Don’t miss this brief interview with legendary dancehall producer and keyboardist Lenky Marsden as he discusses how he and the song’s producer Anthony Red Rose turned what Lenky considers my “American Folk Ting” into what is becoming a MAJOR hit in Jamaica.
It certainly is a hybrid. As a Half Puerto Rican that has always felt a bit out of step with what some Seattle ‘tastemakers’ have attempted to define as Folk and Rock, seeing the Caribbean embrace what I do as folk, is sort of a homecoming.
My Taino blood is tingling.
In the beginning, I wrote ‘Free Your Mind’ in Brighton England. In the garden in which a new music collective called Bedlam Isle, and my British band, Sherlock Soul was truly born. There was once a row house on Bentham Road, so the story goes…
But it was just an idea, a kernel, a thing I was strumming, an American Folk Ting with some Seattle soul, until Anthony Cameron, Sly Dunbar, and Lenky Marsden got their hands on it in Kingston, Jamaica.
Local photographer and videographer Mike Martin is working on a really awesome little documentary about the birth of the song and its journey to the Pop charts. This is a part of that forthcoming little film.
I hope to make more little films with Mike. We want to film the Irish pub tour Sherlock Soul is dreaming up to capture the first shows our British outfit.
Imagine us, these Brits and a token American, as we venture out on the other side of the Irish Sea, in a bold attempt to distill the Merlinesque sound of our studio recordings into an authentic potion we can present on giant European festival stages.
But it will start Niamh OConnell, and my handful of true Irish friends, in the small pubs of Ireland. Most of us in the group including myself have Irish roots, but aren’t most of us really…a tad Irish.
I also want to film what might be the last Staxx Brothers album, as it is recorded in New Orleans with Eric Struthers (Dr. John, Neville Brothers) and his cadre of hand selected greats he chooses for the undertaking. The album will be the album I have been talking about with folks like Angela Rickard and Horace Alexander Young since I started the band with Joshua Hanson in 2002.
It will be called, Home Cookin’.
I want to capture these stories in books, on hand cut Soniphone Records, and ultimately on film. At least digital film. I shot the music video for ‘Sugarwalls’ on film. It was both frightening and hard quite honestly. Digital it is.
There will be a chance to support these projects and be a part of them. But for now…listen to Lenky and then check out his mega hits with Sean Paul and some of the greatest names in modern Dancehall.
☆This message is approved by Sick Donkey Records.
☆This interview was shot in Kingston by Enriek Thomas and edited by Mike Martin in Snoqualmie, WA.
Davin’s new song has been released and has become a global earworm and Caribbean dancehall hit. Listen here on Reggaeville: DAVIN MICHAEL STEDMAN & ANTHONY RED ROSE – FREE YOUR MIND FEAT. SLY & ROBBIE WITH LENKY MARSDEN. The video is now available on Youtube.
– 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. His single with British band Sherlock Soul is now available as well.
