Photo courtesy of Mark Russell
Alternative/world group The Beatroot Road recently released their first single, “Underground Roots,” a song of hope, that speaks to the resilience of roots to endure cyclical changes – in plants, music, or life.
The Beetroot Road is a brand-new project led by Mark Russell with violinist Hazel Fairbairn. The band operates more like a collective, with established artists coming together to release one track every six weeks, eventually leading to their first album in Spring of 2025. The concept is to explore a varied musical landscape with complex drumbeats at the heart of each song.
Kenyan vocalist Lucinia Karrey was recruited for this track along with Fuki Anditi on backing vocals, lending her sunny, simple style to the complex drums and production. Russell plays all the percussion in this track, with many traditional African instruments like the conga and cabassa, but adds a surprising twist with the bodhrán, a traditional Irish drum.
The video utilizes layering, with 3D animation from Griang and Mesut C. from Türkiye, as well as live footage of Lucinia shot in Kenya by Alfie.
Tattoo.com spoke with Mark Russell, asking about the inspiration for the song, his creative process, and how he got started in music.
What inspired your new single, “Underground Roots?”
It’s actually a 30-year-old song which never quite got released at the time. The idea of this project is to finish off a bunch of songs that were left hanging over the years. It’s one of the many art projects initially born of lockdown, I think. We wanted to start off with a catchy one – I love the bass line on this, and there’s enough of a Latin feel to this tune to give me a weak excuse for battering the bejaysus out of a timbale. The lyrics by Demmy James have some layers of meaning which seems rare to me – could be just what I get to hear, but there seems to be a lot of rinse and repeat shallow formulaic introspection out there these days.
Who produced the song and where was it recorded?
I recorded and produced most of the music at our studio ‘Laboratory X’ in the middle of a forest on a mountain just outside Vancouver in Canada. Many of the artists involved are collaborating remotely from countries all around the world, and this song included Lucinia from Kenya and Anditi from Nigeria. We built the house here ourselves, so designed a custom-built music room in place of a garage. I’ve built studios before and Hazel teaches all the technology and physics you need to know, so between us, we’ve managed a nice sounding, soundproof room to record and mix music.
What’s the story behind the name The Beatroot Road?
It’s just what my life has been really. After being force fed musicals, classical music and hymns as a kid, I suddenly discovered African American rock and roll music as a young teenager and that was that. It’s all about the beat for me – I’ve been listening to music from all over the world all my life and have never tired of hearing new rhythms. Every culture has their own beat music in its roots. My parents were Scottish, my childhood was in Khartoum in Sudan, and my musical training was from West African, British and Jamaican musicians in the UK, so the whole thing has been a journey for me – ending up here in paradise in the Canadian Rocky mountains.
How, where, and when did you connect with Hazel Fairbairn?
(Ironically), I met her when we were both weeding out wild oats for ‘cash in hand’ in a field near Cambridge (UK) in 1989, but I knew of her as a fiddler and had seen her playing at sessions in the local Irish pub. I was mostly playing live EDM drums at the time but started to learn the bodhrán as a result of meeting her – ended up playing in a pro Ceilidh band together. We later joined music styles in our first fusion band, ‘Horace X’ – a ‘90s EDM/acoustic band which had some success mostly as a live act. Having loved Canada more and more each time we toured here, we ended up moving to BC in 2012.
How did you get started in music?
Back in the day, the main place for youth to hear new music was your mates’ older brother’s record collection. One fateful day I was introduced to all the original ‘50s rock and rollers and that changed my world. I lied about my age to get a mind-numbing job counting people at some traffic lights for two weeks to buy a truly awful unmatched very-used drum kit, which to me was the finest instrument on the planet. I had no money for lessons, so rewired a Dansette mono record player to play records through cheap headphones, and just tried to copy the sounds. I also snuck into gigs to watch what drummers were doing backstage. Having discovered ‘sex and drugs and rock and roll’ all at the same time, school took a back seat from then on. My first pro work in the bright starry lights of the music biz was in a seedy club band, which rose to the heights of a residency in a brothel.
Which singers/musicians influenced your sound?
Chuck Berry was the first I heard, and I still don’t tire of anything he did except stuff like ding-a-ling and filming ladies’ washrooms. But Lee Scratch Perry was by far my main influence. Technically and creatively, what he did was close to impossible with the equipment he had, and he was arguably the godfather of modern mixing techniques, and of course reggae music. Since I heard ‘Double Seven’ in the ‘70s I have lost all need to respect genres and conventions – every part of that album was ‘wrong’ – particularly at that time, from the playing, to the sounds and rhythms, and the mixing hierarchy of the instruments, but it is still by far my favorite album of all time – U-Roy’s ‘Stick Together’ my fave track.
Fela Kuti, James Brown, Boris Blank, Ian Dury (and the Blockheads), Hidalgo, Bowie and T Rex have to go in there too as a varied bunch of artists I have taken inspiration from. I was actually born in Liverpool and am old enough to have bought Beatles records when they came out, so John Lennon has to get a mention.
Hazel Fairbairn | Photo courtesy of Hazel Fairbairn
If you had to describe your sound to the uninitiated, what would you say?
