Disco group KC and The Sunshine Band are coming to the area this summer to celebrate 40 years of making booties shake with their dance hits.
Founded by vocalist Harry “KC” Wayne Casey in 1973, the group helped to define the disco sound of the era and had a number of iconic hits, like “Get Down Tonight,” “That’s the Way (I Like It)” and “Shake Your Booty,” all of which you can still hear played at sporting events and on radio stations and dance floors everywhere.
Disco became a dirty word in the early 1980s, and many of the acts associated with the genre saw their popularity decline during that time.
But, Casey said, the sound of disco never really went away.
“I don’t think it fell out of fashion,” he said. “You can’t be more disco than Madonna or the music of the 1980s. They just called it something else. I don’t think it ever died. I think it was just growing bigger and bigger. It’s 2013 and every record on the radio is by Rihanna and Lady Gaga. It’s everything we did 40 years ago. It never died. It might have gone underground. If you listen to all those songs of the ’80s, they were all danceable. They were just more electronic than the sounds of the ’70s. It’s in rock, hip-hop and country. It’s in everything.”
Disco went through a resurgence in popularity in the 1990s that continues to this day.
Casey said he can see the enduring appeal of the music in the audiences he performs for, which include old and new fans.
“I think there’s a lot of new people in the audience,” he said. “My audiences have always been from babies to grandmas. There’s always a diverse demographic in the audience. It seems like a lot of different people, which is great. Sometimes we do concerts with [other disco artists like] Gloria Gaynor or the Village People. We do stuff by ourselves or with other people. It depends on what the venue wants for that evening.”
Even though Casey has been performing with his reactivated band for the last 20 years, he said he hasn’t made any new music until recently.
“I have not been in that part of business for a long time,” he said. “I’ve just in the last year or so gotten creative again and started making music. I’ve got a song that I wrote for the Village People that I’m excited about. I have my own album that I’m working on with different people. I’m just getting back into it. In 1984, I walked away from it all and quit. Then in 1993, I came back just to tour and not really make records. In the last year, I’ve started working on one album and it has turned into two albums. One of them is ’60s music and the other is going to be new stuff. It’s been an interesting trip that I’ve been on so who knows what might come of this?”
KC and the Sunshine Band perform 6:30 p.m. June 15 at APG Federal Credit Union Arena, 401 Thomas Run Road, Bel Air, MD. For more information or tickets, call 443-412-2211 or visit www.heykcsb.com.