VIDEO: Sundown "Sleepy Song" (via Impose Magazine)

Seems like a year has gone by since we were introduced to Sundown. Turns out it’s only been like eight months or so since Kanawha Valley native and Sundown guitarist Dustin Travis White reached out to us from their home in Columbus, and turned us onto their debut EP “Mansion Burning,” and ever since, we’ve become huge fans of what TK Webb and crew are doing. Even snagged a Sundown flyer from Budget Tapes to hang here in the WVRockscene home office.

So it was with much excitement we noticed that Sundown recently debuted their video for “Sleepy Song,” off “Mansion Burning.” Done in complete VHS fashion and edited by White, we thought it would be cool to catch up with White (again, we talked for the Gazette late last year) to get more on the making of the video…

WVRockscene: Where/when was the footage for “Sleepy Song” taken?
Dustin White: In the middle of last November we went to Shepherdstown, Philly, and then two shows in Brooklyn with The Demon Beat. We collected it mostly in Brooklyn at Public Assembly and some at Union pool and obviously the road to and from.

-----
rockscene: Was that you filming the TV? that was a neat look...
White: I shot the footage on this JVC video camera from 1982 (image here). It’s a separate camera and VCR unit. Then I played it back on my trusty 1980 JC Penny’s TV and shot that with a digital camera. I originally bought the camera to document two months on the road in Europe with Times New Viking, BUT the battery that came with it wouldn’t hold a charge and I couldn’t track down a battery before we left. I found the camera and VCR on Craigslist and had to drive into the middle of nowhere Ohio to purchase it. I finally found a replacement battery and got it shipped to The Demon Beat guys’ place. I now have a second camera I picked up at a thrift store.

-----
rockscene: What kind of camera were you using? how did you get that VHS look?
White: I got that VHS look by using trust old VHS-C. I’m not a fan of faking things or emulating things if i don't have to. I’m sure there are ways to make it look that in post-production, etc., but that makes no sense to me when the real way exists and is cheap and fun. The camera traces light in really weird ways that make it really fun to experiment with. if you Google ‘Saticon’ or look up videos made with a ‘Saticon’ camera on YouTube you will see all the weird imperfections the camera causes. I just thought this visual aesthetic would work very well with what we are doing musically -- especially for that song in specific, the slow moving and hazy nature of the song.

-----
rockscene: It’s definitely a tough lifestyle going out on tour for extended periods, does putting this video together feed back into the dedication and energy you guys have for the band? regardless this does document you guys being out on the road...
White: My point was more to show how simultaneously romantic and completely un-romantic being on tour is. The open road is beautiful, but you don’t get to enjoy it. It just passes by your window. Then your moving a bunch of half working antiquated electronic devices out of your van and into an empty dark room and praying people show up. I love being on tour. It’s why I have done this fairly constantly since I was about 18, but there is so much down time. So much waiting. So much just sitting. That’s the part people forget about. I kind of wanted to show that and thought that was the perfect song to do it with.

-----
rockscene: What is it about tour videos that have forever seemed to be so cool? Maybe the thought that you get to be on the road with your favorite band...
White: I’m presently living in VHS only 2012 and have been picking up a lot of older tour/concert VHS tapes but there is some weird mystique to them. If you have never seen it there is this Pantera video -- i think from the Vulgar Display of Power tour -- that is maybe the most amazing video like that ever. It’s basically Pantera doing “Jackass” before there was Jackass. Betting their friends to do stupid shit and just generally fucking around. It’s mind blowing. We used to watch it all the time. Seriously this video should be given the criterion treatment. The Cure ‘In Orange’ is one we have been watching lately a lot, but that’s just a concert film and no real road footage. There just is this mystique in popular culture of ‘the road’ as this intangible object. This concept, people latch onto it. It’s very much part of America. So when you combine that with the tradition of the troubadour it takes on even more mystique. It’s this never ending snowball of cultural currency.

