To hear reggae artist Elan Atias talk, one might think he didn’t like his job. But when your job is singing lead for the oldest, most highly respected reggae groups in the world – what’s not to like?

“What I’ve learned is that you can’t trust anybody,” said Atias of the hard-earned lessons he’d acquired throughout his music career. “It sucks, but it’s true. It’s not all the glitter and gold that everybody makes it out to be.”

In the late ’90s, Atias became a member of renowned group The Wailers, the band that toured with Bob Marley until Marley’s untimely death in 1981.

“As a fan, you walk into a venue, have a couple of drinks, enjoy the music for the two hours that we’re on stage. After the show, you don’t realize how much work it takes to make that show happen.”

Atias was barely out of high school when he joined The Wailers on tour in 1997.

“I got to be on tour with them for three-and-a-half years,” he said. “They were like the best professors, teaching me the ropes.”

After about three years, Atias decided he needed to leave his musical mentors behind in search of his own path. “It was like graduating from college,” Elan said. “I had to move on, lay my own foundation.”

From there, the rising reggae star spent almost a decade recording his solo album “Together as One,” which he released in 2006. Atias was not pleased with the turnout.

“I think it didn’t get its justice in promotions and not enough people knew about it,” he said. “If I was on a smaller reggae label, it would have done really well. Because I was on Interscope, which might be the biggest label there is, I don’t think they did it justice.”

Atias insists that his disappointing experience with Interscope Records hasn’t ruined his appetite for a solo career. “I’m definitely going to be doing more solo stuff in the future,” he said. “I came back to The Wailers because of a project that me and Family Man have been talking about for years.”

That project is a collaborative production album involving Atias and Wailers bass player Aston Barrett, who calls himself “Family Man” because he has 52 children. The album is expected to come out this year.

In 2008, The Wailers collaborated with country music icon Kenny Chesney in the song “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven” and performed with him at the 42nd Annual Country Music Awards. Fans of both Chesney and The Wailers were taken by surprise, but Atias thought there was no reason to be.

“Honestly, reggae music and country music are not that much different,” said Atias. “They both tell it how it is without any commercials. They just have different accents.”