Guitarist, composer, and Living Colour co-founder Vernon Reid has never been one to play it safe. From shaping the sound of Black Rock in the 1980s to a lifetime of collaborations across jazz, funk, metal, and experimental music, Reid’s career has been a fearless journey. With Hoodoo Telemetry, his first solo album in nearly two decades, he delivers a project that is both deeply personal and musically adventurous.

I had the chance to sit down with Vernon Reid for a wide-ranging conversation about the new album, his longtime friend Greg Tate, and the cultural lineage that informs his art.

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Preston Frazier: Vernon, you’ve done incredible work with Living Colour and in so many side projects. Why release a solo record now?

Vernon Reid: It had been a while. I started Hoodoo Telemetry before the pandemic, but everything got thrown into chaos after 2020. Then, in December 2021, my longtime friend Greg Tate passed away. That was a seismic event in my life. Greg and I were incredibly close—we talked about culture constantly, influenced each other, argued, and inspired. His passing really shook me.

Without realizing it at first, I wanted to make a record Greg would have loved. He used to encourage me to sing, so I even sang on “In Effigy.” I’m not Corey Glover—I can carry a tune, but I’m not the guy who shakes the walls. Still, Greg and my wife both told me to use my voice more. So I did. His spirit is very much a part of this album.

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Preston: You co-produced the album with Ivan Julian, another legend. How did he get involved?

Vernon: Ivan is a punk pioneer—he played guitar with Richard Hell and the Voidoids—and one of the few Black musicians in that New York punk scene. Over time, he became a world-class engineer and producer. We recorded some of the tracks at Supergiraffe Sound, mixing live tracks with older material that we had reworked. Ivan made everything better—his suggestions, his patience, his ear.

I also have to credit Stu Fine at Mascot for pushing me to finish. And Scotty Hard, who mixed Hoodoo Telemetry, also worked on Mistaken Identity back in the day. There is a DNA connection between the two albums.

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Preston: Listening to this record, I hear threads connecting different eras of your work.

Vernon: That’s true. I always think about the lineage—artists who made it possible for Living Colour and for me. The Bad Brains, of course. Funkadelic—Cosmic Slop was the first record I ever bought. And Ernie Isley deserves way more recognition as one of the great guitar voices of the ’70s. He should’ve been on magazine covers right alongside the other guitar gods. He kept the post-Hendrix sound alive on hit records but was overlooked. That legacy matters to me, and it’s in Hoodoo Telemetry.

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Preston: What was the first song you knew belonged on Hoodoo Telemetry?

Vernon: Probably “Beautiful Bastard.” I worked on that with Rashid years ago, but it never quite fit elsewhere. His vocals were incredible, and I knew I wanted to share them with the world. Then “The Door of No Return”—that instrumental became a cornerstone of the album. The record shifts between vocal songs and instrumentals, concluding with “Brave New World,” which features Aldous Huxley discussing oligarchy. When I first heard that lecture, I thought, “Wow, he was talking about what we’re living through right now.”

Preston: And what about “In Effigy”?

Vernon: That one’s about perspective. A soldier on a hill might be seen as a hero in one place, but in another, he’s burned in effigy. War is like that—people caught in conflicts they didn’t create, following orders with devastating consequences. It’s also my sideways tribute to Hendrix’s “Machine Gun.” Evil men make us kill each other, even when we’re only families apart. That still feels painfully relevant.

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Preston Frazier: The last song I’d like to discuss on the new album is “Dying to Live,” another instrumental, but a cover song.

Vernon Reid: “Dying to Live” was a cover of the Edgar Winters song from Edgar Winters’ White Trash. The original vocal was by this artist, Amisha Fambro. He was an excellent, versatile lefty guitarist and a terrific vocalist. His daughter was thrilled that her father’s voice would be on the record.

The song is very hopeful. It’s actually very optimistic in the end, but it asks a fundamental, existential question about what a person is struggling for. And the other thing that’s really beautiful is that DJ Logic, who’s featured on the album, did these whale sounds on this tune. I never scripted Logic when I worked with him. He’s one of the ultimate kind of Bronx DJs. He fits what he’s doing.

When we were mixing it, Scotty Hard created a version where he removed the whale sounds, and it became a regular tune. I said, “Man, we need the whale sound.” There’s something about the sound of the whale singing—an elegiac quality that really tangentially speaks to the ballad. It’s a sound that’s cinematic in that it’s not exactly on topic, but it actually works as a texture.

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Preston Frazier: How many albums have you worked on with DJ Logic? Was he on Mistaken Identity?

Vernon Reid: He’s on Mistaken Identity, yeah, and we also had a project called the Yo Himbe Brothers (Front End Lifter was the first record, and the second record is The Dow of Yo). The whole idea that the turntablism came in… when the DJs came in, they were very controversial because people were like, a turntable is an appliance. And then suddenly, people were turning it into this extraordinary instrument. It’s a percussion instrument, it’s a lead instrument, and it’s also contextual because depending on what the DJ scratches in, he picks a record, and throws in a phrase, and that can play off whatever else is happening.

Additionally, hip-hop begins with the DJs. The first rappers were DJs. On this album, he appears on “Dying to Live,” and there’s also an instrumental tune called “The Bronx Paradox,” which is a tribute to him.

 Additionally, hip-hop begins with the DJs. The first rappers were DJs. On this album, he appears on “Dying to Live,” and there’s also an instrumental tune called “The Bronx Paradox,”  which is a tribute to him.

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