Fans funnel in from the Euclid Avenue sidewalk and cram into the House of Blues for this sold-out November Tropidelic show. The crowd presses forward on the main floor, laughing and chatting in front of the stage, sharing stories of past concerts, favorite reggae artists, experiences at Everwild music festival.
Before long, the curtains part in the middle, slowly sliding open to reveal the band. Singer Matthew Roads, donning a Cleveland Guardians Block C hat, sings the first verse of “Leviathan”:
Where did you go? / Down Virginia, crossed the bridge that looked / A lot like Leviathan / Traveled the coast / But, I was tied to the whipping post / So, I’m gettin’ high again.
As if in response, puffs of vapor and marijuana smoke drift up from the audience, lit by colorful stage lights.
Roads and his bandmates, plus vocal group Mixed Feelings, sway to the music, easing into this show with the moody, sparse song (Roads’ current favorite). Then, it ends. The crew gazes at the cheering crowd — and then ramps up its energy all at once. A switch flips in vocalist and trombonist James Begin, who starts rapping and leaps across the stage during “Underdog.”
A Tropidelic show is much like some combination of these two songs: beachy and vibey, mixed with frenzied, politically tinged ska-punk, and everything in between. Energy building and crashing like saltwater waves in tropical places (or the waves of Lake Erie?) that influence the band’s funky sound.
It’s a sound that established them as Cleveland’s biggest reggae-funk-rock blended band, and it traces back to the band’s earliest iteration in the 2000s, when Roads was a student at Kent State University.
Seven (soon to be eight) studio albums later, the band has gone from its scrappy school bus touring days to worldwide travels, performances on cruise ships, and its own Ohio music festival. Back in Cleveland, the band stands out, perhaps laying groundwork for a growing number of similar-sounding groups to find an audience in the area. “Some might say we tilled the soil,” Roads says.
That doesn’t mean Tropidelic isn’t still scrappy.
“For the scene we’re in, to be from here is very much an anomaly,” Roads says. “We’ve had to push our old tour bus, a school bus, out of snow drifts. We have this blue-collar mentality, ‘The hard way is the only way,’ and it’s very Midwestern and very Cleveland. Nothing’s ever been handed to us. We’ve always had to put the work in, and that’s pretty reflective of the city as a whole.”
(Photo courtesy Show Bites)
Two days before the HOB show, Roads, Begin and drummer Rex Larkman take a break from rehearsal at the Beachland Ballroom and lounge in the basement green room. Roads holds a gallon jug of water in one hand and a worn biography about Don King in the other. He looks tired. Tropidelic just came off a six-week tour, he explains, where the bandmates (Roads, Begin, Larkman, Bobby Chronic, David Pags and Rob Schafer) were literally living on top of one another in their tour bus, a custom DIYed white shuttle complete with nine plywood bunk beds. It’s parked out back, getting a thorough cleaning, while the crew rehearses.
The practice is long and tedious, eating up the entire day. Each musician tests each drum, synth, trumpet and trombone blare. Begin raps a few verses, Roads sings a few lyrics. They comb through things carefully, parsing out every element of Tropidelic’s varied instrumentation.
You can tell Tropidelic wants to put something extra into this, its big hometown return.
After all, the band played between 100 and 150 concerts in 2023 alone. The sold-out Downtown headliner stands out from the repetition of the road. (Maybe there’s a pun somewhere in Matthew Roads’ last name, “roads.”)
“It’s not glamorous,” Roads says, around 7:30 p.m., as the band continues to work onstage, into the darkness of a fall Cleveland night.
It’s not the first time he’s said that.
(Photo courtesy Kelly Mason)
Just last week, the band was in sunny Florida; just a couple of days ago, Tropidelic’s members lived on their bus, parking in truck stops, rest areas and business lots, getting whatever sleep they could, then waking up to work out at a Planet Fitness and use their showers, then getting to a venue, then going through soundcheck, then putting on a show — then doing it all over again. Rinse, repeat. Day after day.
“The misconception is, ‘Oh, it must be such a party out there,’” Begin says. “Everybody else coming to the shows is very much partying. But we’re clocking in when that’s happening.”
Between all of those performances, which consume at least one-third of the year, Tropidelic also writes and records. Expect a new album this year, recorded with Chris DiCola at Signal Flow Studios in 2023.
The band’s steady rise, all the way from its first EP, 2008’s Tree City Exodus to today, brought the band from Roads’ Kent State hobby to a full-time career. But it wasn’t until 2014 that the band leader started to see the project more seriously — when Tropidelic started to find its unique identity.
Specifically, a headline-making moment at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland stands out to Roads. Former Tropidelic member Derek McBryde brought his colorful sousaphone, with the words “Sex Machine” painted into its bell, and performed, loudly, in front of a crowd of protesting Westboro Baptist Church members. The event drew national attention , and later landed Tropidelic a record deal.
“The goal was always to set ourselves apart, to grab attention, be different,” Roads says.
(Photo by Annie Nickoloff)
Along the way, the band’s growth drew in fans — not through some hit single overnight, Roads says, but steadily, spreading its roots. Band members have seen hundreds of Tropidelic tattoos. There’s a 20,700-member Facebook group, “Tropi-holics,” where fans share favorite songs and memories.
Those fans feel tapped into the band’s life. They follow along on the group’s journeys, which included, in 2023 alone, a Cleveland Guardians game performance, a Red Rocks Amphitheatre debut in Colorado, a sunshine-filled stint on 311 Caribbean cruise and its Everwild (formerly Freakstomp) fest.
Fans were along for the ride, even if they weren’t at every show. Strings of posts celebrated the band’s adventurous life, like they have for more than a decade, since the band first started out in Cleveland’s indie venues.
“From early, early on, we were very accessible. We’d stay there and take pictures, anybody could sign anything, until they throw everybody out of the venue,” Begin says. “I think being able to form a core family, as opposed to fans — everybody’s way more involved in our projects than I think a lot of fans would normally be in a band.”
And now, these fans have sold out the House of Blues.
After rocking and vibing onstage, Tropidelic ends its set (before the encore) with a crowd-pleaser — especially for this crowd. “Snow Country.” The upbeat ska track is an ode to the band’s near-constant state of being on the road. It slams dreary Ohio winters, dying car batteries, gray skies and the toughness that comes with living here. It’s very Cleveland.
Don’t turn the lights out, Roads sings to his hometown crowd. It’s been so long since we’ve been home / I hope that I remember the way.
It’s not glamorous, Roads had said. It’s not the first time he said it.
He completes the sentiment: “But it’s amazing.”
Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct a line of "Leviathan."
For more updates about Cleveland, sign up for our Cleveland Magazine Daily newsletter, delivered to your inbox six times a week.
