I think it’s the immediacy of the emotion and the raw primordial nature of it. I love the real early stuff too but there’s something exciting about that era when the blues became electric that sounds like a door was being kicked open with attitude and authority. For some reason I was really drawn to it at a young age before I knew what it was. My folks brought me up on 60s and 70s music and when I traced the influences back to their blues roots a light bulb turned on. It’s had a heavy influence on what we write and play because it’s become a subconscious foundation for everything to build on. I had a playlist I would practice to all the time I called “blues to brainwash,” just trying to absorb as much as I could.

That’s just how our three personalities and styles sound when we make music together. We try to be authentically ourselves and if you can do that successfully then hopefully you won’t sound like a clone of someone else. I think every musician’s brain has everything in it they’ve ever listened to. All that info gets morphed, simplified or reinterpreted. It gets boiled down and put through a filter of personal taste. I think every musician’s super power isn’t flashy chops or shredding but bringing out their authentic self and their unique taste. Influences get ingested then digested and hopefully what comes out the other end isn’t shit!

On one hand we’ve always felt like outsiders and underdogs. We’re certainly not trying to reinvent the wheel but it’s always been difficult to find other bands doing a similar brand of heavy roots inspired boogie, blues and rock and roll. Over the years we’ve ended up playing with a lot of heavier bands, psychedelic bands, country bands and everything in between. Yet we’ve managed to slowly build a growing audience. So we know there are folks out there that appreciate and identify with what we’re doing. I think we’re able to fit in with a lot of other styles because what we do is so roots oriented yet heavy and fresh too. On the other hand in this digital age of AI I think a growing number of people are looking for a return to the roots and the homegrown realness and rawness of what we’ve been doing all along.

We always try to serve the songs and not overcomplicate things when it comes to our parts. But I’d say the gritty rawness and soulfulness is just an integral part of who we are. We’ve always had a penchant for the real and raw sounding stuff so it’s not something we have to plan for or try to achieve. It just comes out that way.

Are you saying we’re uncool!? What the hell!? Just kidding, I got you! I think it’s also just a reflection of our personalities. We’re just regular, genuine dudes. We’re thankful for what we’ve got and happy to be doing what we love. We want to make genuine connections with people because I think that’s what music is all about. That’s how we perform and that’s how we are off stage too. I think people can relate to that and if you’re able to form a genuine connection with a stranger you’ve gained a fan who will come back to see you perform again. Hopefully at least a few people think we’re cool too though haha.

I think the stereotypical “rockstar” lifestyle isn’t as prevalent nowadays as it once was. It’s a byproduct of touring life and of money and success. Don’t get me wrong, we enjoy debauchery as much as the next guy but the reality of it is we’re broke musicians struggling to make it work. The music industry isn’t the same as it once was in these days of obligatory social media posts and Spotify.

I think remaining in Buffalo has allowed us to maintain and develop our sound without the pressure or influence that living in a major music hub could pose. We live in a rust belt working-class region and I think we sound like it. Buffalo isn’t too dissimilar from Detroit or Cleveland and there’s been a lot of famous gritty and raw, working-class bands from these areas going back to the 60s that have had a big impact on us. Bands like The Stooges, MC5, Grand Funk, James Gang, Bob Seger, The White Stripes and The Black Keys. Another benefit is that in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions the bigger and medium sized cities are generally pretty close together making it easier to string together a run of shows.

We’ve always recorded ourselves going back to the very beginning in our high school days when we found a Tascam 414 cassette recorder. At some point we started experimenting and recording digitally with Pro Tools and realized how much warmth and character our cheap 4 track cassette recorder was really adding. I came across an article on analog recording by Gabe Roth of Daptone Records called “Shitty is Pretty” that inspired me to break out the 4 track recorder again. I realized by using some of the techniques in the article we could clean up a lot of the muddiness we had on our early recordings. Then about 10 years ago we were able to track down an 8 track reel to reel recorder, a Tascam 388, and we’ve been rolling with that ever since. Our last 2 records are the first that we fully engineered and mixed ourselves. We still mix on Pro Tools but the natural warmth, compression and distortion from the tape is cool. We’re always learning and trying to get better but it’s nice to have complete control and let’s face it, it’s the cheapest option.

We thought it would be cool to go with a bare-bones live sound for this return to the roots and blues kind of album. We’ve always recorded the three of us live together in the same room. Since we have 8 tracks to work with it adds some limitations but working under limitations can force creativity and add character to a recording. For the drums we used a kick mic and an overhead mic, one mic on the bass cab, I ran two amps simultaneously for guitar and pretty much left my settings the same throughout. That’s 5 tracks, leaving 3 leftover for each of our vocals. Certain things like the bleed between the mics, room sound on the overhead, and recording vocals a little hot for some compression and tape distortion all add to the vibe.

We have some tour runs coming up this summer. On a few runs we’ll be teaming up with an awesome like-minded heavy blues and rock and roll band, Canyon Lights. Then we’ll be returning to Europe with the new record in the fall time.

Yeah, we’re thinking about possibly digging deeper into the blues and roots for another stripped down type of record. We’re considering doing a proper live album seeing as how we haven’t done that yet. As for something totally unexpected and absolutely not serious, not too long ago at a festival in France a guy asked me “hey, weren’t you wearing an eye patch the last time I saw you?” (I was not.) But ever since then I’ve been wondering if I could pull off a bad-ass eye patch look. It worked for Dr. Hook and hey, they even got on the cover of the Rolling Stone.