Member Since: 3/8/2005
Band Website: www.rootstockreggae.com
Band Members: YANAHAY HOOPER, front man, lead and backing vocals, guitar and slide guitar.
A song writer, Yana grew up playing Bass guitar and listening to Frank Zappa. We still catch him moonlighting with the local jazz quartet. Original band founder and over twenty year band Member...............................................TOM FOREST, Keyboard and Organ, lead and backing vocals, percussion. Tom is an original founding member of the band and has been writing music for Rootstock for well over twenty years. Head dread and a great songwriter, Tom hails from Jersey, NY. ..................................LEX KRAUSS, Guitar and Vocals, is a lifetime musician and recording artist who joined Rootstock in 1987. Composing his first original music at age 5 on the family Piano and later picking out chords on an acoustic guitar, Lex grew up playing by ear. . .
In the 1980s Lex studied Music Concrete and Keyboard Synthesis as well as Corral sight-reading. In 1983 Lex began experimenting with a Fostex 250 multi-track recording unit which spurred his interest in pro-recording. Currently using a DAW to record his Solo Music, Lex can be heard at www.myspace.com/lex5 . .
Discovering Reggae Music at the age of 12, Lex has written such songs as See No Color, Scat Music and Roll This Way for the Rootstock Band. ........................
ELLERY CLARK, Bass Guitar and Vocals. He is the son of a local music shop owner and remembers going to Rootstock shows as a little kid. A little known fact is that he can blow a blues harp right along with the best of them. He can also Cook, and is starting his own Catering Business. A lifetime resident of Mendocino County, Ellery began his music carrier playing bass in jazz standards for the Mendocino High School Jazz Band for 4 years. He has recorded and played with Kenny Porter of the Itals and has been playing Bass guitar for Rootstock since the late 90's and helped to bring the band into it's present status as a full fledged Reggae Band. Bringing HipHop and funk influences to Rootstock, vocally Ellery steps forward in the live set for several leads, and can also cover JR Marvin like spandex! . Ellery has matured and grown over the years like a fine wine, his bass work and his cooking are second to none! .................
FRANKIE ROBLETTO, Drummer, Percussion and Vocalist, 3rd generation son of a jazz pianist popular in San Francisco in the 1950s. Frankie grew up listening to a variety of Jazz, Latin, Classical, African, and later on his own more soulful influences including Country and Folk of the Caribbean Islands. Frank started playing drums to local AM radio stations and performed his first gig at age 9 in 1966 for the Girl Scouts, with a group formed of school friends called Free Love. . . .
Over the last three decades he has performed with at least 30 different bands with styles from Tex-Mex and Punk to Reggae and Top 40. Bands include but are not limited to, the Transistors, Sagittarius Band, The Mighty Whispers, the Sonny Turner Show, Hedzole Sounz, CIA Band, Coast-to-Coast Blues Band, Ron Huges Show, and Bodacious Bros to name a few.
Frankie has also shared the stage with an impressive line up of well-known recording artists including Tito Puente, Armando Peraza, Eeka Mouse, Dennis Brown, Yellow Man, Gregory Isaacs, Neville Bros, Y+T, Motley Crew, Cheap Trick, Journey, Jefferson Starship, Los Lobos, Cameo, Cool and the Gang, Chic, Jazz Crusaders, George Duke, George Benson, The Spinners, Travis Trit, Marshall Tucker Band and many more!............................................JIM DOOLEY, Trumpet, Horns. Jim has been a welcome addition bringing horn lines and solos into the mix. Jim is also a member of "Mambo This" Latin and Jazz band.
Influences: In no particular Order*****************
**********Bob Marley James Brown Steel Pulse Santana Third World Mutabaruka Peter Tosh Fela Burning Spear Zack-I Bunny Wailer LKJ AND MANY MANY MORE TO ADD
Sounds Like: World Reggae Fusion.
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Record Label: Inde....Back-a-Room....and Live!