-----
rockscene: anything big or something you guys might be looking forward to in 2012? shows, fests, recording?
White: Recording. We are about to start recording our first proper full-length at the end of next month. We have most of the songs for it already but are spending this month writing and working on getting everything together so that we can make this record. I think it’s a major step forward to us. I mean ‘Mansion Burning’ was just intended to be a demo, but obviously it took off in a way we didn’t expect at all. Lyrically the record has this Afghan Whigs by way of Rumours vibe and then musically we are really trying some different things. There are some songs that are more direct and some that are even more gazey and covered in syrup. No idea who is going to put out the record yet, but we are going to record it with Adam at CDR here in Columbus just like we did the last one.

--- Sundown is tentatively scheduled to return to West Virginia May 16 for a show at the Glass, and in June for a show in Huntington at the V Club

Related: Five questions with Dustin White of Sundown (Charleston Gazette Sept. 2011)

Way more NES-core than you: Ryan Postlethwait reinvents the music from his favorite old Nintendo games as Mega Beardo

The picture says it all: Ryan Postlethwait (above) combines his love of Nintendo games and metal as Mega Beardo.


Everybody knows that WVRockscene covers the most killer bands and acts in West Virginia. How well they cover bands is another thing, but we pride ourselves here on covering stuff that rocks, better late than never.

Such is the case with Mega Beardo. To our everlasting shame, for one reason or another, we are only recently finding out about how amazing singer-guitarist Ryan Postlethwait's solo project is, and has been since at least 2010.

Postlethwait, who also plays guitar in the Morgantown-area metal band Descension Rate, has taken the music from old Nintendo games Mega Man 2 and Castlevania, covered the scores in their entirety in brutal metal fashion as Mega Beardo. And this fall, Postlethwait will release his take on The Legend of Zelda, “The Ledjent of Zelda.”

This excites us greatly. To learn more on our part, and to help raise awareness about how awesome Postlethwait's combination of video games and metal is, we decided to get off our ass here and cover one of the most exciting musicians in the state. 'Bout time.


WVRockscene: You just released the video tease for your upcoming Zelda-themed Mega Beardo album. What is “djent” and how special is The Legend of Zelda to you, like Castlevania and Mega Man, as a game, to want to basically rock out the score of the game?

Ryan Postlethwait: “Djent” is a bit hard to explain, but it’s essentially just a new breed of progressive metal that has been emerging in the past couple of years with bands like Periphery, Animals as Leaders, and Tesseract. With “djent,” you can typically expect weird time signatures, a lot of tight palm-muted 7-or 8-string guitars over polyrhythm drums, crazy lead guitar stuff, and some melodic clean sections. But the term “djent” gets traced back to Meshuggah and is just a silly way to describe how their guitars sounded back in the 90s, more specifically their extremely tight palm-muting technique. It’s an onomatopoeia, if you will. Listen to Meshuggah’s song “Soul Burn” and you’ll see what I mean. Think back to when Beavis and Butthead would sing the “Iron Man” riff like: “duhhh duhhh duh duh duh....nananananana duh duh duh duh.” If you asked them to sing Meshuggah’s “Soul Burn,” they would sing “djent djent......djent djent......djent djent.....djent djent djent djent djent djent.”

Both Castlevania and Mega Man are quite special to me. They bring back a lot of great childhood memories, I still nerd out about them with my friends, and they completely hold up today. Legend of Zelda fits in that realm. I remember getting my Nintendo back in 1988 and talking about it with a new friend I made at school. All I could talk about was Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, and World Class Track Meet because that was all I had starting out. Then my friend said, “You’ve never played Zelda?!” He came over to my house not too long after that and brought a copy of Zelda. Seeing that gold cartridge for the first time blew my mind, and the gameplay was very addictive. We played for hours, just roaming the overworld. At the time, I had played a ton of Atari, and I remember thinking “This is like Swordquest or Raiders of the Lost Ark...but waaay better.” haha. A couple months later, I got myself a copy of Zelda II, along with the first issue of Nintendo Power magazine. My obsession with Nintendo pretty much blossomed from that point.

Zelda’s music is simply epic. The title theme has that top-notch John Williams quality to it. I didn’t really learn to appreciate how great it was until I got older. The idea to do this album came to me while I was driving on I-79 from Pittsburgh. I was literally going through the Nintendo soundtracks I have on my iPod trying to think of the next Mega Beardo album. I got to the original Zelda soundtrack and hit play. Once the dungeon theme came on, I thought to myself “Man, you could really djent this up if you wanted to....wait...djent...Legend of Ze....LEDJENT OF ZELDA.”



