Steamboat Pilot & Today

A Canadian band originally from the Caribbean was influenced by an Italian composer who wrote music for movies about the American West.

With music as layered as the stamps on their musical passports, the Reggae Cowboys play the traditional reggae back-and-forth base line, but top it with music they picked up from watching spaghetti westerns as children.

The scores for movies such as "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" and "Fistful of Dollars" were musically complex but fit perfectly into the silence between gun blasts. The songs would stick in Stone Ranger's head as he left the movie theater in Dominica, and then twist with the sounds of reggae from the street.

The experience stuck with him and was still with him when he formed a band in 1993 in Toronto with Dominican friend and rhythm guitar player Click Masta Sync.

"We wanted to play reggae, but we wanted something different," Ranger said. Mixing in spaghetti western music was "our own spin, our own niche. We're lucky we found it."

After 10 years and three albums together, what originally began as a hook has developed into the band's own sound.

It's a sound that they may be trying to get away from.

Ranger calls the band a "reggae country rock band."

"But can you please write 'country' in small letters?" he said.

The Reggae Cowboys will play Sunday at Slopeside as a continuation of the bar's free concert series. The band plans to provide copies of their newest, yet unreleased, album at the show.

"We are a great band. We're a fun band and like no other band out there," Ranger said.