It was Tuesday and an unusually hot summer day for Western Washington in Seattle. I had the good fortune of meeting with a fun Canadian reggae band outside the venue Chop Suey. There to meet me was Eon, the friendly, welcoming ,and talkative bassist of Bedouin Soundclash. He kindly offered me his Canadian flag chair and we sat outside in the summer sun in an alley discussing Seattle venues and border patrol into the U.S. until we began the interview.

Thank you for your time in coming out for a brief interview with us. Would you please state your name and role in the band?

Hey, I’m Eon Sinclair and I play bass for Bedouin Soundclash.

Alright thank you. How was it touring with a band like No Doubt? How does this tour differ from other tours you’ve been on?

Ha! Well, this is probably more comfortable than any other tour we’ve been on [laughs]. No Doubt, production-wise is the biggest show that we’ve been apart of I think. They have about four or five trucks and trailers that they’ve been using and each band member has their own bus and there is a lot of crew and staff. So it’s a bigger show than what we’ve been apart of in the past and a higher profile one because Gwen Stefani is pretty well known [laughs]. But I guess other than that, it’s just getting used to playing in arenas and big amphitheaters, we really don’t get to do that often. We’ve played amphitheater shows in the past with Ben Harper, Damien Marley, and a couple other bands but it’s been cool touring through arenas. I’d say that being on stages like that through Canada, like Vancouver and Toronto, stopping at arenas is new and the biggest change and the coolest part about it.

So you’ve played numerous festivals since your debut album. How does the festival atmosphere compare with a venue? Which do you like playing more?

The thing about festivals and venues is that they both offer different pros and cons, so I’d say that I like them equally. Festivals are cool because you get to see a lot of different music in the same day that can inspire you for your performance. Also people that go to festivals — festivalgoers – are typically more open-minded to music so they’ll come out and catch your show and you can get a lot of fans quickly and people who are there to see a band like Ben Harper might happen to walk by a stage where we’re playing and see the similarities, stop, and get an interest in our music. So it’s a good way to make new fans. Venues are cool though because the fans that come to venues for your shows, they’re your fans. So they know the songs and the music and create more atmosphere. You can control the sound a lot more since it’s inside on a big system so you can actually do a lot more effects-wise and a little more interesting stuff that way. Really it’s about playing for people who want to hear you. I’d play in a cardboard box for a couple people who are interested in what we are doing. To the guys, it’d be a good show, you know what I mean? If we’re playing in a venue and the people don’t want to be there, it’s a bad show or a hard show.

Which songs are your favorite to play live? Were there any songs that you enjoyed or had a more difficult time recording the studio?

Hmm, which songs do I like to play live… We have a  song called ‘Bells Of 59′ on Street Gospels that I really like. Jay wrote the lyrics about his grandparents who both passed away within about year of each other. They were older, but he had a really good relationship with them and I knew them too so it’s kind of a special song. I really like playing ‘Gyasi Went Home’ live as well because it gets the energy up in the crowd and both of my parents are from Guyana so that Soca influence is really strong in that song, so I like that. Recording-wise, whatever songs we had in the recording situation, we line them up beforehand and get them in an order of attack as to how we’re going to record them. We try to record songs that we really know well early. While we start to get comfortable, we work on songs that are a little more complex or harder. So I think the song ‘Jealousy And The Get Free’ on the last record is like two songs put together and that one took a little time figuring out how we were going to do it because Vernon Buckley didn’t write any lyrics for his part so he kind of freestyled for about ten minutes and we had to go through all of his stuff, cut it into a song, did our little stuff, cut that into a song. It came out well, I really like that one. We’ve been working on this Bedouin versus Bad Brains mash-up album and those songs were probably the most involved because we’re taking original Bad Brains recordings and trying to play over it and then transitioning between them as we’re writing so there’s a lot going on with that. So those took a while to record. I guess you just have to record what you can. It was easier with songs we’ve been playing for a long time to record like on Street Gospels, ‘Walls Fall Down’ we’ve played already and that makes that a bit easier.

As a Canadian band who initially gained popularity in Canada, how do your home country shows compare to those in the United States and England?

Well, it’s interesting. We sort of spend lots of time playing in Canada, trying to build a fanbase. When we started to make a break in Canada, it sort of happened at the same time in England. So the first time we went to England, it was sort of like where we were at in Canada. Shows in Canada and England are quite similar. English fans love to move their hands, to jump and sing along, and they know the songs. The atmosphere is very festive. You can see the footage from Glastonbury or the Leeds Festival. They usually come out more just to enjoy the show, whereas in Canada and in the State, you know in North America, people are a bit more reserved about it and come to the shows like “Okay, you have to kind of impress me, I’m coming here to have you give me a good time.” As opposed to England where the people are just like “I’m going to have fun no matter what.” Shows in the States are growing steadily but it’s hard for a Canadian act to come down to the States. There’s so much competition. There are so many bands from America trying to do it that know the scene but you know every other band in the world is trying to come to America and break. If you don’t break in America, it’s really hard to sustain a good career. But things are going a lot better. For me, it’s mostly a size thing. America is so large so we’re going to spend a lot of time here next year.

You’ve done a great job as far as Canada, and I think you’re doing a great job here in the U.S. You’ve been down here a few times, doing well.

There’s a lot of places where we have really good shows, just like Canada. It’s just such a big place. It’s so much fun going around it and there’s always a good place to go. It’s just trying to find a way to come back to it.

How do you feel about the album Root Fire eight years later? Many artists tend to play less and less from earlier portions of their discography. What is your take on this? Do you still play songs from it live?

