Cuban Cohiba To Join Life Teachings Tour with Chuck Fenda
Capsicum Records' Cuban Cohiba has been invited to join his long-time friend and fellow reggae artist Chuck Fenda Whitehead on the Life Teachings Tour, beginning February 1, 2012 in California, Oregon and Washington states. Subsequent dates are being planned to take them deeper into the Southwest including Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas. and other Gulf ports. After a two-week break they will tour the east coast from Florida to Maine and New Hampshire, then Europe and Africa, and then come back to the U.K. to play the Hard Rock Café in London.
“Thanks for looking out for me and for giving me such a big link with Budweiser,” Fenda wrote in a note to the Cigar Man. “I’ll never forget this. You’ve always been there for me from when i was living in Hartford. The band knows your music already. You’re the man right now. You taught me a lot in music so I’m not shocked to see you mashing up the place…I remember when you had me meet Peter Tosh and Bob Marley -- I still think I’m dreaming -- how Tosh would shout at you, ‘bumba clat, hold the notes better’ and you’d sit there until you got it right. I’d shake like a wet puppy when Tosh would shout. My feet got wet. But, see, it pays off now for you, being a humble.boy. You’ve helped a lot of people in music."
Listed below are the February 2012 shows already booked according to Antoinette Ennis, Manager of Livin Fire Records’ Desires Enterprise Ltd.
-- February 1: Ashkenaz Music & Dance Community Center, 1317 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94702
-- February 2: Arcata Theatre, 1036 G St, Arcata, CA 95521
-- February 3: The Provolt Grange, 14458 Williams HWY, Provolt, Oregon
-- February 4: Club Sur, 2901 1st Ave S., Seatle, Washington 98314
-- February 5: Mt Tabor Theater, 4811 SE Hawthorne Blove, Portland, OR 97214"
Cuban has been incredibly busy between his tour commitments and studio recordings," said Roger Meltzer, Capsicum Records' CEO and Director of A&R. "He's inexhaustable. He had just returned from a tour of Cuba and the Eastern Caribbean, when he opened for Mavado's "Best of Me" tour in Bridgeport CT on December 1, co-promoted by Bojangles and One Umbrella Entertainment, Movado; Cuban wowed the sold-out audience, and was immediately invited to perform at the TropicalFete Countdown Concert in New York on December 17, 2011.
Keran Deterville (left) interviews Cuban Cohiba and Capsicum CEO Roger Meltzer @ Tropicalfete.com Countdown performance
"Then it was right back to the studio to record his parts of the recently announced comedy duet, "Don't Cry," with dancehall princess Tiana," Meltzer noted. Cuban is also working on a dancehall version of "Talkin' To The Wall", an r&b song Meltzer co-penned with Cuban's fellow Capsicum artist Sal Anthony and renowned writer-producer-arranger Bruce Hawes for the late McFadden and Whitehead, who were Meltzer's primary staff mentors at Philadelphia International Records.
Both songs feature the bass work of the incomparable Derrick Barnett and are co-produced by Meltzer with 5-time Calypso Monarch Joseph Everton "Reality" Weekes and Osborne "Ifield" Joseph. Meltzer credits his co-producers with creating much of the Hartford-based indie label’s unique reggae-in-fusion sound, which Jamaican icon radio deejay Richie B has dubbed “roots on the bottom, and pop on the top.”
Derrick Barnett
Even while touring world-wide with Yellowman, Ziggy & Melody Makers and Toots Hibbert, Barnett was also the production wizard behind many hits for other reggae legends such as Dennis Brown, Beres Hammond, Black Uhuru, Cocoa Tea, Freddie McGregor, Pinchers, Tiger, Adm. Bailey, Lt. Stichie, Ninjaman, Lady Saw, Mikey Spice, Luciano, Richie Stevens, Buju Banton, Wayne Wonder, Kymani Marley, Cobra, and Sanchez. Barnett has also shared the same stage with many stars of international fame and acclaim, such as: George Benson, Lou Rawls, Natalie Cole, James Ingram, Jeffrey Osbourne, Anita Baker, Chaka Khan, The Manhattans, The Dells, Biggie Smalls, Wyclef Jean, P. Diddy, Little Kim, Missy Elliot, Busta Rhymes, Ludacris, Fat Joe, Queen Latifah, Eve, Erika Badoo and Lauren Hill.
