Marty Dread to release new album with Jamaican reggae legends
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One of Maui's most prolific musicians, Marty Dread, has released more than 20 albums, and they will keep coming with two new vinyl releases about to drop.
"Vinyl is my new foray into music," Dread said. "With downloading you have to sell billions of them to make hundreds of dollars. It seems like way more people are buying vinyl now, especially young people."
Set to perform at The Ritz-Carlton, Maui Kapalua on Friday, Dread explained that his first new album, "In Your Eyes," is a reggae remix of his "Upcountry Boy" record with the addition of a cover of the Grateful Dead's "Touch of Grey."
"It was all done with members of the Soul Syndicate band," he said. "Those are the guys that played with Peter Tosh and Bob Marley. It's a retelling of a bunch of old country and rock songs I grew up on, with real authentic Jamaican reggae versions of 'Cats in the Cradle' and Stephen Stills' 'Love the One You're With.' They were remixed by Bob Marley's engineer Errol Brown. He completely reimagined the whole tapestry."
Next up for a mid-August release is "Positive People," a deep roots reggae collection with a bunch of famous reggae artists including Jamaica's legendary rhythm section drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare and The Wailers.
"I went to Jamaica, and I worked with Sly and Robbie," he said. "Then I built these songs from those Sly and Robbie sessions."
Proud of the new record, he said, "I'm really hoping that people resonate with it. It's all socially conscious music. There are no love songs, and that was very intentional. I feel the message of it is timely right now with all the things that are going on politically and socially."
Highlights include the powerful, dub roots of "Teach Dem," with Aston "Family Man" Barrett Jr. and Beezy Coleman from The Wailers, and the Steel Pulse horns. "It talks about how young people are so addicted to technology," said Dread. "They're fed all these narratives that they’re buying hook, line and sinker without doing research. It also dabbles a bit in how AI music is consuming 40% of the marketplace. People don't even realize they're listening to an AI composition completely done by robots."
On another memorable track, "Paradigm Shift," he calls for a transformative revolution, singing, "We don't need another fix." It's time, he suggested for "a whole flip of the system. What we're doing is not really working. It's not a sustainable model for us to move forward amicably into the future to rescue this planet, and end the turbulence that's spun off by racism and all these residual effects that I feel like our country never really atoned for, a lot of the things that it's done in our history. It has to be a major shift for us to move forward."
Other musicians on the new album include Peter Tosh's bassist George "Fully" Fullwood, guitarist Valentine "Tony" Chin (Bob Marley, Gregory Isaacs, Bunny Wailer), Steel Pulse guitarist David Elecciri Jr., Maui's Kelly Covington singing harmony, and Jamaica's Pam Hall, who sang with Jimmy Cliff.
Back on Maui after spending two months in Miami, while in Florida he performed at the Stay Strong Jamaica hurricane benefit alongside Shaggy, Julian Marley, Inner Circle, and Third World.
More recently, he joined the Lahaina Homecoming gathering on July 19. "I was just there to support everybody on stage," he said. "I spent the lion's share of my career in Lahaina, playing Studio 505 and Maui Brews. Everybody was reconnecting, telling their stories of how they escaped and what they're doing to rebuild their homes."
He ended up singing "Rivers of Babylon" with Natural Vibrations, Brother Noland and Melvin Leed, and "No Woman, No Cry."
"All the musicians were all sitting in a massive circle, and I morphed 'No Woman, No Cry' into a Whitney Houston song, 'Your Love Is My Love.' To everybody's surprise, it turned into a really great sing-along."
Being back in Lahaina, "I saw so much great music and hula and connection and culture. To see that in the burn zone was a highly emotional evening."
Dread will play at 6 p.m. Friday. Admission is $10 or free for hotel guests.