Once that title came out, I knew I had to start working on it. The soundtrack is really short. After spending so many months putting together Belmont, which is 70 minutes long, I felt like doing a short 20-25 minute EP. I’m just interested to see how a complex and aggressive style like djent can be used in the world of Zelda, and I knew I had to do it pretty quick. Ask any “djent” band, and more often than not, they’d probably say they didn’t like the term. Most metal bands hate being labeled anyway, but “djent” is mainly a fad in internet forums and such, so it will most likely fade in a couple of years. I’m fully aware of that.



-----
rockscene: How old were you when you were first exposed to the 8-bit NES? What were -- aside from the ones you’ve covered as Mega Beardo -- some of your favorite games early on?

Postlethwait: I grew up on the Atari 2600. Some of my very early memories are of playing Q*Bert with my dad, along with Berzerk, Kaboom!, River Raid, and Crystal Castles. My sister and I would have Pitfall competitions to see who could get the most loot. I was also the master at Jr. Pac-Man, a game I play now and think “How the hell was I so good at this game before I was even old enough to go to school?”

Then, when I was six years old, I got the NES for Christmas. It was the Power Set bundle with the power pad and the zapper. So the very first exposure I got to my Nintendo after hooking it up was with Duck Hunt. My dad and I would play that game and laugh ourselves silly about that dog.

Aside from Mega Man 2 and Castlevania, which are all-time favorites of mine, I poured a ton of time into Double Dragon, Duck Tales, Super Mario Bros 1, 2 and 3, Excitebike, Contra, Dragon Warrior, Guerilla War, Marble Madness.....even crappy games like Friday the 13th and Skate or Die. Super Mario Bros 3 may be the game that I first became obsessed over. I’m sure that had something to do with the major hype surrounding it during the release of “The Wizard,” but my friends and I talked about that game endlessly at school.

Another game we nerded out about at school was Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out. The codes, the patterns, how to dodge Super Macho Man...everything about that game was fun to talk about. That game was extremely popular and very hard to find back then. People probably don’t realize this now, but Mike Tyson was a huge deal back then. I watched all of his fights at a very young age and was just in awe at what he could do. He was unstoppable, until Buster Douglas happened, of course. In that context, defeating Mike Tyson in that game was such a major accomplishment. I got more satisfaction from that than almost any other game growing up.

-----
rockscene: You played out as Mega Beardo about a month ago, at an all-ages show at 123 Pleasant Street, how did that go?

Postlethwait: Very well! It was part of the Rainbowdragoneyes/Ronnit tour that came through town. We were hoping for a better turn out, but the people that were there were really into it. Of course, I got a lot of questions about my Nintendo guitar. Even when I was warming up before the show, people would come up and say, “Does that actually work?!”



I think the biggest reaction was from my Mega Man 2 tracks. A lot of old school gamers consider that to be the greatest video soundtrack of all time, so they love it when that title track hits with that Iron Maiden gallop.

-----
rockscene: When you’ve played Mega Beardo out live, what’s been the general response been like?

Postlethwait: So far, so good. The first time I played as Mega Beardo was back in October of 2010. I was asked last minute to play a little bit and, at that time, not many people knew what it was. The Mega Man 2 Guitar Tribute had only been out a few months. So I decided to play the “Dr. Wily” portion of that album, which is pretty much one 13-minute long track.

And I’ll say this: playing on stage by yourself, especially technical music like this, is way more nerve-racking than playing in a band. When I hit the stage with Descension Rate or any other band I’ve been in, I always have those pre-show jitters, but it’s all just anxious energy. If I make a mistake, there are other guys on stage there to cover it up and divert the attention. When I’m up there by myself, I get a bit nervous because I know a mistake will stick out that much more. I also phase out because I concentrate so hard on playing everything perfectly. I remember at my last show, I had completely phased out by the time I started playing “Flash Man” from Mega Man 2. By the time I was at the end of that track, I had no recollection of playing it haha. I made myself snap out of it at that point.

