André Cymone Brings the Funk Home to the Capri
Saturday night, October 3, André Cymone walks back onto the Capri Theater stage in North Minneapolis for the first time since January 1979, when he played bass beside his best friend Prince at Prince's very first solo shows. The concert is sold out. It launches his new album, The Resurrection of Funk, debuts his new live band, and opens the Capri's 100th-anniversary season.
To hear André tell it in his own words, read Andrea Swensson's interview with him in Mpls.St.Paul Magazine.
The stage where it started
The Capri has stood at 2027 West Broadway since 1927. It opened as a neighborhood movie house, spent decades as the Paradise Theater, and took the Capri name in 1967. Thirteen movie theaters once dotted the Northside. The Capri is the only one still standing.
On January 5 and 6, 1979, a 20-year-old Prince booked the room to prove to Warner Bros. that he could lead a band live. Tickets were $4, and opening night was a benefit for the theater itself. Behind him stood Bobby Z on drums, Dez Dickerson on guitar, Matt Fink and Gayle Chapman on keys, and André Cymone on bass.
Only about 300 people came, because Prince was barely known in his own hometown yet. The label saw enough to keep believing. For André it was a hometown gig in the truest sense: his neighborhood, his theater, and the friend he had been making music with since they were kids.
Soon after those shows, Plymouth Christian Youth Center took over the building and kept it alive for the community. PCYC still runs it today as a cultural arts center with free youth arts education. A $12.5 million renovation added new space and technology, and the stage floorboards from 1979 are still in place. André will be standing on the same wood.
Two Northside kids
The Minneapolis Sound started in a North Minneapolis basement. André's mother, community leader Bernadette Anderson, opened her home to a teenage Prince when he needed a place to stay, and the two boys shared a bedroom for years. The Anderson house was a gathering spot for musicians, organizers and civil rights leaders, with funk records always spinning.
Out of that house came Grand Central, the band André and Prince built as teenagers with Morris Day on drums, André's sister Linda Anderson on keys, and friends Terry Jackson and William Doughty.
They sharpened their sound against the other young bands in town. That competitive streak followed them onto Prince's first national tour, where André told Funk-U, “we never lost a battle of the bands.”
Morris Day has since given André his due. In his memoir On Time, Day credits André's bass lines as essential pieces of Prince's early songs.
André left Prince's band in 1981 and kept moving. He made new wave solo records, then wrote and produced for Jody Watley, Tina Turner, Adam Ant and others, winning a Grammy along the way. He returned decades later with the rock albums The Stone and 1969.
The Resurrection of Funk
The Resurrection of Funk is André's first full embrace, as a solo artist, of the sound he helped invent. He wrote every song and played every instrument himself: bass, drums, guitar, keys and vocals. There are no guest musicians and no AI.
He made it to put his role back in view. André is one of the architects of the Minneapolis Sound, and this record is his way of reclaiming that place in the story.
The album is guided by a colorful alter ego called The Funk Forecaster, who leads listeners through the world of funk. The lead single is “The Revolution's On Yo' In ‘O' Net.”
For André, funk is protest music you can dance to. The record is tied to Minneapolis and its history of community organizing, and it carries that spirit: resistance with joy in it.
It came out in August and is his first album in nearly a decade.
Saturday night and beyond
If you have a ticket, you are in for a piece of Minneapolis music history. The show runs 8 to 10 p.m. at the Capri Theater, 2027 West Broadway. It is the first public outing for André's new live band and the official opening night of Capri 100, the theater's year-long centennial celebration. “It's a full circle moment for me,” André told the Star Tribune.
If you do not have a ticket, there are still plenty of ways to enjoy his music and The Capri.
Hear the album. The Resurrection of Funk is streaming now.
Plan a Capri 100 night. The centennial season runs through October 3, 2027, with more than 40 concerts, films, plays and exhibits. See the lineup at thecapri.org/capri-100.
Stay with Musicapolis. Follow along for more Minnapolis Sound stories and live music picks.
In her interview with André for Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Andrea Swensson asked what it means to come home to the Capri. He answered by naming the Northside people who shaped him, including musician David Eiland, known as Batman, an original member of Flyte Tyme. and he told her that whenever he is in town he slips into Bunker's to hear whoever is playing.
Minneapolis is still home for him as he returns.
Saturday night, the music fans and family get to welcome him back to sold-out show atThe Capri.
David Eiland (left, on sax) and André Cymone (right, on guitar), with André sitting in with Jay Bee and The Routine on December 20, 2025, the day of the Celebration of Life for Minneapolis Sound legend Garry George “Jellybean” Johnson. Photo by Musicapolis.
Sources
André Cymone Resurrects the Funk, by Andrea Swensson, Mpls.St.Paul Magazine
André Cymone Is Fuelled By Minneapolis Traditions And Joyful Protest Music, Wildfire Music + News
Andre Cymone Announces New LP The Resurrection of Funk, Grateful Web
Interview: Andre Cymone “We never lost a battle of the bands”, Funk-U
Morris Day: the rival who almost toppled Prince, Far Out Magazine
Then and Now: The Capri Theater, The Current
André Cymone returns to the Capri to launch centennial season, Insight News
Prince's childhood bestie reclaims his role in creating Minneapolis Sound, Star Tribune
How Prince's First Solo Concert Left Him ‘So Blue', Ultimate Prince
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