Big Mountain (CONTINUED)

 Q: Yeah, I intend to. I mean, I almost got started on it about a year ago and then I got sidetracked. I already know who I want to produce it. There's a guy in town that I want to produce the record. But it's something that I would have to finance out of my own pocket, which is going to take awhile.

SS: Big Mountain's debut album, "Wake Up," was released in 1992. How long had the group been together at that point and how did the members come together?

Q: It sort of evolved out of another band by the name of Shiloh. And we couldn't keep the name Shiloh because there was somebody who owned the license to the name--the trademark. So we changed the name. At that point, Big Mountain was very different. I'm the only person that's around from that very first album. And a lot of the musicians were just basically people that I had been playing with for a lot of years in the San Diego area. Things happened really fast. Actually, Shiloh recorded a record that got some small notoriety, and we got a little bit of airplay. Reggae was not real fresh at that point, but it was still very foreign to a lot of people. God, when you're young like that and just starting out, I'm not sure how the songs came about. The song "Tough My Light" was probably the only song I've written to date that's actually gotten some pretty good airplay. [laughs] And I think, "Shit, man, I wrote that in 1992." I was 24 years old. And it's funny because I don't think I've really been able to write a love song as good as that song.
You think, "Aw shit, man. It's got four little chords--it doesn't change through the whole song. There's no breaks, you can't top that, Quino." It's just funny.

Back then we were already starting to get involved in the Big Mountain struggle with Shiloh. The Big Mountain struggle is the struggle of Native Americans--Navajo people, the real name is actually Dine. Navajo is the name that was given to them by the Spanish. They were being relocated all throughout the late 80s and the early 90s so it was a real big struggle among progressive people. A lot of people knew about it. And we started doing benefits for them. Then when we had to change the name from Shiloh, we chose Big Mountain cause we had become close to the struggle. So some of the stuff has Native American, or I should say indigenous, themes.

To tell you the truth we were just shooting in the dark. I mean I was really listening to Frankie Paul back then. I didn't really know how to sing or write a love song until I heard "Sara" by Frankie Paul. And then I really got into Frankie, man, and he gave me a whole different perspective as to how to sing a love song. Because before I was taking the Bob Marley approach, and I really wasn't getting anywhere because it seems like only Bob can write a song from his approach. It's like you got Bob, he does his thing, and then everybody else tries to sound like R&B American guys. It went from Frankie to Luciano to all of the guys who kinda got that timbre in their voice. So yeah man, it really happened quick. I just know that we were hard back then, and we were excited. And we had already decided that we wanted to play music based on a message.

SS: Through most of the 90s, Big Mountain was signed to Warner or Giant, which is a subsidiary of Warner. Your last couple of releases are on your own Rebel Ink label. What are the advantages and disadvantages of your own label?

Q: Well, I guess we could start with the disadvantages. The main disadvantage is that you have to do it yourself. You don't have anybody calling you up saying you gotta get in the studio. You gotta do it yourself. You gotta hustle and you gotta convince people. We started this label by signing a deal with a Japanese label.

The Japanese label gives us a budget to record a record. They own the rights to the records in Japan, and we keep the rights worldwide. Big Mountain has eight members all throughout the western hemisphere: Jamaica, New York, Hawaii, LA and San Diego, so we need a budget to record. Giant Records was spending $250,000 to $300,000 just to record. So now we're dealing with a fifth of that money and we want to maintain that quality consistency, and we have get everybody to one place--usually San Diego where we all record--pay for their lodging and their food and their transportation airline. And then we gotta try to shave a good 10 grand to 15 grand for a good mix because for a real quality mix, you need real money.

First, I think that one of the disadvantages is that I gotta play both sides of the street: I gotta be the artist and maintain that real groovy type of artist mentality and be spontaneous and unpredictable and all that. But at the same time, with the help of some really key people (like Big Moutain manager Donna Vader), I have to maintain some kind of consistency because these people are depending on us. When they give us 50 grand to record a record, they want a record back. They don't want us to say, "Oh well, man, you know, we ran into a coke dealer when we were in the studio, man." You know Japanese businessmen are just very… they don't like surprises. They don't like anything to happen except for the plan. Learning to be a businessman for a musician who's talking about mashing down the system and mashing down Babylon is tough. You feel a little hypocrital sometimes. But we all realize it's for the big picture. Unfortunately you just gotta tell your brothers sometimes, "Nah, man, that's all. That's all you're getting. We don't have anything else, and we can't give you anything more. And that's just reality."

The advantages: We have a tremendous amount of freedom on the album. We maintain tight control over how we're put out to the public--the image that's displayed, which is important to us. We feel that's one of the reasons why Big Mountain had so much trouble back in the day really solidifying their fan base because we had a record company that was putting shit that would just offend people--offend reggae people. I mean just stupid, stupid things. Instead of really paying attention to image, really paying attention to integrity and trying to put out a product that was very solid in terms of integrity, they, of course, wanted to just capitalize on me and James as being the handsome white guys. What do you expect from a major label that doesn't have any sensitivity? All they're thinking about is money. They're not thinking about longevity or anything.

SS: Was the record deal born out of your popularity in Japan? I heard you had done some shows over there headlining over Steel Pulse.

Q: Yes, Japan is strong for us. Of course, Bob is number one forever, but in terms of reggae, it would be between Maxi and ourselves in Japan. Bob Marley is still the only person that can sell out a reggae concert even in 2002! He's been dead how long? And he's still the only one who sells out Bob Marley Day every year, man.

There's just not a big enough crowd to support the roots music. They have their really rootsy core, but it's small. You're talking about selling 5,000 units. Usually we can depend on selling about 20,000 records. That's average from our records in Japan.

We're trying to steer away from the whole pop thing. In Japan, it's really tough to do because these guys are saying, "Hey man, this is what we want on the record, and if you guys don't give it to us, we don't give you the money." And it's like, "OK, well..." So what we usually do is we try to record as much music as we can for the record. And then we'll put out more of a glossy album to Japan and then take some of the glossy tracks off it and then put more roots stuff and release it to the U.S. That's why "Cool Breeze," for instance, is being released to Hawaii, but not on the mainland right now. I know reggae radio and "Cool Breeze" would have been way too poppy for them. We recorded that in early 2001 and "Cool Breeze" actually did really well in Japan. We sold around 25,000 copies.