Dam Yankee

The sudden passing of Morgan Heritage lead singer Peetah Morgan left the reggae world reeling, but for his brother Mojo Morgan, it sparked a spiritual awakening. On this episode of Dam Yankee with host Zack Newmark, Mojo reveals the family band almost retired until Gramps Morgan received a supernatural message while grieving in the Philippines.

His resilience drives Mojo's sharp critique of mainstream music, which he argues is failing audiences by prioritizing luxury over substance. Pointing directly to Beyoncé, Mojo delivers an unfiltered rebuke of modern chart-toppers. "She's not delivering a message that is uplifting in terms of trying to make people make better decisions," he remarks. "And some of the biggest names in music today, their music has no purpose. It's just about enjoying the finer things in life."

Morgan Heritage almost did not come back after losing their brother Peter "Peetah" Morgan in 2024, Mojo confessed. One of the most beloved members of the group, acknowledged by John Legend among others as one of the greatest singers across all genres, Peetah passed away in his mid-40s while the band was still at the height of their powers. Within a month Mojo knew they had to push through the pain or risk losing everything they had built together.

To keep everyone on track and focused on the importance of having a message and purpose, Mojo now passionately mentors the next generation to help them avoid the pitfalls of early fame. Reflecting on his own high-profile career and the collateral damage of navigating the industry without a guide, he shares a stunningly candid personal regret. "If people told me what I know now, I would probably still be with my first wife," Mojo admits. "I wouldn't have made the mistakes that I made."

Fresh off six sold-out shows at Paradiso, a venue the band has called their Madison Square Garden since they first played to empty rooms here in the late 90s. Today, Mojo is channeling that raw emotion into his solo EP, Jamaica Love, and launching "Morgan Heritage 2.0" ahead of upcoming UK tour dates in London, Manchester, Leicester, and Milton Keynes. Don't miss this powerful, soul-baring conversation.

This full episode of Dam Yankee can be seen on YouTube, or listen to the Dam Yankee on all major podcast platforms. Mojo talks about rebuilding the band around nephew Jimmy Morgan, recording his solo EP Jamaica Love through tears in the back of a car on a farm in Jamaica, why he still asks for Peetah's vocals in his monitor on stage every single night, and what it means to carry on a legacy when the person who helped build it is no longer there.

He also talks about growing up in Springfield, Massachusetts with 29 siblings, getting teased for his dreads as a kid, learning music from Thelonious Monk III and why the mission was never to change the world, just to reach one person at a time.

Mojo Morgan updates his Instagram, YouTube, and Spotify channels regularly, with more information on his other channels. on YouTube, Instagram, Spotify, Facebook, and his website.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction & Six Sold Out Shows at Paradiso

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Ray Ellin is a New York comedian, Comedy Cellar regular and the owner of Aruba Ray's Comedy Club, the number one nightlife activity on TripAdvisor in the entire country of Aruba. He started going to Aruba by accident in 2012, fell in love with the island and opened the club a year later. His colleagues thought he was nuts. They were wrong.

Known for his crowd work and his entrepreneurial streak, Ray has also self-financed a documentary that he sold to 20th Century Fox, hosted a hybrid live and online talk show 17 years ago before the technology existed to do it properly, produced three seasons of a weekly topical standup show for Comedy Central, and raised millions of dollars for charity. 

He has also been profiled on Dateline NBC, where they discovered his heart rate drops when he walks on stage.

In this episode he talks about building a comedy career across New York, Aruba and now Europe, losing his sister during the early days of the pandemic and how Zoom comedy kept him going and why he still has not posted any of his crowd work clips despite having hundreds of hours of footage and everyone telling him he should.

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Rael Lomoti grew up in the Turkana region of northwest Kenya, where girls as young as 12 are given away in marriage, football is only for boys and education is considered a luxury that communities cannot afford. 

Her father moved the family to Nairobi so his children could go to school. Her mother died working in a flower plantation, exposed to pesticides with no worker safety protections. A German nun spotted Rael playing football in the street and took her whole family in.

She grew up, studied social work and community development, played in Kenya's Women's Premier League, and was offered a professional contract to play abroad. She turned it down. She went home to Turkana instead and started the first ever all girls football club.

That was six years ago. Today she runs 18 clubs across Turkana and has reached over 4000 girls through the Desert Roses project, using football as the entry point for conversations about education, early marriage, climate change and the kind of life that is possible beyond the world these girls were born into.

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Tom Cotter has been doing stand-up for 40 years. He is the rapid fire comedian who made it to the AGT finals, lost to a pack of dogs, performed with Joan Rivers in what turned out to be one of her last national television appearances, did eight years on cruise ships, and once had to run out through a kitchen because a heckler wanted to kill him.

He is now on his first tour of the Netherlands with his touring partner Ray Allen, and he has a lot of thoughts about Dutch audiences, cancel culture, corporate gigs, and what it actually costs a comedian to appear on the highest rated show on American television.

He also talks about being married to fellow comedian Mary-Louise Cotter for 25 years, why two comedians in the same house is both the best and worst idea, and why his father, a World War Two era neurosurgeon who paid for six kids to go to private school, did not fully understand what his son did for a living until he saw him on The Tonight Show.

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South African comedian Kevin Fraser is celebrating ten years in comedy with his Decadence tour  and he is doing it the hard way, with sold-out shows across South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and now Europe.

Known for his viral observational comedy and character work, Kevin brings something most comedians do not, twelve years as a professional DJ before he ever picked up a mic for a punchline. That background shaped everything about how he performs, from the pre-show DJ sets he runs before every gig to the way he weaves music, dance and physical storytelling into his stand-up.

