Roots Tonic was the name of the three piece rock-reggae band best known as Matisyahu's backing band during live shows and studio recordings. The band was made up of Aaron Dugan (guitar and sounds), Josh Werner (bass and keyboard, also co-writes songs with Matisyahu), and Jonah David (drums and percussion). They have recorded two studio albums and a live album with Matisyahu, but the name Roots Tonic was first mentioned on the inside cover of Matisyahu's 2006 major label album Youth and its dub version, Youth Dub.
Youth producer Bill Laswell was so impressed with the band that he invited it to record a dub album with him. The result, Roots Tonic meets Bill Laswell, was released in mid-2006 on Reach Out International Records.
In 2007, first Jonah David, and shortly after Josh Werner left Matisyahu's live band, and this meant the end of Roots Tonic as well.
In 2009/2010, Dub Trio became Root Tonic's successor to support Matisyahu live on stage.
In 2011, Bill Laswell and Josh Werner produced Lee "Scratch" Perry's studio album "Rise Again"; Aaron Dugan plays guitar on select tracks.
Famous quotes containing the words roots and/or tonic:
“Einstein is not ... merely an artist in his moments of leisure and play, as a great statesman may play golf or a great soldier grow orchids. He retains the same attitude in the whole of his work. He traces science to its roots in emotion, which is exactly where art is also rooted.”
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939)
“We need the tonic of wildness,—to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)