Bunny Wailer feeds hungry fans on first major US tour in 20 years

Wailer has not recorded an album of new songs since Cross Culture in 2009. But the fans have turned out in numbers to see the sole survivor of the most famous Wailers.

“Is 20 year I don’t do anything major inna dis country, an’ the way the people react to the music yuh think I was here last year,” said Wailer.

The bulk of the dates on ‘Blackheart Man Spring US Tour’ are club venues, with capacity ranging from 700 to 1,000 seaters.

Wailer, 69, has played the West Coast, the deep south and East Coast. He is currently in South Florida and wraps the tour on May 8 in Atlanta, Georgia.

The five-week jaunt marks the 40th anniversary of Wailer’s seminal album Blackheart Man.

Produced by his Solomonic Records and distributed by Island Records, it was released in 1976, the same year Bob Marley’s Rastaman Vibration and Peter Tosh’s Legalize It albums came out.

Wailer performs several of the songs from his finest work, including Armagideon, Battering Down Sentence andDreamLand. He also recalls his years in the Wailers with Marley and Tosh who died in 1981 and 1987, respectively.

He does a ska medley of Wailers songs like Simmer Down, Hypocrite and One Love as well as Heathen by Marley and Tosh’s defiant Legalize It.

“When I go out there is not jus’ about Bunny Wailer. I go out to represent the Wailers always,” he said.

The trio were part of the successful Wailing Wailers that formed in 1963. The group had a number of self-produced hit songs as well as for producers Clement Dodd and Lee Perry.

The Wailers signed to Island Records in 1972, recording the critically-acclaimed Catch A Fire and Burnin’ albums for that label.

Wailer and Tosh went solo in 1974.

Bunny Wailer is scheduled to play a number of festivals in North America and Europe during the summer.