Mike Love’s journey to becoming a must-see reggae musician

Photo courtesy of Ineffable Music.

Dailyreggae.com spoke with Mike Love to learn about his journey as a musician, inspiration as an artist, musical creativity, and his new album in the works.

You grew up in Hawai’i and had a very musical family. I believe both your father and grandfather were composers. How do you think being from the islands and having a musical foundation in your family has affected you as an artist?

Growing up anywhere you have the opportunity to connect with nature is going to affect you so much different than growing up in a city or a suburban area. I think about my childhood and I was always outside climbing around in the mountains by my house, going to the beach, spending a lot of time in the water. That is so fundamental to who I am. I still just love outdoors, hiking, being in the water, and connecting with nature.

That played a huge part in my music because it is connected to that natural living and return to natural living. Getting out of the system and out of that mentality of being attached to the life of seeking possessions, getting the big house, fancy car, and all that stuff. 

I don’t know if being musical is genetic, a spiritual path, or a combination of both, but I know I was always exposed to it and around a lot of music growing up. Even before I can remember. All of my solid memories growing up are all surrounding music. I think I always wanted to play music. I don’t know if it was the influence of my Dad being so into music, my grandpa being a musician, and being involved in a lot of musical things in school from an early age.

My sister was always into playing music and is still a music teacher now. That played a huge role in my growth as a musician. I’m curious to know if I didn’t have anybody in my family that was interested in music, would I still have been completely called and drawn towards it like I was? It’s an interesting query (laughs) that I guess we’ll never really know, but I tend to feel that musicians that end up doing what I’m doing where my focus, career, and life revolves around music, comes from a long spiritual line of many lifetimes being focused on music.

Some people have this natural sense of harmony and melody and I always felt like I leaned into that naturally and everything kind of fit into place easily for me in that respect. I think that comes from drawing from a musical experience and past lifetimes before. Sometimes you’ll see a kid and they’re singing and have this natural ability and that comes from somewhere beyond this life I feel like.

So, you’re growing up in Hawai’i and naturally come upon this love of music. You were playing steel pan and piano, and then at 15, you started playing guitar. What was it that kind of made you gravitate towards guitar and that being your main performance piece?

Well, my Dad was always a guitar player. My sister played guitar, so they both had guitars. I don’t know why I never got into it until then. Around that time my favorite bands were The Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Metallica, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden. I was really getting into music at that time. All of those bands are so guitar-centric. Up to that point, I was a piano player, and I had a lot of steel pan music through elementary school. In all of that music, it’s all guitar-centric. Most of those bands don’t have a piano (laughs) or anything like that. Maybe it was that.

I wanted to learn all of those songs. My Dad and sister both taught me the basic stuff. They are both basic guitar players. They never really dug super deep into learning a lot of technique on the guitar. They learned how to play some chords, play some songs, and sing some songs. Pretty quickly I got deep into it and within a short while, I had gone beyond everything they taught me.

It took off on my own. Then I got really into the bass. I had a high school band with a bunch of my friends that I played bass in. They were all guitar players, so it was kind of this culture we had going on at school. We were all playing a lot of music. Not going to school a lot (laughs) but were focused on music and digging into it at that time.

Was this a reggae band, or did your love of reggae start after this band?

During that time, I listened to reggae, but it wasn’t really my focus. I was listening to Bob Marley of course. My Dad introduced me to Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff. But in terms of reggae that was as deep as it went. Then I had some friends that introduced me to Gregory Isaacs, Steel Pulse, Israel Vibration, so I got a little more into it in high school. But it wasn’t really until my early 20s that my focus on playing music shifted completely to reggae.

I got into The Abyssinians, The Congos, and that deeper and more spiritual reggae that’s focused on Rastafari, spirituality, and revolution. I got deep into that. It was a really big shift in my life at that time spiritually and I started getting into fasting and mediation. I started cutting out a lot of the toxic poisonous behaviors in my life. It was the first time I was glued into this more pure, natural living. I stopped eating meat, I shifted to a vegetarian diet. There were a lot of big changes like that, and reggae music and Rastafari were very integral in all of that shift.

