Interview with Russ "Disciples" Brown at Backyard Studio, Tolworth, England. Interviewed by Jakob Levi on the 19:th of May 2005.

The Disciples first came into the UK reggae scene introduced by Jah Shaka running several of their tunes as dubplates in the middle of the eighties and later released three of their albums. The Disciples started out as a duo making mainly dub music and later formed a soundsystem by the name of Boomshackalacka. Although good feedback it wasn't until nearly a decade later they took the matter of real involvement and setting up a record label for themself seriously. Over the years Disciples have left a steady trail of good vocal and dub releases on a number of different labels mainly their own Boomshackalacka and Backayard Momvements. Now two decades later of being in the business Disciples is one man strong with Russ D carrying on the legacy.

Guidelight Movement : Greetings Russ Disciples!

Russ Disciples: Respect.

GLM: Could you introduce yourself for those who don't know you and your music ?

RD: My name is Russ. I go by the name of Russ D for Disciples. I have been going since 1985-86 making reggae music. At that time specifically dub music and we had a introduction to it by Jah Shaka, who we linked with in -86. He gave us the name Disciples and that´s who we are. At that time it was myself and my brother Lol.

GLM: How did the name Disciples come about ?

RD: That was literally Shaka asking us at the time if we had a name and we didn't. And we couldn't really think of one being two white guys who wasn't thinking too dread or something like that. So he said leave it to me, I'll come up with a name. We went to a dance one time and he was running one of our tunes and I heard him on the mic saying: -Yes, this one Disciples in the area. So from that we knew who we were.

GLM: How did you linked up with Jah Shaka ?

RD: Well, me and my brother were long time reggae fans anyway. Him earlier than me because he's older than me, five years older, and he really gave me the introduction to reggae. I started listening to it myself around 1978, but just a listener. You know a fan. Collecting records and all of that, to this day I still do that. But about -85 I started getting interested in making music and stuff. I picked up bass guitar years earlier when I was about fifteen years old and my brother could play rhythm guitar. But I was just experimenting with things, particularly I was experimenting with a couple of cassette decks and putting a microphone to different speakers, you know. Putting it in the bass speaker, putting it in the treble speaker, putting it in the midrange speaker. Doing my own little funny remix. It sounded quite interesting but after a while it was a bit limiting. So I added some cheap keyboards with a little drum machine on it. So I started doing things, bouncing rhythms between two different cassette decks. Doing overdubs and stuff. Building it up and all of that. That was kind of interesting but still very limiting as well. Then I see on the market that there was all of these little porta studios coming out. Four track cassette recorders. Which was kind of expensive but I managed to purchase one on higher purchase and get myself a little drum machine. Go that route and stuff.

Them first efforts were pretty terrible. A joke really. I got them on a cassette tape somewhere and it's like no one hears that, but you have to learn somewhere. We had no one showing us nothing and not part of a particular scene, it was just me and my brother. In fact in the beginning it was just me who was interested in recording stuff. But over a period of time it was starting to get a little better and I was always interested in it so I got another little bit of equipment and done this done that. My brother started to hear some things I've been doing by myself and he was kind of, that's coming along. So he come in to it playing rhythm guitar and we share things like melodicas, banging out bits of percussion and stuff.

When you hear it off a tape it sounds very clean and we always loved our music coming from records with all the hizz, pops and crackles. I knew about dubplates so I thought for myself that I got to take myself to a cutting house and get a dubplate cut for myself. Did this one and had like four different rhythm tracks on it. Just one mix of each. So that was interesting hearing all of that. I was going around to a lot of recordshops at the time, but there was one particular recordshop in Camden Town called Flash Forward. There were three guys who used to work in there and they were all big Shaka fans and stuff. If you walked into the shop they would run a Shaka session tape and like that. Myself and my brother knew who Shaka was, we had some of his records, but we were never into that soundsystem scene. We never been to dances and things. We lived out in the suburbs. Although we knew of Shaka we didn't know he was still running dances, because that was a thing you knew him for from the seventies times and stuff.

