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Click here to watch the trailer for Return Of The Rub-A-Dub Style!

Dub Club is an L.A. institution and now (after almost five years of filming) the documentary Return Of The Rub-A-Dub Style—which follows both the organizers of Dub Club and the long line of original reggae and dub stars they’ve brought to perform exclusive shows in L.A.—is about to release. Director Steve Henft (who has made videos for Primal Scream, Stone Roses, the Cure and more) and Dub Club mainstay Tom Chasteen speak before a special screening at tonight’s Dub Club. This interview by Nolan Knight.

What was the first record that hooked you into reggae and dub music?
Tom Chasteen (producer/Dub Club selector): The first thing that got me into reggae music was actually my parents. They went to Jamaica in the early seventies and brought back a bunch of records. They had the Harder They Come soundtrack and the Toots and the Maytals’ Funky Kingston album. Those were the first records to get me into reggae. The thing that got me into dub would probably be the Scientist albums. I bought those when I was a teenager—like Scientist Wins the World Cup, Scientist Versus the Space Invaders, a couple of those albums. That’s what really sold me on dub—listening to those. The word dub has a couple of different meanings. I guess the most frequent meaning of dub is—the Jamaican style—they’d make a 45, and on the A-side you’d have the vocal version of the song and on the B-side you’d have an instrumental of the same song but they would add a lot of effects to it—cutting the vocals in and out, making this psychedelic mix of it and that would be the ‘dub.’ That’s kind of the most concise explanation. Then rub-a-dub doesn’t have the same exact meaning. Rub-a-dub is more of this fixed style of Jamaican music that’s kind of in the era of the late sixties through the seventies into the mid-eighties. A slow and heavy kind of reggae that was really great for playing on these big outdoor sound systems and people toasting over.
The Dub Club has generated a huge response over the years—did it start off big or was it a gradual process?
TC: No, it started off pretty small. We have been doing it since 2000. It took a while to build. I would say the last five or six years it’s been a pretty big crowd—solid each week. It’s been a good crowd consistently for years and years. It took a while because I think there weren’t many other people doing this style of music. But we gradually found more and more people and then built from that following—people who liked the style of music and what we do. I think they appreciate that we bring in artists that are rarely seen or who haven’t been here before.
How did the documentary begin?
Steve Hanft (director): We started documenting the shows and then we realized that the Sound System shows in particular could be made into a film. We got excited about that but for me it was a new thing—even though it’s an old style of music that started in the sixties. For me, it was like, ‘Wow, people are rapping over beats back then?’ Basically, I was just excited about finding out about it. I think the first show we filmed was in 2004. We were shooting the rest of them up to a few months ago.
Were all the artists in the film readily available? Or did you have to go hunt some of them down in Jamaica?
SH: We definitely had to hunt those artists down for sure. Those guys at Dub Club—the selectors who book all the shows—they are digging so deep into the roots of reggae—getting the records, getting the artists. A lot of them came through one artist in particular—Tippa Lee, who’s actually a producer on the movie. He knows a lot of them. Tom would ask for some super old school artists and Tippa would know how to find them.
TC: In my experience, usually the artists were good to work with cause they really want to play and they are excited to come here and perform. A lot of these artists are great artists but they mainly play in Europe and they don’t play here very much. They still sound great. Usually they are just great to work with because they are excited that people still love their music. They’re excited that there is a young crowd here that knows their records.
SH: We really wanted an interview with Brigadier Jerry but he’s a real intense person. He was gonna do it and we went to the Twelve Tribes Church in Mount Washington—the Jamaican church were he is one of the founding members. And then he said, ‘No.’ [Laughs]
Can you tell us a little about the film’s soundtrack and where we can pick up a copy?
TC: It’s gonna come out in August and the DVD with the soundtrack will all be in one package together. A lot of the artists in the movie are on it but then there are others like Prince Jazzbo and Jimmy Riley—plus a lot of other great singers. We tracked the music here in L.A. but a lot of the vocals were recorded in Jamaica. It’s kind of just the tip of the iceberg. We have a lot of tracks that we’ve done over the years and they’re going to be out on Echodelic, which is our label. It’s kind of following the traditional Jamaican style where we have the Sound System—Echodelic Sound System—and Sound System kind of becomes the label, putting out its own records.
SH: [The DVD is] gonna come out right around the time of the screening. We’re in the process of building the DVD. The editing is done but we’re putting a lot of extras into it.
You was saying that the film will also be screened on the 15th—what does the club have in store for that night?
TC: We’re gonna screen the film at nine o’clock at the Echoplex and it will be free to come see the movie—free before nine-thirty. Then later that night we have a performance with Trinity, a classic seventies Jamaican DJ. We’re flying him in from Jamaica for that show. So we booked a performance with Trinity and Tippa Lee—and probably some other special guests will come out too.

RETURN OF THE RUB-A-DUB STYLE SCREENS WED., JULY 15, WITH TRINITY AND TIPPA LEE AT DUB CLUB AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. SCREENING AT 9 PM / FREE BEFORE 9:30 PM / $10 AFTER / 21+. ATTHEECHO.COM. RETURN OF THE RUB-A-DUB STYLE DVD AND SOUNDTRACK WILL RELEASE THIS SUMMER ON ECHODELIC SOUND. MORE INFORMATION AT MYSPACE.COM/DUBCLUBLA.