About The Jamaica Band
It was the July of 2014, and the Blue Pie Records production team was on an adventure to produce the new Reggae Central TV episodes in Jamaica. We had an incredible team that was managed by Shemori BoShae, all heading to Montego bay in the middle of Summer. To say it was hot was an understatement.
On arrival we were welcomed by our illustrious leader Mr DC Cornick, one of the founders of DJ Central TV ( www.djcentral.tv ) who had taken over the DJ booth outside of the airport. That was the tell-tale sign that this trip was going to be much more than a basic shoot.
Off we went to our villa and the party started almost immediately. The recording of the song ” We Love Jamaica ” came about due to a lull in the production schedule where we had 3 days break with the crew waiting for some of the team to arrive. Shemori had organised for Native Wayne aka Native Wayne Jobson and his brother Brian to meet with us in the town of Ocho Rios, with the prospect of doing some recordings with Josh Young www.joshyoungmusic.com
So off we go to the studio to see what magic could be created. Unfortunately Josh was not able to arrive on the first day so whilst we were all in the studio, and with some input from Native Wayne and Shemori we decided to see if we could work up a better national anthem for Jamaica than the current one, which by all accounts is not that popular.
Here is the current anthem in its full glory, “Jamaica Land We Love”
The session started great and before long the foundation of the song was there. Now we needed to create a massive chorus and hook and I think we were able to do this with some of the lyrical help of the entire team. The key to make this all work was to have the vocals nailed and with the help of Native Wayne and his good friend “Jeffrey” who absolutely smashed the vocals to the moon and back.
You can see the vibes we had in the studio and this madcap adventure of recording what was the start of Reggae Central TV’s first episode here in the gallery section of this site.
By the end of July 2014 it was time to head home and get to work on mixing the record. Unfortunately other schedules and time commitments got in the way and the record sat in the archives until December 2021 when I was able to bring in Gabe Rizza www.gaberizza.com from Key Loch www.keyloch.com to work on the track and see if could capture the vibes we had in the studio and turn this record into the hit we knew that it was.
It was a tough few weeks for Gabe, working through all the stems and finally locating the incredible sax parts that were recorded during that hot month of July back in Ocho Rios. Once we had the sax parts and the basic structure sorted it was then down to comping the vocals and leaving Gabe along with 2 weeks to cook his magic. Once we had Gabe completing his sonic Jamaica master chef music meal, we then passed this over to Tom Polce to create one of his US centric mixes. This turned into the final version that we have today that you can now listen to on all the major streaming networks.
Damien Reilly
The Jamaica Band
The Cast and Crew
The cast and crew and on this project is nothing short of amazing on all levels including:
Damien Reilly
Brian Jobson
Chris Garcia
Gabe Rizza
Josh Young
Shemori Boshae Guin
Tom Polce
Wayne Jobson aka Native Wayne
Official Links
www.thejamaicaband.com
www.joshyoungmusic.com
www.keyloch.com
www.gaberizza.com
www.djcentral.tv
www.reggaecentral.tv
www.bluepierecords.com
The Jamaica Band are a Blue Pie Records USA and Blue Pie Publishing artist and available at all digital retailers on the planet.