I took this dubplate up to them to get an opinon from them what they thought of it and stuff and they go like yeah it's ok, you should take it to Shaka. So ok. Then there was another recordshop Peckings Studio One recordshop down Shepards Bush. Peckings the old man was like a long time partner with Coxsone Dodd and all this. But his son, a younger guy Chris, used to work in there some times and I was going down there all the time because I was a big Studio One fan. So I took the dubplate down to him and he said exactly the same thing, you should take it to Shaka. At this time Shaka had an arts and crafts culture shop in New Cross. So me and my brother got on our bikes and drow down to New Cross. Shaka wasn't in the shop but one of his boxboys was, who kind of worked in the shop during the week. So we left the dubplate with him and he said come back saturday and Shaka will be in here. So we go home and wait until saturday. Come back on saturday. Walk in to the shop and there is Shaka standing there holding his dubplate, then looking at us saying you made this and we say yeah. So he say I want four pieces of each track and everything else you might got. We were like what ? We were only looking for an opinion. We didn't know about the scene or the soundsystem scene. We wasn't familiar of that at all really. He gave us a flyer for the next dance and said come along to the next dance. So the following week there we are trumbling down to Peckham Selfhelp Center. Real novices at that time because it said on the flyer that it started at 9 PM. Well, anyone who knew Shaka knew that that wouldn't be it. So there are me and my brother down there at 9 PM and the venue is blacked out. It's nothing there and we're thinking, what's going on ? And Peckham is not like a great area in the evening to actually sit around, you know what I mean ? So we go into a little café to sit and wait for a while. Then we see a this minivan full of dreads. My brother went up to them and asked if Shaka were coming later and they just nodded. So we waited another hour or so and about half past eleven we see this big van come trumbling up and they start pulling out all the big speakers to stick up in the venue, which was kind of good for us because we went into the venue straight away to see the whole thing from the beginning for the first time. From beginning to end. From them taking up the speakers, doing all the wiring because even to this day Shaka still is old old school. Bare wires connecting the speakers. To see all the cables, all strung up all over the ceiling and all this. Real old traditional style. It was good to see that and even at that time there Shaka still had a lot of his old school boxes there. This big kind of like wardrobe boxes with Shaka carved into them or Jah carved into the front and stuff. It was a good thing to witness and from that time there we was just hooked.

GLM: So how did it devolop from just a dubplate to releasing your first record ?

RD: At that time even for us we were still novices in making music. Most of that we had done up to that time was like do-overs of old tunes we loved. On a couple we were taking a rhythm and sort of tried to twist around this bassline and make it to our own. Even like they used to do at Studio One in the old days, you know. They knock up a rhythm and it becomes popular and it's like, oh we need something similar, so they twist around the bassline and we kind of tried to do a thing like that. Taking a classic tune something like a Freedom Sounds tune "Shackles & Chains", "Lot's Wife" or something. So we get the beat and drum the same and then we twist around the bassline to see if we can make it our own. But we wasn't particulary that good with coming up with our own basslines. But from that first dance suddenly just like boom things just clicked in, because up to that time there we were just used to listening to records at home on our hi-fi's. Not very loud, just regular hi-fi business. We didn't really have the full understanding of what bass was doing on a record.

If you put this interview in and red it I probably said this story in ten other interviews as well. But it was tunes that he (Jah Shaka) played at that first dance there, the one I particulary remember is Johnny Clarke's "Bad days are going". I had it on a twelve inch Greensleeves before that dance but to me on the record it just sounded like a trod along Johnny Clarke tune. No fantastic like King Tubbys 1976 mix like he had done with Bunny Lee. Just a light 1979-80 stepper. It didn't do much for me at that time so I just passed it on, got rid of it, sold it off. Then when it comes to that dance now he's running it and you just hear the power of that tune. Bad days are going away...boom boom boom, you know what I mean ? The whole pressure of it. You just like boom, you understand what that tune was made for. It wasn't made for you to sit at home listening to it in your nice comfortable chair enjoying it with your cup of tea or whatever. It was made for soundsystems. Serious soundsystem pressure. Hearing tunes in that way triggered something in my head. When I came home and was working on my own things, I was doing my stuff in my bedroom at that time, so I couldn't always have it thumping out of my speakers, but I had a good pair of headphones. So I really turned up the bass on them. Graphic eq full up and it was like Shaka in my headphones. Before that when I played on my bass guitar it just sounded like boom boom boom, but now it was sounding BOOM BOOM BOOM! Sounded like being in a dance and it made sense. Your simple little bassline made sense at that volume and things just became easier. Then after some years you get more of an insight of making reggae in a whole and now it's like no problem for me at all, but at that time it was a vital point hearing Shaka for the first time.

GLM: Going back to the last question. How did you go from a dubplate to the actual release of your first LP ?