At that point, I shifted to playing and writing strictly reggae music. I had been writing music for a long time, but that’s when I started writing music that I felt was more divinely channeled rather than just coming from within me. It was a big change for me, and all of that happened through reggae music.

Over the years my style of writing has gone through so many metamorphoses and at that time I focused on reggae and got really into it. I think that was important because it is such a discipline of music. You see a lot of people trying to play reggae music, but you see them playing the guitar and it’s not the way it’s done. But if you know reggae music and you’ve studied the originators of the music, you see when the guys play the guitar, they aren’t playing the downbeats at all. He’s stoic and playing only the notes that he’s supposed to be playing.

Leaving the space is what reggae music is all about. Space. Like any kind of music, blues music, classical music, and Hawaiian music. There’s a lot of these unspoken rules. Rules, I don’t think are the right word, but practices that are there for a reason, because a lot of people put a lot of time and effort into forming these ways of doing things. When you get all those elements, it sounds right. It sounds like authentic reggae music.

What I do is something different that has a fusion of a lot of other stuff, but I feel like those elements of that traditional reggae music are there, and I try to pay homage to that style in using those techniques and being true to those techniques, within everything else that I do. And over the years, I’ve folded back in a lot of the music that I’ve grown up playing rock, blues, flamenco, and classical. But I think the real shift for me spiritually happened within reggae music, so I try and remain true to that spirit within everything I do. Even if I’m playing something that’s far away from reggae music like a soft folk guitar song or something like that. I still feel like I’m trying to honor that spirit of my connection to Jah, to the most high, to the universe. To keep that spirit continuous through everything that I do.

I love you bringing up the element of the way the guitar is played and keeping true to reggae. Are there any sort of other similar elements, instrumentally, that you think are necessary to stay true to reggae?

If you take a drummer for example and your basic one drop (beatboxes rhythm) all those actions and everything is done in a certain way. Sometimes you’ll see a Sublime or Slightly Stoopid style of the band have a different way of playing. It’s more rock-oriented and they’re emulating that style but doing hi-hat patterns with two hands instead of one. Different things like that. There’s nothing wrong with it because it is its own sound. They are fully influenced by that music. Sublime covered Bob Marley songs but they weren’t trying to sound like Bob Marley. They were trying to do their own thing, which is cool.

There are those elements. You have your piano player, your B3 player, a piano skank that drops on the two and four. There are a lot of elements like that. I’ve been through a lot of different roles. I was never really a drummer, but I’ve learned to play enough to know how to translate what I want to a drummer and study all of those elements. If you’re playing a traditional one drop groove in reggae music, one of the cardinal rules is the bass doesn’t play on the one. That’s not an ultimate rule that you have to follow. A classic bass line like Stir It Up is on the one. But most reggae bass lines are not going to hit on the one. Reggae musicians that are studied and are familiar with all of those elements can identify other musicians that have done the same.

You do mix a lot of styles with reggae, and you have different types of sets whether you’re playing solo or with your band. Do you have a normal songwriting process? Do you normally start with a chord progression, come with a melody, and then lyrics? Is it lyrics first, or is it kind of all over the board?

Yeah, I don’t have a set way of writing. It’s always kind of different. It could start with a lyric, melody, a bass line, a groove, or a chord progression. It always comes differently. I’ve also written music where I’ve collaborated with people and there is a whole form or structure already written and it’s up to me to write a melody, lyrics, some horn arrangement, and stuff like that.

I’ve done a bunch of stuff recently with Rising Tide, which is a bunch of the original members of Groundation, and worked with them on their new album. That was a whole new way of writing for me because there are complex chordal structures and songs that sound like they were written already with a lot of vocal arrangement already built into them. I had to write and adhere to a lot of that, which was interesting.

So, you had a narrow window to execute?

