The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2021 Summer Music Grant to SunDub to help complete their sophomore album. Deeply moved by awakenings and events that characterized 2020 like the Black Lives Matter movement, the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the collective grief of the world amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, lead vocalist and lyricist Joanna Teters took up a pen and began writing. Over the course of the year, SunDub wrote and demoed 13 songs in the band's home studio, Jackson Yard, and devised a plan to track their second album in a professional-level recording studio.

Finally, in May 2021, SunDub recorded the basic tracks for their forthcoming sophomore studio album at Lydate Studios alongside engineer and co-producer Sidney Mills, longtime member of the legendary and Grammy-award winning reggae band Steel Pulse. Now, back in Brooklyn, the band continues to chip away at completing these songs: recording final vocals, tracking more guitar, percussion and auxiliary instruments before handing them off for mixing and mastering ahead of the April 2022 release.

SunDub will be joined by an exciting roster of featured artists and collaborators, ranging from Grammy-award winners to local music programs. SunDub also plans to incorporate the voices of disadvantaged youth living in Brooklyn to bring power and meaning to songs like "Real Change" (lyrics: "fight for what you believe in/show your strength by the way you lead/ and justice will make a way for peace) and enlist other well-known reggae artists to turn their song "No Question" into a rock against racism collaboration.

SunDub is a testament to the power of inclusion, diversity and unity— their music and community rallies around the concept that we are strongest when people of different backgrounds can work together to create positive change. These core values are showcased on SunDub’s first release, “Burden of Love,” which has since amassed millions of streams and whet the appetites of listeners around the world for their next release. In a world that is dominated by watered-down distillation of reggae, SunDub aims to honor the roots of Jamaican music while offering their unique ability to combine soul and funk sophistication into their art.

Born out of a weekly music residency at a local watering hole, Brooklyn-based SunDub has developed into a collaborative mix of New York City musicians, consistently turning heads with an offering of classic reggae repertoire peppered with original and featured soul and blues almost weekly since 2013. Anchored by a core quintet—Finnegan Singer (guitar), Josh T Carter (bass), Eric "The General'' Toussaint (vocals-keys) and the brother-sister team of Joanna (lead vocals) and Ben Teters (vocals-drums)—many of SunDub’s stellar and frequent collaborators came together for its first production of original music, "Burden of Love." The album features reggae royalty Ruff Scott, The Chronic Horns (Easy Star All-Stars), Larry McDonald (Lee Scratch Perry, Gil Scott-Heron) and Sidney Mills (Steel Pulse). They lend their talents to Joanna Teters' commanding and soulfully smoky lead vocals and blend seamlessly with the air-tight arrangements of the SunDub rhythm section. The result is a stand out expression of reggae’s classic undulating pulse and lush subterranean grooves, reinvented for listeners of all times and genres.

Outside of the studio and off of the stage, the band members that make up SunDub put their Berklee College of Music degrees to work in a myriad of ways; using their music as a platform to advocate for political movements, teaching music lessons to New York City youth, and collaborating with non-profits to create change. Like so many other bands, SunDub was hit hard by the onset of the pandemic of 2020 — tours cancelled, opportunities postponed, income lost. But instead of being discouraged, the band came together on a Brooklyn patio and figured out how to make the most of the situation. During weekly, COVID-safe live stream performances in the summer of 2020, SunDub raised over $1,000 for the NAACP Education and Legal Defense Fund, used their platform to rally their community around the importance of political activism and dismantling unjust racial and societal structures.

Please visit SubDub’s Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and their website for more information.