RD: Well, we were doing it as a hobby at that time. Really a strict hobby. But within the first few months of giving Jah Shaka our tunes he decided he wanted to put an album out with us. We didn't think it was ready, because it was done on a little four track porta studio. It sounded really thin, cheap and all that. So I decided that we should re-do the tracks in another studio. So we went to a local studio, semi professional thing, but it wasn't a reggae studio. The guy who worked there didn't know nothing about reggae. My skills and higher ends on studio equipment was nil, because I had only worked on a little four track. So I couldn't tell him what to do and all of that. So I say I want a big reverb and he gets some big reverb. Sounds wicked in the studio, but when you listen to the tape afterwards when you get home all there is is pure reverb. So I kind of dropped that idea, because it wasn't working at all. I just wasted my time and money.

Shaka keept saying that our stuff sounded like it was recorded on a twenty four track. So we just let him go through with it and he did. But at that time the scene was very very underground. There wasn't so many people putting out tunes at that time especially roots and dub. There was Shaka, Twinkle Brothers and you had a odd few others. The odd kind of Dub Judah tune was out at that time, but still relatively unknown. So for us it was just like ok. We just let Shaka do this thing. But even up to the last album he put out by us, he put out four albums over about four years, even to the last one we were still looking at it as a hobby. We didn't take it seriously at all, because we didn't know the business. We were just fans. We were happy to go to the dance and hear our tunes just mashing up the dance. But by that time around -89-90 the scene had sort of came out of itself. There were people like Manasseh, Sound Iration and they were doing their thing and they were white guys same as us. They were a bit well connected in the business and a bit more savvy in the business like how did to deal with media and all them kind of things. They kind of pushed things into the limelight. Them and Joey J who both were on KISS FM playing the music and it was getting a lot of interest. When we went to Shaka in -86 it was strictly a black crowd. You could count on your hand how many white people there were in the dance. But by that time it was a good portion of white people coming to dances. White people were into the music from a long time but maybe they didn't know or didn't feel safe going into the dances but now all of a sudden it's white people making the music. People talking about it and people going to this and going to that. So everything became a little bit safer and easier for people to get into. So it really kind of lifted and when it come to the early ninties Shaka started playing in the Rocket, which is a univerisity venue, and there you had fifteen hundred students, non reggae people, you know what I mean ? They liked the vibe and all of that but pretty much non black people in the most. Place is full up with crowds of people. It all just made the bubble burst on it. It went over the top of it all. Lot of media attention. Lot of record labels interested in dealing with it all. Still for us it was kind of a hobby, but we thought we got to start take ourself more seriously. We didn't think we could rely on Shaka to be doing our thing for us, because he had his own music going and he had other people he was dealing with like Dread & Fred and Twinkle Brothers. He couldn't release so much, he released a lot of records over the years but he's not a big record company. He's just on the same level as us. So we knew at times it just felt that we kind of was pushing him to release our things and that's not really a good way.

We had a friend who said he wanted to release a twelve inch with us and we had this track called "Prowling Lion". We had done that in about -90-91. We had done some raw mixes and he said he was going to put them out, but things didn't really happen. Couple of years pass by and I decided I got to do it. I got to set up my own little label and release it myself. I got to take things seriously. At the same time I was still working but I knew my job were to come to an end. It was to make me redundant. So it all kind of tide in with me being redundant, putting out this first record and trying to take our whole things more seriously. So a good number of years had passed by before we really did take ourself seriously, although we knew how our music was percecived in the scene. We came to release our first tune. We did the running around and everything were going well. I was kind of nervous of all that running around and stuff because you got to know people. You got to go a recordshop a try to sell your record to him. Especially when it comes your dub tunes were it's like a reggae shop selling mostly Jamaican pre-releases and stuff. So that's a hard one, you know what I mean ? But we did it and the tune sold alright with no other distribution than doing it purely on foot. Although there were distributors around, the didn't know us and wouldn't take our product. So we just carried on like that.

GLM: Ok and when did it go from just dub music to your first vocal release ?

RD: Well, I started doing bits of vocals earlier on maybe from -89. When the odd singer would pass through actually the first one I did was with my good brethren Jonah Dan, who acts like my micman and is a kind of co-partner with one of my labels and stuff. We made the connection about -89 through someone who worked in a recordshop. He came down, wanted to sing and we didn't have no singer so that was alright. The actual first time he came down, because he wasn't too sure of his singing capabilities, he brought Sister Rasheda who was a good friend of his. She was there to kind of coach him on harmonies and stuff like that. But she liked some of the rhythms as well. So we started voicing with her and that must have been about 1990.

