Finding Joseph I by Howie Abrams

Author:Howie Abrams
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Lesser Gods
Published: 2016-12-02T21:15:38+00:00

Kenny Dread

The minute Earl showed up from New York, everything changed. H.R. was suddenly jumping up and operating, getting rehearsal spaces, organizing guitarists. Then Jose came down to play the bass; that’s Jose Gonzalez, who was the bass player from the New York hardcore band The Mob. So now you have your rhythm section, and then H.R. added David Byers on the guitar and David Jordan, so the group began rehearsing at David Jordan’s house. I began booking some gigs up and down the East Coast, and that was the first version of the H.R. band, Human Rights. Dave Byers was one of the first African-American punk rockers in the DC scene. Same generation as Bad Brains, and same generation as Skeeter Thompson from Scream. We weren’t just a band; we were a posse. We lived together, rocked together, conquered together. Our performances sometimes became like a basketball game, keeping score. Who had ’em dancing the most, who had ’em thrashing the most, who had ’em freakin’ out the most. And we went out there to win every time. It was an incredible experience to play music with someone who lived it—one hundred percent rocker.

David Jordan | H.R. Band

The only reason he hired me was because I had a place to rehearse. I charged him by the hour anyway. Gotta rehearse somewhere. And I played music twenty-four hours a day. Me and David Byers basically wrote all the music, then we had to show it to Jose from The Mob and Earl, and we’d just try to get it with no mistakes. Joe was just sitting down there writing with a pad, and he’d write the lyrics while we rehearsed the music, and by the time we could play the music without making too many mistakes, he’d written the lyrics. Then he started rehearsing It’s About Luv with us. We wrote it and rehearsed it in about three weeks, I’d say, or less, and then we went and recorded it. Me and Earl did all of our tracks live, and Byers kept going in and erasing his parts and doing them over again. I used to smoke weed, and when I got to the studio, nobody’s got pot except me. They supposed to be Rastamen and shit.

Jose Gonzales

At the same time, he wanted to do an all-reggae project, which became the Zion Train band, and that was many musicians from different parts of the country and some locals. He knew some dreads there that were interested in playing with him. So Human Rights and Zion Train were actually two separate things. There was Human Rights, which was a little bit of hardcore, some reggae, some jazz/pop and some regular pop. And then there was the all-reggae Zion Train with Al Judah on vocals. He was the main vocalist, H.R. was playing guitar, Earl was playing drums and we had a horn section. God, I think maybe we had nine people on stage. Initially, his intention was just to focus on the reggae band, but he also didn’t want to alienate his fan base.

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