Express 5: Bare Essentials' Errol Lee

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IN THE 1970s, you could find Errol Lee in Jamaica's hotels. He was there five nights week, working long hours with few breaks and little recognition.

"It's backbreaking work," Lee said by phone from Kingston. "The setup, the pull down; you move the stuff here, you go there. And you do get bored, too."

But Lee wasn't a waiter or general laborer; he was the leader of Bare Essentials, a reggae-rocksteady-ska band that perfected its sound playing the hotel circuit on Jamaica's bustling north coast tourist scene.

"It's not very glamorous in terms of what we know show business can be, but it's a real way of making a living," Lee said. "We don't do that anymore; we only play a hotel now for a function. But really and truly, it's like going to college: It's a good way of honing your craft. Many Jamaican musicians who make an impression later, when you check them out, they will have served some time on the north coast."

Nowadays, Bare Essentials doesn't need to play hotels because the group keeps busy playing special events throughout the Caribbean and for the Jamaican diaspora in the U.S. and beyond. Lee's ensemble is so popular essentially because it's a dance band: wherever Bare Essentials plays, people shake bootys — hard. The group's repertoire consists of massive crowd-pleasers from post-1960s Jamaican music, sprinkled with a few smart originals, but the emphasis is always on keeping the people moving.

As they have done for several years now, Lee and Co. will play at the annual Jamaican Independence Day celebrations held on Aug. 3 (1 p.m - 8 p.m.) in the outdoor courtyard of the Organization of American States (17th Street & Constitution Avenue). It's an all-day party — and it's free — featuring a market and many artists, including D.C.'s own Image Band and S.T.O.R.M. as well as dancehall artist General Degree and sweet singer Richie Stephens.

And in addition to Bare Essentials' own spotlight set, the group will back Degree and Stephens, making for a long, long day — though not quite as backbreaking as those hotel gigs nearly 40 years ago.

Since the catalog of songs Bare Essentials draws from is so huge, we asked Lee to Express 5 favorites that he loves to play with his band.

1) Ken Boothe, "Train Is Coming"
There's something about that song that speaks to the whole movement of people — it's not just a song. It has a lot of meaning. "The train is coming / And I'm leaving on that train." It's almost spiritual — in fact, I think maybe it does hark back to the old Negro spiritual. [Remember] "People Get Ready," Curtis Mayfield — you see what I mean. I've never seen people fail to react to that song — never. It's a wonderful song; it's one of my personal favorites.

2) Bob Marley, "Coming in From the Cold"
I'm hoping somehow that the message side of reggae will triumph in the end, because some wonderful songs have been done — particularly by artists in the '70s and '80s. But maybe now in the 2000s, people are thinking more of the quick fix, trying to break into the mainstream. When the songs were being done for themselves, without anybody telling you what you need to do to get into Billboard and so forth, those were better songs.

3) Bob Marley, "One Love"
That is such a joyful song — maybe in the whole history pop music. Saying "let's get together and feel alright." Let us just forget about race and creed and politics and country and all that and just get together in peace and unity.

4) Bare Essentials, "Miss Jamaica"
We don't perform it often enough, so I'm going to make sure we do it Sunday when we come up. It's a take off on the beauty contest and the whole imagery of females being packaged to fit certain criteria. We've had people who have been brought "home" — they've qualified to enter [the beauty contest] because their parents are Jamaican or something, but some of them have only seen Jamaica when they've come for the audition. So when they're being interviewed and are asked, "If you were chosen Miss World, what would you do about crime in your country?" And they say, "Crime?" They don't know the problem [laughs]. Or they rehearse something to say, and the questioner asks them something different — and they're stuck. I wrote that [song], so I want to pat myself on the back.

5) Bare Essentials, "You Taught My Heart How to Sing"
One written by my co-writer in the band, Ben Frampton. It's a country and western styling, and our female singer, Maria Myrie, performs it. As recently as May we were in Honduras, and it's a Spanish-speaking country and she sang it, but they love country and western done there.

It didn't matter to them that it was an original song from us or wherever, and I don't know how many understood the words. But they certainly loved the song, and she got a rousing reception for it — and it works every time. We don't get to play it enough because you need to have the right atmosphere, but it's a really nice song. ... When you go into the rum bars — and I'm taking about the real roots places, where the people buy their drinks of white rum and the people there look like ... you can count the years, man — that's what the jukebox plays: old country and western songs. They seem to get the same response wherever they are played in the South [in America] or here in the Caribbean.

» See photos from past Bare Essentials performances at the Jamaican Independence Day celebrations in D.C.

Photos courtesy Bare Essentials