I’m incurably curious to look for different combinations and textures without going anywhere near that ‘experimental’ music where you keep waiting for the tune to start. So I hope it’s catchy and accessible music, but at the same time maybe asking a few questions about genres and culture, or which instruments should play what in a song. Beats, dance, and rhythms are always at the heart, and usually there’s a Caribbean flavor somewhere. To me, all the good new melodies have been used up years ago, but the international fusions that formed the genres people listen to today are barely scraping the surface of what is creatively possible, so this is what we are playing with – coming all the way back to acoustic instruments as weapons of choice. I guess mixing cultural traditions will offend some people, but no disrespect is intended, and we live in Vancouver aka ‘world in a city’ where such things are normal – I mean we have a ‘Bella Sushi’ here. We’re not aiming to make a particular style or statement, but just looking for new happy marriages that add a different slant to the world of rhythm and sound.
Why do you make music?
There is nothing in the world that butters my baguette as much as immersing myself in rhythm and sound, and to be part of actually creating that sound is the biggest privilege and honor I can imagine. The long answer is an ongoing trilogy novel, but the short answer says all that needs to be said.
What can you share about your writing process?
It’s a patchwork collaged chaos of heavily processed, scotch-taped together riffs, beats, solos, sounds and textures often produced initially by improvising musicians – usually on acoustic instruments. I keep organically adding material I like until there is too much, then try to remove the unnecessary parts until there is nothing left that bugs me. I’m in the camp that says that each part must stand up on its own, so you could strip back to any instrument in a dub mix and still have something valid. I am constantly inspired by the cultural marriages that formed genres; Rock and Roll was a fusion born of West African trad music, North American jazz, blues and country, some hymn chords and a dash of music hall. If you take Planet Rock as the fuse that lit the genre, Hip Hop was inspired by a German band, started by a Jewish American producer using new Japanese technology, and African American street poets. Just two examples – the list of genres formed of cultural fusions is endless. People meet people and share their different musics – that’s how it works or used to work. To me, it seems like the best time ever for this cross pollination, as the borders and barriers between cultural artists have simply disappeared with the internet. This idea is close to the heart of most of my work.
Which artists in your opinion are killing it right now?
I honestly don’t know much about contemporary artists as I just find new music by dotting about – mostly on Tidal as I’m told it’s the least awful platform at paying artists – so I rarely know when it was produced or much about the acts. I think new Electronic African acts like Les Amazones d’Afrique stand out, and all those nonwestern fusions have a lot of room to grow and blossom. I like Ghost Note – particularly with Mono Neon on bass. Boris Blank is still producing stunning quality of production after all these years, and I never, ever tire of Lee Perry. I don’t listen to much pop, but I have some time for the Eilishes – particularly Finneas. To me he’s a really imaginative and creative producer, without the usual ‘am I doing it right?’ concerns. Comes of a creative upbringing, I guess. Similarly, Billie seems to be herself, and not a fashionable pastiche (despite the marketing by Chanel) – I hear she doesn’t use auto-tune much, so fair play to her for that too.
Knowing what you know now, if you could go back and start your music career over again, what would you do differently?
Be an accountant? Other than that, on thinking about it, I’m not sure that the music industry is one where people make that many plans that work out as they imagined. The way it seems to work for just about everyone – household names included – is that you climb on board the roller coaster – if you can – and it takes you to places you didn’t know existed, often at breakneck speed with 90 degree turns. Some magical, some appalling, some unbelievable. You get spat out sometimes for years at a time, and then you are back on it. Stevie Nicks was cleaning houses and doing bar room gigs just before joining Fleetwood Mac, so ’nuff said. Good advice to my optimistic and foolish young self would be, if it’s all about being in the right place at the right time, try to be in a lot of places a lot of the time. Don’t turn down work unless it really sucks, because that’s the way you will get all your other work. Advice I was given by a wise old drummer was ‘it will take you a few years to learn to play fast, and then the rest of your life to learn to play slow.’ It took decades for me to understand that, but once I got it, it was liberating. Difficult does not equal Good in music, but it is a shed load easier.
How do you define success?
Happiness. In the music biz, there are so many suicidally depressed, addicted, mentally unstable mega stars, success is clearly not defined by fame and fortune. Stardom at best is transitory and fickle. It’s a brutal, brutal industry for artists, so I think you need to find a niche you can survive in and fight to stay where you can control your own integrity. Being in the Wrecking Crew back in the day sounds about perfect to me as a musician – all the good bits about music with none of that lifestyle being dictated by others that pop stars get contracted into. An obligation for a 5:30 a.m. live breakfast TV promotional slot after a late-night gig is not a barrel of laughs for anyone. World tours seem to be nearly all sitting in airports, vehicles, hotels or dressing rooms trying hard not to drink all day, so if that’s anyone’s idea of glamour and glitter, absolutely do go for it, but with eyes open.
What’s next for The Beatroot Road?
I never know. I gave up predictions years ago due to a routine failure for them to happen. In the immediate future, we are intending to release a series of pretty varied songs one at a time, and then an album late spring next year. After the first kind of Afro-Latin pop track, we have a sarcastic swing reggae number – with lyrics close to my heart – coming out late November, and then a Hindi, Irish-instruments dub track. I have no idea how that one will be received. There are about 10 tracks which carry on in a tenuously connected musical vein, but they are quite different. In the future I am always hoping to meet curious people like me – maybe an EDM Oud player, or dub Shamisen player. Modern music production technology is exponentially better than it was when I started out, so in some way or another I guess I’ll be making rhythms and prodding sound boundaries to see what happens until I fall off my perch.
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