“I didn’t know Eric before that,” Williams recalls. “It was one of those things were fate came through. I was walking by an office and I heard Morgan Heritage. At that time I didn’t know a lot of people who knew about Morgan Heritage, so right away I walked in there and I was like, ‘Who are you and how do you know about this?’ Sure enough, Eric said that it was one of his favourites and it was one of mine too and now we’re actually friends with Morgan Heritage.”
In fact, the band haven’t just become mates with some of reggae’s greats, they’ve gone on to support them (they’ll be supporting Jimmy Cliff in Sydney next year) and they’ve recorded with others – for instance, Errol Brown, the dude who used to sound engineer for Bob Marley and The Wailers, has worked with them on the road and on a number of albums, including this year’s release Count Me In. That’s a coup in and of itself – how did they come to be working with Brown? “We were bouncing around between sound managers,” Williams explains. “All of these other sound engineers had their priority bands, because we were still coming up, and they had commitments to them. But eventually Errol fell in love with the music. We were always just so thankful that he’d even do some shows with us and then he did an album with us. It just clicked. One of the things Errol always says is that he enjoys seeing how much the youth embrace our music. I think that reminds him of the past and when he saw how much the youth embraced Bob Marley’s music, not that we’re on the same level as Bob Marley.”
The early days for the band were fun but they were also Hard Yakka, what with setting up in backyards and in the street. “You’re talking to the right guy about that,” Williams chuckles. “I used to have a pickup truck and we’d build our own stages. We’d have our system and drums in the back of the truck and we had our own little light show. Actually, it wasn’t too much of a light show; it was more frames with coloured bulbs.
“It was all done in this really condensed college community next to University California in Santa Barbara. Every other week we’d do a show and drive over to someone’s back yard. It really helped with getting our name out I think, because everyone went to school and would graduate – every year there’d be a class graduating and they’d leave and go tell other cities about us.”
Things are considerably more sophisticated these days and there’s a lots more responsibility that comes with it. “It feels like in the last ten years I lived enough lifetimes for a lot of people,” Williams laughs. “It’s amazing to look back, but it’s almost like there’s not even enough time to look back to reflect, because it’s always going so fast and there’s always a new show or another decision to make, because besides music it’s a business too. I look back and it was all so simple and fun. It’s still a lot of fun, but it’s a different kind of fun now. There’s a lot of people involved in our operation – there’s a lot of lives involved and a lot of people who depend on us to put on good shows. You’ve got to always be on point.”
While sitting firmly within the reggae tradition, the band are fully aware of the fact they don’t fit into the customary mould – they’re not from Jamaica for one and none of them sport dreadlocks. “We became popular in a funny era of reggae music,” reflects Williams. “Funny not in a bad or good way, just different. As everyone knows, reggae roots came from Jamaica and reggae roots is still from Jamaica, but it seems that a new genre came onto the scene, a US reggae movement – there’s even a festival called Cali Roots. We’re not playing music to be exactly like Jamaican roots music. We have undertones of it and some songs sound more similar to it, but we have other songs that are definitely inspired by Californian rock’n’roll or hip-hop – the things we grew up listening to.
“More traditional people who listen to reggae don’t see us as trying to copy or mimic something we didn’t grow up in, but see us as just using something that inspires us. It’s music for everybody. Its one love and unity. We’re just trying to put our own spin on the music and make people happy and inspired. If people don’t like that, that’s their own problem.”
BY MEG CRAWFORD
