The Wailers featuring Aston “Familyman” Barrett & Mystic Roots

The Brick Works housed an epic show last Tuesday. Aston “Familyman” Barrett and The Wailers, responsible for spreading reggae music across the globe, brought their classic riddims to our small town after hitting Sac on Friday.
The show sparked up with Chico’s own Mystic Roots. They pumped out some of their classic hip-hop / reggae tunes with many people in the crowd singing along. Promoting their new album, they introduced some new vibrations that were very tight. The plateau of the performance occurred when the band played a melting pot of covers, including a Sugar Minot tune, “Murder She Wrote,” and a smooth transition into “Physical Attraction.”
After a couple Jamaican teas at Panama’s, I was ready to cut the rug. Understand, this is the band playing on Marley albums from ’73 on. People should geek-out about this. It took a couple of minutes for the drummer to finish his spliff, and then it was on. They poured two instrumental jams out through incredible trombone and sax melodies. Finally, the sax player introduced Aston “Familyman” Barrett on bass. This is the rastaman credited for assembling The Wailers, being the bandleader, and writing / producing a good portion of Marley’s most popular music. Although they opened their performance with “Lively Up Yourself,” the majority of the songs were from Marley’s more political genre. Hits such as “Burnin & Lootin,” “Catch a Fire,” “Rastaman Vibration” and “Slave Driver” brought past and present Jamaican frustrations to Chico. The band is currently touring with a singer who looks and sounds very similar to Bob himself. At one point he chanted, “There will be no peace without justice.” (I got a little skeered). Toward the middle of the show the band started the intro to “War,” which sent a few dreds into frenzy. The whole crowd was jumping up and down, realizing the current situations that face us domestically and in foreign lands. The irony occurred when some crazy baldhead and a dred got in an argument about space and bar morality. Peace, Dude! This was a great show filled with historical and musical virtuosos.
– Ryan Moore

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