My brother were doing a magazine at the time as well, the Boomshackalacka magazine, and he was making a few connections with artists and stuff like that. He did an interview with a singer called Willie Stepper from Creation Steppers, who done stuff with Fred Locks in the early days and Lloydie Coxone and all of that. He must have played some of our rhythms for him because he was kind of interested in voicing tunes. So he came down to the studio as well. So we were voicing quite early. Then from a friend of my brother, Rootsman, up in Bradford, his wife Dayjah at that time was a singer and she loved my rhythms, so we started working together as well. I think it was probably between Dayjah and Sister Rasheda that the first vocal tunes were coming out. Rasheda released a twelve inch with two of the tunes, I think that must have been -91 or maybe -92, which was "Only Jah Worthy" and the back had "Give Jah Praise". So from quite early on we dealt with vocals but still the style of the rhythm was more in a rootsy dub kind of style. It didn't really have the same similarity as what was coming out of Jamaica at that time although I always loved the Jamaican style and was trying to include it to some degree on some tracks, although we were probably still more influenced by the dub thing. But we were doing our thing then and dub at that time were very popular. So we kind of concentrated on that. Plus that I didn't have the financies to bring in other singers on my own label although probably in retrospect I could have. But then at the same time we had just bought a soundsystem and I was paying for it every months as well.

GLM: How did the (Boomshackalacka) soundsystem come about ? Was it just out of interest or was it the power you experienced on your first Shaka dance that caught your attention ?

RD: Well, obviously we loved that. There was no pre-meditated thought of doing a soundsystem. We never really had that vision at all. But because my brother was doing this magazine writting about music he was invited down to a club by Joey J to run a selection. Joey had a regular thing going at a club in Dingwalls, up in Camden Town. So we went down there and on the same night he had a guy called Bob Brooks, which runs Reggae Revive records, spinning a selection and then my brother were spinning a selection. Mostly oldies and stuff. We had the Rasheda tunes of that time on cassette tape and there was a cassette desk in the club so we thought ok. So there's Bob Brooks and my brother licking each others heads off with these old tunes. Some people did know us as Disciples so they kind of thought we were to play some of our own tunes because they were hearing them all down at Shaka and all that. So we thought we give them this, Let's play this Rasheda tune and it kicked up the place, you know what I mean ? So we got really interested in that. Then Joey J started up another thing in Southhall Community Center, a regular kind of event, and invited us down to play on that. There was a asian soundsystem called Eastern Cheer and we was all invited because Southhall is a big asian community and there was always a asian crew who went to Shaka. So he invited us to play, all on Joey J's set, down his place and the first show we did down there was rammed out, five hundred people, you know what I mean ? It was tearing up the place and we were like this is alright. But Joey was always a bit kind of like concerned about his soundsystem because we were trying to get to have some umph and he could have some umph but he was always kind of like your killing the bass Russ. Yeah yeah, but it's the vibes is'nt it ? When he was playing it it was kind of regular but when we came on we kind of lifted up the bass a bit and ey everybodys going wild now, you know. But we felt a little restricted by that, by him saying keep it calm and bla bla bla. So it kind of struck into my head and I talked with my brother and stuff that we should get our own sound. So I sit there doing my sums to see what I can afford. My brother couldn't put nothing in because he had a family and all them kind of things. I got a bit of a loan, borrowed some money and built our own soundsystem. It took us about nine months to get it all together and in that time we had stopped doing the shows with Joey J. But when we came back out we started with him again but with our own sound now.

GLM: How was the response ?

RD: It was good at the time. Actually there were kind of a thing that went off because we had stopped playing down at the same club with Joey J, even the asian sound who were getting their own soundsystem together, they kind of stopped playing with Joey as well. So the vibes had kind of cooled off down there a little bit. Nine months is a long time so people were a little unsure what was going on and stuff. But there wasn't really a lot of else going on. At that time there were Shaka who always did his things and maybe there were some others sounds like Channel One and Jah Trinity who were doing their thing elsewhere so and so forth.

GLM: About what time was this ?

RD: It was 1990-91 because -91 we got the sound together to get on the road. The vibes down there had kind of cooled down and stuff, but there were no other, like Aba Shanti was not around at that time, Iration Steppaz wasn't around at that time at least in London. Iration Steppaz was based up in Leeds and was doing his thing up there. So there wasn't a lot of other sounds.

GLM: There wasn't much of a competition ?

