Patricia Meschino, Rhythm Magazine, December 1999

"Themes of the American West have played a larger role in expanding reggae's colorful lexicon than most of Jah music's fans would care to admit. The Barett brothers, the drum-and-bass foundation of Bob Marley's Wailers, scored major hits in the late '60's with the Western-tinged instrumentals Return of the Django and Clint Eastwood. The ensuing years saw dancehall DJ's such as Lone Ranger, Lee Van Cleef and Super Cat (aka The Wild Apache) taking cowboys-and-Indian subjects even further. The concept reached a pinnacle - or nadir, depending on your perspective - with Pincher's in 1991 Mexican-flavored smash Bandelero and Josey Wales' chart-topping 1997 ditty ‘Who Shot the Colonel.’

As the sun sets over Dodge City (or rather, as a new millennium beckons), the Reggae Cowboys - a band with members from the Caribbean islands of Dominica (home to the world's largest settlement of Carib Indians), and Jamaica - saddles up on the dusty streets of Toronto, Canada. Seamlessly combining Ennio Morricone's spaghetti-western soundtrack music with Marley and the Wailers' one-drop rhythms, these roots-rock wranglers boast gun-smokin' lyrical appeal and home-on-the-range humor, branding reggae with galloping Western grit.

The Reggae Cowboys' rhythmic lasso corrals listeners into their album Rock Steady Rodeo (Tumbleweed). Bird Bellony's twangy guitar suggests Dick Dale supplying the theme for TV's Bonanza, evoking lonesome prairie nights or a palmy Caribbean beach. The band slips into Cowboy kitsch on De Agenda (''Me and the one named Brenda/way up in the hacienda") and Roadshow, recounting touring rigors to the 'clippity-clippity-clop' of tired hooves. But they reach artistic heights on the instrumental Jesse's Theme, dedicated to turn-of-the-century African-American broncobuster Jess Stahl, and their harmonies haunt on Geronimo, honoring the legendary chief: "Hell's 40 acres ain't fit for man to be/so you see he must be free Apache.'