Come Back To Me…A Year Of Missing Funky Sole

Cheyenne’s Comin’ – Come Back To Me

If a number of things had been different, exactly a year ago today I’d be packing up my records and heading to Echo Park to spin as a guest at Funky Sole. Alas, the night was cancelled earlier in the week, along with everything else as the full weight of the pandemic hit us here in LA (well, not everything was cancelled, with that night free I did go to a socially distanced screening of A Woman In Lizard Skin at the Secret Movie Club’s space, but that would turn out to be the last indoor screening of 2020). In the period since, without a doubt one of the things I’ve missed the most was the refuge that Funky Sole provided for me. Knowing Funky Sole was always going to happen each Saturday meant there was always a reliable space for good dancing and great soul sounds where I knew the people and the people knew me. Aside from being an occasional guest DJ, I’m a regular on the dance floor, and it was something that was a major source of weekly therapy when I was getting divorced, and something that I now realize was taken for granted in the years since, without any thought that it could be taken away.

Of the many many many songs that I’ve heard at Funky Sole that I didn’t own, this one from Cheyenne Fowler’s little known group, Cheyenne’s Comin’, would frequently pop back into my mind over the past year, generally in a rare cheery situation. Or better stated, there’s something about one particular line, the line that I’d bet sticks in the mind of most anyone who hears this song for the first time, that fills me with joy every time I hear it.

“I’m smoking my smoke, I’m tooting my coke, I’m drinking my drink, I’ve had time to think…”

For some reason this line will pop into my mind in brief moments of celebration during this past year, almost always involving drink and smoke (never any cocaine…my mind tended to erase that reference when I was singing it in my apartment). Since I didn’t have the song and only went off of memory, my memory of the song and the way it would sound at the Echo on Saturday nights gave me a different impression of what was really going on. When I finally tracked down a copy a month or two ago, I was surprised that the song was actually less of a hedonistic anthem and literally more of a “baby, come back to me,” kind of song. The song itself isn’t actually cheery at all, as Cheyenne waxes regretfully about a past relationship she wishes would be reconciled. Even the line that pops into my mind is a pretty sad one, since none of these things keeps this former love out of her mind.  While the specifics addressed in the song might not fit where I’m at in this moment, where I’m missing all that used to be, that sentiment about missing a thing that you love and you used to have in your life, but isn’t now, hits hard…especially on this day, when exactly one year ago, I would have likely heard this late in the night while trading off records with Miles and Hector. I miss those days terribly, but I’m hopeful that soon they will come again.