Mike Clip Payne Part oNe

I first met Mike 'Clip' Payne one afternoon in Woodstock, NY. I was playing music outside my friend's place, where Clip happens to be a neighbor. I was playing some new songs for my friend when he comes out and says something about a record.
"No record," I said.
"You will," he replied. I liked him right away.

I asked him if he was a musician and he laughs, a big full belly laugh. He's good at those. Turns out he is a career musician, with 40 years of experience performing, writing and grooving with George Clinton and Parlament Funkadelic. (Oh yeah, I think, I've heard of you guys.) He takes me inside his home and shows me, just in case I'm having a memory lapse, videos of his band, P-Funk.

"Ok," I say, "but what do you play?"
"I don't really play an instrument," he says.
"Well, what do you do on stage," I ask.
"I try not to be on stage these days," he says.
"Well, ok, but if I'm at a Parliment show and I'm looking for you, where do I find you?"
He laughs, one of these eye creasing, belly laughs again. Then he takes a puff of his smoke and goes onto Facebook and puts the question out there to his friends.

 OK, so  he's the narrator, keeps the low end tight, found in the crowd possibly playing the fool. One reply to this thread takes us here:

 Clip is that deep resonate MC. "We're a freak show," he tells me. He likes to be in the crowd or leave the stage for a bit, or be singing from the sides. He keeps it interesting.
 I see a couple of these machines.

I figure out Clip is a producer, a creator of funkadelic music and writes hooks. He writes pop music, he says.

He's pretty funky. I jam with him for a few hours. He plays this:

And creates beats on his computer live. Sometimes it works, sometimes we just get through it (me on a nylon string guitar and all), but all in all its definitely funky. And fun. He tells me that my choruses are like poetry and he laughingly contrasts this with hooks he writes, like the late 70's smash hit "Flashlight":

 These days, when not touring with Parliment Funkadelic, Clip has other bands he produces. He has a podcast,  a history and a future. Stay tuned for part 2 in which Clip tells us about how an early music experience watching a Motown recording session when he was 9 years old changed his life, about bad music deals and working for the man... And how he's keeping the funk alive.