None of the nine musicians in Dr. Theopolis would be considered funk or hip-hop artists. But when they come together as Dr. T, a fully-formed funkadelic groove busts forth, and the roster of Portland’s musicial who’s who forms a new fly creature altogether, embodied by the enigmatic and simply unavoidable Mr. Fabulous.
If Mr. Fabulous, above, is the face of Dr. Theopolis, Ezra and Jules Holbrook are the voice. They are the lyrical and managerial foundation behind what must surely rank among Portland’s best live performances. It started on a lark, with the musicians sitting in a green room considering the outrageous incarnation of folk and progressive rocksters as funk, hip-hop and rap artists. But like Mom said, be careful what you wish for.
Nearly a decade on, Dr. T is still keeping people moving, in a way that nine white guys from Portland, Ore., would seem unlikely to do (a condition repeatedly pointed out to them with just about every mention of the band). Nonetheless, Jules and Ezra insist that despite the over-the-top performances and the humor in their lyrics, this isn’t a parody. They love this music. And if you can get up on stage, play funk until 3 a.m. and have the whole room on the dance floor, why not throw on the polyester suit to boot?
On Aug. 20, Dr. Theopolis and friends are lending their support for a benefit for the Jeremy Wilson Foundation, one of several charities the group’s members are involved in. Wilson, who performs with Portland’s The Dharma Bums and Pilot, along with Dr. T, formed the foundation to help pay major medical expenses for uninsured and underinsured musicians in the Pacific Northwest. Wilson himself was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition. In addition to this project, Dr. Theopolis has worked on the Deep Roots project, which pairs student writers at Roosevelt High School with professional musicians to produce a CD. They also support the Ethos Music Center, a Portland nonprofit that promotes music-based education among youths in underserved communities. Dr. Theopolis has also helped raise money for The Rockstar Stella fund to help pay for a young child’s treatment for a rare form of leukemia.
On stage, though, Dr. T is all about the fun — that’s the reason the band exists. Go to a concert sometime, and you won’t have any doubt about it.
Jules: When we started it in 2001, there was a trend that was just starting, that a lot of venues that had had music previously were getting DJs on Friday and Saturday nights and catering to a dance crowd. And we were seeing just a changing of the guard in the music venues. And we realized that there’s a whole bunch of people out there who would come out and go dancing, and they’re not necessarily the same type of people who would go to a rock club and stand there and nod their head.
J.Z.: I also imagine it’s a little cheaper to book a DJ than a band. How is the economy and environment for musicians?
Ezra: Right about the time when we moved to Portland, in 1998-99, Portland was in its heyday, the music scene was at a boil. Unfortunately, I think partially because of the economy of the country, it’s become harder and harder for musicians to make real money. Most musicians can’t just play music for a living. Or if they do they have to have their hands in as many different pies as humanly possible. I play in four bands, but I also work in a recording studio and I book two clubs. I don’t have a day job, I have six part-time jobs. And not all of them are about getting on a stage and playing drums or a guitar. I think you have to be pretty versatile these days.
Unfortunately, what we’ve seen over the past few years is that clubs have really changed how they do business with bands. And really, to be honest, almost to the point of unethical behavior, where they’re taking almost 99 percent of the money that could possibly be made form a live performance to sustain what they want to do.
J.Z.: And those are your shop floors. That’s where you have to make a living as a musician.
Jules: Absolutely. There are venues that are really good to bands, and usually, ironically, they’re not the coolest places, because they’re excited about having music in there and trying to get people in their clubs and they’re willing to cut a fair deal in order to make that happen. … But there are places around town unfortunately now, that think the entertainment and the band and musicians are just lucky to be seen, and if they get a dollar and some chips and salsa, they’re lucky. It is unfortunate but there are a lot of bands out there that are at the mercy of that. The venues can go that way because there are people willing to take less to play there.
J.Z.: Is that because of the competition?
