PHILADELPHIA, PA — The Philadelphia region is one of the best music scenes in the world. One of the greatest musicians to rise-up from the Philly area is Rick Reinhart. Throughout the Mid-Atlantic United States, he is heralded for his ability to help make other musicians sound good. From Atlantic City, he has been awarded best bassist. To Philadelphia, where he was crowned King Of The Undgerground.

KingArthur.com: How did you get from the music into the music business?

Rick Reinhart: Well, I started playing the bass professionally at 16 years old after I had only been playing bass for a few months. I had played drums when I was 11 for about 6 months but never really did anything with it (besides piss my family off with the noise.) After realizing that this was what I wanted to do with my life at 16, I never really looked back. I couldn’t exactly see the recession coming, MTV turning into all sitcoms instead of music videos or FM radio stations losing their mojo; but, if I would have seen it coming, I would have tried to jump into being an independent artist sooner. It wasn’t until I met a really incredible engineer/musician named Gene Leone that I really started to see the great things that come with being an independent artist. That was when I officially started my own label and got my LLC. for Out In The Woods Records. I had already known that I was excelling at recording. I had a god given ability to be able to capture moments with my Rowland VS1824 18 track that my dad got me. My friends and I use to stay up all night writing and recording new songs until we passed out. At that point, I knew I had found something that I loved doing… I just wasn’t aware on how to make a living out of it. Then, I had a wake-up call in 2007-2008 and had to really get my life together. I had realized how shady the music business really was and made a big decision in my life to be a positive influence in this business that seemed to be changing. In 2011, I met a guy named Terry Utain, and he introduced me to The Philadelphia Recording Community which was a dream come true. All of the producers/engineers and many more people in the industry I met and talked music with and it completely renewed my interest to follow my passion with recording. That is when I then got my LLC. for my record label and went on a nice run. I was able to record 6 solo albums and drop over 30 records in a 3 year period at www.outinthewoodsrecords.com, my first online record label/store/distribution. It was a really great way for me to be able to creatively express myself as an artist and also throw on the producer hat and label decision maker. I really like artists like John Fruscinate, 2pac Shakur and Midnite who all have had creative spurts releasing tremendous amounts of material. I realized that was the kind of artist that I wanted to be. I’ve had friends tell me that I have to slowdown so that the records could be promoted properly, but I don’t really care about that kind of stuff. My job on this earth is to be creative so that is what I do. To me that is why I got into this stuff to begin with. In my first couple of bands, I wasn’t able to get into the groove of dropping enough material because of too many opinions getting in the way of releasing material. By the age of 25, I had felt like a veteran in this music business but had nothing to really show for it. As a solo artist, I can completely let loose creatively and keep pumping out new stuff whenever I feel like it. I have become my own boss and I love it.

KingArthur.com: You must do a lot of live performances?

Rick Reinhart: Yeah, over the last 13 years I must have played everywhere. The Theator of Living Arts (Philadelphia), The Lincoln Financial Field (Eagles Stadium), Peter Seeger’s Jam On The Hudson (NY), Occupy Philadelphia (City Hall, Philly), Wallstreet International (Now called The One Art Center), Kalamazoo Island Festival (MI), BB Kings (NYC), Elephant Talk Music Festival (Atlantic City), Red Square (VT), The Blockley (Philadelphia), John Stewart’s Daily Show (Comedy Central), WMMR’s Preston and Steve Show, The Note and The Social Lounge (West Chester, PA), The Appalachian Brewing Co. (Harrisburg, PA), Raise The Vibration Festival (Philadelphia, PA), Opple Topple Music Festival (PA), World Cafe (Philly and Delaware), West Philly Street Festival, Low Country Blues Fest (South Carolina), Dewey Beach Music Conference (Delaware), Fox 29 news (Cherry Hill, NJ), Bearsville (Woodstock, NY) and a whole bunch of other places.

KingArthur.com: What band names do you play under? And, what about pseudonyms?

Rick Reinhart: I try and treat every project with its own energy. I originally started doing my solo projects in 2010 because I had been in bands for so many years. After working real hard, the band breaks up. You are stuck with absolutely nothing. I said foget it and wanted to start getting my own name (Rick Reinhart) out there. Well, it worked out way better than I could have ever imagined and dropped 6 solo albums and played all over. Would like to thank all of the musicians who had my back. Terry Utain, Gene Leone, Bobby Eli, Rick Tate and everybody else. Love you guys.

Then, I started to trip myself out with new project ideas as they came to me. I dropped 2 albums under different names even though they were solo projects. The Psychedelics is a name that I liked and was going thru a Jerry Garcia phase after a friend of mine (Eric Loos) played the song Ripple. It felt like an angel hit me with an earthy musical feeling that I hadn’t felt in years.

