Last year Wieden & Kennedy, New York creative director Stacy Wall, along with director Young Kim of Santa Monica and London-based Tony K., got the bright idea to put together a ’70s-style funk band to promote the WNBA on ESPN. With the help of New York-based RTG Music president Tag Gross and music producer Nile Rodgers (who is now with jsm/music, New York), the WNB-Ays were born and a series of goofy promos featuring the band singing songs about WNBA match-ups caught the eyes and ears of millions.
Riding on the popularity of last year’s campaign, Wieden & Kennedy and RTG teamed up again this year to take the WNB-Ays to the next level-live and uncensored. They organized a commercial shoot at Webster Hall, New York, where the band played to a live audience while, under the direction of Kim, the event was filmed like a music video. The footage is set to air on ESPN and other major networks as part of a promotional package for the ’99 WNBA season, which starts in June.
Funk Shoot
Over 500 people turned out for the show, including the marketing folks from the NBA and ESPN, some WNBA players, Wieden & Kennedy staffers, production crew and press. According to Gross, the event wasn’t advertised for fear of exceeding the venue’s capacity.
Orange and white basketballs adorned the stage while the house played ’70s disco tunes to get everyone in the mood. Just before the band went on, an announcement was made that all women should come up to the front of crowd while everyone else was asked to push towards the stage to prevent the appearance of gaps in the audience. New York Liberty players Teresa Weatherspoon and Kym Hampton came downstairs from their exclusive perch on the balcony to party with the crowd.
"The WNBA has 12 teams," said Gross, who got up on stage to address the crowd. "You are about to meet the 13th -introducing the WNB-Ays!" he exclaimed as the seven members of the band came busting out in their familiar orange and white sateen outfits with front man Justice X looking like a cross between Lenny Kravitz and Freddy Washington from Welcome Back Kotter. They ripped right into a rendition of last year’s classic "Monday Night," their tribute to the WNBA’s time slot on ESPN.
"What was cool from a production standpoint and different from anything you have ever seen in an ad is that this was shot like a live concert like you would see on VH1," says Gross, who co-produced the music along with RTG producers Camus Celli and Paul Conte.
The six-camera video shoot employed a Unitel video truck and an Effanell 48 track remote recording truck while lighting specialist Abbey Holmes of bicoastal Light Switch was called in to handle the lighting effects. People in the crowd waved fan banners bearing the band’s name and at one point, a round of confetti was dropped from the ceiling, adding to the excitement.
The band played continuously, funking their way through 16 tracks, stopping only to introduce the band members to the crowd. To everyone’s surprise, B-52’s vocalist Fred Schneider made a cameo appearance dressed in a referee uniform. "I was watching the reactions of people in the crowd and I was totally amazed. I mean, they’re just singing about basketball," laughed Mike Wade, ESPN manager of corporate communications.
While last year’s songs were crafted by Wall to represent certain match-ups between WNBA teams, this year Wall wrote a song for each team with such lyrics as …
I like my crumpets with tea.
I like my fish in the sea.
I like my Phoenix mmm mmm
mmm mmm mm mm m
Mercury.
The unique content of the songs is only upstaged by the fact that the music is very strong. In fact, it doesn’t matter what the band is singing about because the quality of the sound speaks for itself.
Funk ‘n Dunk
Both Gross and the agency know that the band is good enough to pull off a live show but moreover, Gross has big plans for its future. "Their sound is power funk and there’s really nothing out there right now in the record world that’s like that," says Gross, who contends most R&B stuff right now samples old funk records that are used as loops to make new records.
His vision includes a promotional CD with a few bonus tracks that could be purchased in retail shops, then a summer tour of the WNBA arenas and ultimately, Gross sees the band cutting its own funk CD, independent of the WNB-Ays moniker.
Each band member is a serious talent in his own right. The drummer, Sterling Campbell, is currently on tour with the B-52s, while guitarist Gabriel Gordon is on tour with Natalie Merchant. Bass player Jerry Barnes recently played on a soundtrack for Comedy Central’s South Park and has toured with Roberta Flack and Chaka Khan. "With these guys, it’s a mutual admiration society. They love playing together and I think the time is right to bring back funk with a live funk band," asserts Gross. "When people like Branford Marsalis and Fred Schneider are calling us up wanting to get into the band, that’s big," says Gross.
Whether or not the WNB-Ays cut the next platinum gold album remains to be seen, but for the band members, it’s a little simpler than that. "It’s been a lot of fun and I definitely get my funk rocks off," says bass player Barnes about his experience with the WNB-Ays. Barnes jumped at the opportunity to play in a funk band as did the other players but their schedules are so demanding that they can’t see doing it as a full-time gig. "I think all of us would love to do it, but something like a tour would have to be booked at least a year in advance."
According to Barnes, he and the other members agreed that it would be better to play together as the WNB-Ays because it’s a marketing vehicle that is already in place. "What we would like to do is to expand into doing promotions for the WNBA as well so we can keep doing it that way," adds Barnes, who says that he is a huge fan of the WNBA.
So for now, they’ll stick to singing about basketball. None of the band members is hurting for gigs and the WNB-Ays experience has given them so much exposure that some of the musicians have been approached by music producers to work on other projects. The band has only one complaint-the uniforms. "Last year the material was too itchy, now this year the shoes are killing my feet," whines Barnes.e
