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Feelin’ reggae rhythms

Easy Star All-Stars tour comes to Whistler with Dub Side of the Moon and Radiodread hits

Who: Easy Star All-Stars

When: Thursday, July 10, 9 p.m.

Where: GLC

Tickets: $25

Most people associate reggae music with a tropical vacation, Bob Marley, and blunts, but at least one voice in the industry says it’s much, much more than that.

Michael Goldwasser is a producer, guitarist and arranger of the albums for Easy Star All-Stars. He’s also the leader of the band that is coming to Whistler to perform on Thursday, July 10.

Goldwasser founded the Easy Star label back in 1996 with three good friends — Eric Smith, Lem Oppenheimer, and Remy Gerstein.

“All four of us were big reggae fans… and we were just lamenting the dearth of good reggae coming out in the mid-90s,” Goldwasser explained.

They wanted to find a way to combine the newer, popular dancehall reggae with the traditional, live, Jamaican-sounding music.

“There was no one else doing it, so we figured, ‘well, let’s do it ourselves,’” he said.

They ended up creating their own label, Easy Star Records, which produces a mixture of modern roots productions, using living instrumentation and vintage recording techniques, innovative dancehall rhythms to keep things current, and reissues of rare recordings.

Easy Star started out recording 45’s — seven-inch singles — eventually compiling them into an album and issuing CD compilations of music from the ’70s and the ’80s.

But their initial vision didn’t take off.

“We were not selling a lot of CDs at all. Reggae is a niche market, its relatively small… and now, its even worse because of the relative ease of downloading music illegally,” Goldwasser explained. “But even back in the mid-90s people were selling bootlegged CDs in the street in New York all the time.”

While they were well respected and well reviewed, their vision just didn’t seem to be catching on.

“We had a lot of good fans, but not enough to really support a record label,” Goldwasser added.

It wasn’t until 2003, after they did a cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon , entitled, Dub Side of the Moon , that the label really took off.

“The idea of taking a famous album, a rock album, and doing the whole thing over in reggae, it really had never been done before,” said Goldwasser, “People have been covering other forms of popular music ever since the beginning of reggae, but to take an entire album and reinterpret it had never really been done before, so we struck a chord with both reggae fans and Pink Floyd fans and were able to capitalize on that.”

They followed their Pink Floyd hit with a cover of Radiohead’s classic OK Computer in 2006, entitled Radiodread .

Now, Easy Star Records has released 17 albums, recording with reggae veterans and up and comers alike, and representing an impressive lineup of talented artists, like Sugar Minott, Sister Carol and The African Brothers.

“New York is pretty fertile ground for reggae and there are a lot of Jamaican expatriates here,” Goldwasser points out.

And they’re also currently working on a third album in the series, though Goldwasser won’t say who they’re covering this time.

This week, the Easy Star All-Stars, Easy Star Records’ touring band, will be coming to Whistler for the first time to perform their own original music, plus selections from Dub Side of the Moon , and Radiodread .

Artists performing in the upcoming Whistler show have been with the touring band since 2003 — Ras I-Ray on bass and vocals, Ivan Katz on drums, Elenna Canlas on keyboard and vocals, Gene Clemenson on guitar, Jennie Hill on saxophone and flute, Buford O’Sullivan on trombone and vocals, and Kirsty Rock and Menny More on vocals.

“There’s nothing better than seeing a show with 15 musicians playing really well together,” Goldwasser said.

From his position at Easy Star, Goldwasser has been in a prime spot to watch reggae evolve and gain popularity over the last 12 years.

“I think some of the greatest successes have been more dancehall oriented, but overall, reggae has seen more success on the pop charts, at least in the U.S., than probably when we started out,” Goldwasser said, pointing to artists like Sean Paul, Damien Marley, and Shaggy as musicians who have successfully crossed over into the mainstream.

He hopes their recreation series will help to expand people’s understanding of the genre.

“I think that reggae is going to continue to expand in the public’s consciousness,” Goldwasser said. “One of the biggest battles we have is people who think that reggae is solely Bob Marley or just music you listen to when you go on a vacation in the Caribbean, and people don’t understand that it’s a viable genre of music, like any other.”