Background: Brian Tappert and Marc Pomeroy co-own Florida’s Soulfuric record label working out of their Fort Lauderdale base, not all that far from WMC territory in Miami. They have recorded material under a number of guises including Urban Blues Project and Cleptomaniacs, the latter with John Julius Knight. Their list of production credits grows longer almost by the week and as Jazz ‘n’ Groove they are responsible for remixing some classic tracks from artists including Mone, Crystal Waters, Taktix and Kathy Brown.
Since its inception the label has built a reputation for high quality soulful house music. The two imprints “Trax” and “Deep” focus on slightly different material as the guys explain during the interview. The label has been particularly prolific over the last few months with releases from Marc’s own venture Deepstar along with material from Mambana, John Julius Knight, Copyright and Richard Earnshaw. To top it all off Defected asked them to do the latest in the Sessions series, which dates back to 1993. Soulfuric Sessions was released on 8th July and is top of many House fans’ shopping list.

Amid all this work, Dean found time to talk to them during one of their quieter moments. As he caught up with them around 5.30 Eastern Time they had just stopped for the day, having spent it working on remixes of Jamie Lewis’ track “The Light”. Brian was due to fly to the UK two days later for the album launch then on to Ibiza the day after.

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DS: Looking back through my collection, I came across a compilation which had tracks from both of you, Brian as Jazz ‘n’Groove and Marc as “Lunch Pail” so when did you start working together?

(following a bout of laughter) MP: I haven’t heard that name in a while.
BT: We started working together around 1995; our first project together was “Deliver Me”
MP: We had worked on each other’s material before that though.
BT: Yeah, most of that stuff we did around 1992/93 so we already knew each other

DS: How did Soulfuric come about?

BT: After the great reception that “Deliver Me” received and we’d done a couple of remixes for A&M for artists like Mone the market was really strong and the climate seemed right. It seemed to be the next logical step

DS: Marc, Florida wasn’t exactly known for its house music scene, when do you first get into the scene?

MP: I first really got into the scene around ’92, I’d been aware of it since around ’88 but I didn’t really know anyone else in South Florida liked House Music until I met Brian. Until then I’d been listening mostly to R n B and Hip-Hop.

DS: What were the first records you bought?
MP: Rappers Delight, that must have been around ‘79
BT: I don’t really remember, it was probably a track by Ozzy Osbourne.

DS: Brian, who would you say were your biggest influences as a DJ?

BT: There’s lots but Victor Simonelli, Louie Vega and Tony Humphries stand out as the main ones.

DS: When you put a track together, do you work on it first then look for a vocalist or do people bring tracks to you to work on?

MP: For the most part we come up with a basic groove and maybe some lyrics then we bring in someone to do the vocals.
BT: there’s been the odd time when someone’s brought a track to us but it’s normally the other way around.
Michael Procter had never been near a house track until “Deliver Me”. Bobby Pruitt did some work with Murk in the early 90s. Marc had been gnawing at Donna Allen to work with us for years before she finally agreed. I’d say we’d introduced a lot of them to the house music scene.

DS: Are there any of your productions that you’re especially proud of?

BT: “Deliver Me” and “He Is The Joy”
MP: I’d have to agree with Brian.

DS: When you’re not working what do you like to listen to?

MP: I listen to a bit of jazz and some RnB including some of the newer stuff and to whatever Brian throws on a mix tape for me.
BT: There’s not been much over the last year that’s really inspired me, not that I don’t listen to anything at home, just that nothing much has really grabbed me recently.

DS: Who would you most like to work with?

BT: Chaka Khan, Patrice Rushen, Vince Montana
MP: Lolleatta Holloway
BT: Yeah that’d be good
MP …and Stevie Wonder

DS: Tell us a bit about the More House label
BT: The guy who owns it is a friend of a friend and the guys kept bringing us material and before we knew where we were they had eight songs and we decided to do a label deal - the first track being from the Groove Junkies. It looks very promising.

DS: What about your best and worst Djing experiences?

BT The worst was last Saturday – that was not a great night. I seemed to pull out records and it just wasn’t the right time and the mix was a struggle
There’s been too many great ones to mention.
MP: I can think of at least five or six. (mentions WMC).
BT: Yeah the vibe at WMC is excellent, it’s like all these people from all over the world coming together because of the music. You really feel like you’re among friends.

DS: Do you still spend a lot of time in record stores?

BT: Yeah, I still buy a lot of records. I’m fortunate that my travelling takes me to a lot of great cities with really cool record shops and of course I always go to the best ones.

DS: You must be really excited about the album launch; did it take much planning?

BT: we’re very excited about it and it was a great honour to be asked to do it.
It took a lot of planning, first up it’s a double CD, which is a lot of music, particularly when you’re trying to stay upfront. |Then you’ve got the problems getting clearance and some of the bigger labels just aren’t interested. For other tracks it’s just too early for them. You end up working back to front. Instead of making a great mix then clearing the tracks, you clear what you can then put the CD together.
On the back of this we’re going to put out some compilations on Soulfuric. We’ve just signed up Frankie Knuckles to do the first one and we’ve got two more planned. The first by Jask from Tampa and the other hopefully by myself, whenever I can find the time.

DS: So what exactly happened between yourselves and Stevie Wonder? Did he want too much money?

MP: Finance was never the issue, it was more of a no response thing from Stevie’s people.
BT: You can imagine how we felt. We’d never intended to release the track, we had recorded it for ourselves to play and gave a few copies out to people we knew. The next thing we knew it just blew up. There were at least five different white labels none of which had anything to do with us. I’ve got five different white labels with different matrix numbers so there were at least five different bootleggers at it out there. By the time all these copies got around, just about everyone was playing it.
MP: We tried contacting Stevie’s people, but got no response which we took to be a “no”
BT: The only way to salvage something from the situation in the end was to do a cover version that we never really wanted to do?

DS: There’s a lot of people waiting for “Deliver Me”, how much longer will they have to wait?

BT They’re gonna have to wait a little while longer
MP: We’re still trying to get the remixes together and we’re still unsure on the direction we want to take with our own mix. Do we stay true to the original or go with more of a main room mix?
BT: Yeah we’ve started it numerous times. We’ve actually just signed up Dave Lee to remix it and we have high hopes. Jask and Hardsoul are also doing mixes, the Jask one on the website is about eighty percent done, he’s nearly finished it.
MP: You can tell him the full line-up.
BT: Well we’re going to bring out a double pack on soulfuric with all the original mixes from the Hott release except the Victor Simonelli mix which we can’t get cleared. That’ll be replaced by a 95 North mix. It could possibly be out mid to late September, though it’s more likely October. After that there will be the remixes. You know we’ve been wanting to do this for about four years and we’re still not ready yet.

DS: Finally,what are your favourite pieces of studio equipment?

MP: A Neve 5104 custom console (it’s a mixing desk)
BT: Mine is our new computer, it’s really fast and does away with the need for lots of other stuff.

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Thanks to all the team at Soulfuric for taking time out from their schedules to make this article possible.
You can check out all the up to the minute news on Soulfuric at their website which can be found at www.soulfuric.com. You can also access the site from our jump page.