Ezra: Yeah, and I think also that a lot of people buy into the hype. There are definitely clubs in town who have this aura that they’re the cool place to play. Me, I’m 36; I make a living doing this. I’m not going to waste my time in clubs like that. And I don’t give a shit what my reputation is in town. I’ve spent more than half my life learning how to play a couple of instruments the best I can, and if I’m going go out and do all that professional musicians do to bring people out to see them and all the preparation and time that it takes, I want my time to be respected. And to play a club where at the end of the night you get, “here’s your bag of chips.” …
J.Z.: It’s really that bad?
Ezra: In some places it is that bad. With the amount of money that they’re making off of you -- you can see how many tickets you sold, at what price and what percentage you’re making, what percentage they’re taking. No wonder these are the popular clubs in town because they sure have a lot of money to promote this stuff, which they took from me, and all of us.
J.Z.: So despite the talent pool Portland has, you’ve also talked about not having big record labels here to launch careers. Do you have to leave to hit the big-time?
Ezra: That’s an interesting question. I played music in L.A. for 10 years. I’ve had multiple run-ins with major labels, I’ve been in bands that had deals, all of which ended horribly and taught me many valuable lessons about where I fit in and where I don’t fit in. And I am a socialist in every way, especially when it comes to playing music. The one very interesting thing I noticed when I came to Portland was that, in general, in the music scene in Portland is the musicianship and the songwriters and the people that live here are every bit the caliber of the people I’ve played with in L.A. or in New York. There are people here that are absolutely top-tier musicians, songwriters, versatile, amazing and creative. And yet because Portland has never been a city that was tied in anyway with the major music industry, the people that wind up here are people, in general, who don’t want anything to do with that. People are doing it for different reasons.
J.Z.: Dr. Theopolis works on several charity projects, Deep Roots, for example, which works with students at Roosevelt High School to write lyrics, which are put to song by local musicians. You’ve been involved individually, as a band and as producer, why do all that for this project?
Jules: I think that arts in the schools are definitely important to every musician. We used to have really famous lead guitar players, just a few years ago and decades ago, and now pretty much every really famous musician is a vocalist, and that might have something to do with the lack of music in the schools. So anytime you can contribute to something that brings a little bit of art to schools… We also do a lot of stuff with Ethos Music Project. I think it’s just a benefit to society in general.
J.Z.: You’ve got two big dates coming up.
Ezra: We’ve got the Artbar on the 18th and then the 20th is the benefit of the Jeremy Wilson Foundation. He’s got a heart condition but he has set up this foundation that’s essentially a fundraising tool that is specifically for musicians who don’t have health care that have an emergency health need.
J.Z.: I’m sure a lot of musicians don’t have health care.
Ezra: You’re looking at two of them.
Jules: I’m also a graphic designer who works in the health care industry right now. But I’m a contractor, so I don’t have health care. It’s an interesting position to be in and it can be a little frustrating. Jeremy Wilson is getting involved in that, and Little Sue is interested, and so we’ve sat around many a night and talked about what can be done, but it’s an incredible struggle for individuals to try to take care of themselves. Something hopefully will change over time, but it’s going to be a while.
Ezra: I have some sort of mysterious form of rheumatoid arthritis, and when I turned 30, we had saved up all this money and planned on starting an independent label and we were bankrolling the whole thing. I was really sick for about a year before they figured out what was going on and all that money, probably $10,000, went to cover that. I had no health insurance, so all this money that I had spent the decade previously saving up, every little penny, it’s all gone. It’s a (health) problem I still deal with. I go to the doctor whenever I have to but otherwise I stay away. It’s a ridiculous situation.
On a bigger level, it’s become pretty clear that the people who are making the decisions on what Americans need have absolutely no idea how people actually have to live. Even to the point of a senator making the comment a couple of weeks ago that most unemployed people are either lazy or on drugs, and that’s why they should cut benefits.