-----
rockscene: A Mega Man 2 Guitar Tribute was released seemingly way back in 2010, Belmont just came out last November, when did you first set out to do Mega Beardo, and was Mega Man your first attempt at covering a video game’s soundtrack?

Postlethwait: Oddly enough, I never meant to call myself Mega Beardo. Just about everyone I know in Morgantown has been calling me Beardo for 10 years. When I released the Mega Man 2 album, the full title was “Mega Beardo: A Mega Man 2 Guitar Tribute.” I was still going by my real name. After I released that album, everyone kept asking, “So when’s the next Mega Beardo album coming out?” I had given myself a new name without even realizing it. So it stuck at that point.

The very first video game cover I ever did was back in 2002. Just to get the hang of recording with Sony Acid Pro, which I knew nothing about at the time, I decided to record a straight cover of the Level 1-3 theme for Super Mario Land for Gameboy. I still have that somewhere, but I’m sure it sounds like crap haha.

I had the idea for the Mega Man 2 Guitar Tribute back in early 2008. I had even recorded a demo of the “Crash Man” theme and put it up on Myspace, back when that was still a thing. I didn’t get rolling with the idea until the summer of 2009 when I had enough money to put towards new and better equipment. I also had a broken finger that needed to heal. I spent from July 2009 to February of 2010 recording everything in sequential order. My main reason for doing it was to pay tribute to one of my favorite things of the last 20 years. I have a lot of awesome memories of that game, and the music has stuck with me for so long. Dissecting it like that made me appreciate the music even more, and it made me a better player at the same time.

The idea for Belmont had been around since 2008 as well. I’m a huge horror film nerd, and I especially loved the Universal monsters growing up. That made Castlevania even more awesome to me as a kid. I even have a tape of a song I recorded with an old air organ called “The Search at Castlevania” when I was 8 years old; I included that as a secret track on Belmont. So I’ve been obsessed with the first Castlevania game for a long time. It’s one of those games that I still nerd out about with my friends. I wrote the opening track “Simon” back in 2008 on a lap dulcimer. A couple of riffs were even from 2006 or so. But I started writing a bulk of Belmont before working on Mega Man 2, even with a broken finger. The opening riff to “Medusa’s Scream” on Belmont is so simple because I could only play with my index and middle finger at the time. So when I was doodling around on guitar one day, that riff came out, and I based the first half of that song on it. To bring it full circle, I broke another finger at the end of the Belmont recording sessions, luckily after I had recorded all the guitar tracks. Actually in the video I did for “The Mysterious Works of Dr. Frankenstein,” my left pinky finger is still broken. I just kept the splint off because it would’ve been distracting otherwise.

-----
rockscene: We’ve talked about the games you may have liked growing up, what about metal influences or just what bands made you wanna pick up a guitar?

Postlethwait: The first band I obsessed over was Soundgarden. I still hear their influence in my writing today, and I can’t say that about any other band. I was pretty much a Seattle grunge kid stuck in Jane Lew, West Virginia, so I listened to a lot of Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains. I can tell you the exact moment I told myself I wanted to play guitar: when I watched Metallica playing “The Thing That Should Not Be” from their Live Shit box set. I saw that at the age of 14 and thought playing guitar just looked like so much fun. At that point, I was a metal kid.

Things kind of changed when I saw Buckethead live back in 1999. Primus was playing at the Metropol in Pittsburgh with Incubus of all bands, and Buckethead was scheduled to open up. This is back when nobody, including myself, knew who the hell he was. My friends and I got there real early, so we were standing front and center when this ominous music starts playing and the place fills with smoke. Then a 6-foot-6 dude with wearing a chicken bucket and a mask walks up on stage, puts on a guitar, hits play on a drum machine and absolutely destroys the place single-handedly. To this day, I’ve never seen anything like it. I still consider it to be the most influential show that I have ever seen. He would take interludes and hand out random crap he bought from Rite-Aid. I still have some dollhouse furniture and a weird severed hand that grows in water that he gave me at that show.

