Review: Medium Troy at the WOW Hall

Local “bohemian dubsters” kick much ass — for real though.

words NOAH DEWITT

Jesse Ferreira (aka J Say Say), a chiller with stubble who reps Holy Cow really hard, comes into the natural foods store I work at all the time. As I ring up his bottle of Double Dog Dare merlot, we share a giggle over its costing $4.20. I ask him what he’s up to tonight. “Just chilling at my house. Gonna play some music,” he says. I cannot count how many times we’ve had this exchange. He seems to be ever on his way to a jam sesh.

Last Friday at the WOW Hall I got a chance to hear him play. Jesse is the bassist for Medium Troy, a band of six-ish that plays “bohemian dub” — a cross between reggae, hip-hop, and electronica. They have a fat local following, and in 2010, Eugene Weekly readers voted them Eugene’s best band. Their show on Friday featured another Eugene-based dub band called Tribal Spectrum, a reggae group from Bellingham, Wash., called Yogoman Burning Band, and Undermind, better known as “that kid who beatboxes on a recorder at the ASUO Street Fair.” I missed all of the openers, but the boys of Medium Troy alone made the at-the-door cover charge a $10 well spent. They killed it.

Generally speaking, Medium Troy fans are Eugene natives who smoke weed every day, refuse to remove the holographic authenticity stickers from their fitted caps, and are in the throes of Sublime obsessions (although most of them are too young to legally purchase 40 ounces to freedom). At Friday’s show, the band kept their followers entranced with an array of old and new material. Their genre-hopping — from delay-laden reggae jams (e.g., “Angry Child”) to womp-womp slappers (e.g., “Life”) to stripped-down melodic raps (e.g., “Run”) — kept the dance floor from stagnating.

Towards the end of the set, Jesse’s brother Yonaton (aka “Jo Jo”), who sings and plays guitar in the band, paused to appreciate their patrons. “All these people coming out to support local musicians is not that fucking common. So thank you, guys.”

That’s when I thought to myself, Word. This is rare. I see members of Medium Troy around town all the time. I can recall selling Double Dog Dare merlot to at least half of them. And is that my neighbor Scott guesting on the trumpet? It is. Why ship your rock stars in from all over the country when you’ve got everything you need up the block?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 15th, 2012 at 1:19 am. It is filed under Blog, Reviews and Shit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.