Right, when I write generally for my band, I write everything from scratch and I’m writing everything arrangement-wise. Drum parts down to a lot of the drum fill. All the bass lines, horn parts. I’m almost always writing all of it and come to my band with this complete, full arrangement. There’s a lot of interplay between vocals, horns, bass, and everything.

To have a vision for all of that from start to finish, there’s a lot of freedom to it. To do something like with the Rising Tide guys, it’s interesting because it’s not like a traditional riddim like I did with the Cali Roots Riddim last year and some features. It’s pretty straightforward, chord progression. The Cali Roots Riddim is a traditional three-chord reggae riddim that you write over. The only limitation is there’s no changing, so you have the palate to free form your verses and choruses and the same thing doing features. There’s usually a section to do a verse on. I recently released a song, Ease and Flow, with the guys from Indubious, and that is a two-chord thing, a little bridge and it’s pretty simple and straightforward. The music with Rising Tide has time changes, breakdowns. Groundation is pretty complex jazz-infused reggae music and there’s a lot of dynamic change. They wrote all that stuff as if there was a singer there but there are just instrumentals. It was pretty cool to write to considering Groundation is one of my favorite bands of all time and felt like in a way coming in with the original rhythm section felt like I was the new singer of Groundation or something (laughs). Epic music. I’m pumped to get it out into the world!

It’s always exciting to create new music. In the past, I’d write a new song and would start playing it at my solo shows, the week I write it. And now we have the Internet and YouTube and all of that. I have a much bigger fanbase than I once did. If you play a song and someone films it and puts it on the Internet, then it’s out there. You record it on your album three or four years later, but everyone has heard it already (laughs), so now you kind of have to hold this stuff into myself and it’s not easy. You get excited about sharing.

When I feel like blowing people’s minds and have friends over to my place, I’ll put on a video of you performing Permanent Holiday, and once it gets to that section in the middle where you build up this vocal loop. You’re doing the first syllable of a word. You’re on the downbeat and then you build the next syllable and you’re doing harmonizing. It’s one of the coolest musical things I’ve ever seen. Whenever I show it to somebody, they just can’t believe it! How did you make that? What was the process?

Yeah, you nailed it. One thing I love about Groundation and their singer, Harrison Stafford, is the way he writes in this constant free flow. He doesn’t have a melody that repeats, and he’ll have four lines of the same melody in the verse, then a chorus and then go back with the same four lines, melody, and lyrics in the second verse. He’s going from idea to idea to idea and building on those ideas. I’ve always loved that and as I said, I grew up listening to a lot of progressive rock. One of my favorite bands is TOOL, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and my Dad raised me on Crosby, Stills & Nash. These bands would be in this heavy grooving song and then in the middle it breaks down to this big open dreamy slow part. It builds and builds and then comes back into the big groove again and I’ve always loved that kind of arrangement to where there are multiple suites in a song.

When I was writing Permanent Holiday, I had most of the song and had this idea of a droning rhythm. I had been writing some stuff like that where it drones or pedals on the same note, so I was thinking of something like, (sings) “I will be manipulated, mind-controlled and inundated, I will seek the… You know what I mean?” That driving rhythm. I wrote those lyrics and I had just started doing looping with vocals.

I had been doing this solo gig every Monday night. I started playing solo. I had been playing with bands for a while and it was a suggestion from my wife because she was like we’re broke and why don’t you try doing a solo gig? So, I started doing that.

It was four hours and pretty soon I realized it’s pretty boring to play your guitar and sing for four hours, and I’m a lead guitarist, so I started doing some looping stuff. I had just recently started doing vocal looping and realizing I could beatbox and loop that and do bass lines, so it was a fresh thing for me. I was realizing that it’s cool to have unique moments within your set. You can play songs and songs and songs, but if you have these unique and different things that grab people’s attention at different moments in your set, it keeps re-engaging people.

