Grupo Fantasma 2007
From Empanada Parlour to Prince's backup band six years later
You can't have a fairy tale without a Prince, and in this one the frog is Austin band Grupo Fantasma.
Once upon a time - Friday, February 5, 2007 on Miami's South Beach, to be exact - the powerhouse cumbia-funk band backed the artist currently known as Prince at a pre-Super Bowl party for CBS affiliates.
The pint-sized musical giant, who blew everyone away in the rain at halftime of the Super Bowl two days later, joined the 11-member Grupo on its song "Chocolate," sang one of his newer songs and then led a 20-minute jam on Tito Puente's "Oye Como Va" that had the lucky 500 guests dancing wildly.
This happened without Prince and the band ever rehearsing, as the notoriously spontaneous Minneapolis megastar merely sent Fantasma a disc of songs he'd possibly do, and the band members worked them up in their chilly St. Elmo Road rehearsal space. From South Austin to South Beach, with funk.
In the previous three months, Grupo Fantasma, which formed in Austin in 1999 (kismet!) had become a Prince pet, with His Purple Majesty not only flying the band to Las Vegas every Thursday in late ‘06/early ‘07 to play his 3121 nightclub, but hiring them as the house band at his Golden Globes party in Jan. 2007. Prince almost never has an opening act, but he put Grupo on the bill at his Feb. 3 concert near Miami.
"It's really a trip," guitarist Adrian Quesada said. "We were all thrilled just to see him in the audience (at 3121, which is in the Rio hotel and casino), but to play with one of your idols . . . that just blows us away."
How does something like this happen - a band with three albums that have sold a combined 18,000 copies and that still tours by van - becomes the go-to sidemen of one of music's greatest icons?
The big wheel of fortune started rolling when manager Mike Crowley sent a copy of Grupo Fantasma Comes Alive, recorded at Antone's, to Prince's promoter, Paul Gongaware. The two have been friends since the '70s, when they worked at Concerts West in Seattle. Gongaware passed the CD on to Prince, who was looking for groups to play Latin Night at his club.
"When Mike told us that Prince was going to listen to our record, we were like, 'Yeah, right,' '' said Quesada, a native of Laredo, like four other original Grupo members.
But Crowley got a call three days later, telling him that Prince liked the record and wanted the band in Vegas to play Thanksgiving, when the regular band couldn't make it.
With a Spanish song on his most recent album, Prince's ever-expanding musical palette had been embracing more Latin sounds. And he was a longtime fan of the Earth Wind & Fire/Tower of Power big horn funk sound that Fantasma has perfected since it formed eight years earlier as a comination of two Austin bands from Laredo- Blue Noise Band and the Blimp.
At the first gig at 3121, Grupo members were energized to see Prince dancing at the side of the stage. The next day, Gongaware called to say Prince was so impressed that he was offering them the Thursday gig in Las Vegas for the remainder of 3121's limited run, which ended in March 2007.
Prince's guitar was always there behind the amps, always in tune, ready for him to join the jam whenever the spirit took him. But during Grupo's first six Thursdays at 3121, Prince remained a spectator. The band members had not even met him.
Then, during a set Jan. 11, 2007, Prince stepped out of the shadows, asked "Is it cool?" and strapped on the ax for a Jimi Hendrix-like flight. After only a minute, Prince put down the guitar and disappeared in the wings.
Apparently, Fantasma passed the audition, because Crowley got a message a couple of days later: Get Grupo to Los Angeles within 24 hours. All the band knew was that it had something to do with a Golden Globes party.
In Los Angeles, the group was sent to the Presidential Suite of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where drums and amps and mics were placed in a corner. Another band might've been deflated by the cramped, stageless setup, but the Fantasma members were jazzed.
"This is our bread and butter," Quesada said to his bandmates at the sound check. Grupo Fantasma was born playing house parties, with all 11 players tucked into a corner while dancers dodged the trombone.
Then Prince walked in. He thanked the band for coming on such short notice and asked whether they knew certain songs. After a few minutes of shop talk, it started to dawn on the band members that they'd be backing Prince that night.
"We didn't have time to be nervous," Quesada said.
Prince's Golden Globes party was one for the ages, with Marc Anthony singing a couple of 1960s salsa standards (with wife Jennifer Lopez dancing right in front), plus Mary J. Blige and will.i.am from Black Eyed Peas also sitting in with Prince and Grupo Fantasma.
This was a humble band enjoying their time in the purple limelight for what it was. Whether Prince was simply going through a Latin-funk phase before moving on to his next musical fixation had no bearing on all the fun Fantasma was having.
When the daydream was over they got to work, recording two Grammy-nominated albums (El Existential won in 2011), and ready to back everyone from GZA of Wu-Tang to Daniel Johnston.
G.P. spent its first two years in Austin virtually ignored- or booked as a noontime token at mini-fests- but they came on strong in 2001, building a huge salsa dance scene at the Empanada Parlour on Sixth Street. As many as 300-people were grooving on the patio each weekend to a Latin sound as urban as it was tropical. But the neighboring Sheraton Hotel guests were bigger fans of R.E.M.- not the band, the sleep. One weekend the hotel had to move 17 guests to the quieter street side.
The City suspends the noise ordinance downtown during SXSW (which gave angered Four Seasons guest Howard Stern about 15 minutes of material on Sirius in March 2012), and some venues want to keep the party going outside until it gets cold. The hotels call the cops, who show up with a sound meter, and if you’re over 85dBs at the property line before midnight, or 80dBs after that, the venue’s in violation.
The Sheraton went even further, filing a civil suit against Empanada Parlour in July 2001, asking for damages of $289,953 in addition to an injunction against music on the outdoor stage.
"You can't have it both ways," argued Parlour owner Patricia "Ash" Corea, a London native who moved to Austin 11 years earlier, with her husband a UT professor. "The Sheraton benefits from being in the nightclub district and yet they don't want to be bothered with what nightclubs produce.”
A compromise between the parties was met in March 2002, but since one of the provisions was that the Parlour would have to pay the Sheraton $500 if the sound meter ever went over 85 dB, the 11-piece Fantasma was out. Without the weekend dance tribe, the Parlour’s days were numbered. It closed in July 2002.
Corea’s story is one of a half-moon dream devoured by circumstances. A Cordon Bleu-trained chef, she caused a bit of a local culinary sensation with her Argentine meat pies in the mid-90s, at the original Empanada Parlour at the corner of 4th and Nueces Streets. With the expansion of the Convention Center in 1998, street closures and construction dust crippled Corea's business and she searched for a new location.
She found it on Sixth, but diners were sketchy about the neighborhood east of Red River during the crack epidemic. To make ends meet, the Parlour added live music on the patio and filled a nightlife void with adventurous bookings, offering cabaret music, free jazz, hip-hop, world music and other underserved genres in addition to its Fantasma blowouts. Corea would often leave her post behind the bar to dance with her patrons.
"They were the only club that would book us in the beginning," said Fantasma guitarist Adrian Quesada, now a member of Black Pumas. "They gave us a Friday night for our first gig, which is unheard of."
"It's a shame to go through everything we went through, with the Sheraton and the financial hard times, to close the doors now," said manager and booker Damon Lange. "Ash sweated blood to keep that place going."
It was a scene too powerful, too beautiful to last in downtown Austin.