Tropidelic is a band originating from Ohio with five collections of music released and one in the making. Tropidelic fuses energetic funk, hip-hop and reggae, making their music truly one of a kind. While on tour, they stopped in Savannah and had a chat with Xuan Sequira about their music, life on the road and more.
Q: Why the name Tropidelic?
James: Our singer started the band in college, and I believe it has something to do with the combination of tropical and psychedelic.
Darrick: Probably more funkadelic than psychedelic.
James: Yeah, the sound has really evolved in the past couple years. So I still feel like it’s a very fitting name. [The name is] a lot more funky.
Xuan: Yeah, I think of a tropical storm, then add “delic” at the end.
James: My dad likes to call us punk rock island music.
Darrick: Like the village people on crack haha.
Xuan: Haha, yeah. I have heard some of you guys’ tracks, and my first impression was its nice beats with horns, drums, reggae, and funk in the background. I like that.
Q: How did you guys form? I know you guys started in Kent, Ohio but how did you guys get together and develop this band?
Bobby: It’s been a roller coaster for sure. Our singer started the band when he was in college in Kent and there were a couple line ups for the current group that just ended up not working out between all the guys for whatever reason. This current lineup, the bass player, singer and I have been together for a little over four years now. We have just been kind of acquiring new members. Our trumpet player used to play tuba. He used to be the only horn we had, so we picked him up. We’ve come up and picked up these guys. We have had members just filter through over the past four years too. So it’s really been a trial and error, finding the right guys.
Q: Did you guys do auditions?
Bobby: Yeah, I think everybody but James had to audition for the band. We just liked him. Hahaha, he didn’t know how to play the trombone when we hired him.
James: I used to be in a band that would open for Tropidelic all the time.
Xuan: Is you guy’s lead vocalist Matthew?
Bobby: Yep.
Matthew: (pokes his head out of the back and said hello).
Q: So this [tour bus] is your home, and… how is it?
James: It’s great!
Darrick: It’s cozy
James: We have been through a bunch of vehicles. We had a school bus at first, which was probably everybody’s favorite kind. It sucked to move around because it was so big but it was the most comfortable ride. We had the most space.
Xuan: Yeah, this is like a church bus almost. It’s smaller.
James: Yeah, but it’s cool because everybody still has a bed and you can still stand up which is like kind of everything. You can get up and stretch. You can’t beat it.
Q: What about bathroom? Is there a bathroom in here?
James: There’s some pee-jugs laying around.
Q: So you guys just set up the bed inside the bus?
Darrick: Everybody has their own bunk and has their own set-up in the bunk.
Bobby: Our bass player has actually built all of our beds.
James: Everybody’s got one of these (Points to the LED light) guys and everybody’s got a light switch in their bed too.
Bobby: There’s actually in all three buses our bass player has built all of these beds. Having that is huge, just to be able to get a chance to relax. When you are with each other for weeks at a time sometimes you just need to sit on your own not talk to anybody for a little bit. And when you want to talk to everybody you just come up here and chop it up, have good time.
Q: Is this [the table] kind of like, your living space? I’m guessing where this table is?
Darrick: Slash family room, office work space. We do a lot of work at this table.
James: Plus, the guys that work on the road, so they just pop their laptop on open, get their hotspots going and work.
Q: What kind of music and/ or musicians inspires you guys?
Bobby: I think this is one of the best things about this band is that all the
guys come from such an incredibly different backgrounds. The things that influence us are so different that when everyone comes together [we make great music]. Like I grew up listening to metal, Chili peppers, Prince, grunge rock and classic rock. (To Darrick) What did you listen to when you were growing up?
Darrick: Just a lot of hip-pop stuff, funk, gospel stuff too. Classical jazz.
James: He plays in a bunch of churches and stuff at home.
Darrick: Yeah. What about you James?
James: A lot of hip-pop and punk rock. I went through a really big Ska Phase too, which is what led me here. It’s [Ska] kind of like horns mixed in with funk and reggae. I like the horns a lot.
Xuan: Yeah I really like the hip-pop behind you guys’ sound. I like that beat.