I was doing things like the whole delay part at the end of Barbershop. Ideas like that to do something different to break up just playing songs. I thought with Permanent Holiday, it could be cool to split apart and loop these syllables. I spent about four or five days writing it all down and splitting up all of the syllables on paper. I memorized the three sections of syllables. It’s just memorization like learning another language or something. I’d be walking my dog, hiking, or driving in the car and I’d repeat that first section and would repeat that for a couple of days and then I added the second section. I’d repeat the first section I already knew and would add the second section and then did the third one. After about five days I had it all memorized.

I never set up any of my gear at home because I had this gig where not a lot of people would come at first, so I was just practicing at the gig and I never set up any of the looping stuff at home to practice, I just did it at the gig. So, I played Permanent Holiday. I had worked it out in my mind and didn’t know if it was going to work. Are people going to be able to understand what I’m doing, or what I’m saying?

I had memorized the whole thing; I went to the gig and did it at the gig. That first time that I did it, it all came together, and I was like it all came together good! Everybody in the crowd kind of went nuts and I was like ok cool, this thing works.

It’s funny because something like you said, you put it on to blow people’s minds, but it doesn’t really blow my mind. In terms of musicianship, it’s just memorization, it’s not that impressive to me. It’s something that occurred to me but for whatever reason, people when they hear that or see that they trip out. I’m sure it’s something that probably acapella groups for hundreds of years have done things like that you know (laughs). In that way, it’s probably not a novel idea, but I don’t think anybody ever did it with a loop pedal.

I never really had that vision of it being the thing that would draw a lot of people to my music. We did that video for Permanent Holiday one morning. It was me and my old percussion player Sam that played with me for years. We had played a gig the night before. We were up super late, and we had to be at that house to film at ten in the morning or something.

We got out of our gig at two-thirty in the morning and we’re getting ready to go home and we were like, ah you know we should just cancel this thing (laughs). And then we said, ah I guess we’ll do it. Our friend Brandon had booked it and I was like we don’t want to let Brandon down, so we showed up and did it. We did one take of all the songs.

Then one day my oldest son, Charlie was like, “I’ve seen your song on the front page of Reddit!” I was like, “Yeah?” I didn’t know what Reddit was. I looked at the video and overnight it had a couple of million views. It was like wow! I couldn’t believe it.

You’ve done such an incredible job on engaging with your fans through YouTube and your Mike Love Mondays live streams. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind Mike Love Mondays? That’s awesome you recently reached over 100,000 subscribers.

Yeah, it hasn’t been an easy year with our gigs and touring being canceled. It’s our main source of income. Doing the live streaming, creating my own YouTube channel, and putting a lot of content on that was something that I never really took the time to do for myself, but this year was the perfect year to do that.

When I started, I had never done a live stream before. I did a couple and was like this is a cool way to connect with fans and have people tuning in from all over the world. It sort of occurred to me, well I’ve toured all across North America, South America, Europe and Australia, New Zealand, and East Asia. I’ve toured a lot of places and have been a lot of places I never thought I’d go and probably most musicians never are blessed with the opportunity to go just because of the unique nature of what I do. Being able to have that outreach on YouTube and tour so lightly, if it just needs to be me, I can tour by myself, and that’s enabled me to do a lot of that stuff. Even if I toured every day for the rest of my life, I’d probably never be able to reach half the places since I have fans spread out all over the world. Doing the live stream is a cool way to connect with a lot of those people that might never get an opportunity to see me live. I love being able to do that.

It’s been a great way for my fans to support me energetically and financially. A lot of people donate when I do live streams. It’s awesome to feel that love and support. Pretty soon after starting to do that, I realized I’m not doing any gigs right now. I’d do a live steam and then I’d get focused on other stuff and there would be a couple of weeks before I would do another one. I thought I want to create this Mike Love Mondays thing, because I always played starting with my early solo gigs, on Monday nights at home in Hawai’i. So, I started doing the Mike Love Monday streams, because I wanted to keep myself accountable to my fans, who weren’t able to get out and see live music. I felt like in a way it was my responsibility as a musician, a bringer of light, a bringer of love, a bringer of connection, to be able to keep connected and grounded with my music.

