Esprit de Corps at SXSW 2012

♫ If love don't love you back

♫ You just be easy

♫ And let go of that love

♫ 'Cause someone will take his place

♫ Yeah, yeah

People know me as Cherokee,

but Fred here brought the reggae vibe to me

and then Neil Paul said,

Why don't you guys get together and do a band?

So cool, we did a band

and it's kinda like a reggae meets pop meets soul music.

It's pretty cool.

It's new and refreshing.

[Fred] We have a lot of songs about relationships.

And love and peace and happiness and no war, no violence.

Fred here does all the music

and I do all the lyrics and the melody.

The music is really just like a reggae foundation.

Anything, as long as it has a chicka chicka,

you know, and you can do whatever you want.

It just kind of--

We like the reggae influence,

but we're not Jamaican or anything.

'Cause if we were Jamaican, we would talk like this.

You know what I'm saying?

But we're not, we're not trying to do that.

We're not faking Jamaican, we're American.

[Fred] Basically, using like, I take all our songs

and I break them down into individual stems,

bass drums, guitar, keyboards, horns

and I run It through Ableton Live

and I program this mixer interface so I can do

live dub mixes on the fly.

Kinda like Mad Professor does,

but all digital.

We have a single that's out right now

and it's called It's Too Late

and you can get that song

at espritdecorps.bandcamp.com.

You get a free download.