The highlight of the upcoming Essence Music Festival in New Orleans for many fans will undoubtedly be Sunday night’s showstopping finale performance by George Clinton. While in Nashville for a Podcast recorded at the NMAAM, the Godfather of Funk revealed that the main reason he had come to Nashville was to check on the progress of the Mothership, which was being built here in the Music City. He said he had driven it, and was looking forward to landing the Mothership Sunday, July 5 on the closing night of the Essence Music Festival, celebrating 50 Years of the Mothership Connection. The “We Sound Crazy Live Podcast Taping featuring George Clinton” should be available soon on YouTube or their website: https://www.wesoundcrazy.com/

P-Funk (Parliament / Funkadelic) fans remember the heyday of the U.S. Funk Mob when, over 50 years ago, the masterpiece, the fourth Parliament album, “Mothership Connection,” was released in December of 1975. Three of the tracks on the album were instant classics that still reveberate today. The first single, “P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)” was co-written by George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, and Bernie Worrell. The second single, “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker),” co-written by Jerome Brailey, George Clinton, and Bootsy Collins, was followed by “Mothership Connection (Star Child),” co-written by George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, and Bernie Worrell. All three are perennial dance and funk groove favorites.

The P-Funk Mothership, also known as The Mothership or The Holy Mothership, is a space vehicle model belonging to Dr. Funkenstein, an alter ego of funk musician George Clinton. An integral part of the P-Funk mythology, the Mothership existed conceptually as a fictional vehicle of funk deliverance and as a physical prop central to Parliament-Funkadelic concerts during the 1970s and 1990s.

Starting in October 1976, the Mothership was seen to land on stage amongst the band and before a baying and expectant crowd, even here in Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium where I saw it. It was designed by Jules Fisher. The Mothership was summoned down by the vocal tones of P-Funk singer / guitarists Glenn Goins and later Garry Shider, and was represented in the form of a full-scale model complete with light and sound effects as well as pyrotechnics. At this point in the show George Clinton would emerge from the Mothership in the form of Dr. Funkenstein, the “cool ghoul with the bump transplant,” in order to better “administer funk” to the audience.

Due to the prohibitive cost of maintaining the elaborate stage-show, and dealing with mounting debt, the Mothership was discarded and sold for cash in 1982 or 1983. Replicas and smaller-scale versions of the original 1,200 pound aluminum spacecraft were seen sporadically at concert events, and several replicas have been made for exhibition in various museums.

However, this year, the Mothership is returning, as foretold by the 1996 George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars album “T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M. (The Awesome Power of a Fully Operational Mothership),” 30 years later, we are about to experience that power anew in the Big Easy at the 2026 Essence Music Festival. Learn more about it at: https://www.essence.com/awards-events/george-clinton-essence-festival-of-culture/

 If we’re lucky, they will tour with it, and we can see it in other venues, perhaps here in Nashville again, maybe at Bridgestone Arena or, who knows, maybe even the new Nissan Stadium. Make mine the P!