I’d say the artist that I’m most inspired by today is Devin Townsend. I could talk endlessly about how much of a genius that guy is, so I’ll need to cut myself short. He is a guitar virtuoso that practices restraint more than any other. He keeps the wankery to a minimum, something a lot of guitar players need to learn. His solos are always tasteful and perfectly placed. And not only is he the greatest vocalist in metal today, he is also probably the most entertaining performer. Plus, he writes and produces everything in his own home studio and has full control over every aspect of his creation. His production abilities are mind-boggling. Listening to his album “Deconstruction” is a great example of that. So there’s just too much genius in that guy to not be inspired by him in some way.

-----
rockscene: The guitar you made out of an NES, what possessed you to do that?

Postlethwait: I didn’t actually make it. It was custom-made from a site called getlofi.com, but they did a fantastic job! I basically just told them what type of neck and pick-ups I wanted. It ended up having this unique sound and tone that makes it perfect for playing leads. In fact, most of the leads on “Belmont” were played on the NES guitar. But there was something about taking a broken console that gave someone hundreds of hours of entertainment and giving it a new purpose that really appealed to me.

I have an extra Atari 2600 console laying around that doesn’t seem to want to work anymore. One of these days, I think I may try to make a custom Atari 2600 guitar myself and just start a little collection of console guitars.

-----
rockscene: There was a recent piece in Game Informer magazine about all the old, (by the writer considered) great, 8-bit music in a few old video games, I think one of them may have been Zelda. Considering your own involvement in bands like Descension Rate, what makes covering your favorite NES games so fun, and special? If nothing else aside from it rocking it’s got to be a small niche, do you know a lot of musicians doing what you do?

Postlethwait: There are tons of people doing what I do, but just to different extents and within different genres. There is even a site called Overclocked Remix (ocremix.org) that is a dedicated video game remixing community. But bands like The Minibosses and The Advantage have been known for quite a while now.

It’s more rare to find artists who release full concept albums based around video games. You have Metroid Metal that does metal versions of Metroid themes from all consoles. There are tons of bands around like that, and that is closer to what I did with A Mega Man 2 Guitar Tribute. It’s even more rare for an artist or band to write a concept album based on a game but with totally original compositions, which is what I did with Belmont. The only band like that I can think of off the top of my head is The Protomen, who have released two fantastic concept albums based on Mega Man.

To me, covering a video game theme song from a game I love gives me a deeper connection to that game and a better understanding of its composition in general. When I do my remixes, most times I take bits and pieces of certain melodies and try to expand on them more. Like “Skull Castle” from Mega Man 2. I took that 8 or 9 second song and stretched it out to a couple minutes by expanding on the bass line. With the “Boss Select” theme, I took a song that loops after 8 seconds or so and expanded it to over 3 minutes. So I like picking apart a melody or a bass line, putting my own spin on it, and seeing where it goes. Dissecting it like that helps me appreciate it that much more. “Crash Man” might be my favorite overall theme from Mega Man 2. It’s just so damn catchy! When I started learning all of the lead melodies to that song, I couldn’t believe just how well that melody was constructed.

-----
rockscene: Not only do you go by Mega Beardo, you write about movie beards. How important or not are beards in movies? Are you one of those people who obsess over their beard?

Postlethwait: I actually started MovieBeards.com as sort of a joke to myself. I was googling stuff about John Carpenter’s “The Thing” because it’s something that one of my good friends and I obsess about endlessly over a couple of beers on a regular basis. I stumbled upon some “Top 20 Beards in Movies” list on some random site, and Kurt Russell appeared as R.J. MacReady somewhere on that list. I thought to myself, “Awesome. I wonder if there is a website out there dedicated to celebrating awesome beards in film.” To my surprise, there wasn’t. There are a bunch of “Top Beards in Movies” lists, but they all have a lot of the same entries (George Clooney from “Syriana,” Zach Galifianakis in everything) and boring write-ups. So I told myself, “Well if nobody will make a website dedicated to movie beards, then I will.” A couple of weeks later, I got bored and started MovieBeards.com.

