We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Bounce Cruz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Bounce, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?
Well… the name ST1 comes from ST-one
One of our founders (Lawrence “Ching” Dahilig) aunty used to “catch” and ask, you are ST1d’ again?
We thought it was a good play on the word and a clever name for a band.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
ST1reggae is a collection of individuals from different ish musical backgrounds with the common goal of making the world a better place by spreading our roots/rock/reggae style music amongst other genres with the masses.
And also pride ourselves in, doing a lot of community outreach and trying to bring the “NESIAN” (poly/micro/mela) communities together. To share our love of our cultures’ food, dance, practices, and… of course, music.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
Consistency is key. Also, managing individual personalities is a necessity.
No one likes to work for a boss. But…
Everyone will follow a leader.
Anyone who expects stuff to be done a certain way by other people = a boss.
Anyone who will put in the work and appreciate the help= leader. That being said I’d like to think the 4 of us are leaders in our own respect.
Ryan “Boi” Rodrigues Malina MD/Drummer/vox
Jonah “Jongomon” Pascua: Bassy/vox
Jimmy Levi: Piano/keyboard/vox
Bounce Cruz: Lead Guitar/vox
We all have our roles and know what to do. If one needs help… any or all of us can step in. It’s a pretty cohesive band/family that we have.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
We just get out there and do our thing.
What you see is what you get and we try to get out there and meet and hangout with all our fans. We’d like to think they’ve become chosen family. And, back to consistency we love to Maintain those relationships with our people that way. We like to take the time to be the ones to stop and ask, have we met? Make real face to face connections with people. Make them feel like they matter. Cause… they do. They’re the reason why artists’ stay relevant.
Contact Info:
- Website: N/A in the works
- Instagram: St1reggaeofficial
- Facebook: ST1reggae
- Youtube: St1reggae
- Soundcloud: ST1reggae
Image Credits
Tiff Bidwell
Social media manager/digital media creator @st1reggae