One Drop is an awesome 5-piece reggae rock band from San Diego, California. The band’s name One Drop refers to a particular reggae drumbeat popularized by Carlton Barrett of The Wailers, in which the emphasis is entirely on the third beat of the bar using a snare hit or a rimshot and sometimes combined with the bass drum, while beat one is left empty except for a sometimes used closed hi-hat. So with the expected hit on beat one “dropped out”, this creates the “one drop” effect.

The band One Drop started forming over a decade ago when band members met in a San Diego college music class. The current members are James Alger on lead vocals, guitar, and melodica; with members of The Devastators – Brian Teel on lead guitar & vocals; Ivan Garzon on bass & vocals; John Allen on drums, percussion, and vocals; and Alex Somerville on keyboard, organ, piano, and melodica. You can find my posts for The Devastators on the right side of this site under “Posts”, or by using the search feature.

One Drop has had consistently high rankings on the iTunes Reggae Chart in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Norway, Greece, Spain, and Switzerland, and their songs have been in rotation on radio stations in the U.S. and abroad. One Drop has toured throughout many Western States and also internationally in Mexico, Guam, and Ecuador. They have played at many festivals including headlining the 2011 & 2012 Reef Classic in Montanita, Ecuador, headlining the 2009 Reggae In The Park in Yigo, Guam, and also in 2009 they played at the West Beach Music & Arts Festival in Santa Barbara, California, among others. One Drop has shared the stage with many other artists including The Devastators, Slightly Stoopid, The Dirty Heads, SOJA, Rebelution, Tribal Seeds, Iration, Tomorrows Bad Seeds, Pepper, Mike Pinto, Stick Figure, G Love & Special Sauce, Ben Harper, Steel Pulse, The Aggrolites, The English Beat, Fishbone, Pacific Dub, Stranger, Stone Senses, Top Shelf, Diego Roots, Ooklah The Moc, The Holdup, Project Lionheart, The Supervillains, Natural Incense, Seedless, Elijah Emanuel And The Revelations, Irieside, and many more.

One Drop‘s new album called Black Book Diaries will be available on iTunes starting June 26th! They are having a CD release show on July 6th at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, California. If you are in the area you should definitely go! You can get tickets from their website onedropreggae.com or their Facebook page.

The One Drop EP was released in March of 2007 and it’s a really great debut album that I still play a lot to this day! It has 6 really catchy songs mixing together rock, reggae, dub, R&B, punk, ska, pop, alternative, roots, soul, funk, and acoustic. “Don’t Drag Me Down” is a killer reggae rock track with a great riff and catchy melodies with cool lyrics. “Magdalena (Dub Mix)” is a really good dub track. Straight DuBaDeLiC! “The Carnival” is an awesome track with some super funky ska! “The Last Star” is so smooth and has great lyrics. Great beach tune! “No More Tears” is a really rockin’ break-up song! And “Wake Up“, man I can’t even describe how much I love this acoustic track. I’ve played this song a lot every summer since 2007. It always brings back some crazy memories whenever I play it!

Listen to the whole EP below and then buy it to support One Drop! I will be doing posts soon for their first full-length album called Mission Blvd. and a couple singles they have released, as well as their new album Black Book Diaries which you can get a preview of in the video below. One Drop keeps getting better and better and I’m sure Black Book Diaries is going to be their best album to date, so make sure you check it out on June 26th!

Buy “One Drop – One Drop EP” from iTunes

Buy “One Drop – One Drop EP” from CD Baby

Buy “One Drop – One Drop EP” from Amazon

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