While on tour, Cuban learned that pull-up (replay) requests for "Born on Third Base", Cuban's second hit from the label's inaugural Reggae-In-Fusion Album #1, co-written by Meltzer and Anthony and co-produced by Meltzer and "Ifield," literally and figuratively stopped DJ Raven's live interview with Meltzer in its tracks.
"I've been in this business for 34 years and it's the first time I've ever had an interview come to an end quite like this one," says Meltzer, "and certainly not in an international forum."
DJ Raven and Meltzer had discussed her interest in doing a set devoted to Capsicum Records LLC songs and artists for Sunday November 20 on her weekly broadcast. The show is carried on www.reggaeairways.co.uk and www.kronikradio.com and is now also simulcast on 100.7-FM in Manchester U.K.and on Kronik Radio UFDV 87.9-FM in Kingston, Jamaica.
"Raven told me that like many other DJs, she gets tired of playing the same artists year in and year out, and what she enjoys most is the opportunity to introduce her listeners to new talent. We arranged for a 'skype' link so she could conduct a live interview with me during the set, so I could fill in the backstory behind the various selections she wanted to play.
"Earlier she had asked me if there was anything I especially wanted to focus on, but with all the talented artists who have worked so hard to put product on our label I told her just to play her favorites from the inaugural CD or from the singles we have released since then,and I would ad lib my commentary. I had no idea which songs she would play, so it was like going to a pot luck dinner where you don't what they're serving but you know the food's all good," Meltzer explained. "I'd hear the first few bars of a song playing in the background and introduce the song and the artist on the fly."
As the broadcast began, Raven told her listeners to call in on a special number, let the phone ring once and then hang up if they wanted her to "pull up" (replay) the song currently being played.
"Raven's choice of "Born On Third Base" surprised me, as I expected her to play Cuban's other song on the album - "Enuf Is Enough" - an indictment of gun violence that features bits of commentary from world-renowned Shabba Ranks, and which became very popular during the social unrest in Tivoli Gardens in West Kingston in 2010," explained Meltzer.
"Plus several other reggae artists had declined to record "Third Base", a fusion of folk, funk and reggae, insisting that reggae fans were passionate about cricket and soccer, and wouldn't understand or relate to the central baseball metaphor - "born on third base and swore he hit a triple". While it was actually football coach Barry Switzer who coined the phrase to describe one of his own self-centered players, the song really has nothing to do with baseball or football or any other sport; I used it to depict how wealth and privilege perpetuate themselves with social capital, and the arrogance that engenders. I had W. Bush in mind when I co-wrote it with Anthony and co-produced it with Joseph and was always grateful for and delighted by Cuban's enthusiasm for the song and the 'attitude' he brought to it.
"As Raven is British, I was thrilled when she started playing it during her show while I was on-air with her. Then, midway through the song, the one-ring pull-up calls started, and just kept coming. At first Raven would patiently play out the song and then re-start it. After a while, she'd just stop whenever a one ring call came in, and would re-start the song right there. She finally had to tell her listeners she was out of time, and promised to dedicate another show to Capsicum Records with Meltzer online very soon.
"Of course I've heard of someone 'stopping the show,' and I've been to stage shows where the audience just won't let a performer end his set without endless encores, but I've never heard this happen on a radio program before -- certainly not to me. I called Cuban afterwards and he said it was a first for him, too. We were as dumbfounded as we were flattered. He told me the song is always a big hit at his concerts."
DJ Raven
Nov. 21 Manchester, U.K.) ""Born On Third Base" by Cuban was loved on my show yesterday on UFDV 87.9fm in Kingston. This is THE ONE!! A dj in Gambia just asked me for all these songs." From DJ Raven's Facebook.com/musical sunshine.
Musically a “late bloomer” by industry standards, the Montego Bay/St. James parish of Jamaica native waited until he was in his high school band before he found his true love was music. But right after high school, Cuban met reggae icon Toots and the Maytals and was hypnotized by the way they played. He soon met another reggae immortal, Peter Tosh, who would become his best friend and mentor. Tosh not only taught Cuban how to hold a note and how to harmonize with it, but also how to promote a show and the “business of the business.”
