Long car rides, too much gas-station coffee, and being surrounded by incompetent drivers on the California interstate have made the members of Dub Trio a little restless this afternoon, but the good-natured band from Brooklyn is taking it in stride.
Crooner Jeffery Osbourne’s 1982 R&B hit “On the Wings of Love” plays over satellite radio, a device, the band agrees, that has infinitely improved road trips. “Oh my god, yeah—it’s a beautiful thing!” guitarist DP Holmes exclaims.
The band is at the tail end of its West Coast tour with Helmet. Next week it’s back east to take off again with fellow New Yorkers and friends Gogol Bordello. Relentless touring is the life of an up-and-coming, hard-working band.
Left to right: DP Holmes, Joe Tomino, and Stu Brooks
Long car rides, too much gas-station coffee, and being surrounded by incompetent drivers on the California interstate have made the members of Dub Trio a little restless this afternoon, but the good-natured band from Brooklyn is taking it in stride.
Crooner Jeffery Osbourne’s 1982 R&B hit “On the Wings of Love” plays over satellite radio, a device, the band agrees, that has infinitely improved road trips. “Oh my god, yeah—it’s a beautiful thing!” guitarist DP Holmes exclaims.
The band is at the tail end of its West Coast tour with Helmet. Next week it’s back east to take off again with fellow New Yorkers and friends Gogol Bordello. Relentless touring is the life of an up-and-coming, hard-working band.
Dub Trio may be in supporting slots now, but it won’t be for long. With five years and four albums under their belts, Holmes, bassist Stu Brooks, and drummer Joe Tomino have gained a reputation as a group that pushes boundaries.
Drawing from rock, metal, punk, ambient, and of course, dub, the trio challenges the notion of the genre for which it is named. Tomino says, “There are not enough interesting voices in the world today—everyone’s kind of doing the same shit, pulling out the same trick.”
In January, Dub Trio released its third full-length studio record, its first for Ipecac Recordings. Produced by long-time studio collaborator Joel Hamilton, Another Sound is Dying is its heaviest, most far-reaching album to date.
Hard-hitting, dynamic, and expansive, the instrumental soundscapes contained on the record are immediately engaging and become more intoxicating upon repeated listens. Using its exceptional musical skills to blend styles and rhythms, Dub Trio openly defies conventions of popular music. It’s enough to make you momentarily question the validity of the rest of your record collection.
“When we’re working with other people, we are restricted and we cater to their musical needs. But when we’re doing Dub Trio, we have absolutely no restrictions musically. We’re able to do whatever we want. That was the attraction.”
Toronto natives Stu Brooks and DP Holmes first met in Boston before moving to New York to pursue their musical careers. When their then-current band found itself without a drummer, a mutual friend introduced them to Joe Tomino, a former Cleveland resident who made the move to New York a couple of years before.
That band soon folded, but the three remained great friends and continued to play music together, often hiring themselves out as a rhythm section for session work and live shows. Their collective studio resume includes names like Macy Grey, Common, The Fugees, and 50 Cent. Although they enjoy working with other artists, playing their own music allows freedom for exploration and expression that by nature, working on someone else’s music does not often permit.
Brooks says, “When we’re working with other people, we are restricted and we cater to their musical needs. But when we’re doing Dub Trio, we have absolutely no restrictions musically. We’re able to do whatever we want. That was the attraction.”
The members of Dub Trio are committed to writing music that they like, even if it is not commercially viable by traditional means.
“We’re not writing songs to be on [NYC radio station] K-Rock,” deadpans Tomino. “We could do that, and we probably in some level production-wise have, but we don’t. We’re Dub Trio. We do what we do, and the rest takes care of itself.”
This attitude is not a new phenomenon. Experimental artists such as Frank Zappa and Tom Waits have questioned whether to use their talents to make music with mass appeal or to play what is in their hearts, and thankfully, their hearts won the debate. What good is art if it hasn’t broken any rules?
In a modern age where middle-school students are learning how to write their own press releases at rock ’n’ roll summer camp, and where winning American Idol symbolizes the epitome of success to many Americans, this truly stands out. Punk and indie rock may still in be in vogue, but what it means to be independent has changed dramatically, now that you can buy the look at the mall and match your taste in music so that it makes the grade on any number of hipster webzines.
Dub music was born in Jamaica in the 1960s and ’70s. Pioneers such as King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry developed techniques to reshape and configure existing songs into brand new versions, or “dubs” (from the word “double”). A predecessor to modern dance styles, dub often dropped vocals and high-end instruments in and out of songs while emphasizing drum rhythms and giving the bass guitar a huge guttural makeover.
