Mint Condition has just released their first holiday album, Healing Season, and the famed R&B band from Minnesota is looking stronger than ever. With their lengthy catalog of soulful hits like “Pretty Brown Eyes” and “Swingin,’” Mint Condition decided the time was right to delve into a Christmas release. Combining five original cuts with five standards, Healing Season sometimes veers into unconventional territory for a holiday release — mostly because the band wanted to keep things real.
“[The song] ‘Not What I Wanted’ was me in a relationship with a girl around the holidays and was definitely looking at pursuing something a little bit more,” shares bassist Ricky Kinchen. “But I saw a different side of her and I had to figure out how to get out of the relationship. It wasn’t something easy where you could just block your number and move on. You had to think about a lot of different things. It was going to end bad because the person was attacking you in every way.”
“Real life happens at Christmas, too,” adds frontman Stokley Williams. “Everything ain’t just roses and cherries that time of year.”
The band has sustained their fan base over the years by never allowing themselves to become creatively stagnate. But as a band, they’ve been able to keep this thing together by not allowing ego and rock star excess to undermine what has proven to be a strong working relationship.
“When we work close together, it’s like family,” explains Williams. We’ve had bouts and fights and all that stuff — that’s just the nature of it. But you realize what things are important — what things are worth being more passionate about versus less passionate about. But we learn that we’re all men here and you have to jockey for position to make your voice heard. But there’s no big magic wand.”
One issue that has consistently torn apart countless groups has been money. Williams says that Mint Condition is designed in such a way that they don’t have to in-fight over funds. “Honestly, one of the biggest things is when you talk about commerce and finance — how things are broken down. Everybody in this group contributes. That’s one of the things that happened in the ’60s and ’70s: they had these big horn bands that couldn’t sustain themselves. There wasn’t enough money to go around.
“We’re constantly on the road and we write and produce our own stuff,” he adds. “We’ve done that from day one. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis gave us the platform and they let us do what we do. We’d always heard people back in the day say, ‘You’re not going to see any money ’til your third or fourth album.’ But that’s only if you’re just singing. But we’ve always written and participate in every aspect. Jam and Lewis were great mentors and didn’t want us to just be musicians, but great businessmen. That’s one thing that keeps us together.”
Another way they’ve been able to maintain cohesiveness is avoiding the sort of headline-grabbing behavior that jettisons careers. Kinchen says that not becoming too indulgent or reckless has kept them focused.
“We’re on the road sometimes and we see people [in other groups] physically fighting in the lobby and then they have to go out and do a show later,” he says with a chuckle. “And they probably came in drinking. Alcohol and certain things, it tears everything apart; your family, your work — if you’re going into a situation where you work. I have a drink or two and if I’m hanging with a rap group once a year, I might smoke. But I’m not going to do that on the day of the show. Because I don’t know how that would affect me performing. I want to perform great every night.”