The write-ups for Movie Beards are more comical than anything. I also try to find ways in which a specific beard serves a purpose for the character or drives the story in some way. Like Rocky’s Montage Beard indirectly represents the duration of time in “Rocky IV,” or the growth and subsequent shaving of Ron Burgundy’s Depression Beard is an important physical characteristic throughout his arc. Other times, I just make up other “powers of the beard.” It’s interesting to break all these beards down into subcategories, like the Villain Beard, Business Beard, Scientist Beard, etc. Not all beards are important, though. Fisher Stevens has a beard in “Short Circuit,” but I can’t think of a single interesting thing to say about it. But I try to mix it up between famous beards, like Gandalf, and obscure beards, like the gravedigger from “Friday the 13th: Part VI.”

As far as my own beard goes, I obsess over its symmetry more than anything, but I try to maintain symmetry in all aspects of my life. A symmetrical, trimmed, and conditioned beard is a happy beard.

-----
rockscene: You’re releasing some acoustic stuff, when’s that gonna be on the Mega Beardo bandcamp page, and how different is it for you to be doing acoustic songs versus MB and Descension Rate? Will you do acoustic shows?

Postlethwait: I actually just finished recording the final tracks for the acoustic album, so it will be up on bandcamp sometime in the first half of May. Doing acoustic stuff is way different than what I do with Mega Beardo or anything else. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna call the album “Unmega.” There will be 7 tracks at about 30 minutes. I guess it’s more of the singer/song-writer type, but the songs are quite melancholy and haunting in a way.



I’ve been telling people, if you like the tracks “Simon” and “Such is the Curse” from Belmont, then you’ll dig this stuff. I drew inspiration from a lot of places: childhood memories, horror movies...there’s even a song I wrote based on the famous West Virginia story “The Telltale Lilac Bush.” The production isn’t stellar, nor is it meant to be. Usually, I’d just grab my guitar and hit record without any time-consuming pre-production microphone placement stuff. These are just songs I’d write when the inspiration hit, and I couldn’t find any place for them. I’ve been recording it off and on for two years now. I figured I’d just write and record until I felt like I had enough for a short album.

No plans for acoustic shows yet, but it has definitely been on my mind. If I do, I’ll probably work my way through some open mic nights just to get the hang of playing the stuff live.

-----
rockscene: When you play as Mega Beardo, especially for people who played these games for hours, there really does seem to be something nostalgic, even having mostly forgot the music that was on those games. Obviously you are very proficient on guitar and it really is a fun yet punishing version of metal you have, but do you think that there’s that subconscious appeal and pull for those gamers who listen to Mega Beardo records? Does that make sense? It’s almost like a two-for-one deal, you may have never played the games but like the music. But for those who have it’s more…?

Postlethwait: I see what you’re saying. Obviously, when gamers see I’ve recorded a Mega Man 2 album, they are naturally drawn to it if they have established a prior connection to that game and music. Then once they listen to it, I hope that my own rearrangements and additional original compositions bring it to a different level. Because there are hundreds of people that have covered “Dr. Wily’s Castle” on YouTube. But to make it something different, something a little more special is a bit more difficult. I had hoped that the way that I had rearranged the music helped it stick out from the pile a bit. I’ve even had fans tell me they have taken the Mega Man 2 iOS game on their phone and replaced the original music with my music. That’s pretty cool in my book.

And as far as people not being familiar with the music, my own mom said she couldn’t stop listening to my Mega Man 2 Guitar Tribute for weeks! haha. So I guess it has a broader appeal than I thought.

-----
rockscene: Do you see yourself ever doing something outside of Mega Beardo and Descension Rate and acoustic stuff, like a solo metal/electronic act not based on video games?

Postlethwait: I definitely do. I’ve been recording stuff on my own since I got an old Fostex 4-track recorder back in 1998. And I have recorded a whole bunch of albums with bands and other projects over the years. I just never took the “solo artist” thing seriously until Mega Beardo. But I’ve been putting together some original compositions that are in no way related to video games. I have two or three pretty strong foundations of songs ready to go. I’m not sure what I’ll do with them yet, but I’ll just keep adding to the pile until I have enough to record a full album.

