By the time Dale Rodman found himself standing backstage at Reggae Rise Up in 2022, waiting to join HIRIE for their first collaboration, he’d already lived a lifetime’s worth of plot twists. Just a few years earlier, the frontman of Dale and the ZDubs was serving a three-year sentence for a non-violent drug charge — a stretch he now calls both his lowest point and a catalyst for everything that followed.
“I was ripping and running pretty hard,” Rodman says, recalling the bust that ended with him behind bars. “I got caught with a large quantity of cocaine, molly, and LSD. The only thing that saved me was that the LSD was on paper, not liquid, so they couldn’t weigh it. That’s probably why I got three years and not thirteen.”
Prison was a crucible — a forced pause that stripped away the chaos but left his mind racing. Struggles with mental health and psychosis were real, but so was a growing need to turn that darkness into something lighter. Behind bars, Rodman started writing what would become “Her Melody,” a rare love song in a catalog often filled with breakups, prison tales, and raw introspection.
“It doesn’t touch or mention prison,” he says, “but in a different way, the song was inspired by being locked up. I wanted to write something different, something light.”
When he walked out, the reggae world he’d once circled was thriving without him — and many of the bands he’d opened for before his sentence had blown up. Instead of watching from the sidelines, Rodman reached out. “When I got out, I hit up Jackson from The Elovaters, Brandon from Bumpin Uglies… and luckily enough, HIRIE was down too.”
The HIRIE collaboration became a statement of intent. “The timbre of her vocal and my vocal on the record — I think it sounds amazing,” Rodman says. “We’re pretty lucky and stoked that she said yes to be on this track.”
His band’s versatility — from heavy, introspective cuts like “Black Sunflower” to buoyant hooks — is earning attention fast. Last month, Dale and the ZDubs nearly doubled their Spotify monthly listeners. But for Rodman, the numbers are just part of the story.
“Anybody can go spend money and play a show. Can you write something that people feel? That’s the hard part,” he says. “I’ve got four bandmates who are studio musicians, and we all create together. That’s special.”
For a man who once thought the bars in front of him would define his life, the sight of a growing crowd is proof otherwise. “Nothing’s off limits,” Rodman says. “I’ve got nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed of. Shit happens. But I think we’re doing something different here — and it’s just the beginning.”
Watch Dale and the ZDubs full interview with ThePier.org below!
