Rocking a Jheri curl, wife beater, and boxy shades on the stage of Carniville Austin, Dam-Funk looks classically West Coast. Taking on both selector and vocalist duties, he breaks a sweat circling around, asking the crowd to “just bounce” to his ‘80s-inspired funk while performing the track “Hood Pass Intact.” Dam (pronounced Dame) may have only recently been embraced by the music industry, but he’s no fly by night throwback act trying to play a role—this DJ/producer/singer is a lifetime lover of funk who’s finally getting his time to shine.

Inspired by early Prince records and Steve Arrington of Slave, Dam has been recording and crate digging on the underground since the late-80s. This L.A. artist hasn’t exactly been desperate for a big break all these years, but he unexpectedly caught one just a few years back after befriending fellow vinyl fanatic, Peanut Butter Wolf of Stones Throw Records. While PB Wolf was well aware of Dam’s abilities as a DJ, he didn’t quite know the whole story. “He looked on my MySpace page, listened to my music and he really liked it,” recalls Dam. “And he didn’t even know I did music—it was a natural thing.”

Now with a double album of modern funk on the shelves, Toeachizown (recently released as a five-LP set), Dam wants listeners to let his spaced-out, synth-heavy tracks gain appreciation over time. “I didn’t want to record an album that people could just decipher in thirty minutes,” says Dam. “I wanted to present something that you could look back at for years.”

With a collection of his older, un-released material, Adolescent Funk, on the way along with heavy touring of Europe, Australia, and Japan, the Dam-Funk funk explosion is just starting to gain steam.

Words by Max Herman, Photos by Dustin Downing