RD: No. There was Manasseh. Sound Iration was doing their thing as well. There were a few people doing their thing but there wasn't whole heaps of big known sounds. I'm not saying we were a big known sound but we were known for our music, through Shaka and stuff. Straight away when we came into the arena we already had some sort of crowd, because they appreciated our music. But at that time sameway I didn't have a lot of knowledge of soundsystem, technical knowledge and all of that. I was learning things as it was going along. First time we played out I wired it up all wrong and stuff like that. We were only playing half the amount of bass power, so it didn't have the initial impact. Someone from the crowd said this speaker is out of phase and that need some sorting out there and I sort of asked him questions how to wire it and bla bla bla. So before the next time we played out we did a sound check. Invited a couple of people down that we knew to get an opinion just incase I wired wrong and stuff. We kind of lifted up the bass there and the place was shaking, so yeah it's working properly now.

There was a lot of small promotors around at that time that you could get a little dance with. Some of them were rip off merchants, I wont mention names, but people over here know who I mean. But you do a thing, you know what I mean ? We were doing a lot of dances although we really wasn't coming away with more than we payed for the van hire. Then after a while it's like you kind of served your apprenticeship now. You know, we want this fee or we will not step out of the door and bla bla bla. We were getting shows regularly, but then under a fairly small period Aba Shanti came out and he got the chance to run Jah Tubbys old soundsystem and people appreciated that. Iration (Steppaz) came down from Leeds and there was all these big words about these people and stuff. We were all kind of playing dances together, clashing each other. So there was quite a happening scene at the time. Quite lively.

GLM: From the top of your head could you give us three tunes which mashed up the place at your dances ?

RD: That's a hard one for me to say, because I got very few soundtapes from those days that I can rememeber. "Prowling Lion", our own tune was always a tune that would kick up, even to this day. It's still a tune that can kick up for people. Some might get a bit oh no not "Prowling Lion" again. I don't play it myself, you know what I mean ? But it still does its business. It was a big tune. I had favorites of my things and stuff. There were always old tunes, classic reggae tunes that I used to love playing. There's so many that I can't get it down to three really.

GLM: Alright, so we move on then. You have two labels which through you distribute your music. First you have the Boomshackalacka label.

RD: The Boomshackalacka label is more for dub stuff. Anything that's kind of dub is going to be released on the Boomshackalacka label.

GLM: And then you have the Backayard Movements label.

RD: That's for the vocals. The vocal side. That's more of a yard style roots kind of formate.

GLM: You begun with the Boomshackalacka label...

RD: Yeah, we begun with the Boomshackalacka label because that was what we was doing at that time. We was doing dub. We had that name because my brother had his magazine by that name. We just felt to keep something tied in, intstead of thinking up another name. We didn't want to call the label Disciples, because Discples was our musical name. So we kept with the Boomshackalacka thing. But when I decided that I wanted to start to release my own vocal tunes and more in the roots style, I thought I wanted to keep that separate from Boomshackalacka. I don't know what was in mind particularly, but I just felt to keep it separate. It was a little thing because from the kind of reggae consenty our stuff was always getting dissed. They didn't see our dance stuff as legitimate or anything to do with reggae and all of that stuff. If you play this to a Jamaican they don't know what it is and bla bla bla. Ok, fair enogh, but we're played by Shaka and it tears up to two thousend people, so who's saying what's what, you know what I mean ?

But when I came to release my first vocal tune, which was "Judgement Seat" by High Priest, there were one particular point that I wanted to make to a particular reviewer in Black Echoes. Because he had reviewed some of our dub stuff and really kind of dissed it quite bad. So I thought ok, you're dissing it, but I wonder why you're dissing it ? Is it of the point of view of music or is it from the point of view who we are ? White guys making reggae or whatever it is. So I sent him a white label copy of this tune with just the title and the artist to see what he would think of it and he gave it a good review. So to me that was kind of saying we can make the music and you can appreciate it, but if I put it on Boomshackalacka with Disciples riddim section or something like that, you might have dissed it at that time even though that's what it is. But that was my kind of thinking at the time to try and prove a point, partly to myself and partly to other people. Ok, you're dissing something but not from the right point of view. You have put a mental block in your head because you can not appreciate what we're doing. So because of that it was to keep it on another label.

GLM: Reading interviews with you one can see that you are more into the Jamaican scene rather than the UK scene and that you actually would like to bring in more of the Jamaican vibes to your music. How come when...

