Lionize updates reggae beat for modern rockers

By Ben Balanoff

I recently had the pleasure of catching D.C.’s reggae-rock up-and-comers Lionize perform in support of CKY at The Clearwater Theatre in East Dundee, IL. After the show I had an opportunity to catch up with their singer/guitarist, my old friend Nathan Bergman, who granted us the following interview.

Q: Touring with Lee “Scratch” Perry must have been an interesting experience, to say the least, especially having the opportunity to perform as the backing band for such a legendary performer. What was that tour like?

We had done two full U.S. tours with him, and a couple different regional tours….it is awesome! We get to go out and support him to a full house as Lionize, and do our own thing, and bring that kind of weird vibe to the crowd, and then he comes out and does his Lee Perry thing, and there’s not many people that can do the Lee Perry thing quite like Lee Perry does. For us, its also a really good exercise in improvisation- the whole set is basically improvised, and there’s no samples. I think a lot of bands that have toured with him in the past use samples, a lot of pre-recorded stuff. We try to do as much live as possible, so it’s fun.

Q: D.C. has a pretty rich musical history, particularly the late 70’s and early 80’s when the hardcore and punk scenes came to prominence. Any hometown favorites you cite as influences, and how do you feel about the D.C. music scene today?

I mean, there’s a lot of stuff that has come out of D.C., and Maryland specifically, that definitely influenced us. I mean Bad Brains was definitely a huge influence on the band, as far as a band that kind of took reggae and did their own thing with it. They were certainly one of the best hardcore bands, and I don’t know, D.C. kind of treated them like shit. You know The 930 Club in D.C. and I.M.P. Productions have been super supportive of the D.C. music scene, but other than that I really don’t feel like there’s a whole lot of real hometown D.C. love, particularly you have bands like Clutch that came out of the Maryland area, Earthride, you have Citizen Cope who came out of D.C., I mean you really do have a pretty rich history, but what happens a lot of times is that you find that these artists have to go to New York City or L.A. or other places- particularly New York City, from D.C.- to kind of be accepted into a mainstream kind of thing. And while I do think that D.C. does have a rich tradition of bands, it also has a tradition of those bands migrating elsewhere, and never really getting the kind of love they deserve in town.



Q: What direction would you say Lionize is going in the next 5 years, and how do you feel your sound has evolved over the course of your career?

It’s hard to say where we’re gonna go with it, we never necessarily have like a pre-set idea of what we want to do. So many things come into factor- I mean, what bands are you touring with that are awesome that kind of influence you to do a twist on things, what we’re listening to a lot in the van on tour kind of seeps in a lot. I can’t say the direction it’s gonna go, y’know, I can only hope that we’re gonna get better, and our live shows are going to get stronger and our albums are going to get more interesting. You can only hope that you’re going to get stronger as a band. What I think will happen, hopefully, is that we’ll continue to grow and learn. As far as where we come from, I think we started out as more of a Reggae thing, as a whole, and I definitely think a love for Blues and Classic Rock and certainly some heavier things definitely crept into the mix, and I think those things evolved separately, but together at the same time I think the heavier stuff- like we’re listening to a lot of Black Sabbath and a lot of Jesus Lizard and some crazier stuff- and I think that kind of influences that end of it, and as for Reggae we’re getting deeper into Dub, and listening to a lot of older stuff, and y’know, when you get into those two things, as those things grow they kind of connect the two paths- if that makes sense- they’re both going in different directions, but there’s always the hybrid. We do what we do, and I think that will work out.

Q: You guys tour pretty extensively. What are the craziest/best/worst moments you’ve had out on the road?

It’s so easy to think of the worst (laughs). You know what, there’s no one specific bad or good thing, y’know, the good nights are when you don’t fuck up too terribly, and you get paid, and the crowds are cool and you meet new people and you get fed well before the show (laughs). I think that’s a great night. And then sometimes you get stuck in a snowstorm in Wyoming and you’re stuck in a hotel with no money talking about siphoning gas to get to the next city and I think that’s the low point (laughs). And not one specific thing stands out, but we just feel that no matter what- good and bad days- we’re very lucky to be able to do this, and we don’t take a minute of it for granted, because everything we do is, I think, an expression of how happy we are just to be a part of playing music and getting paid a little bit and getting fed a little bit and having a chance to play in front of more successful bands audiences.



