Eston Ravey at Slo Brew Rock December of 2018 Eston Ravey is a native Hawaiian currently living in Los Angeles, I had the opportunity to chat with him and talk about the future with Through The Roots, favorite venues and much more
Q: What are the plans for the future?
A: I’m pushing, the boys are pushing, it’s been a great time to be able to take some of this newfound free time and refocus. Lots of time for reflection and planning lately. I’ve been working on a lot of stuff on the programing and production side to transition to this new vitrual-heavy environment that performance artists have found ourselves in. The TTR boys are working on growing the next album, and I’m working on trying to find some vanilla beans for this Chantilly cream I’ve been working on for the banana breads.
Q: What’s it like playing Bass for through the roots and how long have you been with them
A: Oh man it’s been a great, sweaty, massively exhausting time. I started auditioning in the Fall of 2018 so it’s not yet a full two years. Besides initially learning music decades ago I think this time with TTR has represented the largest and fastest period of growth for me. We teamed up with LAW records for the Arrival album and Sweetwine Entertainment Group which has been great, but on the road the band is just massively DIY and full on. A lot of the boys wear several hats and it’s a trip getting to put these shows together with everyone and take it on the road. I walked on as a backing musician basically-all the baselines I play outside of the bits of live arrangements came from the previous bassie Budda Foster (@buddaonbass) and the producers of the albums so a big part of my job was not f*cking up the vibe that was setup for me. Budda’s not an easy act to follow man
Q: What was been your favorite show/tour
A: We played Red Rocks on my second show ever, that was epic…So was the Arrival release party at North Park…besides that it’s hard to say. When a show is done it largely gets filed away into this cumulative mental archive of shows I’ve played that lose the show metadata and it becomes one big mess of stage and sweat and chasing Corrick around the stage tryna not run into Evan.
Q: Do you play/tour with any other bands/artists aside from through the roots
A: I took a break at the top of the year to go on a pop tour with Melanie Martinez in Europe and had some plans to go back their with another pop group before the lockdown started, getting away from the stage and into the production side of live shows. We’re still working on several artists with an LA company that I work for so it’s gonna be exciting once we can all get into gathering again.
Q: What got you involved in music in the first place?
A: When I was between sixth and seventh grade I found this Hawaiian contemporary band “Ka’au Crater Boys.” I knew immediately that I wanted to be on stage. At that time the pinnacle of achievement was this amphitheater in Honolulu called the Waikiki Shell, and that was it man. If you played the Shell, that’s it you’ve made it. I started on the ukulele and was very, very terrible for an unnecessarily long time. Bless my parents an family for not bashing me over the head with that thing, honestly.
Q:How do you feel about the internet in the music business?
A: The internet is a tricky, sticky place for artists. On one hand you have the tech literate world as your potential audience and on the other there’s just this steaming stinky sewage swill of criticism waiting for anyone taking risks…I don’t know if you can tell but I’ve had several bad experiences hahaha. But it’s a tool like anything else, I think if you understand how it works and what you are aiming for, you can narrow your scope enough to take advantage of the positive aspects and keep on growing.
Q: What new music do you like?
A: All of my new music has been stuff that I’m working on. Evan and Brady are my main lines to new music especially on tour. Brady’s got the time machine vibes, hooking up the throwbacks from the roots era and Evan’s got a tuned ear for what’s hot and when we’re on tour it’s four to nine hour drives of him running me through tropical, new reggae, and hip hop. I can’t say I’m up to date at all though, I’ve been spending a lot of my time on the tech side of music lately and have almost no idea what’s going on outside of my laptops.
Q: Who are some musical icons that influence you?
A: Bob Marley-I know that’s a pretty cliche one, but I’ve never seen another front man so believable. I’ve only seen DVDs but I used to order them off of Ebay in the early 2000s and watch these performances-Dortmund in 1980 I think was a really good one and the Santa Barbara County bowl show with the day to night transition—you just really get this idea that music is a vehicle and this man is just pouring every atom of his DNA into the message. But Family Man and Robbie Shakespeare for obvious Reggae reasons…Pino Palladino. Just six feet too-much of sauce and groove. That guy really knows when not to play and how to glue the space together.
Favorite venue to play and why?
Red Rocks, Colorado. It’s an energy vortex for sure. It’s like the planet funnels 10,000 human people units of energy just right into your face and you just take it and hope that you can understand what to do with it. I got a chance to work at the O2 in London recently, that was some epic ear splitting energy too. I think my favorite gig for selfish reasons was the Hilo Ho’olaule’a on the Big Island of Hawaii. Playing with my closest friends in my birth town, family there, raining festival style. I’d take a time machine there if I could. Monthly.
Q: How has this quarantine affected you/and the rest of the Through The Roots boys?
A: I’ve been insanely productive. Or at least busy. Lots of online courses, certifications, just filling the time trying to stuff my brain with new skill. Honestly it’s rough. As musicians and artists and entertainers we’re all in the business of the largest gatherings of people as possible, and to have the rug suddenly taken up from under you isn’t fun. It’s madness trying to be okay with feeling messed up and also trying to empathize with nurses, doctors, grocery store staff, people who face this thing every day….I understand it’s not a suffering competition but it’s a weird thing trying to stay aware and empathize and also respect where you’re at yourself. I think we’re all trying to balance the shock and stress response with positive realism and being as smart as we can while trying to still be artist in the new virtual world. We’re understanding now how much art affects people especially as far as having some miniature escape from the tough parts of life but as they say, no mud, no louts I’m afraid.
Q: What projects have you been working on (if any) during this off time
A: I’ve been working a lot on helping out emerging musicians and artists with broadcast and production, writing some riddems for some of my Hawaii people. I spend a handful of hours a week on zoom calls and screen shares with fellow artist who are also trying to make it happen, the TTR project is happening and I haven’t gotten my hands too much on it but I’ve been having fun doing dub mixes of the arrival album. Maybe if there’s a demand for it I’ll talk to Evan about releasing some of it hahahaha.
Q: In your opinion how is Hawaiian reggae different from Cali “Non Roots” reggae
A: Oh man sticky one. There’s so much to consider. One thing I’ve noticed being raised in Hawaii and then moving to California is that form a production standpoint, the bands on the mainland have a different if not bigger idea as far as the entire package; visual production of the show, gear, even touring in general. The Hawaii reggae market is so small and noncompetitive that you find that a ton of people in Hawaii play with a ton of other people and it’s just the way it goes. Corrick goes back and probably stays on stage all day and night at a festival with Polynesian bands. I feel like Hawaiian reggae is such a firm dichotomy…You take these Jamaicans who, and I don’t have a complete and comprehensive understanding of Jamaican music culture by any stretch of the imagination, anyway you have these Jamaicans and in the era of Black Uhuru and BMW and Jacob Miller before Inner Circle- who are really talking about social issues and using art as a vehicle to really represent a snapshot of the sociopolitical climate of the time, and you have Hawaiians playing their interpretation of reggae which is really doing the same thing except by the 1990s where I remember Hawaiian reggae…It’s just a weird picture when you get to comparing because i think there’s this source which is Jamaican Reggae, arguably the only for true Reggae, then you have Hawaiian Reggae, then you have Cali Reggae. I think like with anything else that has a source that’s very popular, you get different interpretations that inevitably evolve from the original. I just went on a complete tangent my a single line answer would be I think in Hawaiian reggae you can still hear the influence of tropical life and the equatorial, tropical vibe and with the Cali reggae you get a ton of rock influence.
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