Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Sher­win Je­re­mi­ah prefers not to be called Men­ace, the so­bri­quet he used as a mem­ber of the now de­funct group 3Suns. Je­re­mi­ah now goes by the name M1, cho­sen to show that he's on a dif­fer­ent path. "M1 sig­ni­fies a new stage in my life and in my mu­si­cal ca­reer. I like to say 'a new chap­ter, a new char­ac­ter.' It is re­al­ly about bring­ing all the dif­fer­ent parts of me to life,' said Je­re­mi­ah, who says he has more cre­ative con­trol as a so­lo act.The 34-year-old from San­gre Grande had quite a busy sea­son this Car­ni­val with his sin­gle Big Peo­ple Ting. The song was writ­ten by Je­re­mi­ah and pro­duced by Chain Links Pro­duc­tion from the Big Blood Stu­dios in San­gre Grande.

Je­re­mi­ah per­formed the song with Machel Mon­tano and the HD Band and Big Peo­ple Ting al­so re­ceived a de­cent amount of air­play.Je­re­mi­ah said he set out to write a song that would move young and ma­ture folk alike."The song is re­al­ly about a re­la­tion­ship be­tween a man and a woman who are ready to go to the next stage in their re­la­tion­ship and he is mere­ly ask­ing her to trust him. But the way I wrote it, I did not want it to come across vul­gar or dis­re­spect­ful which is why it is re­ferred to as big peo­ple ting," he joked.He said this has been his best since em­bark­ing on a so­lo ca­reer three years ago.He de­scribed the op­por­tu­ni­ties to per­form along­side Mon­tano for the en­tire sea­son in­clud­ing at Mon­tano's con­cert spec­tac­u­lar Machel Mon­day, and be­ing cho­sen a se­mi-fi­nal­ist in this year's So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion "as a huge deal.""Pro­duc­ers who had for­got­ten about me are call­ing my phone now. They want to work with me. I sup­pose they are see­ing now what was al­ways there but they just could not see it then," said a hap­py Je­re­mi­ah.

He re­vealed a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mon­tano is soon to be re­leased as well as a track with his all-time favourite fe­male so­ca star De­stra Gar­cia called Hon­ey Love, is al­so due out soon. Je­re­mi­ah hopes to work some day with the Mighty Shad­ow who he hails as one of the great­est vet­er­ans in the busi­ness. He told the T&T Guardian work­ing again with his long-time friend Ian "Bun­ji Gar­lin" Al­varez, won't hurt ei­ther.

Born to do it

Je­re­mi­ah's love for mu­sic start­ed in child­hood. He said in pri­ma­ry school, he and a for­mer class­mate would sit at the back of the class­room and chant every dance­hall hit they knew. Of course, this of­ten got him in trou­ble as he and his friend dis­rupt­ed the class. One time, as pun­ish­ment, Je­re­mi­ah was giv­en the task of writ­ing a song for Moth­er's Day and per­form­ing it at the school's Moth­er's Day con­cert.With the help of his moth­er, he wrote the apt­ly-ti­tled song Moth­er's Day and the rest was his­to­ry."When I went on to sec­ondary school I kept writ­ing and tak­ing part in small 'sing off' com­pe­ti­tions. I re­alised I had a nat­ur­al knack for it and I stuck with it."As a part of 3Suns, whose hits in­clud­ed Dat Eh Nut­tin (On de Prom­e­nade), Ka­ma Su­tra and By The Bar, he was the main writer and lead vo­cal­ist of the group. He doesn't how­ev­er, feel it is more chal­leng­ing to per­form as a soloist.

"It is not like a big dras­tic move at all be­cause while I was with the group I al­ways ven­tured out and did so­lo projects or col­lab­o­rat­ed with oth­er artistes, he said. "It isn't much dif­fer­ent ex­cept that I now have more cre­ative con­trol, where­as in the group there had to be the in­put from every­one and if I felt a song need­ed to be tweaked here and there, it wasn't re­al­ly my say."

The song­writer now known as M1 is work­ing on an al­bum which is due out clos­er to the year's end. Ac­cord­ing to Je­re­mi­ah, mu­sic lovers can ex­pect a mix of all gen­res as he is not stick­ing to just so­ca mu­sic. They can get a taste of what is to come on a sin­gle he says will be out by East­er."I love so­ca mu­sic, but I love mu­sic as a whole and I be­lieve a true artiste is ver­sa­tile and can give the peo­ple a world of mu­sic from one voice."