'It's going to be epic!' Gentleman's Dub Club to kick off their co-headline tour with The Skints in Portsmouth | Interview

When The Guide catches up with Jonathan he is juggling work for the band, and for Good Vibrations Society, a festival he runs on the edge of Ashdown Forest in East Sussex which runs over August 4-6.​

‘It's a fairly new thing, just going into its third year now. We've got (legendary reggae DJ David) Rodigan headlining and we're playing. It's sort of out of necessity that we play – if I don't play a show we can't do it as a band. That might sound a little self-obsessed, but it's because all the other members of the group have got deps for their roles, but me wanting to have a whole weekend off in the summer can be a bit divisive because it means we have to say no to a lot of potential bookings! The way I mediated that was by saying, look, we'll play here, I'll book the band for it each year, you all bring your families and stay in a yurt...

‘It's brilliant.’

Since their formation in early 2006, Gentleman’s Dub Club have become one of the most respected names in dub music, sealing themselves as festival favourites across the UK and Europe. With every UK show to date a sell-out performance, including numerous sell-out nights at The Electric in Brixton, their return is highly anticipated.

Fuse this with the UK’s premier punk/ska/reggae band, The Skints, who have played as the number one British presence across the North American scene, ignited theatre and festival stages across Europe, Japan and Mexico alongside their legendary sold out UK tours, and this co-headline run for 2023 promises to be phenomenal.

Uniting for the seven date tour, which begins here in Portsmouth at The Guildhall on February 25, means the two acts can bring their high-energy shows to more fans than ever.

Both bands share an agent, and it was his inspired idea to put the two acts out on the road together.

So how long have they known The Skints?

‘It would be hard to put a number on how many years we’ve known each other, but we often cross paths as we're booked on similar bills. We've become friendly through that, and then there's also musical projects we've worked on together.

‘We've got the same agent and we're also on the same label (Easy Star Records). It's quite nice because musically if you think of it as a venn diagram, there's a cross over – but then they might go a bit punkier, where we go a bit more electronic or dub. I think we'll offer quite an interesting musical journey for the night, as opposed to it just being one shade on that spectrum. It’s going to be epic.’

And as to who gets to headline each night, Jonathan says they’re going to take it in turns. However, as to which way round they’re playing on the opening night here in Portsmouth, Jonathan pleads ignorance.

‘We've not yet worked that out yet, I don't think. I purposefully don't get involved in a lot of those conversation any more! It will be interesting to see how it goes.’

Given their collective pasts, can fans expect the two bands to perform any collaborations during the run?

‘We might well have something…,’ he teases.

The Dub Club have built a formidable reputation as a top draw festival act, but which does Jonathan prefer – festivals or their own shows?

‘I don't have a preference – we've been playing for such a long time and played so many shows that the experience of a gig for me is, first and foremost, about the band. So whatever environment it is, whatever's in front of us, I've always got the band – the family – around me, and that will bring it up to the highest standard we can give it.

‘The big festivals are fun because they're epic and there's the whole experience around it as well. I remember we played in Germany over the summer, and sometimes these big festivals, they look after you really well and it makes the whole experience really beautiful. And playing alongside icons – we played between Inner Circle and Julian Marley, which is really nice. You get this unique element of playing the big events.

‘But then where I've felt most in my body and most energised at the end of a show is in a tiny venue – that's amazing because I'm looking someone right in the eye – we're in it together and we're there.’

The band’s last album, Down To Earth, came out in March 2021. Recorded during lockdown, it enabled the band to shift their focus while unable to play live due to the pandemic restrictions.

‘We did it online, basically. We had two weeks booked into a house in Wales where we usually go and write our albums, and then that got cancelled because we weren't allowed to go any more.

‘So we decided in those two weeks to meet on Zoom, using a programme our manager developed call Tin Pan Studio, which is a way to play together online without any delay, so it felt like you were jamming together in the same room. The concept he came up with was amazing.’

The album came out, but the nine-piece (give or take) band were unable to tour properly behind it. However, Jonathan, explains that the band’s internal dynamic proved to be their saving grace.

‘We were fortunate in that we've been going long enough to not be affected by it. The way that our set up is internally, most of us have got other projects we're involved in, and are living lives that don't necessarily hinge on the band.

‘It messed things up a lot of course, but for me, I've been gigging, playing 60 shows a year for 15 years and so to actually have a year and a half off had its real drawbacks, but also had its advantages.

‘I struggled during that period with my mental health around not performing, and having to fill a void in my own personal income and needing something to do.

‘I used to run a much bigger events company which pretty much folded because of lockdown – everything changed.’

One of the major ways Jonathan turned things around during lockdown was through returning to study – and he also took a course run by Portsmouth-based music and mental health charity, Tonic.

‘I got a diploma in counselling and psychotherapy. I don't know if I'll pursue it as a profession, it was more of a personal development thing to a certain degree, and something to do! But there is something of interest to me in that area because I've been working with the voice for such a long time. I'm starting to develop this idea of how we can use our own voices to impact our wellbeing. That's been really interesting to explore from a talking therapy point of view, to then bring something like a somatic, physical experience as well.’

It enabled the vocalist to bring together various other strands in his life: ‘It's sort of a meeting of everything together throughout my life. A few years before lockdown I met a yoga instructor who I fell in love with and that changed a lot of my habits and I got into meditation and practices like that.

‘It's talking therapy, spiritual practices and then the voice – it's bringing all three of those together.’

For now though, alongside the tour, there’s new music pending.

‘We've written and recorded the new album – it's called On A Mission and it's coming out in the next couple of months. The first single is dropping at the start of next month, then the album comes out around May.

‘We actually did this one differently – we're always trying to refine the process, so this time we did it with a new producer, whereas the last few albums have been done by Toby, our bass player.

‘We worked with a guy called Brad, who is one half of The Nextmen, they're a wicked crew – we did a record with them called Pound For Pound. So it was him, Luke the keyboard player, Toby and myself – the four of us in the studio for the first six months of last year. And since then we've been slowly fine-tuning it.

‘It's pretty epic – it's our seventh album!’

The Gentlemen’s Dub Club x The Skints is at Portsmouth Guildhall on Saturday, doors at 7pm. Tickets £29.30. Go to portsmouthguildhall.org.uk.