The other album was Bass Nut. An album I recorded upon returning from a music fest. After being pulled over by the cops, something had to be ingested in order for me to not go to jail. I then went home and hallucinated for like 10 hours and recorded the Bass Nut album. It was a real psychedelic time period for me.

A few years before that, I was performing/hanging out at the West Chester music festival in 2010, and I ran into this girl on the street. The New Kings Of Rhythm band had just finished a late show. When I walked out to the street, there was a girl wearing nothing but a thong. Things got a little crazy. The next thing you know, I was performing oral sex on the street. People gathered around watching with their camera phones out. It was then that Rob Perna gave me the name Street Chicken Rick. I guess it was kinda a initiation cause I ended up joining the Rob Perna Band a year or so later.

In the reggae world, I always felt like I was being lifted up by god to be a part of Jah. One of my first shows in the reggae world was playing side by side with Junior Marvin of Bob Marley and the Wailers in 2007. But, it wasn’t until 2013 that I got real into Jamaican producers/dj’s, like King Tubby, The Scientist and Mad Professor, that my next stage name started coming out. I was/am hanging a lot down at this Jamaican venue called One Art Community Center in West Philly and got the real taste of African culture. I felt this new wave of creativity come over me. I got to play shows with bad-ass groups like Midnite, and I was once again feeling like I was being lifted up by god. While learning more about the culture, I started to realize that I am someone who truly lives outside of “Babylon”, and that is why I do music. I stay in my house all day and just try and create music from a pure place of expression in hopes that it will uplift people. I saw the Bob Marley movie in Delaware one night, and I felt like I had been re-united with family from another life. I remember hearing Bob Marley say in an interview in that movie “I’m not white or black. I choose god who created me this way for a reason.” All of the sudden, my life started making sense to me. That was a really great moment. Around this time, I was producing a lot of live recordings at incredible speed. I then started to produce tracks by the name King Lionheart for reggae/hip hop. Reggae and hip hop are the music of Kings in my eyes. So, I had to think of what kind of king I wanted to be… better yet, what it is that I do, that makes me who I am. I didn’t have to think for very long. I respect righteous kings from the bible a lot. I knew that had to be involved with it, but still wasn’t the whole picture of who I am. I knew I had something special with creativity that was given to me through my love for professional wrestling as a kid. I used to love the story lines and tradition of it all. I guess that carried over into my musical career because I always end up just wanting to create new things. The conclusion was reached that creativity is what I am a king of. King Lionheart I don’t consider a musician. I still get credit as Rick Reinhart when I play bass on reggae tracks. When I’m producing reggae tracks, it’s under the name King Lionheart.

In 2007, I started The Late Night Drifters with my friend Jack Donnelly. We have a chemistry unlike anyone I have ever met. We actually just started getting back together in 2013 and making new music. With our relationship there is a real cool thing about wanting to get better at singing and one day being a real singing group. We have always been learning from our musical hero’s like Hank Williams (Sr.), The Beatles and Sam Cooke. It’s starting to really come around. It makes me really happy. Jack is a lifelong friend to me and has been one of my biggest influences with this music stuff. He’s listened to so much music at a young age, that it is completely inside of him. It’s nice being able to time travel with music back to the 1940′s whenever we feel like it.

In 2013, I started a new reggae group called The Kings Of The Underground. I was really inspired by Midnite and King Tubby to keep making new music. I bought a King Tubby CD on amazon that had 80 dub songs on it for 5 Dollars. I was in reggae paradise and wanted to have my own outlet for all of this new music that I was getting into. It’s been the first time in my life that I have felt all caught up with music. There is so much that I want to make still. I feel like what I was listening to and what I was playing was kinda linked up for the first time in my life. That’s a really great feeling as a musician to feel. So, my friend Dan Brouse calls me The King Of The Underground. lol

So all in all, Rick Reinhart (solo stuff), King Lionheart (Reggae/Hip Hop Producer), Street Chicken Rick (Space Bass Funk), The Late Night Drifters (Old School Country/RnB), and now the “The King Of The Underground”.

KingArthur.com: When you look into the future, what do you see?

Rick Reinhart: I see myself doing exactly what I’m doing but on a much bigger level with the cats that inspired me to keep going with music through hard times — people like John Frusciante, The RZA, Warren Haynes, The Felice Brothers, Bootsy Collins, Flea, Midnite, Mike Watt, Jimmy Vivino, Amy Helm, Anushka Shankar, Keisha Cole, Jack White, Dhani Harrison. These are the musicians that I feel like I would mesh well with with what I’m trying to do and where I see my home is with music. I would like to work with Dido one day… Eminem, Rick Rubin, Dr. Dre, Snoop, B-real, Nas, Damian Marley. That be the $*%#.