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First Watch: Jack Hinson “Going Back Home”

California Roots. Levitate. Reggae Rise Up. The Peach Music Festival, Reggae on the River, Lockn’.  These days, music festivals have become all the rage, and unless it’s Fyre Festival, they typically provide a magical experience that brings feelings of pure euphoria. Carefree days partying and dancing amongst friends with your favorite bands performing all day and well into the night. A huge variety of delicious, decadent food served with pride from trucks or pop-up stands. (Why does food prepared in a mobile kitchen always taste better?) Creative vendors offering all kinds of cool schwag, photography, art and other crafts. (Is it ever too early to start your Christmas shopping?) And, maybe even the best part, the inevitability that you are going to make new friends.

Whether it be blocking off your calendar, scoring tickets, making travel and lodging arrangements, packing for your trip or actually trekking there, the lead-up to a festival generates a ton of anticipation. However, when the festival grounds are in the rearview mirror and the excitement dissipates, even though the memories will remain to cherish, reacclimating to the Babylon grind can be quite depressing.  

It’s this uncomfortable dichotomy that Illinois-bred/Florida Keys-based artist, Jack Hinson, writes about in his song “Going Back Home,” the video which Rootfire premieres exclusively today.

“It’s a perfect world for those 3 or 4 days while you’re there,” Hinson relates. “It’s a melting pot of unity, positivity and music and arts where someone can just be themselves and come together and not feel out of place or weird. They have a place to call home, a place where they belong. It becomes about way more than just a festival.”

But inevitably, that mecca of fun and freedom must come to a close, and Hinson laments “having to go back home to the real world of bills and work and dealing with people with road rage, etc.”

Produced by E.N Young as part of a four song Hinson E.P. that Roots Musician will put out around the new year, “Going Back Home” has a classic roots reggae beat and may remind listeners of Stick Figure and Slightly Stoopid. The latter actually makes a split-second cameo in the video, on stage during, appropriately, a performance in Key West.  

The video, shot by industry darlings, Florida-based Sugarshack, could easily serve as a tourism advertisement for the Florida Keys with its aerial shots of the Highway 1 dissecting the turquoise water, orange ocean sunsets, boats, palm trees, pelicans and a breezy convertible. These joyful images are interspersed with footage from revelers, including Hinson and friends, at the Summer Camp Music Festival, an annual Memorial Day weekend gathering of about 20,000 attendees near Peoria, IL. 

Growing up about four hours from the festival, Hinson has attended numerous times, and the friends he made there have enriched his life. “I basically wrote this as a thank you to all the people that I have met along the way —  strangers that I now call family.”


 Find Jack Hinson music on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Google, and wherever you stream and download music. 

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Ever since becoming deeply moved and then essentially obsessed with reggae music as a teenager, Dave has always strove to learn as much as possible about the history and culture of reggae music, Jamaica and Rastafari, the ideology and lifestyle intertwined with reggae. 

Over the years, he has interviewed many personalities throughout the reggae world including Ziggy Marley, Burning Spear, Lucky Dube, Bradley Nowell and many artists in the progressive roots scene.

Dave has also written and published a novel, “The Cosmic Burrito,” a tale of two friends who drive across the USA in search of the ultimate burrito. He plays ice hockey weekly for a recreational team he founded and manages, Team Rasta.

Reggae music has filled his life with a richness for which he will forever be grateful, and he gives thanks to musicians far and wide, past and present, whether they perform roots, dub, dancehall, skinhead, rocksteady or ska, whether their tools are analog or digital, as well as the producers, promoters, soundsystems, selectors and the reggae massive at large who comprise the international reggae community.

You can follow Dave on Instagram at @rootsdude and Twitter at @ElCosmicBurrito.

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