In this episode Kevin talks about what ten years of touring actually costs you, why Amsterdam is one of the strangest cities in the world if you have never been here before, and what happens when you go from being Spin Doctor the DJ to just being Kevin Fraser starting over from scratch.

He also opens up about losing his father in 2014, the DJ year that nearly broke him with 49 gigs in two weeks, and why he is launching an entirely new wellness and entertainment platform called Jim and Tonic on September 1st.

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Two-time Grammy winner Gregory Porter is known for Liquid Spirit, Take Me to the Alley and No Love Dying. Behind those songs is a story that most people have never heard in full.

In this episode Gregory goes back to the beginning, growing up in Bakersfield, California, with a minister mother who dragged her church to the streets, a brother who believed in him before he believed in himself, and a community shaped by both extraordinary hardship and extraordinary love.

He talks about how those early experiences became the emotional foundation for everything he has ever recorded, why Liquid Spirit is really a sermon his mother used to preach, and what it feels like to sing a song live when the person it was written for is no longer there to hear it.

He also opens up about losing his brother Lloyd, the depression that followed, and how he has learned to keep Lloyd alive not by writing an anthem for him but by letting him show up quietly in the music, the way he always did.

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Jiaoying Summers is one of the most fearless comedians working today. She owns two comedy clubs, runs a production studio, hosts the Tiger Mommy podcast, and is currently on her first European tour. She is also 35 weeks pregnant and has not slept properly in weeks.

Success has come far faster than happiness for comedian Jiaoying Summers. In just a few short years, the Chinese immigrant went from hosting open mics on Zoom to starring in a Hulu special, buying comedy clubs, and selling out international tours. But years of harsh parenting and cultural clashes still fuel a relentless search for self-worth.

Fresh off sold-out shows in Dublin, London and Amsterdam, Jiaoying sat down with Dam Yankee host Zack Newmark to talk about growing up in China with a drunk father and a tiger mom who still cannot say she loves her, moving to Lexington Kentucky at 18 without speaking a word of English, and building a comedy career from scratch after a director told her to get out of his office but also maybe try stand-up.

"She doesn't think happiness is a factor for human beings," Summers says of her mother. "She think happiness come with success, but it doesn't. So I spent my whole life trying to value myself."

She also opens up about the painful side of her ambition, the feeling that her self-worth is entirely tied to what she produces, the difficulty of feeling happiness even when everything she ever dreamed of has come true and why she bought her own comedy clubs rather than wait for someone to book her.

Summers also confronts the jarring realities of Eastern beauty standards as she prepares to welcome a child with her American fiancé: "And it's gonna be a white boy," she notes of her mother's reaction. "The darker your skin means you are poor, you work at a farm. The lighter your skin means you are royalty, so."

From setting up a satirical "rehab fund" for her son's stand-up ambitions to combating generational trauma, this is a raw, hilarious, and unforgettable interview. Watch the full episode on YouTube, or listen to the Dam Yankee on all major podcast platforms.

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This podcast is produced and recorded by 301 Studios in Amsterdam.

In this episode of the Dam Yankee podcast, host Zack Newmark sits down with comedian, voice actor, and American Netherlander Greg Shapiro. Best known across the globe as the voice of Donald Trump in the viral "America First, Netherlands Second" video, Shapiro gets real about the high stakes of modern politics.

He doesn't mince words about the future of the U.S., warning, "We assume that this, crazy Trump, you know, project 2025, now in 2026, you know, this won't last forever. And, I think someone said, we'll see you at Nuremberg 2.0, yeah".

Watch the episode now on YouTube, or listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more services.

Swiss-French DJ, record producer and #dreamtrack inventor Quentin Mosimann sat down with Dam Yankee host Zack Newmark fresh off a sleepless night after announcing a sold-out show at the Accor Arena in Paris for 19,000 people. 

After 15 years as a DJ, something shifted in the last two years. The social numbers went up, the gig requests went up, and suddenly Quentin was playing 150 shows a year while trying to figure out how to handle worldwide agency requests with a team that was never built for that kind of scale.

He talks about the viral Dream Tracks series he created with Hugh Jackman, Kate Hudson and Edgar Wright, why his worst dream track got millions of views, and why he once walked away from a million euro deal and a Universal contract to start completely from scratch.

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Join host Zack Newmark on this unforgettable episode of Dam Yankee for a profound and deeply personal conversation with six-time Grammy-nominated Afrobeat legend Femi Kuti. Currently traversing Europe on a massive tour to support his introspective new album, Journey Through Life, Femi stops by to reveal the complex man behind the roaring saxophone and pulsating rhythms.

In a raw, highly vulnerable interview, Femi explains the ingenious, culturally rooted way he tricks listeners into digesting difficult political realities. "The way I see my music is they should be in malaria tablets," he explains. "It was the worst tablet you could take. It was so bitter... So you can still dance. You can still party. So consciously or subconsciously, the lyrics hit you."

Despite decades as a global music icon, Femi pulls back the curtain on the intense, unseen pressure of touring, confessing to Zack, "I'm always scared of about the next day. I'm always scared." He also addresses the darkest psychological moments of his youth, detailing the agonizing, deeply misunderstood choice to leave his father Fela Kuti's band.

From sold-out crowds in the Netherlands to the legendary stages of the New Afrika Shrine, discover the joy, the fear, and the unyielding passion of a musical titan. Don't miss this incredible episode—tune in now to hear the rest of the story.

This episode of the Dam Yankee podcast is now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more services.