On Thursday, April 16th at 9PM, a whole lot of head bobbing was going on at the Boulder Theatre. At this time, The Movement was rocking the stage, opening up for headliner Tribal Seeds. By 9:30PM, the theatre was starting to get packed. The crowd was quite the amalgamation; old men with dreads, young men with dreads, twenty something girls who just wanted to dance, college boys who were probably involved in Greek life and high-schoolers. The sounds of reggae, rock and hip-hop mixed together appeased all.
The Movement is a three-man-band consisting of Josh Swain (lead guitarist and lead vocalist), Jason Shmidt (bass guitarist and back-up vocalist) and Gary Jackson (drummer). Although The Movement is considered a reggae band, many of their songs have a hip-hop flair. They really got the crowd dancing when they played one of their hits: “Set Sail”. This song starts off with a piano prelude that travels down the keyboard. After about thirty seconds, we hear Josh’s voice sing and rap about the beach as his mecca, and how being at the beach takes him away from the dark world we live in. A memorable moment from The Movement’s performance was when they broke into a rock song and Jason swung his four-feet long dreads around-and-around for about thirty seconds. The crowd stood mesmerized - How did he do that and maintain his balance? Jason was definitely the best performer in The Movement. When he played his guitar, he danced with equal effort, and his facial expressions mimicked the mood of each song he performed—It was inspiring.
By 11PM, Tribal Seeds took the stage quickly and began with some good-old, slow-paced reggae tunes. Tribal Seeds is made up of Steven Rene Jacobo (lead vocalist), Tony-Ray Jacobo (keyboardist, vocalist, beats producer), Victor Navarro (bass guitarist), Carlos Verdugo (drummer), E.N. Young (keyboardist and vocalist) and Ryan Gonzo (guitarist and vocalist). The staccato, offbeat rhythm took ahold of the crowds attention immediately, as it contrasted from the hip-hop islander mood that The Movement previously created. At about halfway through Tribal Seeds’ set, they played their number one hit— “The Garden”, which got the entire crowd singing. This song is so catchy because of its traditional reggae sounds coming from the keyboard, the horn synths and of course, the song’s topic—Marijuana.
Around the end of Tribal Seeds’ performance, each member released his “inner rock star.” Out of nowhere, the room got darker and the style of their music changed to punk rock. E.N. Young stole the stage— he skipped around the whole platform and got down into “lunge” dance moves. At this point, it sounded like they were free-styling – It was awesome. The night ended with an expected encore consisting of The Movement and Tribal Seeds all jamming together. During this final performance, they really got the crowd involved, instructing different sides of the audience to sing “yeahhhhhhhhhhh” and “oooooooooh” back and forth. The audience involvement was a little cliché, but still enjoyable because we got to spend just a little bit more time with the bands. Both The Movement and Tribal Seeds put on a great show—Both these groups aren’t just musicians, they’re all around performers.
Written By Samantha Elkan
Photos taken by Calyx Ward