INTERVIEW: Baha Men’s Dyson Knight gets ready to ‘Ride With Me’

Baha Men struck gold several times with their international hit Who Let the Dogs Out, and now the Bahamas-based band is building off that success and heading out on new adventures with their latest release, Ride With Me. The recently released album, exclusively available in Walmart, brings together world music, Junkanoo and other styles, although throughout the songs there’s an unmistakable feeling of the band’s island flavor.

Dyson Knight has been with the band for several years as one of the vocalists. He detailed how the album sprang out of an opportunity with Sony Latin America.

“Sony [Latin America] asked us to do a performance for one of their conferences,” he said recently during a phone interview. “Whenever they have the conferences in different locations in the world, they ask for a local band just to see what’s happening in the music. … And we were chosen. We performed a few songs for them, and the CEO wanted to sign us. And that was about three and a half years ago, and the album just grew from there.”

Recording seems to be a lot of fun for the Baha Men, as evidenced by such new songs as “Night & Day,” “Island Girl” and “Off the Leash,” but their passion resides in live performances.

“I think I can speak for the entire band and say that we are all about performance,” Knight said. “What happens a lot of times with the music or the recordings is that we just connect. Like everyone goes into the studio at different times. The singers go in at one time. The musicians go in next. The producers work separately with everybody, so it’s never the same as the magic that we create when we are on stage together. So we live for the live performances, and … to us, they always turn out seasoned, more flavorful than the actual recording records. So what you hear recorded is like a producer’s vision, which is great. What you experience at a live performance is the magic, so, yeah, the band is performance, performance, performance.”

Ride With Me, according to Knight, is the truest album to Baha Men’s intended sound. The band had a lot of “creative input” in the final product, and it features both that distinct island sound and influences from the United States as well. “It’s a very nicely blended album,” he said.

Knight said he especially likes the remix of “Off the Leash,” a song he called “fire” and “explosive.” It features a spin on the classic “Who Let the Dogs Out,” a song that continues to dominate the world.

“I think everything about that song [‘Who Let the Dogs Out’] has just been unexpected,” Knight said. “Initially, the band did not want to record it at all. They actually had to be convinced by the label — Steve Greenberg at S-Curve Records at the time — to record this song. They thought it was way too gimmicky. The actual version that they heard, it sounded nothing like what they did with it in the studio, but I think after it was recorded, everyone was a bit more comfortable with it. And then after hearing that it went platinum, then they became more happy with it. And then it went platinum a couple more times, made movies and just blew up.”

Even though many fans begin their love of the Baha Men by listening to “Who Let the Dogs Out,” people are using that song as an entry point into their catalog. They hear one song, and they want to hear more from not only Knight but also vocalist Rik Carey, bassist Isaiah Taylor, drummer Colyn “Mo” Grant, percussionist Anthony “Monks” Flowers, vocalists Leroy “Breaka” Butler, guitarist Patrick Carey, keyboardist Jeffery Chea and guitarist/music director Herschell Small.

Here’s an example that Knight gave about a recent concert experience: “We just performed in Rhode Island for Autumn Fest, and we were just doing sound check with the title track, right, and by the time we performed later on, I think two hours later, there were people that were singing the lyrics of the song [‘Ride With Me’]. And that’s after being the first time they heard it just a few hours prior to the performance. That was amazing. Pretty much they weren’t that familiar with ‘Off the Leash’ because they were chanting for ‘Who Let the Dogs Out’, but to see them actually singing ‘Ride With Me’ was very, very impressive.”

Knight had a deep musical upbringing. As he said, he was “born singing.” His father is a successful oboe player, and his grandfather is a musician as well. His aunts on his father’s side are musicians, too.

“I was literally born into music, born into performance,” he said. “My grandfather being a pastor, so I was born into being a public speaker, very comfortable in front of crowds, knowing how to entertain, playing the trump from when I was 4 years old.”

Living and growing up in the Bahamas helped as well. The island nation is known for its musical influences, although Knight was quick to point out that the Bahamas are “chill about every aspect of life.”

“Nothing seems to be that overbearingly important,” he said. “Our favorite pastime is politics just because it’s always something to talk about, and mostly people don’t even care that much about it until it’s like election time when the politicians start giving out free stuff. We’re a chill nation. We’re only worried when the beaches are being corroded, and we can no longer go out and have a chilled Bahama Mama next to a palm tree and probably do some fishing. If you mess with that, then you have a serious national problem.”

As one of the vocalists, Knight is a central part of the Baha Men. However, what some fans might not know is that he’s one of the newest members. He only joined in 2004, but the welcome from his band mates was quite warm. Today he calls them his “family.”

“It’s like a real bona fide adoption,” he said. “They took me in, and they showed me everything. I know all the band’s secrets. I know all the ups and the downs, and there’s a lot of that. There’s a lot of bonding in this band. … We share everything except toothbrushes. We don’t share toothbrushes. We share everything else.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

• Baha Men recently released Ride With Me. Click here for more information.