, so that you know that we’re all just one person under the sun.” And I jumped off the stage and a light flew over me. Everybody was grabbing me and laughing with me and crying. And I soaked in the mud and we just had fun. That’s a moment I will never forget as long as I live. The band was saying, “Charles, you’re crazy.” Yeah, I may be crazy but look at the love that I got. And then I got back up on that stage and grabbed the microphone and I got another shock!
When I’ve seen video of you onstage, you put so much into performing, How do you come down from that at the end of the night? I go in my room and take a nice cold shower and go on my medication; I talk to the supreme being who creates all. I say, “Thank you for the gift that you’ve given me. I hope I can continue to give it to the world.” I have a routine to work on my vocals. I always get some honey and some extra virgin olive oil to coat my throat, and I go to bed. I know how to take care of this body and keep it strong. I don’t go out and try to throw my life away.
It sounds like your music has progressed over your two albums in the same way funk and soul music progressed in the 1970s. Was that intentional? I feel that, even today’s music is still picking and manipulating the music from when I came from, back in the days. If you look at music today, all they did was put it on the computer and mix it and change it. That’s all they’re doing.
I have some things in me that I still want to say, some feelings that I still want to touch, and I’m just looking for the right music to bring it out. I don’t always know what I want to hear, but I’m gonna try and pull it out and sing it to you and if you hear it the way I sing it to you, then a wall is broken.
What is your biggest struggle as an artist? My biggest struggle is time and trying to create the quality of music that I want. People try to get me to do things, but I don’t want to do the things they want me to do, because I’m looking for the quality, the dynamics, the instinct, music that can feed my soul. This is why it took so long for me to come out and be who I am. I ask the people, “look inside yourself to find your own dreams. You’ve got gifts inside you, but you’re sitting here doing nothing. Stop that. If you ever wanna find out who you are, don’t look at what I’ve got inside me, look at what you’ve got inside you and then use that for yourself.”
Because that’s what held me back so much in my life, I should have been out there in my 30s. I should have been out there at 25, I should have been out there, but I wasn’t. At least I got the little chance that I’ve got now. I’ve got this little chance, and I’m holding on to it and I’m not letting that door close.
Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires September 19, 8 p.m., $20. Cosmopolitan’s Boulevard Pool, 702-698-7000.