Q: I listened to one of you guys’ tracks called “Police State”. I did some research and found out that you guys were shut down during a SXSW street performance back in 2014 at Austin, Texas. Did that event inspire Police state?
Bobby: That was actually a very small part of that. We got shut down in the street trying to play at SXSW Austin. But it was really back in Cleveland part of the song that was the big basis for that. We were at our practice spot, just setting up ready to practice. Where we used to practice, our old saxophone player bought a house from the bank that was foreclosed. Well, the guy whose bank foreclosed the house on apparently had some kind of warrant for his arrests.
James: He wasn’t paying child support.
Bobby: So we had the door kicked in by the police one day and practice came down.
James: Guns blazing.
Bobby: Guns out, this [was a] terrible ordeal.
James: But the real kicker was that it was the second time it had happened. None of us were there except for the owner of the house at that time but police had already raided the establishment with their guns out. [They] have been told that the tenant that they were looking for no longer live in that house. At the time, we had the school bus back then and [we] said that this was our home. That was a private domicile and at the time our bass player panicked and they searched that without a warrant too.
Bobby: It wasn’t there.
James: No body was there to give permission. We actually currently in a lawsuit with the Kayell County sheriff department over the incident.
Xuan: That’s still going on?
James: Yeah.
Xuan: That was in 2014 when that happened?
Bobby: Yeah think so.
Xuan: That’s a long time.
James: Yeah, the legal system.
Q: I have listened to Police State and read its lyrics. I have a lyric here “They’ll break you down but you’ll give them the tools”. What did you guys mean by that?
Darrick: James, he wrote that line.
James: Yeah, I wrote that one. I started off saying “Where the cash go, I think we all know, straight into technology tracking you on your self-phone. They’ll break you down but you’ll give them the tools.” It’s kind of like I feel that as citizens I don’t feel that I’m ultimately a victim of oppression or anything. But I think that the American people have been beaten down and personally in that song that when a lot of people see police officers they don’t think cool I’m safe there’s a police officer here. They think oh crap there’s a police officer here, I better not mess up. So I think giving them the tools is sub-missing the thought crime of the way you feel in front of law enforcement or government officials or things like that.
Xuan: So that kind of feeds into, or make them more powerful I guess?
James: I think so. Yeah.
Q: Recently there has been a lot of police aggression and police brutality and stuff like that. How do you think these things relate to Police State?
Bobby: I don’t think the brutality aspect of it really relates to the song so much as the abuse of power.
Xuan: So that song is about the abuse of power?
Bobby: Yeah.
James: The song is actually written like, I meant like there has always been police brutality in the news and stuff like that but like a lot of the later, most recent stuff, the song was written well before that. I think there’s a lot of things that tied into it that just kind of happened in coincidence but [the song] definitely more about abuse of power. Specifically, for us it was about those incidences like in Austin and
Cleveland.
Q: What’s your favorite food?
James: I like rice-based dishes. Honestly I think there’s nothing better than a good stir-fry. Mall Chinese food definitely haha is the top of the list.
Darrick: All about seafood. Makin’ my business when we come down here to get like shrimp, stuff that’s close to the sea.
James: You can get seafood in Cleveland but nothing like (here).
Darrick: It’s not the same when it’s you know, right out of the ocean.
Bobby: [I] just like rare steak man. It’s gotta be rare though.
Q: Do you guys eat well though? Even when you are travelling?
Bobby: Depends on if you mean eat well as in healthy or..
James: Sometimes a lot of the venues that we play at will like feed us and that’s awesome. Sometimes we’ll order a pizza but then sometimes you can order a steak from the restaurant so it’s just depends. Personal favorite of mine on the road is a can of black beans with some tuna in it mixed up with some hot sauce. Willis likes canned Spaghettios or Chef Boyardee stuff, but cold because there’s no microwave.
Derrick: A lot of peanut butter and jelly, oh yes.
Bobby: and a steady diet of wild berry pop tarts.
Derrick: And mountain dew on tap.
Bobby: If only haha.
Xuan: Sounds like the life of the artist.
James: Living the dream as they say it.
Their new full-length album “Go Down With The Ship” is in production and will hopefully be released soon. To learn more about Tropidelic, check out their website as well as their Instagram.