RD: Well, that's because it's the roots of the music. No matter what you hear from myself was doing back then and what people like Shaka was doing back then, its roots was always Jamaican music. It wasn't anything else and I always wanted to keep that no matter how dubified our things were ment to be. To me it had to have that root in it. Because that's what I always felt from the music. I listened to it since I was seventeen, so that's what I learned from the music trying to give it this feel. What I feel from a lot of people that maybe took up making dub music later on or were influenced by people like myself or if they come from a more house, techno, drum and bass end, when I hear a lot of that music that's done by them people I don't hear the root of reggae music in it. It's missing that point of it. There's something about it that I don't hear and I think that anyone that's deeply into reggae doesn't hear that either. It's missing that thing. So I always looked to the Jamaican reggae music to have it's soul or whatever you might call it for inspiration.

But I have always loved Jamaican music, even when it went digital and stuff. I'm not really a big dancehall fan. I'm not so much into the bashment or the rubadub side of it. Always the roots and always Jamaica. There's very little things that were actually a big influence on me that come from the UK, but at the same time I wouldn't dismiss anything that comes from the UK. Because there have been some great music coming from the UK.

GLM: But how is it now when the reggae scene is so much wider. You have top quality reggae music coming from all over Europe, US and elsewhere.

RD: Yeah, a lot of years have passed now. Things do change. Obviously I'm talking about a very particular point when we were first going and stuff. When there wasn't other people than Twinkle (Brothers), Shaka and a few others. It wasn't that many people doing things over here. I suppose it has always been and still is two sides of it because you have labels over here like Ruff Cutt and Stingray. Their stuff is really not so much UK influenced. Not in the slightest really. It's more influenced of the yard thing and you see with them that they will get all the yard artists on their tunes.

GLM: But it's still a UK vibe to it.

RD: Yeah, obviously which comes from the UK and from living in the UK. But still it got more of a Jamaican influence over it than any kind of UK influence, It's like they don't build as much steppers or their concentration is certainly not the dub side of it. It's coming more from the Jamacian vibe.

GLM: Lately you have been releasing a couple of tunes from yard artists like Prince Malachi...

RD: Well, actually he's a UK based artist...

GLM: Yeah, but he got the Jamaican kind of style to it and he done stuff over there. So the question goes if you're moving in that kind of direction ?

RD: It's partly a conscious thing that we done stuff with these artists. Partly it's because you can tell some difference to their quailty of talent against some upcoming UK artists. There's something more immediate about what they do and something more assured and I think that makes a difference. If you listen to reggae for a long time and love reggae vocals. I love reggae vocals. You can't get no better like people from the old days, say Dennis Brown, and later like Luciano and stuff. If they do a duff tune, a bad tune, good tune or whatever. You know them guys are quality singers and if you're in the presence of them guys, you can feel it sameway. You can't say that about a guy that just come out from the UK with his first attempt and stuff. You can't compere. It's not to dis them, but you just can't compare. The same time we make music and always want to up things. Sameway my studio. I want to get better gear to do this and that to get a better sound. So if I want to make a musical step I want to do it with the vocals as well. So to get someone like Prince Malachi, which is a exceedingly good singer, is like yeah it jails with the music now. So it was partly because of that. Some of it is just by opportunity. We had the opportunity to record Prince Allah.

GLM: How did that come about ?

RD: Prince Allah had obviously come over to this sides and started to do works with lots of different producers around the country. In particular he started doing stuff with Steve Jah Warrior. Jonah (Dan) were playing percussion for Jah Warrior. So obviously he's in the studio same time and link up with Prince Allah and sort of suggested to him that he should come down to our studio. At that time he had two days left to stay. So we had to bring him down quick and over two days we voiced up seven tunes with him. A bit of a rush, but it was interesting still and he was a lovely man. Prince Allah is a real heartfelt man. Always good vibes. When someone like that you rememeber from tunes like "Great Stone", "Bucket Bottom" and all them there.

GLM: Classics.

RD: Classics and deep roots tunes. Nothing else. To meet that guy and have him in your studio even though it might be twenty years passed its sale by date it's still a great pleassure to be able to something like that. So I went through a thing personally to see if it would work, because as running a record label you have to think through a business point of view as well. So I was thinking about the sales I'm doing with a local artist is not really picking up. They just sit at their level. So Let's try it with some name artist to see how that works out. In sales it didn't really work out any different, but in how the music was perceived worked differently with some people, because they can't sit there and dis us with our poor man artist. But if we got a artist like Prince Mlalachi, who done tunes with Xterminator, how can they dis that tune, you know what I mean ? Because if they dis that tune they're dissing him. We know it's a good tune, he know it's a good tune, so it's a good tune. So as a point to a number of people that might be around it kind of brought us some notice, but it didn't really gain us any extra sales. Last year we did a lot of voicing with different artists.

