EEK A MOUSE Jan 9 at The Fox Theatre!
A chat with Eek-A-Mouse is something of an aural adventure. More than a quarter-century of recording, global touring and enough years of residency in the suburbs of Irvine to justify an accent heavy on California mall girl-isms have hardly changed the dancehall godfather’s husky Kingston patois. Though his voice is smooth and rich in tone, Mouse’s unique re-imagining of English grammatical rules can prove challenging to the unprepared ear.
Take a conversation touching on Mouse’s feelings about his music’s place among reggae’s current crop of dancehall favorites. While a couple of decades removed from the early ’80s Jamaican dancehall scene that solidified his reputation as one of the genre’s most irreverent and oft-copied toasters, The Mouse — as he is fond of calling himself — hardly feels his career has peaked or that his time has passed.
“I’m Mouse, you know? I’m Mouse, so I can change my style any time. There’s different reggae now … hip-hop, dance, regular reggae. Just like Eek-A-Mouse. I’m also unique, you know? Different.”
“I was singing when I was a child, yeah,” said Mouse, asked about his hand-to-mouth beginnings in Kingston’s notorious Trench Town ghetto. “I would sing with my mama. I was singing all the while. Then the kids got interested, and sometimes I would sing them songs. Sometimes there would be little concerts going on in school and I would participate in singing, you know? But I knew I was gonna be a singer soon.”
Mouse’s diverse list of early musical influences reads like a Magic 8-Ball of the varied styles that would eventually color his inventive lyricism and instrumentation.
“I loved Nat King Cole, Marty Robbins, Cab Calloway, Patsy Cline … all different singers. Sam Cooke and The Beatles … and stuff like that,” said Mouse, rhapsodically. “And then I came up with my own original style.”
That “original style” included elements of “sing-jaying,” an early form of toasting (boastful catch phrases, singing and DJ work) mixed with funky vocal gymnastics and effects.
Mouse’s contribution to the genre was a percussive, nasally vocal style, and a talent for using his voice as a musical instrument that moved The Boston Globe to call him “the Al Jarreau of reggae.” Much to his chagrin, Mouse has also often been called the originator of “sing-jaying.”
“I don’t know why they call me that,” said Mouse, chuckling. “Maybe … it’s a good vibe. Maybe a good vibe is what they feel, you know? Using my voice as an instrument … (it’s) just what I do, you know?
“Sometimes, if I’m freestyling lyrics … I’m thinking about the sound. I say, ‘bam-ding-ding’ and stuff like that to get the lyrics together.”
Over the years, Mouse’s core audience has also happily accepted his frequent lyrical switch-ups from half-baked humor (“The Mouse and The Man” is about a Disney World meeting of the minds with Mickey) and pointed social commentary (“Operation Eradication” is about the murder of his friend Errol Scorcher by politically-motivated Jamaican eradication squads).
“That just came natural,” said Mouse, of not being pigeon-holed to a sole lyrical style. “I never worried about … sounding the same because I’m always seeing stuff happen to people. And I’m alive, you know? So I just sing about current stuff happening in the world … and just make it unique to The Mouse.”
And as evidenced by some off-the-cuff long-distance crooning, what seemed to be on The Mouse’s mind of late was some serious fascination with amour.
“I’ve got a song called ‘Pretty Girl,’” said Mouse, offering a track from this summer’s still untitled followup CD to 2001’s “Eeksperience.”
He began singing softly and sweetly, “She’s a pretty girl. Pretty like a diamond. Pretty like a-gold.” After finishing, Mouse shared a few verses from another gently performed love song called “I’ll Be Waiting,” this one using all manner of weather-related lyrical metaphors as a promise of keeping one’s love real.
You in love, Mouse?
“Yeah, you know … but not really,” he said, laughing again. “I go through stuff sometimes, you know? — and I’ll sing about it. It’s like stress release.”
We know.
CHECK OUT EEK-A-MOUSE AT THE FOX THEATRE JAN 9!
