Pepper

www.pepperlive.com

The spirit of aloha is alive and well and currently residing in sunny Southern California. Meet Pepper; Bret Bollinger, Kaleo Wassman, and Yesod Williams, three young innovative minds mixed with divine inspiration from the Hawaiian Islands.

Pepper formed out of Kona’s fertile music scene in 1998, and relocated to Southern California in 1999. Pepper headline’s the annual KTMF Kona Town Music Festival in Hawaii every December (Now in its 4th year). Each year Pepper brings a special guest with them; Two years ago they brought Slightly Stoopid and last year they brought Pato Banton. Thanks to a relentless touring approach the band has developed a devout fan-base across the country. They’ve toured with the likes of 311, The Wailers, Slightly Stoopid, G-Love & Special Sauce and Snoop Dogg. They’ve played at festivals like The Bob Marley Day Celebration, San Diego’s Street Scene, Reggae on the River, Sierra Nevada World Music Festival, Download Festival in Boston and most recently X-Games and Lollapalooza 2006. The band’s catalogue has sold well over 200,000 units to date. All of them independently released,  1999’s Give’n It has sold over 25,000, 2002’s Kona Town has sold over 110,000 and 2004’s In With The Old almost 70,000 and 2005’s Pepper Live DVD recorded over two sold-out nights at the Troubadour in W. Hollywood, has sold 5,000 copies.

Pepper made a big slash at Alternative radio in early 2005 with their hit ‘Give It Up’ – The song received serious airplay at key stations like KROQ/LA, WXRK/NY, 91X/San Diego, Q101/Chicago, KXTE/Las Vegas, KEDJ/Phoenix and KUCD/Honolulu. ‘Give It Up’ climbed the Alternative Rock chart and peaked around 30. The hysterical video for ‘Give It Up’ was embraced by Fuse where it won on ‘Oven Fresh’.

Their fourth studio album, No Shame is a bold artistic leap forward. No Shame defines what Pepper is all about.

“No Shame is different from the other albums we’ve done because we had so much artistic freedom,” says singer-guitarist Kaleo Wassman. “We had plenty of room to explore the range of possibilities of the band, which was so much fun to do.”

With the band’s trademark penchant for the musically unpredictable firmly in place, No Shame is indeed a tasty and rewarding blend of styles and sounds unlike anything Pepper has recorded before.  The 18-track collection, which was recorded over the better part of a year, in a variety of SoCal studios with no less than 4 producers, is triumphant culmination of months of hard work that began on the road in the summer of 2005.

“We wanted to make a record that perfectly catches the Pepper vibe and I think we’ve done just that,” says drummer-vocalist Yesod Williams. “On This record, we’ve really succeeded in bringing the positive elements of our live show into the studio.”