Most people probably don’t associate Sudbury with Grammy award-nominated reggae music – at least, not yet.
But one resident of the town will by flying out to Los Angeles in February hoping to bring the famous golden gramophone back to Suffolk.
Daniel Boyle spent more than two years working with reggae artist and producer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry on his new album Back on the Controls.
Now the 34-year-old producer and 78-year-old Perry have found their work nominated in the Grammy’s Best Reggae Album category.
The awards recognise outstanding achievement in music and are one of the industry’s top gongs worldwide.
Mr Boyle, who moved to Sudbury three weeks ago and set up a studio in Friars Street, said he first worked with Perry around three-and-a-half years ago after building a replica of the Jamaican’s Black Ark studio in London.
Perry heard about and visited the studio where he and Mr Boyle had a short recording session. A couple of weeks later Perry got back in touch and said they should make an album together.
Mr Boyle said: “I was super keen because he is a legend in the industry so I agreed and we spent about two and a half years doing it every time he came to the UK.
“It was fun. It was an honour.”
The album reached number five on the Billboard reggae album chart in America. When he learnt of the Grammy nomination Mr Boyle said he “nearly fell off his chair”.
“The reason I’m pleased is we purposefully created an album with a lot of vintage equipment in a vintage way,” he said.
“We wanted it to be that home grown vintage sound Lee had back in the day.
“Even though there are some big names you expect to see, the actual music they have done is very different to what normally gets nominated.
“It is incredibly humbling. To be nominated is more than enough, that is fantastic enough. To even think we could win a Grammy is amazing.”
Whether the album wins or not, Mr Boyle thinks the duo have created a world first – a Grammy-nominated album funded entirely by crowd funding.
The money raised to independently produce the album came through donations on Kickstarter.
Mr Boyle said people who gave money to the project were involved in choosing which songs went on the album and had an input into the artwork.
“It is good fun but it is a hassle,” he said. “It is about involving them (the contributors).”
Mr Boyle added working with Perry was “challenging in a good way” and said he was “arguably the greatest reggae producer still alive today”.
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