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You can also find them on Facebook by searching Bookies Chicago. This podcast is being brought to you by WXAV 88.3 FM and WXAV.com. WXAV bringing the best podcasts to you. Ziggy, how you doing today?
I'm doing good, I know you. I'm very well, thank you. First off, I just want to ask you, you're on tour right now, right? How's that going for you?
Great, so far. Great, great, great. People enjoy the music, come and join it and it's going great. Excellent, excellent.
Your new album is Dragonfly. It's your first solo album, Away From The Melody Makers. Was it difficult for you to do it on your own or was it kind of exciting? It's so exciting, you know, for me it's like an adventure, like to get out there and explore.
That's what it was like for me, like a little kid, you know, getting out there for the first time. And for me, that's about expanding my knowledge and my mind and just being able to experience different things in my life. So what exciting? Yes, I've heard the album and my personal opinion, I think it's the best album of the year.
It's really incredible. Nice, perfect. Yeah. Oh, hey, thank you.
Now you had Flea and John Prisconti play on some of the album, is that right? Yes. How did that come about? Well, like when I wanted to do the record, I would like, you know, I'm gonna work with some great music, I don't want to play music with some different musicians, I want to usually play with it.
And so, you know, the question was like, you want to play it, I was like, okay, Sheila prepped with a group that I really liked. Yeah. Flea is a first, she did that at the end, we did something she was a long time ago together. Oh, really?
And Europe. Oh, cool. And I said, like, oh, Flea would be cool on bass and they said, okay, let's try to get him and they called him and he came and we jumped for like a week and we recorded some stuff that was great, you know. Oh, wow, that's awesome, man.
Now you got some very interesting songs on Dragonfly, but the two I want to focus on is the self-tired one, Dragonfly. Yeah. What a way to write a song, man. I mean, talking to a dragonfly, a butterfly, a dog.
I mean, how did you come up with that? Because I think it's the best song I've heard in a long time. That, I mean, I came up one day, I'd been out in my eye, actually, one morning and I came across a Dragonfly. We kind of bumped into each other.
Like, he was hovering in front of me for a little bit and I was looking at the Dragonfly and I'm thinking, okay, it's gonna fly away, but it didn't fly away. It was in my eye, it was looking back at me just as curious as I was looking at it. Yeah. And that's when that song started coming to me.
Wow. I started to wonder what is the Dragonfly thinking looking at me like that. You know, and that song just came like that. And then after that, I remember I had experiences, I've had with dogs and butterflies and the tree and it's all based in reality.
This song is all based on reality. But it is just that I perceived these creatures and trees and stuff as personalities. I'm not just like, oh, it's a tree, it's nothing. I perceive them as actually living personalities.
Yeah. I'm not just like, oh, it's a little Dragonfly, whatever. It's, you know, it's not. But it has its own special meaning.
Yeah, you know, like, all the creatures, the other human beings and what we are doing today, environment, which is their home. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the question for you.
What do you think the state of music is in today? The state of music, I mean, the problem with the music is that we become such an advanced civilization. Yeah. Such a technological civilization is that music becomes such a more than just music and it becomes images.
And before music was about feeling. Yeah. And what you hear, you could find your own images, but no, we're being bombarded with images, which create how much more important part in the music world today than it ever did. Yeah.
So I think that music actually takes a box with the image. Yeah. And if you have the right image, you can tell any music. Yeah.
Yeah. You know, and so as I said, video, kill the radio star, it's like that, like, video, videos, and other things that really need music become less of what you're feeling from the music and more of what you've seen. Yeah. I mean, look at all the big names stars like Britney Spears or, you know, NSYNC, they're attracted people to look at, but no substance behind the music.
Right. So that's where the problem lies. And the media keep pushing a certain type of thing while not exposing the people to other things, like the consciousness, like my thing, or other people. They're not being exposed to that.
Yeah. And so that's really the problem. For me, the music business, you know, the problem is not that there's no art is that those music that you mean. And part of that, those artists don't get exposure.
Yeah. That's the more commercial stuff. Exactly. Exactly.
I mean, in Chicago, there's only maybe like three stations playing here stuff, but then there's like 10 stations playing the cruddy music, you know, you have to pick and choose. Yeah. I mean, that's just the way it is, bro. That's where the problem is.
The problem is, I mean, there's always been musicians that do a different type of music. Yeah. For me, in the 60s, the music business was much more drawn to music that has a purpose. Yeah.
It was limited. No, it's like everything is getting more, but I'm calling it. Everything is getting more smiley, more like companies are becoming one company's like a million companies. Yeah, I know.
I don't even know. It's very strange. Yeah, it is. It's everything is like being taken over by these huge corporations.
Yeah. And what they're doing is like cruising down the space that allows music to go. It's getting smaller and smaller. Yeah.
And only a certain type of music is going to get through that space. Yeah. You know, and other stuff must be on the outside. Yeah.
But we've got to keep on doing what we're doing, you know. I'm glad you are, man. You're one of the rare lights out there giving us the good music, you know, music with the purpose, with the meaning, you know, and I just wanted to thank you for doing that. I got one more question for you.
You have a charity group called Urge. Yeah. What exactly does Urge do? Well, I mean, we do whatever we can do, you know, it's not a big thing.
It's not a great big charity thing like Chris and Melon of Dallas. Yeah. Usually I just use my own money and we do what we can do in Jamaica, helping schools, helping homeless orphans, feeding people, whatever, whatever we do, we do, you know, and we don't, we are the, like, we did this. We don't do that.
We don't need to do that. We don't need to be going on any idea. I did this. I did that.
So all right. I just want to thank you for your time, everyone. Ziggy Marley. Thank you once again.
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