Eight years is a long time to wait for a new album, and Ziggy Marley is clearly not letting Brightside sit quietly on the shelf.
The reggae icon and The Melody Makers have announced a full North American tour kicking off September 17, with stops in New York, Austin, Asheville, and a handful of festival stages before wrapping at El Patio in Puerto Rico on October 20.
The run is a mixed bag in the best way, blending solo headline slots with co-headlining dates alongside Southern jam rockers Gov’t Mule, a pairing that should pull in crowds from more than one corner of the live music world.
Festival appearances at Sea.Hear.Now in Asbury Park, Ravinia Festival in Chicago, and MEMPHO Fest in Memphis round out the schedule and put the band in front of some seriously diverse audiences.
Brightside, which dropped on April 18, is the album fueling the tour, and it comes loaded with collaborators including Trombone Shorty, Sheila E., Nikka Costa, and Jake Shimabukuro.
Marley previewed the record with a Jimmy Kimmel appearance to debut “Racism Is A Killa,” a track that made clear this was not going to be a low-key comeback.
One of the more curious details about the album is the recording choice Marley made around tuning. He recorded Brightside in 432hz rather than the standard 440hz, citing its closeness to natural human frequency and its use in meditation.
“This is the only frequency I’m using from now on,” he told Billboard, which suggests this is less of an experiment and more of a permanent shift in how he approaches his craft.
The timing of the tour also lines up with something long overdue for the group’s catalog. Just a week before the first show, the first-ever vinyl pressing of their 1988 album Conscious Party is set to arrive, giving a whole new generation a chance to hear one of reggae’s most celebrated records in the format it arguably deserved all along.
The album was produced by Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, the rhythm section behind Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club, a collaboration that felt unexpected at the time but clearly worked.
Conscious Party took home the Grammy for Best Reggae Album in 1989 and housed classics like “Tomorrow People” and “Tumblin’ Down,” tracks that still hold up decades later.
The new vinyl edition includes “We A Guh Some Sum Weh,” a cut that had only ever appeared on CD, making it a genuine find for collectors and longtime fans who thought they had heard everything the record had to offer.
The digital deluxe version goes even further, featuring a “Tomorrow People” remix, a Bomb Squad edit of “Tumblin’ Down,” and a live recording of “Lee And Molly” captured at the Spectrum in Philadelphia back in 1988.
For anyone who was there that night, or wishes they had been, that last one alone is worth the price of admission.
With a new album, a vinyl reissue, and a coast-to-coast tour all landing within weeks of each other, the fall is shaping up to be a busy stretch for Marley and the band.
