David Hillyard & Rocksteady 7 @ Red Moon Ale House

130 South Main Street,Yuma AZ 85364

09 February, 2023

Description

David Hillyard (of The Slackers) and his group the Rocksteady 7 finally make their way back to Yuma, AZ!! Catch them February 9th only at the Red Moon Ale House. Doors 7pm, all ages, ADV $15 with guest opener. Rocksteady 7 began through the meeting of Hillyard and veteran percussionist Larry McDonald at a Skatalites concert and reflects their common love of Ska, Reggae, Jazz, and Latin music. Hillyard is a 53 year old music veteran who is credited with helping spread the gospel roots ska, reggae, and Jamaican jazz in America in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He is currently the saxophonist of NYC’s classic ska group, the Slackers and has also played with Hepcat and Rancid amongst a career full of 1000s of concerts and 100s of recordings. McDonald, who just turned 85, is a living legend, part of the first generation of Jamaican musicians to create Ska and Reggae music in the 1950s through the 1970s. He played with Carlos Malcolm Afro-Jamaicans and played on numerous classic reggae recordings such as the conga breaks on Toots and the Maytals classic, Funky Kingston as well as tracks by Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, and Lee Perry. In the 1970s, McDonald moved to the United States and played with Taj Mahal, Gil Scott Heron, and Lee Perry. Most recently he has toured with the Skatalites. Since their first album in 1999, Playtime (Epitaph), Rocksteady 7 has slowly built up a local and international following and over the years have received recognition in diverse music scenes. The title track of their first album was a Jazzy Nyabingi that appeared on the legendary punk compilation, Give Em The Boot. Jazziz Magazine noted "Hillyard can play." The African Beat maga zine called the Rocksteady 7, "Real Musical Revolutionaries Who Cut The Competition." Over the years, Rocksteady 7 has grown to a collective of numerous musicians based in New York City, California, and Europe and they have played 30-40 concerts a year in Europe and North America. In the midst of the pandemic in May of 2020, David, Larry, and crew went into a house converted into a studio in Cranford, New Jersey. Playing in separate rooms of the house connected with tv monitors and headphones they were able to record 12 tracks in a day which became the foundation of their latest album, ‘Plague Doctor.’ (Org Music) Armed with his pandemic defying performance mask, Hillyard says “the album is the sound of defiance. We needed to let people know we were alive and make a joyful noise doing that.” Plauge Doctor is a mix of Ska, Reggae, Samba, and Afro Beat. Punk News.org says the album “shows him coming into his own as a band leader.”