Still Climbing

Big Mountain have weathered better than most the capricious moods of the music business.

The San Diego-based five-piece suffered a steady rotation of members during the ‘90s, as well as their own version of major label hell. Still, the fraternal duo of Joaquin and James McWhinney have remained true to their ideas for the band, and Joaquin – or ‘Quino’, as he’s commonly known – puts it down to the support of the international reggae community.

“Reggae music sort of has this built in support system,” he explains. “I don’t think anyone would let us break up. It would make us ostracized from the community and we’re not willing to risk that.

“There is also a deep sense of purpose in Big Mountain. We’ve always felt like our message was something that was going to add something special to life in general. At least we’re singing about things that matter and that we’re trying to live. We sing about revolution and we sing about people, about inspiring people and looking out for the underdog.”

Also working in the band’s favour was their decision to take a five-year sabbatical from recording during the middle part of last decade. “We did take a break and I think it was a good thing that we did at the time. It was probably around 2003 that we said, ‘You know what? Let’s settle things down.’ It just didn’t seem like the music business was really going anywhere, or reggae in particular. At some point we wanted to live regular lives. We just kind of tapered everything down. Then we got to spend more time focusing on raising kids, and just all that other stuff you got to do when you’re not on the road.”

Big Mountain are of course best known for their 1994 cover of Peter Frampton’s ‘Baby, I Love Your Way’ – a huge hit at the time that also reflected a brief mainstream interest in reggae music. To a certain extent the band are still defined by the song, but Quino, now in his early 40s, is philosophical about its continued dominance of the Big Mountain story.

“We’ll never get past that,” he chuckles. “When I was younger it was a little bit more frustrating. But then as you grow old, you start to appreciate things more and start to appreciate the story and the little things that happen along the way. ‘Baby, I Love Your Way’ is what we did with reggae, being a reggae band from San Diego, California. We recognise that it was one of those one in a million things. Now you’ve got reggae bands from California that are actually starting to penetrate, but this is 20 years after we did our thing and back then people just weren’t ready for that shit. They were like, ‘Ok, we’ll go for ‘Baby, I Love Your Way’. We’ll keep that, but everything else…’

“Reggae is a mixed market, man. You can never totally anticipate what people are gonna want. We’ve never been the kind of band to chase after a sound. It just never worked for us.” But with the narrowcasting nature of the internet and an increasing focus on bands to get out and tour, interest in Big Mountain is once again on the rise. The band have responded, signing a new record deal and are now busily working on their next record, due for release mid-2012. The first single from the record, ‘Leap Of Faith’, has hit the airwaves in the last couple of weeks.

“It’s a lot of fun. It’s really exciting. Contrary to everything else we’ve ever done, we actually planned this. We sat down as adult men and said, ‘OK, how are we gonna work this? How are we gonna make it work for our families? Can we do it?’ But one thing that was always paramount was that we really want to do this, man. We really are not done yet. It’s like this urge, this hole in your stomach saying, ‘You know what? You’re not done yet, bro. You still got some records to make; you still got some concerts to play.’”

And Big Mountain will soon have some concerts to play in Australia, when the band hops a flight south with Junior Marvin to join up with Ali Campbell’s UB40 and Billy Ocean. “In the United States, Australia is like some mythical fucken wonderland, so whenever I say we’re going to Australia and NZ in January everyone’s like, ‘Oh my god!’ I have to be excited. I have no choice or everyone over here is like, ‘You unappreciative bastard!’ I know we’re gonna be playing in front of some big houses. Australia is an amazing country; it’s just one of those places. It’s going to be an honour playing with Junior; we’re really looking forward to it.”

BIG MOUNTAIN FEAT. JUNIOR MARVIN PLAY THE BRISBANE RIVERSTAGE, JANUARY 26, ALONG WITH BILLY OCEAN AND ALI CAMPBELL’S UB40.