Echoes and reverbs were layered on top, and DJs were able to further shape the sounds in a live environment. Dub started out primarily as B-side versions of more pop-friendly songs, but it soon became a popular style in its own right. Dub has left a monumental, yet often unrecognized, impact on the world of modern music.
Tomino speaks about dub the way some people speak about a profound religious experience. “These cats were working with the most minimal, cheap amount of gear they had at their disposal,” he says. “They were in Jamaica in the ‘60s and ‘70s and had no money. Everything was hand made, really budget, saying, ‘I’m going to put drums on track one, guitar on track two, bass on track three, and vocals on track four,’ and just totally coming up with this brand new style. Essentially, this was the birth of the remix. Taking this basic material and coming up with all these ways to reinterpret the music is just amazing.”
Beyond admiring the technical side of the music, the different voices found in the tracks and the overall warm vibe of the music makes for a good listen. Tomino explains, “It feels good and sounds good, and the way it is produced is amazing. Even if it is the same song, you can listen to a King Tubby version and a Scientist dub and know the difference.”
As the story goes, it was Tomino who turned his bandmates onto dub. As professional musicians, the three had ample time to listen to music as they traveled back and forth from shows.
“I had a bunch of mix tapes that a guy made for me off old vinyl, and I just laid it out one day in the car ride,” Tomino says. “We had been listening to a lot of jazz stuff and a lot of other things, but from there I felt like we just fell in love again with dub. We’d listen to it constantly. We’d be doing drives from Boston to New York playing these gigs, and it would be straight dub sessions in the car ride the whole way with the low end turned all the way up. It was great.”
Although the friends had been playing together in different configurations for three years, the official formation of Dub Trio was accidental. Holmes and Tomino were approached at an impromptu street performance by a man who asked them to play at his restaurant. Brooks also happened to be around, so they asked to play as a trio.
They quickly grew a following at their weekly gigs and began pursuing opportunities at other restaurants and bars. Holmes describes it as “very causal, unplanned—we didn’t even have a name or anything. We were playing for fun, making some money.”
The name of the band came about in a similar fashion. “One of the restaurants we were playing at—and we were playing a lot of dub at the time—started writing ‘Dub Trio’ on the chalkboard outside, because we started building a following,” Holmes says. “Before we knew it, we were stuck with the name.”
Not that they care to change it. “The name is fine. It’s fitting.” For some listeners it has been misleading, because the band does not easily fall into what has been commonly accepted as the “dub sound.” Tomino acknowledges, “Dub music has always been synonymous with reggae, but I don’t think of dub strictly as reggae music. I think of it more as a concept. So it’s almost like we’re applying the dub concept to whatever we’re doing.”
“There are not enough interesting voices in the world today—everyone’s kind of doing the same shit, pulling out the same trick.”
ROIR recording artist Badawi (Raz Mesenai) was at one of their early shows. By 9 a.m. the next morning, he had put in a call to ROIR label head Lucas Cooper to tell him about his discovery. Curious about a band that could elicit such a strong response from someone whose taste he highly admired, Cooper listened to sample tracks on its website and contacted the band.
Soon after, Stu Brooks dropped off a demo and Cooper had a chance to see them play live in New York for the first time. “They took over the room and they nailed it,” Cooper says. “Plus they were great musicians and nice guys. It prompted us to do something that we don’t normally do, which was to really work aggressively with them.”
ROIR was a natural pairing for the burgeoning band. The label is famous, in part, for releasing the first albums by Bad Brains, who were forerunners in brilliantly combining reggae sounds with hardcore punk. When asked about a common thread between the two bands, Cooper states, “There is definitely a musical connection, and I know they have respect for what each other is doing.”
Dub Trio released its first two studio records, the roots-oriented Exploring the Dangers of… (2004) and the more riff-based New Heavy (2006), on ROIR, which Brooks characterizes as “ultra supportive—they’d come to every show.” ROIR will also release the vinyl edition of Another Sound is Dying.
“Keeping it all in the family” is the catch phrase echoed throughout conversations with everyone in and surrounding the band. Though Dub Trio’s album reviews have generally been favorable, the band has elicited some mixed reactions, in part because it is so far reaching in musical scope. “To really get them, you have to see them live—then you can appreciate what they are,” says Ipecac Recordings co-founder Greg Werckman.
