By Ray Stevens II
I started listening to Nightmares on Wax in 1996 when I first heard Smokers Delight. I was doing live sound engineering at a beer garden restaurant that hosted jazz, funk, and Latin bands and I would roll the CD during band breaks. Every time it played someone from the audience would ask me, “Who is this? Oh, what did you say their name was? Oh, please write it down for me, I gotta get this CD!” I probably sold about 22 CD's for them that summer. I’d already considered it a classic, much like Pink Floyd, Dark Side Of The Moon. You know the deal, all-killer, no-filler quality on purpose!
The main man behind NOW is George Evelyn/DJ EASE who has been putting out top-shelf soul/funk/trip-hop album after album for years, even hooking up with De La Soul at one point with fine positive messages. The latest offering is Thought So… an album that was recorded in a RV while on a road trip from Leeds, England, to Ibiza, Spain, with his band while moving his recording studio and setting up his record label. Along the journey the band would stop at waterfalls, get inspired, and throw down on their computer set-up in the RV while sliding around the mountain roads. How fun does that sound? Well, the results sound awesome. '”195 Lbs.” is one of the crank-it-up! cuts on this LP with Ricky Ranking delivering the distorted classic sounding toast. As usual there is the soft mellow side to NOW on board that attracts the chilled-out crowd and makes the sometimes beatless silky sound perfect reflective music for life's inspired moments, or the afterglow of a sweet day of skating with the crew. George has also set up his own record label, WAX ON Records, with some very fine upcoming worldwide soul artists like Ella May, GUTS, Gelka, Earl Tutu, and Marcel being some of the tastiest signings.
The NOW crew (EASE, Ella May, and Ricky Ranking) came through to a sold out crowd at San Francisco's Independent venue on a drizzly February night. They rolled through with a super-tight and entertaining set. So what does the main man behind NOW think of the power of thought, lamp posts and skateboarding, Obama and running a soul music record label? Read on SLAP pals.
You moved a couple of years ago to Ibiza and recorded your album on the road?
Yeah, three years ago I moved my family to Ibiza and released
Inner Space, Outer Sound, and I got it in my head that I needed to move my studio from England to Ibiza. But how am I gonna do that? I can't put it in a moving truck; it might not turn up in one piece—or even turn up! I can't just pay someone to do it, because the same scenario could happen, and if there’s gonna be any accidents, then I could be there, and if I am gonna be there with all this gear, then I could be doing something. I could just set the gear up in a camper van, and then take however many days it took traveling from Leeds, my hometown, to Spain.
Then the idea grew to make it into a road trip and we could pick musicians up along the way; don't plan the music but make it up along the way. And that’s what we did. I basically got in touch with the label and said I got this crazy idea, whether you’re gonna back me or not I’m gonna do it! This is why the album is called Thought So…, I’m really up on the idea of the power of thought. What it can achieve and what it can manifest, and what are the results from it, because we’re all constantly doing it. We all withhold the element of thought. If you wanna talk about infinity? Thought is it. You know what I mean? I realized I spent most of my career talking about music being a journey, and here I am making music on a journey physically, that's like, wow, that's like full circle shit sort of thing. Through that understanding and self-realization it's like, well, there's thought for you then, thought so! And that was it. The whole concept and the whole album born out of that.
.png)