Q: You toured heavily with Clutch. How did you guys come to meet them?

(Laughs) I’ll make this as super-brief as possible. Growing up my father owned a seafood store in Gaithersburg, MD, and Neil Fallon, who’s now the singer of Clutch, worked for my dad for a few years. I was a young kid, I mean, 3, 4, 5 years old in the seafood shop, and I’m sure I was a pain in the ass to everyone who was there, I was probably just a little piece of shit (laughs), so there was that connection, and through the years my dad always told me “This guy who used to work in the shop, he’s in this band” and then I started getting into music around 9 or 10 and really being kind of aware of what was going on and Clutch was definitely a band that I started listening to around 12, 13, 14. Then, just coincidentally, we had a drummer- our first drummer in the band- was taking drum lessons at this drum teacher’s house in Maryland, and John Paul Gaster, who is Clutch’s drummer, is also taking lessons at this guy’s house, Walter South, a very influential percussion teacher in the D.C. area. Walter was the kind of guy who had all the bands over all the time, to kind of check out the sessions and listen to jazz music and just sort of be a part of the experience, and even though I wasn’t playing anything there I would always be there. So after a while, we ended up meeting at Walter’s house and it was just sort of this thing where it was like “I’ve been listening to your band for a long time, and Neil used to work for my dad, and I’m a big fan”, y’know. So that’s how the whole thing kind of developed, and then every chance we got we kind of gave J.P. music we were working on, and after a little while we ended up doing our first show together October 2006 with The Bakerton Group, which is a Clutch side project. Then that led to doing a couple more shows, and a couple more, and the next thing you know 2010 turns around and we’ve done 5 or 6 different runs with them- some small, some really big- across North America. They’re definitely the best example of how to make the music you want to make and be the best at it.

Q: What are you currently listening to? Anything at present that you’re hooked on?

Fuck, modern bands? (Laughs). We listen to a lot of Clutch in the van, and really, what I think is heavy on rotation in the van right now, we’ll constantly listen to this live Steel Pulse record called Living Legacy. It’s retarded (laughs). It’s recorded in Paris in the early 90’s and its just 20 or 30 thousand people there and its just one of the best live records. We’re also listening to a record out of 70’s Jamaica by The Heptones and its this
Record called Night and its just amazing. Actually Lee Perry produced it. We’re also listening to a lot of Jesus Lizard. Down’s a great record. Goat’s a great record. I can’t lie, we illegally downloaded the whole box set (laughs). They’re from Detroit, I’m pretty sure. They’re unbelievable. They were so far ahead of their time. You kind of feel like they really never got the credit they deserved. (Laughs) Its like Nirvana took everything they did from The Melvins and Jesus Lizard. We listen to a lot of Go-Go in the van, which is a D.C. area sort of funk hybrid, go-go music, you can Google it and see. We also listen to a lot of jazz. We listen to a lot of John Coltrane, a lot of Miles Davis. We listened to this really sick-ass record out of the New Orleans, this organ player named Robert Walter. He did an album called Heavy Organ, which is this album he did on a Hammond B3. Anything like that.

Q: One record that changed your life?

Uprising by Bob Marley and The Wailers. It’s the last record before he died. As far as reggae goes, I think that record and True Democracy by Steel Pulse are the best written, sonically best recorded records that you could ever get your hands on. And when CD’s first came out I remember getting Led Zeppelin 4, their fourth record. I had their first three on vinyl- they were my parents’- and hearing that was kind of like…it solidified my love of rock and roll, if that makes sense. God, there’s so many. When you hear a great record, you feel like it really does change your life. I think Black Sabbath Black Sabbath, the first time I heard that it blew me away. Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come. It was the first Sam Cooke I’d ever heard, and I remember thinking nobody else’s voice is quite like this guy’s. I loved Otis Redding and Al Green, but Sam Cooke, to me-for whatever reason- just always did it. I ended up getting a Sam Cooke tattoo, actually- the last time we were in Pittsburgh. I have a portrait on my arm. (Shows me the tat). I’m a big fan.