On a tip from Miguel Happoldt, The Pier hit up lead singer Danny Franco of Southern California-based reggae/ska outfit BURNT to discuss everything from their early beginnings in San Diego to their brand new album, Sol Connector, and the inspirations behind the record (spoiler alert it’s lots of early Jamaican ska).
TP: You guys have been making music for a long time, on your instagram is says “DIY since 2003”, so what is the history behind the band?
DF: We’ve been making music for a long time. We connected like the core of the band connected back almost 20 years ago at an open mic.
We were all going to UC San Diego at the time and there was this one an open mic event that happened every Thursday, that was basically the only one of the only interesting things happening. We became friends and started making music together in that time and we’ve managed to keep it going all these years later.
TP: How would you describe BURNT’s sound?
DF: It’s pretty much like a Heinz 57, a variety of everything that we find interesting and inspiring. I’d say we definitely deliberately try to kind of bend genres and stretch and include all of our influences in our music, so whether that be jazz or hip-hop or punk rock or ska or reggae or just our own weirdness, we try to just like throw a little bit of everything in there and definitely are more drawn to like a diversity of sounds rather than one specific sound.
TP: I listened to the album. It’s got a very robust brass section, but it’s its reggae for all intents and purposes. I feel like there’s other stuff in there as well, but overwhelmingly, I think the album struck me as more, more reggae than anything else.
DF: Yeah, I think that’s true of this latest album. There’s definitely a pretty strong reggae vibe. Although we do have a number of tracks that are more reggae than anything else, we work with Karmic Bass, a dear friend and an MC that we collaborate with a lot to kind of bring some of that hip-hop flavor. There’s a few tracks that I think have like a little bit more of like a funk or soul vibe as opposed to reggae. But yeah, by and large, lots of heavy ska and reggae on this latest album.
TP: It kind of reminded me of John Brown’s Body in a way… I really, I really enjoyed it. And this new album is called Soul Connector. When’s the last time you guys put out an album prior to this?
DF: It was in 2021.
TP: Okay, so not that long ago — you guys have been pretty active! And you’ve been working on this for the last couple of years? What influences you guys? What has everyone been listening to the last couple of years as you built this album out?
DF: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I probably shouldn’t speak for the rest of the band because I know they all have like such diversity of influences, but we ALL really love Hepcat. I think for me, I’m always listening to like a lot of jazz and a lot of early Jamaican ska music that was heavily influenced by jazz.
TP: That makes sense, Sol Connector has some super heavy brass moments.
B: I think I write a lot of music that supports those jazzy brass arrangements because I just love that Jamaican ska sound!
