In Defense of Ska ep 194: Raylin Joy (The Calamatix)

Hellcat Records has released a lot of great ska and reggae albums over the years. But it’s been a while since they’ve released an LP by a new group. That changed on September 20th when The Calamatix put out their debut self-titled album. Lead singer Raylin Joy joins us this week to talk about the project. 

Though the group officially formed in 2022, many of the songs began in 2017 when Raylin started to do songwriting sessions with Tim Armstrong. At the time, she was also releasing pop songs. These sessions were done in the spirit of “having fun” and the intention of doing ’60s style rocksteady. And they were more meaningful to her than the pop music she was releasing. 

Now that the record is done, it’s more produced and pop-oriented than ’60s rocksteady. Collaborators on the album include Tim Armstrong (Operation Ivy, Rancid), Albert Hype (Bad Bunny, Kali Uchis), and Scott Abels (Hepcat, Aggrolites, Jimmy Cliff). Listen to our interview with Raylin, and Adam and Aaron also give a little history of Hellcat Records and see how this stacks up in the label’s lineage. 

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If you like our theme song, go download the EP Lives by Slow Gherkin. They wrote the opening and closing songs for our podcast. You can get both tunes from their Lives EP. Also, check out Dan P and the Bricks two LPs. They provided the mid-roll ad transition music. 

Support the In Defense host Aaron Carnes by purchasing a copy of his book, In Defense of Ska. The 2nd, expanded edition of In Defense of Ska will release in Oct 2024. 

Co-host Adam Davis has a band called Omnigone. Their latest record, Against The Rest released on March 31, 2023. 

The In Defense of Ska editor Chris Reeves runs a record label called Ska Punk International. They have new releases coming out all the time.

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