GLM: Like ?

RD: Lutan Fyah, Bunny Lie Lie, another old time singer. A few others and we still kept working with our local singers as well. We had this singer Christine Miller who done harmonies on the albums I did with Tony Roots and I really liked her voice so I wanted to record hear as an own artist with her own songs. I will continue doing that because I highly rate her. I think she's a good lyrcist and a very good singer. So I want to keep that thing going with her. Then there's other people I worked with over here like Colour Red, who I'm still working with on certain projects and little one away things. We got loads of things just parked up waiting for me to find the time to fininsh them off, be happy with them and find the financies to release them.

GLM: Let's hear you comment on some of the people you have been working with like Sister Rasheda ?

RD: We havn't really worked that much together since the early ninties. She passed through here and voiced a tune for someone else which have seen release. She did it for Universal Roots, but that was a couple of years ago still. Rasheda got her way how she want to see her career and I don't think any man can change that. At the time we did the works years ago it was more vibrance in the scene so it kind of seemed like anything could happen at that time. There were particulary with her album "Hail HIM" a label to approach to release it and stuff, although the label got bust and us not getting our rightful dues and stuff like that. It was kind of up and down. That makes things hard in the business. But she does her thing and I do my thing. She's going to reissue "Only Jah Worthy"/"Give Jah Praise" on twelve inch very soon and we're talking about reissueing both "Hail HIM" and the dub album.

GLM: You mentioned Christine Miller earlier on as well. Can you tell us a bit about her ?

RD: There's two tracks released with her now on my label. The first one was "Warmonger" and then there is the recent one "Come Together & Unite". We got a load more tracks down but most of them at the moment are more, what I would call, album tracks. Not because of any artistic decession but just through the way things have worked out. I actually want her to do some rhythm tracks especially for singles releases, because that's what we have to concentrate on here in the UK. Plus me financially as record label, that's what I need to concentrate on, because we don't have the distribution for albums. Not like that's out of the scheme of things but we have to build things up. So we'll continue to work. I like Christine. I like her heart and she's easy to work with. When she comes down she got a song praticed and harmonies worked out and a whole lot. So it's a plessure to work. She doesn't have to drop in here and drop in there. We just run through and done, you know. A couple of hours later and the tune is finished. I like that as a producer. Lyrically I think she's very strong as well. She's very insightfull, I think. We will continue to work.

GLM: You have also done some works with Danny Vibes...

RD: Yes. We had him down here when he was seventeen years old, that's when he first came to our studio. He did a couple other things up in Conscious Sounds studio with other people, not directly with Dougie (Wardrop) I think, but with his apprentice. Maybe there's something else done with somone else I don't know. Jonah (Dan) had heard his voice because he's always up in Conscious Sounds studio playing percussion for people. Jonah heard his voice on tape, then got him contacted and said he wanted to bring him down to the Disciples studio. So they met up at Waterloo on the following saturday, never met before...

GLM: Yeah, I heard the story.

RD: So there's Jonah at Waterloo and Danny Vibes at Waterloo. Jonah's looking around wondering where he is, because he heard him on the song and his voice is deep like a old man he thought he was exactly that. So he buzz him on the phone asking him, where are you ? I'm here Danny answers and Jonah turns around and sees this young crop headed youth, six foot tall something and he's like what ? He couldn't believe it. So they come down here and we start doing nuff tunes. Danny's musical inspiration was more lovers based, so obviously ourselfs and the other people he done a couple of tunes with before was trying to get him to do roots based things. So were maybe pushing him into a avenue that weren't fully developed in him, but Danny's a very talented artist, very good lyrically and still learning. I think it's all coming from within him how he's singing and his melodies. But since he's a youth he's constantly changing and doing a little different things. Trying to do his own personal way in the music. Plus he's been linked with his longterm friend Job and their group that they got together which was originally called Roots Conquest and included a third guy who was a rapper who since parted the way and now they go under the name of The Hiites. Their thing is more of an old school, what I call old school, Bob Marley tip. Different. It's very song based. Not really what people like myself are trying to deal with at the moment, but we still work together. Actually the tunes that they are recording at the moment in that kind of vein they record down here. They're doing some overdubs at Conscious Sounds studio. They just put out a seven inch with two of the tracks which seem to have done ok. They got their vision of what they want to do with that. But that's their concentration right now. Me and Danny did about fifty tunes down here and we were trying to get an album released through a record company, but that record company just ended up messing us about. So I don't know maybe the they (the songs) will stay away hidden in the archives. Who knows ?

