360°Sound recently had the opportunity to chat with singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Henry Invisible aka “The Hardest Working One-Man Funk Band in the Land.” Earlier this month, the Austin native dropped the disco-funk single “Dance Music Saves,” which features legendary drummer Bernard Purdie, progenitor of the “Purdie Shuffle.”
Henry said he’s been making music his entire life. One of his first gigs took place on Austin’s famous Sixth Street at age 16. In the early ‘90s, he played in a band called The Gingerbread Men, gigging throughout town regularly.
The punk jazz movement drew Henry to New York City. It was there that he began playing many more instruments. Guitar was his primary instrument, but he would pick up gigs on bass and keys. He studied with jazz guitar greats Mark Whitfield, Mike Stern and Hiram Bullock.
Henry told 360°Sound he has played in bands as big as 14 pieces and as small as a duet. He returned to Texas in 2005 and eventually became a solo loop artist. He started as Henry + The Invisibles and now goes by Henry Invisible. More recently, he’s been doing more producing and exploring the possibilities of music production software.
Every Friday this summer, Henry will be performing at the Meridian in Buda, Texas, a suburb of Austin. In this exclusive interview, Henry discusses how he composes dance music as a one-man band, jamming with funk icon Bootsy Collins, his joyful new song “Dance Music Saves,” and more.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
360°Sound: How did your one-man band come to be?
Henry Invisible: In 2009, I acquired a basic loop pedal, and I had five or six gigs that I needed to fulfill. I figured I would just go ahead and do something. I’d pretty much led every band I’d been in. I’d been the singer and the composer. I just started doing simple looping shows with an acoustic guitar and bass guitar and a water jug and a pot, like a saucepan. And it was just a lot of fun. It was very novel.
Then I got a cocktail kit. And then I added a keyboard. From there, I added back my electric guitar. I got an MPC, which is a MIDI pad or MultiPad controller. It’s got 16 pads. That’s where it branched out with the orchestration. Now, I had these MIDI keys where I could do a symphony of sounds. A whole number of keys that had been turned into VST [virtual studio technology]. You can get anything from a Moog bass to a Wurlitzer, and it all sounds pretty authentic. I started exploring with all that.
I did some gigs that moved me up a little quicker than just playing local bar gigs. I won a battle of the bands in 2010, which got me to open for Ghostland Observatory. I’d been doing it for about a year, and then I was playing in front of 5,000 people. That was a pretty big crowd for me at that time. I got to open for Lauryn Hill, George Clinton, Victor Wooten, and a long list of names. It’s been a whole domino effect of just persistence and consistency.
In general, how do you compose your songs?
Music composition is something that I’d been doing in earlier bands like Gingerbread Men. I was either the main writer or a very strong co-writer on a lot of stuff. I studied some composition and music theory in school. To me, writing music has always been the beginning of every song. I certainly think about key signatures and time signatures. But, as of late, I write more dance music than anything, which is commonly 4/4 time signature.
As far as the writing and inspiration, it could be a key or a chord progression, either on the keys or guitar, or it could be a bass line. More often, I’m starting with the actual drums and beat. It tends to inspire ideas, and I record ideas constantly. I could be driving, and I’ll just pull up my phone and sing an idea that I’ve got.
During the pandemic, I had this thing called “The Lovestream,” where I was doing a songwriting exercise almost every other day live on Facebook. I would come up with a few chords before the show, and then live stream for an hour. And by the end of the show, I would have a full song with an AB structure, a chorus and verse.
I’ve been really blessed as far as not running out of ideas. It really just comes from either a chord progression, a bass line or a drum pattern. Being a solo artist, I had to really dig deep into a digital audio workstation. I use Logic, which is comparable to ProTools. And I’ll record track after track. More so than looping these days, I’m actually composing as if I were the bass player, the guitar player, the keyboardist, and the drummer, and not necessarily in that order. When I record everything, I start writing vocals. And sometimes it’s the vocal idea, too.
I’ve studied a lot of production so far as constantly adding ear candy and making it interesting for the listener. I would think that I’m more in the realm of my Prince stage. You know when Prince recorded like 22 instruments on his first album? I feel like that is just a challenge in itself. It’s a really fun thing to compose music and make it sound like a full song and getting out of the monotony of just looping things.
What was the inspiration for “Dance Music Saves”?
“Dance Music Saves” was inspired during the pandemic. It was one of the songs that I had written in the 140 episodes of “The Lovestream,” which was essentially a one-hour live writing exercise. Despite being in lockdown and losing all my gigs, the one true thing that was going to keep me happy and going was music – dance music, in particular. Because it really picks you up, especially if it’s got an upbeat tempo. Music has a way to heal; I strongly believe that.
I think when we’ve lost a loved one or something amazing happens in our life, we tend to document it with a song or music. For me, the message was clear that dance music was making me hopeful of the future, and that I would get to play live again in front of an audience and feel that synergy again. Thankfully, we’re back. “Dance Music Saves” was one of the songs that I had already begun recording before I even considered getting Bernard Purdie on the track.
How’d you connect with Purdie?
In January 2020, I was invited out to California to audition for Bootsy Collins. He found me on Instagram. We went to Anaheim to audition. I wound up getting the part, so I appear on Bootsy’s last record, The Power of the One. I did some co-writing with him and some synth work, which led to another project with him and Omar Apollo.
I went to a party in Anaheim hosted by Bootsy, and it was a star-filled room. There were people from The Four Tops and Parliament Funkadelic and Buddy Guy’s band. Fred Wesley was also there. One of the cats there was Bernard Purdie. I got to chat with him for a bit and got his contact info. When “Dance Music Saves” was coming out, I realized that I didn’t want to have a “boots and cats” kind of house beat to it. I wanted to get a human feel because it’s a very disco retro track.
I thought to myself that Purdie would be really good on this. We had a conversation about his disco, aside from his “Purdie Shuffle.” He was the cat that “put the disc in disco.” That’s what he said. He’s responsible. So, I thought, “Well, who else to call?” I got to send him the track to see what he thought. He said he was interested, so lo and behold he went into the studio the next day and recorded a track for me. And the rest is history.
For more on Henry Invisible, visit his official site. You can follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