It’s funny because we never really considered it an album. We met in school and we started playing songs together and we had all these songs, about fifteen or sixteen songs and we just recorded something to have for ourselves and for our friends and family who wanted copies. So to me, it was never really an album but a collection of songs. But still, there are some great songs on it. It’s hard to listen to it though because I remember what we were intending on doing at the time and now knowing what we are capable of doing makes us realize what we could have done with those songs, and make them a lot different. But at the same time, I feel it was something for that moment in time and I appreciate the fact that we were able to do that when did it. We play… I’m trying to think… occasionally we’ll play ‘National Water’. Every now and then we’ll play that song, but we typically don’t play too much from it. ‘Santa Monica’ was on that which a lot of people tend to like. Jay’s rerecording it for a solo project he’s working on as well which is more of a folk-rock sound than what we do which is more reggae/dance. So those two but yeah, we really don’t play too much from it anymore. I think a lot of that is for the reason that I already said; it’s really for the ourselves at the beginning. We were trying to find the sound that we wanted to have — we’re still trying to find it — but with every album, we get closer to it. The further you get from those first records, the less likely you are to reach back for it. But it’d be cool to pull it out sometime and maybe do a whole set of Root Fire for fans back where we started or whatever.

That’s a great answer, I think a lot of people don’t realize what Root Fire really was. All the research that I did pointed me to say that it was just the debut album. Moving along, the song ‘Hush’ is a neat take on a traditional tune. How did you come to the conclusion of adding it to Street Gospels?

Well, Jay came up with it. We talked about how we really wanted to add a little bit of gospel influence to the music. We were really into gospel music at the time. I grew up with a lot of gospel. My parents both grew up in church. It’s a traditional song that lots of people know and Jay had heard it and he liked it. And we knew were going to be working with Vern and Maytones, and we thought his voice would lend itself well with that song. So we recorded it a cappella sort of as a bridge to lead it into ‘Bells Of 59′. ‘Bells Of 59′ was about his grandparents passing away. We try to visualize the albums conceptually, and this was about the celebration of life. So we thought we could put it on the album in that way.

Yeah, that’s a really cool idea. I had the opportunity to hear the new EP, Where Have All the Played Songs Gone? and have enjoyed it, along with the new song ‘On My Block’. ‘On My Block’ is a bit different from your previous material with the bolstering horn section. Is this along the lines of what we’d hear from a new album?

I think it’s definitely closer to the idea of what we’re going to look into trying to do with the new record. But there are so many thoughts of where we could take the music now. ‘On My Block’ is definitely a step in that direction. We’ve added the horns to the band which has been a really fun process and a learning curve. So ‘On My Block’ is what we’ve been doing, it’s got a little bit of a soul, kind of like a southerny, country-reggae feel with horns. I don’t know if it’s exactly like everything we’d do in the future. We have a couple ideas floating around with some more electronics, some involve horns, some don’t involve horns, some that will have the horns doing unorthodox things that most people don’t really hear horns doing. I mean we’re still in the process of writing. After the tour’s done, we’re going to write and try to record by the end of the year. We’ll have a better sense of where we want to be after all this touring.

That’s great news. What is it about Darryl Jennifer that makes him your preferred producer? How did that bond form, and do you plan on working with him for as long as you can?

We met Darryl through our old manager who was a promoter in Montreal and he was a big Bad Brains fan. He put on Bad Brains shows from the early 80s and become good friends with them, and so when he started working with us, got some of our material knowing that the producer would like that sort of thing. But after, we came to know Darryl and he became a really good friend of the band, like a mentor and an advisor. He helped us out with our sound, making sure we spent time on spaces between notes, as much as the notes that we played. It’s not about filling up the sound, he’s not a producer trying to put a million things into it. It’s very sparse. And that means a lot to us because you get to hear what everyone is doing all the time. With that in mind, he’s been a great producer, a friend we’ve been lucky to have. I don’t know about the future. We still have a good relationship, but at the same time, he’s an artist and he’s got solo stuff and Bad Brains which he’s in, and working as a producer. We understand the idea of working with a bunch of producers. It really depends on what songs we like. We try to find the right person to have the kind of sound we have. Once we write, we’ll be able to figure it out and it’ll sell, or maybe not.

Is there anything you’d like to say about the Bad Brains/Bedouin Soundclash mash-up?

Yeah, it took a lot of work. It was a very cool thing. It was a very interesting project to be in. I would really like you to hear it. I mean Bad Brains is very eclectic band and it was a great opportunity to be able to work with their music. You know Darryl was really into the idea. We had access to a lot of a cappellas, or interesting songs that weren’t released or didn’t blow up and so we just took those songs and our songs, and tried to find ways to construct them in a new way. It was definitely a very creative art project. We didn’t do it thinking “Bedouin fans, if you loved Streep Gospels, you’re going to love this.” It’s more…this is what we’re into. If you want to know why we make albums, this is part of the reason. The bands wanted to show how what we do and what they do make sense together. Because sometimes people don’t realize how close reggae and punk is, but they are really closely related. I mean it’s a really cool project, we’re still working on it. We’ve recording a lot of stuff that we’re still mixing. Hopefully, we’ll get it out soon and people will dig it.

On Sun On the Sand, we have a tradition of an extra question for fun in interviews, and here’s the one I’ve written for you: Would you rather have to cartwheel everywhere you went, or be cursed having to take two steps backward for every three steps forward?

Hmm, that’s a good question. I think for myself, I think taking two steps backward and three steps forward would be easier. I guess you’d still be making slow progress [laughs] and I’m not the most nimble dude. I think I’d probably get really dizzy and I like to go for runs and walks so I don’t know if I could handle cartwheels [laughs]. I think I’d go with that.

Well, thank you for your time.

Yeah no problem man, thank you.

Interview conducted by Jacob Price