By the late 80s, Cuban had formed his own band as the lead singer of Rhythm Force, touring with Horace Andy, Josey Wales and others. In the early 90s, though, Cuban decided he wanted to try his hand at promoting live concerts, so he put both his band and singing on hold, working instead with every major reggae artist out of Jamaica. Cuban single-handedly put Connecticut on the reggae concert tour map, so much so that the Mayor of Hartford proclaimed every August 15th from 2008 on to be Ardie Cuban Wallace Day and presented him with a key to the city. The subject of two major NY Times interviews, concert promotion was what he’d been doing exclusively until “Enuf Is Enough” was released in Jamaica and New England to debut his return to the performing side of the business..
Added at the last minute to the album, "Enuf Is Enough" reflects the community’s helpless frustration and anguish over the senseless gun violence that plagues its urban streets, capturing its repetitive and numbing impact in an original fusion of southern hip-hop and dancehall reggae with an A-Kon-influenced r&b ballad feel in the midst of a New Orleans jazz funeral procession, its beat punctuated by bursts of automatic weapons, squealing tires, condolence calls, and pealing church cemetery bells, its all too timely message reinforced by the commentary of the inimitable Shabba Ranks. With its message about society’s tolerance of gun violence on urban streets and even rural campuses, the song gained a second surge of airplay in Jamaica when civil unrest and a subsequent national state of emergency erupted in Tivoli Gardens in West Kingston in the spring of 2010.
"But it’s not true that his song was written in response to that event,” says Meltzer who co-produced the song with "Ifield". “The song had been released in February of 2010 and had been playing on Jamaican radio stations for three months prior to Tivoli. The song was actually inspired by the fatal 2009 shooting of an infant in the crossfire of rival drug gangs during the Caribbean Independence Day Parade in Hartford CT in the US. Cuban brought me the song two days later, and Ifield and I spent considerable time building a track that reflected the tragic feel and sounds of this all-too-familiar bloodshed on our streets.”
Even while touring world-wide with Yellowman, Ziggy & Melody Makers and Toots Hibbert, Barnett was also the production wizard behind many hits for other reggae legends such as Dennis Brown, Beres Hammond, Black Uhuru, Cocoa Tea, Freddie McGregor, Pinchers, Tiger, Adm. Bailey, Lt. Stichie, Ninjaman, Lady Saw, Mikey Spice, Luciano, Richie Stevens, Buju Banton, Wayne Wonder, Kymani Marley, Cobra, and Sanchez. Barnett has also shared the same stage with many stars of international fame and acclaim, such as: George Benson, Lou Rawls, Natalie Cole, James Ingram, Jeffrey Osbourne, Anita Baker, Chaka Khan, The Manhattans, The Dells, Biggie Smalls, Wyclef Jean, P. Diddy, Little Kim, Missy Elliot, Busta Rhymes, Ludacris, Fat Joe, Queen Latifah, Eve, Erika Badoo and Lauren Hill.
While on tour, Cuban learned that pull-up (replay) requests for "Born on Third Base", Cuban's second hit from the label's inaugural Reggae-In-Fusion Album #1, co-written by Meltzer and Anthony and co-produced by Meltzer and "Ifield," literally and figuratively stopped DJ Raven's live interview with Meltzer in its tracks.
"I've been in this business for 34 years and it's the first time I've ever had an interview come to an end quite like this one," says Meltzer, "and certainly not in an international forum."
DJ Raven and Meltzer had discussed her interest in doing a set devoted to Capsicum Records LLC songs and artists for Sunday November 20 on her weekly broadcast. The show is carried on www.reggaeairways.co.uk and www.kronikradio.com and is now also simulcast on 100.7-FM in Manchester U.K.and on Kronik Radio UFDV 87.9-FM in Kingston, Jamaica.
"Raven told me that like many other DJs, she gets tired of playing the same artists year in and year out, and what she enjoys most is the opportunity to introduce her listeners to new talent. We arranged for a 'skype' link so she could conduct a live interview with me during the set, so I could fill in the backstory behind the various selections she wanted to play.
"Earlier she had asked me if there was anything I especially wanted to focus on, but with all the talented artists who have worked so hard to put product on our label I told her just to play her favorites from the inaugural CD or from the singles we have released since then,and I would ad lib my commentary. I had no idea which songs she would play, so it was like going to a pot luck dinner where you don't what they're serving but you know the food's all good," Meltzer explained. "I'd hear the first few bars of a song playing in the background and introduce the song and the artist on the fly."
As the broadcast began, Raven told her listeners to call in on a special number, let the phone ring once and then hang up if they wanted her to "pull up" (replay) the song currently being played.
