“People have been missing this vibe and this energy for five years”
Last year when the reformed Morgan Heritage came to London, the city’s music media were literally fighting for a piece of them.
They were in such high demand that United Reggae was fortunate to get a nice chat with two members – Una and Mojo – about their reunion and The Return EP.
But with the full album ‘Here Come the Kings’ ready to land on June 11th it made sense that we talk to lead singer Peetah and keyboardist Gramps for their side of the family story.
‘Here Comes the Kings’ is very much a back to basics Morgan Heritage record – dialling down some of the rock influences of their pre-hiatus album ‘Mission In Progress’.
The new record begins with a tribute to the great Lloyd Parks and even poppier sides like catchy single Perfect Love Song feature impressive bass frequencies.
Angus Taylor spoke to Peetah and Gramps just as they had touched down in the States from a promotional trip to Jamaica. You’ll see we posed many of the same questions we asked Una and Mojo. Here are their answers.
Let’s talk about last year in London – it was crazy right? You paused your show to show Usain Bolt and Johan Blake winning the 100 metres Olympic gold and silver medals.
PEETAH: (laughs) We went on stage like “Man, we’re going to miss this damn race!” Then mid-performance my production manager told my brother Lukes the race was about to come on and he thinks they can show it. So while Gramps was doing his verse Lukes pulled me aside and said “Yo, we can watch this on the screen”. As soon as we finished the song the race was about to start. It was perfect timing, we didn’t plan it, everything happened in the space of two minutes on stage. And when Usain won, the show went to a whole other level. The energy of doing a great show, being in London after five years, and seeing Jamaica win the race, all at the same time. It didn’t really hit us until a week after when we started to see all the footage pop up on YouTube. We were so caught up in the tour, The Return and being in Europe after five years that we didn’t even realize how much history we created that night.
GRAMPS: It was beautiful to be back with my brothers and sister performing. Just to look across the stage and see the crew you’ve been riding with for almost 25 years. We’ve been doing this since we were six and seven years old. It was like “Wow, it’s really back!” It was something familiar whereas for these solo projects it was all new. It was like starting from scratch again. It made us lose our comfort zone as performers and you eventually grow. That’s the difference with Morgan Heritage in 2013.
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