I just got a call from Decurrian, AKA DC. The third official member of The Staxx Brothers after Joshua Hanson and I started the band on 2002. He was one of my best friends at the time anyway, and I remember Tina Turnbull told me after we rocked a particular house party that I had better ask DC to officially join the band.
She insinuated I would be a fool otherwise and it was the right thing to do.
DC was by my side in the group from early 2003 till he had to bow out in 2009 because of his eyes, at which time he appointed Ayo Dot to take his place.
It’s a bummer that as he left the band we suddenly started producing all those videos. It’s ironic. He is a man who could not see, that you can now only hear. But listen to him. His raps on Easy Rider, Slowdown, Toshin, 1992, Game Recognize Game, the first version of Name Dropper, Jesus in Adidas, Almost Got Shot in North Minneapolis, Little Big Time, Westsound Union, they are with me always. I learned them all and performed each of them in his absence.
I’ll never forget my Dad striding at full trot through a bus station to bring him his cane. I’ll never forget the rap battle I stepped into where we met face to face, nor the radio show we freestyled at days later. Nor the night where Josh played his Strat and we rapped for hours over those cold riffs at Chinook Apartments.
I love that guy. I remember when we recorded at Columbia City Theater and in the twilight after a session, I had to act fast and pull him out of the way of a Cadillac tearing around a blind corner. I wonder if then as we are now, if we had then been so attached to these phones, if that Caddie would have run him over. Would I have been preoccupied?
I would have taken that Cadillac to save him then and now. When I needed a place to stay during a rough time in college, he insisted I stay in his room and he took the couch. These are facts.
As I stare down the end of the road of this band and decide how to end our recording life, I am starting to remember what really mattered and who we truly are.
DC has big plans. I hope we all get to see what the great Blind rapper from Detroit and Tacoma does in his next act.
I am preparing for mine. I would trade mine in, if it meant DC getting everything he is hoping for out of his.
I have been putting in work with Hold in Fyah. We all gained a greater appreciation for Anthony Red Rose‘s production style on ‘Free Your Mind’ as we problem solved how to bring the massive song he constructed around me to the stage.
It’s one thing to reproduce Sly & Robbie‘s legendary sound. Alex George studied Robbie Shakespeare‘s high octave attack. Paul Huppler brought Sly Dunbar‘s MPC based drum sounds to a kit. The two played around with ‘Mix’ and ‘One Drop’ hits that are conventional in a super hype Dancehall show, that almost become Jamaican Heavy Metal, and left me taking notes on reggae culture like I was born yesterday.
We are going to be fine for now with just Stingshark Sting singing harmonies on the hook. Tracy Ferrara is looking at the prospects of adapting Red Rose’s intricate gospel & opera back ups to a three piece horn section.
But what had us scratching our heads and making real decisions, was how to come up with completely different drops, where Red Rose, Lenky Marsden, and later Rohan Dwyer created eargasmic, mini mind tingling sonic dub experiences with each break into a stadium rock chorus.
Me? I had to face the demon that they sure made sound good as the guitar came in and out of the keyboard heavy mix. Chained to a microphone I can’t dance about with a corny Garth Brooks mic with out punching myself in the face.
Apropo of nothing, here’s a bonus pic from one of DMS’s July 4 in-store appearances.Thus my Keith Richard and Hendrix vamping i did in the video are both impossible and impractical because i actually have to hold down some of these parts like an actual guitar player, not the Nashville star with his acoustic turned off as pretty things in long dresses strum duplicate parts behind him.
So…I’m practicing. The complex chord changes are now coming back to haunt me as I have to perform my own sh☆t.
I want to play guitar. Now I actually gotta play. But half the 4 song set at High Dive July 3rd at Stingshark’s birthday I get to be Thick Jagger. I’ll swagger about, free of that tuned up wooden ball and chain I write on, in secret like a chalkboard or sketch pad, searching for sculptures and architects, to carve out my sonic dreams.
Producers and Godfathers like Red Rose got me Level’n up. Back in Kingston, we had to do an impromptu acoustic version with Deejay Kat on KLAS. But this LIVE band thang is a different beast.
So will be the challenge of playing this song with such a band on National Television, and before a crowd of Jamaicans that know every note.
Back to the woodshed.
☆August 4th we’ll have Andon Hiltner on keyboards and back ups at Morgan Henley‘s Carnation City Block party.
Here it is, the long awaited video for ‘Free Your Mind.’:
I just got a call from Decurrian, AKA DC. The third official member of The Staxx Brothers after Joshua Hanson and I started the band on 2002. He was one of my best friends at the time anyway, and I remember Tina Turnbull told me after we rocked a particular house party that I had better ask DC to officially join the band.
I have been putting in work with Hold in Fyah. We all gained a greater appreciation for Anthony Red Rose‘s production style on ‘Free Your Mind’ as we problem solved how to bring the massive song he constructed around me to the stage.
– Musician and writer Davin Michael Stedman has many ventures, such as the AMAZING blog, 100milesofmusic.com, and is one of the driving forces behind the Staxx Brothers. This past spring he spent weeks networking in and reporting from Kingston, Jamaica.
