Powerful Pandas

Chris O’Brian of Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad called to talk about the proliferation of reggae, the band’s transition to a quartet and their plans for world domination.

It’s not often that the sheer hammer of a bass knocks over a whole row of people, but that’s a scenario that’s always in play when Rochester’s own Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad takes the stage. With rhythmic, lyrical guitar lines that dance and shimmer over a thick dub bottom end, Giant Panda has been known to take roots reggae and push it to extreme levels while maintaining a social consciousness and level of musicianship that makes their live show almost overpowering. Just ask the people in the front row.

But the squadron has gone through some changes since the release of debut album Slow Down in 2006, getting pared down to a quartet in the midst of a marathon three years during which the band hit the stage over 500 times. Now with a new lineup, a new sound and a new album in the works, Giant Panda is finally ready to take the next step in the studio that they seemed poised for after the promising success of Slow Down.

“There has been [a focus on the live show] in the last few years, to our fault even,” said drummer Chris O’Brian. “The fans love and appreciate the live thing but they also really want to hear what can be achieved in the studio. They deserve that and we owe it to ourselves.”

The new album is shaping up to be a big benchmark for the group, its first record in five years and first with the new smaller lineup. But that doesn’t mean Giant Panda has changed. The instrumentation is tweaked, the stage is a bit lighter, but the group hasn’t lost sight of what it is they do so well.

“I feel like we’re more danceable and I feel like our fans are really happy with the new sound,” said O’Brian. “We all had to put in extra parts, and we’re all bringing more to the table now, but it’s not like “woah, this is a totally different band.” The new album is in the same vein [as Slow Down].”

The long break between studio records doesn’t mean that Giant Panda has been idly sitting by – not by a long shot. In addition to their relentless touring schedule, the band has released a live album, Live Up!, and launched a new web site, LivePanda.com in order to proliferate their live recordings and interact with fans. And in the time that they’ve been around, since their beginnings at the turn of the century playing whatever shows they could get in upstate New York, they’ve been riding a wave of increased mainstream interest in reggae.

“Since we became a band we watched the whole Matisyahu thing happen. The dubstep thing happened too,” said O’Brian. “Reggae is one of those types of music where there’s so many subgenres and so many different styles, [everyone says] I’m in a reggae band, I’m a reggae DJ, I’m in a reggae sound system.”

It’s a craze that has even sucked in jam-rockers Umphrey’s McGee, the band that Giant Panda is opening for at the House of Blues tonight. Umphrey’s recently re-released a version of their song “Turn and Run” that they rechristened “Turn and Dub,” complete with all the hallmarks of the reggae movement. Gov’t Mule, a titan in the blues/Southern rock scene, became so enamored with it that they released an album, Mighty High, in 2007 that was composed entirely of reggae interpretations of their tracks.

And Giant Panda is intent on riding that wave to success. In early March they’ll be back in Boston touring with west coast dub outfit Rebelution, who O’Brian says is creating a model that they are attempting to follow. “Those guys run the California reggae scene,” he said. “Obviously we’d like to [do the same] in the Northeast, and it’s on us. We gotta get the new studio album out and keep being productive. There are things you have to do if your goal is to, say, get your song on the radio, or sell hundreds of thousands of albums, or be touring anywhere in the country to a thousand people. That rarely happens by just going out and playing 500 shows in three years, or having a great band, or telling all your friends to tell all their friends. It’s a fluke. We’re just trying to make all the right moves in all the right places, and we feel like we’ve got what it takes.”

Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad will be opening for Umphrey’s McGee at the House of Blues tonight, and will be playing the House of Blues with Rebelution March 5.