ARTICLE

Pocket Dwellers Break It Down
by Lizza Gebilagin
Published in Urbanology
Issue 5, January 2006

“Get in the pocket, mother fuckers. Get in the pocket, mother fuckers!” tenor sax player, Dennis Passley Jr., says as he explains how the Pocket Dwellers got their name. It's what he, drummer Marco Raposo and bassist Gordon Shields were told to do when they played together in a different band for another guitarist in college. It basically means to get into the groove. Ten years later, the Toronto seven-piece has just released its first major LP, PD-Atrics . Although the band is known for fusing together elements of hip-hop, funk, jazz and rock, this album has more of a hip-hop edge.

“Before we were like, ‘Oh there's a killer bass line. Oh there's a killer sax line. Oh there's killer vocals, killer drums.' Everything was going off at the same time,” Shields says. “Now everyone's found his space in the song. We really focus on sounding like a band in this album.”

Dennis Passley Jr.

When talking about the speed at which EMI brought out PD-Atrics after signing the band only a couple of months prior in the summer of 2005, Dennis Passley Jr. says, “Well they had to. We're getting old, man.”

“I'd like to think that I bring leadership [to the band],” says Passley, who has been playing the tenor sax since high school. After a moment's consideration he adds, “But at the same time I look up to these guys. So then how do you really lead people that you… aspire to be like?” Passley asks. “I guess I'm not really much of a leader in that respect.”

NiGel A. Williams

His band mates, Mckibbon and Griffith, jokingly called him “loud, overbearing, and full of shit. Typical frontman.” But the Pocket Dwellers's lyricist, NiGel A. Williams, thinks of himself more as the spirit of the band. “Sometimes I'm the conscience,” Williams says. “Sometimes I'm the idiot.”

“This is true,” Passley teases. “More times than not, he's the idiot.”

As the mouthpiece of the band, Williams raps about topics that the whole band supports. In “Photogenic” he slams society's obsession with plastic surgery and in “Trust Us” he reminds everyone that whatever happens, “we all go down the toilet together.”

Christian Mckibbon

“In the beginning it was all about the chicks,” says Christian Mckibbon about why he began playing the guitar at 14. But now the 30-year-old guitarist believes it's all about being an example to the group's younger fans. “I love it when there's a young kid who comes up to me and says, ‘you inspire me to do that,' and that's what it's all about. It makes me fulfilled,” Mckibbon says. “It's not money. It's this.” Mckibbon is responsible for what he jokingly calls the “sick ill riffs” in their sound. Check out “Electrify” for an example.

Johnny Griffith

Saxophonist Johnny Griffith once told his grade seven music teacher that he wanted to be an underwater explorer or a musician. He chose the latter. More specifically, he chose to play the sax over the guitar because, as he says smiling mischievously in Mckibbon's direction, the “guitar was too easy and I had to move on.”

Griffith plays both the alto and soprano sax and the flute and works on the string arrangements during recordings. His favourite venue is the Mod Club in Toronto because the shows always start with the velvet curtains opening. “It just makes [it] feel a bit more magical,” he explains.

Sheldon Moore

Trinidad-born Sheldon Moore began playing around with turntables when he discovered a pair that used to belong to his dad in the basement of their house. “I just started mimicking what I saw on TV,” Moore says. “And that was it. Ever since then, I was like, ‘Yeah, I [have] to scratch records. That's what's up.'”

Moore made all the final production decisions on the album. He says, “I'm the guy that's not afraid to edit anything. If it's filler and it's not moving me right away, then it's gone. And it doesn't bother me one bit.”

Marco Raposo

“I'm a big picture guy,” says drummer Marco Raposo. “I pace around the room in front of the monitors and listen for stuff that's not working and I'll put my two cents in that way.” Raposo also works on the business side of things for the band; he deals with the promoters and watches the finances.

His musical influences include Queens of the Stoneage, Bloc Party, Mos Def, A Tribe Called Quest and old Toronto drum and bass DJs. “I'm schizophrenic when it comes to music,” Raposo says about his eclectic taste.

Gordon Shields

If bassist Gordon Shields wasn't playing with the Pocket Dwellers right now, he'd be sleeping instead. “I'd also probably be married. I'd probably have beautiful children. I might even have a job,” he says. But since Shields started playing the bass when he was seven, he has always wanted to follow his passion and become a musician.

“I'm a wing nut,” Shields adds. “I think people know me as the soft-spoken person. But the guys in the band think I'm crazy. I try to at least bring a little bit of comic relief to our 12-hour drives.”

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