My brother right now is in the process of being laid off, but he’s not lazy and he’s not on drugs. He’s been working for them for years. These people – what is an average income for them? How do they really think people live? Most of us live on barely enough to pay off our bills and have anything left over to get food. I think it’s really unfortunate that all the people who are making the decisions on what we need really have not concept. Who knows what will happen to health care, but I have a feeling whatever it is, I’m not going to be able to afford it anyway.
J.Z.: Does this attitude overlap with your music at all?
Jules: We’ve had discussions about this, and I think Dr. T has to walk a very careful line to not take ourselves seriously. I think that for rap, because we do a lot of rapping, I don’t know how successful you can be being nine white guys and getting political on stage. There’s a place for political rap, and it’s definitely an underdog position historically.
J.Z.: Because there are a lot of rappers out there who have a lot more to be angry about?
Jules: Yeah. It’s hard to be a middle-class white guy tilting at windmills. We’ve discussed making contributions, and that’s why we do benefits, but we can’t get too serious with ourselves lyrically and have people look at themselves in the crowd thinking, I thought this was supposed to be fun.
Ezra: We’ve got one serious song that we ever did called “Hit Them Where Their Ears Are At,” and that’s what I wrote and it’s basically about slamming the music industry — I feel I have every right to do that, at least. I’ve gotten feedback that people really love that song, but in all honesty, live, that’s probably our crowd’s least favorite song because I think the seriousness comes across. The songs that have gone over our crowd the best are some of the most ridiculous stuff we’ve ever done.
J.Z.: Does that hold for you as members as well, to have this one outlet where it’s just a free for all
Jules: Absolutely. The energy is shared. I get way more from a Dr. T show than I have to put in. People get that sensation. You can go to any show and set a mood — an angry mood or whatever, and if the audience is into that it’s still great, it feeds the vibe. But our vibe is definitely, “Let’s get ridiculous and have some fun and …”
Ezra: And lose your T-shirt. If you get political in the middle of that you’ll feel kind of underdressed.
Jules: The streaker is going to feel very uncomfortable if we get too political.
J.Z.: Do we need that now, given the times we’re in?
Ezra: I absolutely think so. I think once people get that you’re not taking the pith out of something, that you’re not being cynical, and you’re not taking yourself seriously, it gives them the freedom to just actually have a good time and enjoy something. And that’s what we see over and over. If that’s what you’re offering to people, they love it. You see people at the beginning of the show, so many times, especially when we play outdoors — for the first two songs, everyone is standing there with a puzzled expression on their face, and by the ninth song, everybody is dancing. And you can watch them from the stage thinking, “Am I going to buy into this?” And then they realize we’re not asking them to decide: it’s here’s what we’re doing. Join us if you wanna!
Jules: In a city like Portland, especially with young people and young musician crowds and papers that skew young with their writers, it’s not necessarily cool to be having too much fun. There is skepticism that you have to overcome, even in Portland. If it doesn’t look like you’re trying too hard and you’re just having fun, sooner or later people will come around.
Ezra: One thing we realized early on, when the momentum established itself, we also discussed how serious do we want this to be, what message will work in this environment and what wont. It was important for everyone in the band to use this platform that we had in a real way as well. We don’t want to write a song that says, “Give me free health care.” But when you have a band that people want to come see you have a certain amount of power that you can use. That’s why we’ve always tried to be involved with benefits and to do awareness projects, The Bus Project, Stella, the Jeremy Wilson Foundation and all these things because we felt like what we had that a lot of other bands that don’t necessarily have or are trying to get are people that are willing to come support what we ask them to come support. So we found that we can keep the show fun, but contribute to things we think are important. And calling attention to our things to the attention of our fans without standing on the stage and yelling about it. A band can be a tool socially without actually…
J.Z.: Being a tool.
Ezra: Exactly.
J.Z.: Do you buy Street Roots?
Jules: At Hawthorne.
Ezra: We used to live across the street from Natures on Division, so we became good friends with those guys there. But now our guys, Art and Bruce, are at the New Seasons, so when I’m over there I buy it from them, because those guys are friends of mine.