Episode 13: Wayne Foote [SLAVE]

WAYNE FOOTE aka “Foote Funk” never would have thought he’d be asked to replace Steve Arrington as lead singer in monster funk outfit SLAVE. After all, he was 19 years old, living with his folks just outside San Francisco in Daly City, while Slave were based out of Dayton, Ohio—part of the Ohio Player lineage and knee deep in a super-stank scene that included Zapp, Faze-O, Lakeside, Heatwave & Dayton. So how did this California kid wind up onstage opening shows with “Slide?”

Well, Wayne came up as a dancer, a kid in a troupe called the Master Locks. But by age 14 he found out he could sing Stevie Wonder songs acapella, plus funk up the drums and any other instrument he could get his hands on. So he had a group called Master Funk with buddy/bassist Darren Jones—until he left to start producing artists himself. That’s when someone connected Wayne with a woman named Kim who had two sisters that could sing.

So Foote went to their home in Pacifica to start showing the sisters the parts for a song they were to record. But after the ladies heard Wayne’s pipes, they said: “Naw, we don’t want you to produce us.” What? Wayne asked. “We want Mark to hear you.” Mark who? “Mark Adams.” Mark Adams, the bassist from Slave?! “That’s my husband,” said Kim. “We want you to be the new singer for Slave… We need you to replace Steve Arrington.”

Well, Wayne didn’t really believe what he was hearing. But sure enough, about a week later, he was cooking pancakes at home when the doorbell rang. He opened the door… it was Mark Adams! “That made a believer outta me,” remembers Wayne. He had every Slave album in his room. But he met the moment. “Instead of fainting,” he says, “I started singing for him.” Soon after that visit, Adams called Wayne and offered him a one-way ticket to Ohio, a per diem, and an apartment.

By spring of ’83, Foote was funkin with Slave. “These rehearsals were extremely intense,” says Wayne. “This was not a party for me… We would practice Monday through Friday, eight hours a day. I mean there was no breaks. If you had a cold, if you didn’t feel good—sorry! You gonna watch what we do. You sit to the side… I almost had a heart attack, man. This whole experience was extremely overwhelming for me. But I absorbed it and I lived it.”

Foote wound up becoming best buddies with Mark Hicks aka Drac, Slave’s guitar legend who played through over a dozen Marshall amps at once. Drac even showed Foote the garage at his mom and dad’s where Slave was first formed. And Wayne just loved writing with the group. “We would write for hours,” he says. “Listening to instrumental music by Slave was an experience in itself.”

But the honeymoon was over when it came time to release their album Bad Enuff. Not only had they not paid Foote yet, but management wouldn’t even hook him up with funds to get his curl done for the album cover! And when he found out that he had been denied a lot of songwriting credit to boot, he quit and went back to California. Adams managed to lure him back months later to record New Plateau, an album on which singer/guitarist Danny Webster himself asked Foote to take the lead. The music was beautiful, with songs like “E.Z. Lovin’ You,” but lack of proper credit induced Foote to split for good and go solo.

Today, Foote Funk is clean and sober, living in SF, ready to tour again while also making films and art. In this laughter-filled, revealing interview, Wayne talks about the many problems with Slave’s management, his struggles with alcohol, being treated like royalty in England, and almost cutting his finger trying to play like Mark Adams. Foote also raps about trombonist Floyd Miller being the backbone of the group, the intense rivalry between Drac and Danny Webster, getting a good luck hug from Roger Troutman at the airport when Foote first joined Slave, and that time Webster hit him in the solar plexus with a guitar onstage.

Produced & Hosted by Ace Alan
Cohosted by Jay Stone
w/ Content Produced by Jay Stone & Wayne Foote
Website & Art by 3chards
In-studio Photos by Debbie Jue
Engineered by Alex Scammon & Justin Ancheta at Soul Graffiti Studios in Oakland, CA
w/ Special Thanks to “Baseball Bat” Nat Collins
…but we couldn’t have done it without Scott Sheppard

w/ Danny Webster

Intro tracks “I Can Never Be,” “He Talkin’ Bout,” and “Barrack Wayne” from Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth by the Funkanauts. Go get it wherever music is sold.