Thursday, May 21st; Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad Street Pharmacy and Reggaddiction at Lee's Palace

[Jay Funk Dawg]

 

 

Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad with special guest Street Pharmacy and Reggaddiction
Thursday, May 21st, 2020
Lee's Palace - 529 Bloor St. West, Toronto, ON
Time: Doors 8pm | Show: 9pm
Tickets: $30
Online Tickets: http://bit.ly/PandaTO
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/556985638494014/

NEW YORK REGGAE HEAVYWEIGHTS GIANT PANDA GUERILLA DUB SQUAD ARE COMING TO TORONTO

The Billboard chart topping “Grateful Dead of reggae” will perform at Lee’s Palace on Thursday, May 21, with Ontario bands Street Pharmacy and Reggaddiction to open the show.

Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad (GPGDS) formed in 2001 in Rochester, New York. A mysteriously fertile area for developing the U.S. reggae scene, the city has ties going back to 1981 when Lee “Scratch” Perry recruited his entire backing band from Rochester. The Upstate NY region became early supporters of GPGDS, while its members were in high school, playing weekly gigs to cut their teeth. In these formative years, Giant Panda began to explore their songs with an experimental approach, mixing in layers of afro-beat, R&B and americana, while keeping their roots firmly planted in reggae rhythms and lyrical content. Around 2005 tapers began to notice and soon after one of the band’s first Colorado shows received homepage placement on the popular taper website Archive.org. Almost overnight GPGDS became a mainstay on the jamband festival circuit.

After five years of synthesizing their sound on the road, GPGDS released their first studio album Slow Down (2006) proving their abilities as songwriters and setting the stage for a string of eclectic releases, topping the Billboard Reggae chart twice along the way with Steady (2014 Easy Star Records) and Make It Better (2016 Rootfire Cooperative). In 2019 the band released two singles, “Stop Fighting” and “Cool It,” followed by their first release of 2020 “Good Love.”

Now two decades into their careers Giant Panda has become an institution, widely regarded as “the Grateful Dead of reggae” and continuing to grow with the world around them. See them perform at Lee’s Palace in Toronto on Thursday, May 21, with Ontario bands Street Pharmacy and Reggaddiction opening the show.