I know you’ve been working on your next full album. Can you tell us about the album and your creative process?

It’s the most massive thing I’ve ever undertaken in my life. I’m finally getting to the place now where I can see some light at the end of the tunnel with all of the work that I’ve done and put into it.

We started recording the album about two years ago now. It’s around 25 songs now that it will be in the end. The band learned all the songs. We worked really hard rehearsing to be able to go into the studio and record all of the basic tracks with the band. We prepared to be able to go into the studio. It was my seven-piece band and we all tracked live together, so it was me playing guitar and singing, drums, bass, Hammond B3, piano and Rhodes, so two keyboard players, sax and trombone. So, seven of us all tracked live together to analog tape.

If you know a little bit about modern recording, everything is digital and it’s kind of so easy now to the way we’ve done our albums in the past. You go into the studio, do a bunch of takes and you go through and pick the best take. But if you hear a funky part in the bridge then you could take the bridge from the other take and splice it all together in the digital world. But if you’re recording to analog tape and you’re recording together, the whole band has to nail it start to finish together. If you don’t then you stop the tape, rewind it, and try again. We were trying to do a lot of songs and material and recorded two and half hours’ worth of music in that original session. We didn’t have the expense to do multiple takes and pick the best one. We did one good take of every song, so it took a lot of focus and energy. It was a cool way to do it.

Since then, I’ve been working on a lot more of the acoustic songs and doing overdubs, overdubbing, extra horns, strings, percussions, vocals, backup vocals, and all of that stuff. It’s been a lot of work and I’m getting close to the end of it, and we’ll send it to mix and everything. I’m hoping to start releasing a couple of songs before the end of the year, but you never really know what’s going to happen in life and how things are going to go. Sometimes I’ll get cranking on it, do a bunch of work in a month, and then next month a bunch of stuff comes up and I’m traveling doing gigs. Being at home and having a lot more time to work on it has sped up the process.

We were talking before about how you like to put a bunch of different genres into your music because you love all of it. Is there a particular genre right now outside of reggae that you’re stoked on and that you’re integrating into your music?

I listen to a lot of different styles of music. I’ve been listening to a lot of folky stuff and a lot of hip hop and modern R&B. I don’t consciously try to integrate anything into my music. I feel like if I’m listening to Kendrick Lamar, Nipsey Hussle, J Cole, or something, I’m not going to rap in my song, but it might influence the percussive way in which I phrase something. I’ve noticed that and think that’s kind of crucial to growth. You listen to different things. If you’re an authentic artist, you’re never going to try and sound like somebody else or emulate someone else, but your influences naturally come through in your music and what you create.

Do you have any advice for upcoming reggae musicians or the overall reggae scene moving forward?

I think I would say one thing I noticed about the world in general and everything more than ever being focused on social media is there’s a lot of judgment. It’s easy for people to judge and to display their judgments from behind the screen. I haven’t experienced a lot of that, but I see people experiencing it. In the end, I’d say it’s all your personal journey. If you like something. If you like the way it sounds, you like the way it feels playing it, you have to let go of any fear of judgment and just do what feels right and honest to you.

That’s the true path to growth. Being honest, and true to yourself. And not worrying what anyone else thinks. That’s always what I’ve done and always tell people, that’s how you find your voice. That’s how you find what you really sound like. You just let go of thinking about what you’re supposed to sound like and let it come through and come out. If there’s something that you feel passionate about, sing about it! Art is about being open, vulnerable, and saying things that you feel passionately about.

In my experience, letting go and trusting that you’ve been given these ideas and messages to share has always resulted in the people that I thought would be offended by it, embracing it and being the ones that wanted to hear it the most and needed to hear it the most.

Follow your heart, follow your spirit, follow your intuition, and when you get those signs that are reminding you or reinforcing you, make sure you’re recognizing them and being open to them. Use that as your fuel.