On stage, Dub Trio appears to be part craftsmen, part magicians, taking dub techniques that are typically done in the recording studio in front of an audience. The concept, explains Brooks, “is kind of specific to this band. We mic up the drums and we do our own effects. We’re manipulating one another in real time, which is usually done by a sound person at the front of the house.”
The trio arms itself with keyboards, a melodica, and a sea of effects pedals. Though some bands sound “just like their record” live, with Dub Trio, every night is a unique experience. Tomino explains, “The material has been written. The studio version is one version of that song, so if you come see us play tomorrow, it will be somehow different. It’s going to be a dub, a version of that song. We’re not going to play the same reverb in the same spot every single time.”
This open-ended format could result in total chaos, but as Cooper explains, “They are so tight. They can stop on a dime and drop it down into a real slow, deeper bass feel. [They can play] a dub track or two for a hardcore rock audience, and everyone just stops and starts bobbing. It’s pretty incredible to see that. They take advantage of the fact that they are amazing musicians.”
ROIR, which has long embraced live albums, released Cool Out and Coexist in the summer of 2007, capturing the group’s crushing live prowess at two packed shows at Brooklyn’s Union Pool.
Dub Trio caught the attention of Ipecac Recordings’ Greg Werckman and Mike Patton when it sent the label an advance of New Heavy. Werckman recalls, “They already had a label at this point, so it was more like, ‘Hey, we really like what you do. We would like you to check us out.’”
Ipecac has a well-deserved reputation for celebrating distinctive voices in modern music, such as Isis, Melvins, Hella, and Patton’s own Tomahawk, Fantômas, and Peeping Tom. Although Werckman estimates the company gets hundreds of demos a week, “Dub Trio stood out because their sounds are so unique.”
Patton, a prolific artist known for his work with Mr. Bungle, Faith No More, and countless other bands and projects, is a musically kindred spirit with Dub Trio in that he surpasses conventions of genre, finding inspiration from the most varied places. Impressed by its style and musicianship, he invited Dub Trio to collaborate on a song with him for his upcoming Peeping Tom album.
The group’s contribution resulted in the anthemic “Not Alone,” a song that also wound up on New Heavy and was the first Dub Trio track to feature vocals. Dub Trio then toured as part of Peeping Tom, opening the shows with a set of its own material.
The band applauds Joel Hamilton, who has produced all of its studio records and has become the “fourth” member of Dub Trio in the studio, for helping achieve its colossal sound on Another Sound is Dying. Exploring the Dangers of… and New Heavy have been praised for their live feel, but in producing its latest album, Dub Trio embraced the luxury of having a bit more studio time than usual to nurture each track.
“We could just go in and record one track each, do it, bang it out, and get a good performance,” Holmes explains. “But we do that every night when we play, so when we go into the studio, we want to get the best sound possible. If we have to put six guitars to make it sound full or put keyboards on because that’s what we want to hear, we’ll do it, and I think we’re able to cover it all live.”
“The material has been written. The studio version is one version of that song, so if you come see us play tomorrow, it will be somehow different. It’s going to be a dub, a version of that song. We’re not going to play the same reverb in the same spot every single time.”
Although the band maintains that it doesn’t write or record with a musical agenda in mind, Another Sound… is a cohesive package. From the rumbling bass lines and precise drum beats on “Not For Nothing,” to delving deep into dub roots on “Mortar Dub” and transporting listeners to another plane on the atmospheric “Felicitation,” the album plays like the perfect score to an action thriller not yet written.
The record is a departure from the band’s previous work in that the balance shifts further away from reggae in favor of gut-wrenching hard rock, but Tomino says that the songs show a “logical progression of where it’s been going. Who knows where it’s going to go tomorrow or the next record?”
The future is bright for Dub Trio. Tour plans are imminent, both nationally and abroad. Although it has already released a slew of impressive material, Werckman is excited to see what it will come up with next. “They are one of those bands that are fun to work with,” he says. “They’re just beginning, really.”
Brooks contends, “I don’t see us getting a Top-40 hit, but who knows? The sky is the limit. We’re doing the right thing and I think it’s important.” On American radio, perhaps the band’s biggest hurdle is that it chooses to remain an instrumental group, a fact that the group says still bewilders many fans. Half jokingly, Brooks says that they constantly tell people no, they aren’t looking for a singer, but, “We’re for hire and we’ll play on your record.”
– Jamie Ludwig
Photos by Bryan Sheffield
Dub Trio: www.dubtrio.com
Ipecac: www.ipecac.com