"Raven's choice of "Born On Third Base" surprised me, as I expected her to play Cuban's other song on the album - "Enuf Is Enough" - an indictment of gun violence that features bits of commentary from world-renowned Shabba Ranks, and which became very popular during the social unrest in Tivoli Gardens in West Kingston in 2010," explained Meltzer.
"Plus several other reggae artists had declined to record "Third Base", a fusion of folk, funk and reggae, insisting that reggae fans were passionate about cricket and soccer, and wouldn't understand or relate to the central baseball metaphor - "born on third base and swore he hit a triple". While it was actually football coach Barry Switzer who coined the phrase to describe one of his own self-centered players, the song really has nothing to do with baseball or football or any other sport; I used it to depict how wealth and privilege perpetuate themselves with social capital, and the arrogance that engenders. I had W. Bush in mind when I co-wrote it with Anthony and co-produced it with Joseph and was always grateful for and delighted by Cuban's enthusiasm for the song and the 'attitude' he brought to it.
"As Raven is British, I was thrilled when she started playing it during her show while I was on-air with her. Then, midway through the song, the one-ring pull-up calls started, and just kept coming. At first Raven would patiently play out the song and then re-start it. After a while, she'd just stop whenever a one ring call came in, and would re-start the song right there. She finally had to tell her listeners she was out of time, and promised to dedicate another show to Capsicum Records with Meltzer online very soon.
"Of course I've heard of someone 'stopping the show,' and I've been to stage shows where the audience just won't let a performer end his set without endless encores, but I've never heard this happen on a radio program before -- certainly not to me. I called Cuban afterwards and he said it was a first for him, too. We were as dumbfounded as we were flattered. He told me the song is always a big hit at his concerts."
DJ Raven
Nov. 21 Manchester, U.K.) ""Born On Third Base" by Cuban was loved on my show yesterday on UFDV 87.9fm in Kingston. This is THE ONE!! A dj in Gambia just asked me for all these songs." From DJ Raven's Facebook.com/musical sunshine.
Musically a “late bloomer” by industry standards, the Montego Bay/St. James parish of Jamaica native waited until he was in his high school band before he found his true love was music. But right after high school, Cuban met reggae icon Toots and the Maytals and was hypnotized by the way they played. He soon met another reggae immortal, Peter Tosh, who would become his best friend and mentor. Tosh not only taught Cuban how to hold a note and how to harmonize with it, but also how to promote a show and the “business of the business.”
By the late 80s, Cuban had formed his own band as the lead singer of Rhythm Force, touring with Horace Andy, Josey Wales and others. In the early 90s, though, Cuban decided he wanted to try his hand at promoting live concerts, so he put both his band and singing on hold, working instead with every major reggae artist out of Jamaica. Cuban single-handedly put Connecticut on the reggae concert tour map, so much so that the Mayor of Hartford proclaimed every August 15th from 2008 on to be Ardie Cuban Wallace Day and presented him with a key to the city. The subject of two major NY Times interviews, concert promotion was what he’d been doing exclusively until “Enuf Is Enough” was released in Jamaica and New England to debut his return to the performing side of the business..
Added at the last minute to the album, "Enuf Is Enough" reflects the community’s helpless frustration and anguish over the senseless gun violence that plagues its urban streets, capturing its repetitive and numbing impact in an original fusion of southern hip-hop and dancehall reggae with an A-Kon-influenced r&b ballad feel in the midst of a New Orleans jazz funeral procession, its beat punctuated by bursts of automatic weapons, squealing tires, condolence calls, and pealing church cemetery bells, its all too timely message reinforced by the commentary of the inimitable Shabba Ranks. With its message about society’s tolerance of gun violence on urban streets and even rural campuses, the song gained a second surge of airplay in Jamaica when civil unrest and a subsequent national state of emergency erupted in Tivoli Gardens in West Kingston in the spring of 2010.
"But it’s not true that his song was written in response to that event,” says Meltzer who co-produced the song with "Ifield". “The song had been released in February of 2010 and had been playing on Jamaican radio stations for three months prior to Tivoli. The song was actually inspired by the fatal 2009 shooting of an infant in the crossfire of rival drug gangs during the Caribbean Independence Day Parade in Hartford CT in the US. Cuban brought me the song two days later, and Ifield and I spent considerable time building a track that reflected the tragic feel and sounds of this all-too-familiar bloodshed on our streets.”