08/30/2024
When I first met Levi Tekneek Benji and Doc Smith aka Rising Son in 2000-2001 Benji was 15 y\o Levi had long ass dreads and Terry aka Tek basically looks the same now as he did back then. I don’t remember if JahRam was there yet. 
It was at a festival in Ventura at the state beaches Our band Disfunction was playing too. We did punk and reggae. So the story the best I can remember it is rising Sons drummer for the show, and I know that they were a new band at the time, couldn’t make it or flaked, I don’t remember but they came up to me and said hey you play reggae right? I said yes and they said you want to fill-in for us today and I was like dang you guys go on and like an hour so we immediately went into a VW van I do believe it was Doc Smiths van, & and I think they had a cassette or maybe they just played the songs acoustically for me to learn what type of beat to put to the song and at the time I knew it would either be a steppers or rockers or one drop or boxcar so I had it on my notes what type of beat to play and we would figure out the tempo as we went. From what I remembered rising Sun did play a few songs, but had to be cut off because they could only do the festival until sundown, and I’m not even sure our band dysfunction even went on, that’s my memory of how rising Sun met and played the first show.
After that, I guess I did good enough that we decided to meet up again at Doc Smith garage and throw down some rehearsals where I learned the songs for real on YouTube. There is record of our first rehearsal. What really solidified me getting in the band was very difficult beat For a song called find a way the beat is called a poly rhythm style beat. Rising Sun has been together to close to 24 years and thankfully we get to play all these amazing shows once in a while. We go on at 4 o’clock this Sunday 9/1 at the aloha Beach festival in ventura by the fairgrounds. And Sept 14 Olsons