You Got Bluegrass in My Reggae! No, You Got Reggae in My Bluegrass!

What has two thumbs and didn't even make it TWO WEEKS

with 'posting new remixes'? THIS GUY.

• • •

I made a bluegrass/reggae crossover record.

What started out as a one-off goofy project for 4/20/20 eventually blossomed into a full half-hour of old bluegrass tunes recast as reggae, along with three original dub tunes to create Red, Gold, Green & Bluegrass with musical partner-in-crime Joe Dep. We released it July 1 on Bandcamp. ($7, get your copy today!)

I can trace the deepest roots of this project back to a cassette tape of Puerto Rican reggae. That's what was playing — specifically, a band called Gomba Jahbari — when I walked into one of my now-best-friend's dorm rooms, and it was immediately captivating. Partly because it was Spanish-language reggae, which I'd never heard before, but also because they were using a synthesizer that I always referred to as "the Wubbly." It's just a certain way of filtering and tweaking a square-wave synth that gives it this nice, fat, round sound that works great in a reggae context. Gomba Jahbari uses it a lot, as well as my other favorite PR reggae group, Cultura Profética. 

With the banjo originating in Africa, and its use in the Caribbean dating back to the 1700s — and its general percussive nature — Joe and I figured there was no reason it wouldn't fit right in with a reggae soundscape. And I think it does, very well. It works as a sort of melodic substitute for the hand percussion common in rocksteady reggae.

Anyway, it turned into a real labor of love, we had a great time putting it together, and hope that you might think it's worth checking out.

Snag a copy at patrickvarine.bandcamp.com.

New Music for This Week: Yasiin Bey, "Next Universe" (Remix)

"Light up the sky like the Fourth of July..."

I've been messing around making beats for about 15 years. It goes in fits and starts. I'll come back around to it once every 16 months or so and really get obsessed — like two years ago when I found a bunch of old recordings of in-store Kmart Christmas music that they used to play in the '70s and '80s and made an entire beat tape using samples from those songs.

But I don't have much to do with all of these beats. I might be a writer by trade, but I'm no MC, that's for damn sure. I'm a 40-year-old white dude who couldn't be less connected to the local hip-hop scene. And most of what I've seen is not so inspiring.

So why not just share them for now, right? The other thing I've collected over the years is tons of acapellas, mostly just random stuff I encountered back in the Wild-West days of the Web. Sometimes I got enough of one artist to cobble together a sort of collection. I was able to find all of the acapellas for one of my all-time favorite records, Freddie Gibbs' "Piñata," and I've done a bunch of stuff with those.

But I figure, may a well share one new song per week. So this week it's another of my favorite MCs, Yasiin Bey, p.k.a. Mos Def. I first heard "Next Universe" on the "Soundbombing II" mixtape. Not every rapper would sound at-home on the quirky beat I put together to remix this, but I think Bey does.

Thursday's (Solo) Setlist: 8/11/16 CoCo Coffeehouse, Leechburg, Pa.

Counting Crows cover...? Check.

After playing with a full band for the past four years, I'm never really fully satisfied playing solo shows. I have fun, and it's a great opportunity to road-test new material and pull out some of the slower, more-emotional tunes that don't fit very well into the Charlie Hustle repertoire — and I do occasionally find something that makes me go, 'Huh, that was pretty cool' on the tapes — but for the most part, I just find myself wishing there was at least one other person there playing alongside me.

That said, this is probably the most varied solo show I've played in a while, which probably made it a little less coherent for the crowd, but whatchagonnado?

Click here to download/stream the set, courtesy of Archive.org!

Early set:

Hearts and Bones (P. Simon)

You Can Keep It

Incident on 57th Street (Springsteen)

Madam Will You Walk (J. Davis)

Midnight Moonlight (P. Rowan)

Western Wind* >

Southwest Sky

Anna Begins (A. Duritz)

Dire Wolf (Dead)

Cyprus Avenue (V. Morrison)

Somebody Changed the Lock (C. Weldon, M. Rebennack arr.)

Late set:

Loose Lucy (Dead)

Row Jimmy (Dead) >

Streetlight Mama

Blackjack Molly

Passing Afternoon (S. Beam)

Casey Jones (T.L. Seibert)

Catfish John (McDill/Reynolds)

Man of Constant Sorrow (D. Burnett)

On a Foggy Night (T. Waits)

Spanish Ladies (Trad. sea shanty, Varine arr.)

I Can't Wait to Get Off Work (T. Waits)

Stack-a-Lee (Trad., M. Rebennack arr.)

*First time played