GLM: What about future plans for the Disciples ?

RD: It's very hard at the moment. The future is very odd to perceive. We've got to a level where we can work within what we're doing and maintain some kind of reasonable income. Nothing major, but just something that we can tick over and keep on going. You know, we have to do other bits of hustling as well like I sell equipment for Jah Tubbys. We have to sell dubs and we have to do the shows. So we're kind of covered in lots of different angles in the reggae business to keep our living going. We manage but it's kind of hard to see where we can really go at the moment. Because things like the lack of media interest in this country. A very poor distribution network in this country and outside of it for us. It makes it kind of hard for us to say how things will go. We all have plans like myself I speak with people like Conscious Sounds and we all got plans to do things, but we can not rush it because we can foul ourself by doing something, you know.

GLM: When you say we who do you mean ? You and ?

RD: Me the artist and obviously I do stuff with Jonah Dan, It's like a royal we.

GLM: Ok, then what about future releases ?

RD: Well, I got a plan to release a ten inch next which will feature a tune we did with Bunny Lie Lie called "Babylonian" and we got Ras McBean from France on the same rhythm. Then I got another rhythm with Lutan Fyah and Kenny Knots on it. So I'm planning to release those two rhythms on two different ten inches. But it's still like one of them things trying to get the grip if I'm happy with the mix and this and that. So I'm not rushing it at the moment. I got some other projects on for other people which is kind of taking my time. So I'm thinking to myself that Let's not rush nothing. Put out the right thing at the right time. Then after that I got loads of other little bits and pieces. I'm still going to carry on doing things with Christine (Miller) and I want to find time to actually do some dub stuff again partly because of a business level because it sells better. But I don't want to do it the way I did it years ago. I kind of want to do it in a certain way, I'm not going to say how because I'm not really sure of it. It got to lift itself up some for me musically and I want it all to have some real dynamic vibes to it.

GLM: You do a lot of work for other people as well like making music and letting them take the producer credits...

RD: With some people like Roots Hitek who comes down here and although I do most of the production work like building the rhythm and stuff like that a rhythm might be suggested by the producer as in the case of RDK Markie for Universal Roots. He usually says can you lick one over this rhythm or whatever, because most of his releases have been do-over rhythms whether that's obvious or not I don't know but most of them are. It's like listen to this and build a version of it and that sort of thing. I might ask if they want it as a steppers, one drop or whatever. I always try to get it in a way different from what its previous version was in some kind of manner. Some tunes you can't do that because it's just the pace of the bass line, so I might suggest that I got to be over a steppers or something. Other than that the production side of it is more down to the engineering side of it although for me. But I'll ask them if they want horns on this or if you want to do that, this would really suite a guitar and I'll bring a guitar man down. I might suggest those things or they might have an idea for the things they want to bring in and it kind of works like that. So I work as studio and engineer for them. For me it's good financially because I can't release so many tunes myself. So if I do a production for someone else they get all of it and I just done a little money from making the tune for them, but my name is associated with it. So through out a year, although I might released two tunes myself, maybe there been six to ten tunes released all together. So good for me. Good for keeping my name out there and I enjoy it because when I do things myself I got my own vision of them but if it's for someone else I have to put head into their head and do it for them to it their kind of sound and stuff. So it's interesting doing it from that point of view. Then of course I do remixes for other people as well, which is always nice. You get a vocal that they have voiced in their studio. I just done some remixing for Cultural Warriors in Geneva Switzerland. Five vocals that they had on the same rhythm, Murry Man, Lyrical Benjie and a guy called Collie Weed and so forth. I think I've done a nice remix of that and I think they going to put them on some seven inches and stuff. So that will be nice. You just got to keep on working in this business.

GLM: Any last words to a newcomer ?

RD: Buy my tunes! Hahaha. Let me think about that one...

GLM: I asked the same question to Dougie Wardrop and he said perseverance,

RD: Perseverance. I think I said that through the interview.

GLM: Alright then. Give thanks Russ Disciples.

RD: Respect. It's been good.

First and third photo are used with kind permission of Wobblyweb.com

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