Lloyd "Bullwackie" Barnes
Producer. Reggae, roots, dub
- Active
- 1970-present
- Sunrise
- 1945, Kingston, Jamaica
- Also known as
- Lloyd Barnes, Bullwackie, Wackie's, Wackies
Lloyd "Bullwackie" Barnes is a producer and engineer who set up the first reggae recording studio in New York, Wackie's in the Bronx, and made it the source of a roots sound that was, in the Rough Guide's words, "his own." David Katz calls it "very lo-fidelity," rough, low-budget music made for the Bronx of its day.
Born in Kingston and raised in Trench Town, he was drawn to ska and rocksteady, was friendly with Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer, and spent time around Studio One. He arrived in Brooklyn in the early 1970s and began producing in partnership with Munchie Jackson; with Little Roy the two launched the Tafari and Earth labels, which issued Little Roy's "Tribal War." He built the studio first in a basement and then in storefronts on White Plains Road in the Bronx, paid for by his work as a deejay and at day jobs, and his records, issued in short runs under the Wackie's lion, carried his nickname.
By the end of the 1970s he was producing on his own, recording New York's Jamaican singers and players, Wayne Jarrett among them, and visiting stars: Sugar Minott, Horace Andy and Leroy Sibbles all recorded for him, and he made a series of dub albums the Rough Guide calls "sometimes stunningly good." Rising rents closed the White Plains Road studio in 1989, after thirteen years; by 2009 he had built a new one inside a record shop on 225th Street, where he was still working at the mixing board in his late seventies.
Last updated November 5, 2026
Connections
- Sugar Minott (artist)
- Horace Andy (artist)
- Little Roy (artist)
- Leroy Sibbles (artist)
- Wayne Jarrett (artist)
- Clive Hunt (session work)
- Munchie Jackson (collaborator)
- Bob Marley (friend)
- Bunny Wailer (friend)
Notes
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 425-26.
- Saxon Baird, "Author David Katz on Wackies and the History of New York Reggae," Afropop Worldwide, September 26, 2013, https://old.afropop.org/articles/author-david-katz-on-wackies-and-the-history-of-new-york-reggae.
- Lawrence Peryer, "Lloyd Barnes, Wackie's Studio, and the Legacy of Bronx Reggae," The Tonearm, June 3, 2024, https://www.thetonearm.com/lloyd-barnes-wackies-studio-and-the-legacy-of-bronx-reggae/.
- Peryer, "Lloyd Barnes." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 207, 425.
- Peryer, "Lloyd Barnes."
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 199, 425. On Minott: the Sugar Minott entry. On Sibbles: the Leroy Sibbles entry, which names Barnes among his producers.
- Peryer, "Lloyd Barnes."
