David Hillyard & the Rocksteady 7
with Soon Come Sound
The Bowery Electric
Sat
April 20
@ 8:00 PM
(Doors: )
21 and up
$18.00
Buy Tickets
Two sets of The Rocksteady 7 + Soon Come Sound!
Artists
David Hillyard & the Rocksteady 7
The Rocksteady 7 began through the meeting of David Hillyard and veteran percussionist Larry McDonald at a Skatalites concert and reflects their common love of ska, reggae, jazz, and latin music. Hillyard is a 53 year old music veteran who is credited with helping spread the gospel roots ska, reggae, and Jamaican jazz in America in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He is currently the saxophonist of NYC’s classic ska group, The Slackers and has also played with Hepcat and Rancid amongst a career full of 1000s of concerts and 100s of recordings.
McDonald, who just turned 85, is a living legend, part of the first generation of Jamaican musicians to create ska and reggae music in the 1950s through the 1970s. He played with Carlos Malcolm Afro-Jamaicans and played on numerous classic reggae recordings such as the conga breaks on Toots and the Maytals classic, "Funky Kingston" as well as tracks by Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, and Lee Perry. In the 1970s, McDonald moved to the United States and played with Taj Mahal , Gil Scott Heron, and Lee Perry. Most recently he has toured with The Skatalites.
Since their first album in 1999, Playtime (Epitaph), Rocksteady 7 has slowly built up a local and international following and over the years have received recognition in diverse music scenes. The title track of their first album was a Jazzy Nyabingi that appeared on the legendary punk compilation, Give Em The Boot. Jazziz Magazine noted "Hillyard can play." The African Beat maga zine called the Rocksteady 7, "Real Musical Revolutionaries Who Cut The Competition."
Over the years, Rocksteady 7 has grown to a collective of numerous musicians based in New York City, California, and Europe and they have played 30 - 40 concerts a year in Europe and North America.
In the midst of the pandemic, David, Larry, and crew went into a house converted into a studio in Cranford, New Jersey. Playing in separate rooms of the house connected with tv monitors and headphones they were ab le to record 12 tracks in a day which became the foundation of their latest album, Plague Doctor. (Org Music). Armed with his pandemic defying performance mask, Hillyard says “the album is the sound of defiance. We needed to let people know we were alive and make a joyful noise doing that.” Plauge Doctor is a mix of ska, reggae, samba, and Afro-beat.
Soon Come Sound
100dBs is an engineer, producer and DJ living in Philadelphia. He has produced two hip hop LPs, a slew of bootleg remixes, and a ton of mixes delving deep into hip hop, reggae and soul. His signature DJ style blends performance and selection: astral echo box and bouncy spring reverb tank on a wild crate-digger’s chase through the genealogy of a tune. Most of his time is now spent composing Jamaican-style dub using custom-built synthesizers as Soon Come Sound System.