REBELUTION plays Blaze ‘N’ Glory Festival May 16
Rebelution hits up the Blaze ‘N’ Glory Festival at San Manuel Amphitheater in San Bernardino May 16 playing a mix of rock, world, and reggae music. The Santa Barbara band has released four studio albums, “Count Me In”, their latest release, came out in 2014.
Concert Guide Live caught up with drummer, Wesley Finley to find out a little more about their growing phenomena.
Concert Guide Live: Rebelution has enjoyed some massive airplay and downloads while seemingly putting out your music on your own terms. What do you think it is about your music that resonates with audiences and contributes to its success?
Wesley Finley: Like most successful bands, our music fits into a niche that helps us sound different and stand out while touching on specific sentiments that resonate with people. Because we are largely grassroots in our approach, our fans help disseminate our music and feel proud they are contributing to our success.
CGL: What can fans look forward to at a Rebelution concert?
WF: Fans can expect a mostly up-tempo show with good lighting and positive lyrics that will make you shake your derriere.
CGL: How would you describe your music to someone that isn’t familiar with it?
WF: Music with a reggae foundation, with songs influenced by hip-hop, heavy rock, world music, and straight ahead roots reggae. Our singer is Persian too so that adds an interesting vocal quality.
CGL: I believe the band met while attending college. How did that unfold, was everyone studying music?
WF: Yes, three of us were studying music at the time and met in classes, then picked up a couple guys who we knew from the music scene. It always starts out with harmless jamming to see where it goes, but it’s all about how far you take it and how much time you’re willing to dedicate to pushing it places. Now none of us really used our degrees!
CGL: What sort of impact or influence does living in Santa Barbara play in creating your style of music?
WF: Living by the beach in a mostly sunny place inherently affected the mood of our songs, and being in a college town usually meant playing party music so our songs always came out accordingly. Now we’ve learned to tap into different moods but we always come back to that same sensation that was in our original songs.