Reggae music is the music of the working person. It came together in urban Kingston, Jamaica, as traditional island sounds of calypso and mento collided head on with the radio friendly R&B of North America. As I sat in Mike Franklin's den, after a long Monday of work, I felt the deep blue that resonated through the taut strings of Dewayne Jackson's bass, Mike's keyboards and Melvin Welborn's sax, the working man's blues. Then Jay Williams' guitar danced with the rest of the horn section, and RJ's drums beats were calm and cooling like an island breeze. Mike's house, crowded with the eight musicians and all their gear, felt more like a backyard bbq then a band's rehearsal. Though this was the end of trumpeter Ed McNames's day, it was still the beginning of something beautiful - an aged flower of friendship wilted in the hot summer and mild winters of Austin, only to bloom again in the spring.

Though the band Tribal Nation has only been around for 7 years, the members have been playing together for 20 years. They've seen Austin's reggae scene blossom and fade as venues and promoters disappear with time. Wallace Hawkins noted that reggae hung tough during Anne Richards' reign over the state, dissipating with Bush's office. So if you dig the irie vibe, vote democrat. Chatting with the members of Tribal Nation was like sifting through a musical stream of knowledge - here's a little nugget of what I found ...

Eric Rothschild: It seems a little tough getting eight guys together, just for a practice like this?

Mike: It's hard. We're older now, we all have other things going on in our life, other responsibilities. It's difficult. You got to really want to do it, and even wanting to do it still doesn't work out sometimes.

ER: And seven others want to do it as well?

Mike: They all want to do it, but they all got different stuff going on too. We'll call each other ...

Ed: Some of us are in other bands, so there're set nights that we don't ever try on that night. More than anything it makes for a long day. I came straight from work over here to rehearsal, so it's pretty much go home and go to sleep and back to work tomorrow. It can be a loose rehearsal because everyone's tired. We can go through the tunes, boom, just to keep them fresh in your mind.

ER: Is it tough to work out new tunes in this situation?

All around: Yes!!!

Mike: Since we first started the band, the dynamic of the band has changed a lot. We started out as a four-piece, and of four musicians, three were writing the songs. Now we have eight people. And eight people in theband can all write songs. Everyone's been in their own band, and they have got just as many musical ideas as we do. The dynamic of the band is changing, so we haven't gotten the chance to focus on any new material with the core group we have now. Hopefully we will in the future, but it's just hard - like you say, getting the practices together and everything. We usually put our own ideas in everybody's music. If somebody writes something, they put their own flavor, or the way that they play into somebody else's song. There has been a time where we've done a song on the spur of the moment and got a tape of it and worked with the song from there.

It's hard just keeping a band going and doing the band, let alone practicing. I'd say over half of the bands don't even practice. They just get together and play. We've always made a habit of at least trying to get together and practice.

Diane Causey (sound engineer): They've all been playing together so long that its just going over little sections ...

Ed: From a horn player's perspective, we've been in situations where guys just want to practice and practice and go over it forever, you know, this needs to be tight, this needs to be tight, a horn section needs to be tight. It kind of takes the three guys or however many horns in the section that know how to play, to get together so that you can articulate and make it sound good. It's nothing you can really learn in a rehearsal. That's why I like playing with these guys, it's fun because they play well. It's a challenge to yourself just to play to their ability.

ER: Who are the original four?

Mike: Myself, D, Jay and Melvin. But everyone has played together, Wallace and Jay used play in the Bees together, RJ and I have played together. And Diane has been mixing with all of us. Even when she was doing Root One.

D did his first gig with us when he was fourteen or fifteen. We had to get permission from his mother to get him out of the house.

D: I was fifteen.

Mike: That was weird. Everything kind of started with Jay.

Jay: I worked at the Texas School for the Blind. So I started taking students out. And that's how Dewayne got involved ...

Mike: Wallace has played with all the old school guys, way back, a long time ago.

Jay: Wallace has played with Gladys Night and the Pips ...

Wallace: Many moons, many moons ...

Diane: A couple moons ago ...

ER: Have you been in Austin since then?

Wallace: No, I've been everywhere.

Jay: I met Wallace with the Killer Bees.

Diane: I think I met Wallace with the Killer Bees too.

Wallace: And the Bees met me with Pace Entertainment.

ER: How is it being a reggae band in Austin?

Diane: Rough, rough.

RJ: No place to play.

Jay: As a matter of fact, there're a lot of reggae bands that have disappeared, they're gone. Even the Bees are gone.

ER: Is it a shortage of gigs or venues?

Jay: It's a shortage of gigs and venues. That's a whole 'nother can of worms.

D: That's a couple cans of worms ...

Mike: Well, you know, reggae is a hard genre of music to play and promote anyway, so us doing original music, and then doing our own style, then mixing funk in it, a lot of reggae clubs don't want you to mix the styles. And some of the audiences, they don't like it either. Flamingo doesn't like us to mix reggae and funk, but we do it anyway. I used to be that way myself. I didn't want to really here another style of music. I just wanted to hear straight reggae, so I can understand it.

ER: When did y'all start funking it up?

Jay: Right away pretty much. Our influences are funk and soul. The Temptations ... well mine anyway.

Mike: The funk was really easy to do, we had to pull it back some to keep from making it so funky. When we first started we trying to be this serious roots reggae band, and it would pop out, and kept on popping out, and finally it just took over. It's what it is.

Wallace: Fuck it, ain't nobody else doing it either ...

Ed: That's what's cool about it though. You can only play how you play. You can learn all these different styles, but there's something that's going to come out of you that is where you are and what you take in. It's how you grew up or whatever.

Wallace: The closest thing to it is Toots.

Jay: Most reggae bands I hear over here in America don't sound Jamaican. When Jamaican bands come over it's like whooosh .... It goes off right away and you go "That's it right there!" You go to hear American bands and sometimes they hit it, but it's always Americanized.

ER: And y'all are Americanized as well?

Jay: Oh big time.

Mike: We can't help it, we're all Americans. We go to Jamaica on vacation ...

Wallace: But they're on the side of the stage listening to us though.

Diane: The trade goes back and forth, everybody brings their part.

And Tribal Nation has shared their part with reggae greats like Black Uhuru, to jam-rock icons Widespread Panic. They've been recording their live shows, with hope of compiling a live album. Their mix of reggae with funk brings the genre full circle, as they dip into the soulful roots of reggae that preceded Bob Marley, Toots and other legendary island performers. August 2000.