-----
rockscene: Speaking of video games, this should have been asked earlier, but we should obviously assume you to be something of a gamer, what are your favorite games to play now on any system, and are there any other games that you’d like to cover as Mega Beardo?

Postlethwait: I own a PS3 and a Wii from the newest generation of consoles. I don’t play newer games much because they are just way too time-consuming. Like, I’ve been playing the new Zelda game “Skyward Sword” off and on for three weeks, and I’m probably not even halfway through it yet. So I do get a little behind on modern gaming, and I’m not much of a first-person shooter guy, either. I’m a sucker for a good platformer, like Little Big Planet. But I also really, really loved Fallout 3, Bioshock, and Arkham Asylum. I even thought the new Castlevania game “Lords of Shadow” was awesome. Of course, the Super Mario Galaxy games on the Wii are highly addictive and super fun. Those games have tons of replay value, while I feel the games that take 75 hours to beat really don’t have that unless you want to spend 200 hours just walking around and doing side missions. Why do that when I can blast through Contra from beginning to end in a half an hour? haha

I have a couple of ideas for new Mega Beardo stuff. The next game I plan to tackle is a little-known gem called “Journey to Silius.” The music is stellar, and it lends itself to my style pretty well. I figure it is time to give some attention to a game that hasn’t been covered to death. I rarely see anyone mention it, actually. It’s an interesting game in that it was originally developed as a “Terminator” game, but the publisher lost the rights to the franchise. So they had to tweak a few things before they could release it under a different title. There are still some “Terminator” remnants, though. One of the bosses resembles a T-800 endoskeleton, for instance.

I’m also toying with the idea of recording a medley of the first Ninja Gaiden. I always wanted to do a full album of that entire soundtrack, but there is just so much damn music on that game. So I’ll just take three or four of my favorite tracks and mash them up a bit.

-----
rockscene: Remembering having the NES growing up, there are so many memories of smashed controllers, stuff being thrown and epic freak outs when me playing the game didn’t turn out like I wanted it to. Have you ever lost your mind in anger and gone totally crazy over a video game? Or are you more calm?

Postlethwait: I’m much more calm now, but I definitely threw my NES controller a lot as a kid. Those things were sturdy and will most likely work fine after the apocalypse. It wasn’t until the SNES days that I finally demolished a controller. I had some birthday money, so I spent it on this brand new turbo controller for the SNES. Every button had a turbo setting. It was awesome. So I’m using it to play Super Mario World, a game I had beaten time and time again at that point. But for some reason, I could not get passed the Valley of Bowser 3 Level right before Bowser’s Castle. It’s the one that has all of the floating platforms that fall when their individual timer runs out. I was just having one hell of a time. Death after death after death, and I finally grabbed my brand new turbo controller and chucked it at the wall. The thing exploded into shrapnel. I was picking up pieces from every corner of my room. Not too long after, my sister and I were playing Super Mario World. She wasn’t very good at it, but I was just flying through it. She kept dying during a Special World level, and I made the mistake of laughing at her. She punched me in the face with the controller. It still has a crack in it from that incident.

In high school, my friend and I played tons of Mario Kart 64. So our skill levels were identical. Then one day, he was just beating me in every single race. I got absolutely furious, because I naturally hate to lose, and I just went to town on my N64 controller until it broke in half. After that, my friend and I duct taped it back together, and if we ever felt the need to take our gaming aggression out, we would drop our good controllers and start beating the shit out of the duct taped one.

I can gladly say I haven’t broken a controller in this century!

-----
rockscene: Are you going to be playing any MB shows anytime soon?

Postlethwait: Nothing is lined up at the moment, as I’ve been too busy with other non-music related stuff. But once that dies down, I’m hoping to do some more shows in the future! Also, I think my main goal is to play a release show for “Ledjent of Zelda” and play the whole EP in its entirety, along with some of my other tracks. I think that would be a great way to celebrate. Maybe have a NES console and a TV set up at the show so people can stop by, hang out, and play some games. We’ll see!

-----
rockscene: Brian Pickens (who kindly did the header art for us here) did the art for the Mega Man Tribute and Belmont, you think you may reach out to him for the Zelda cover?

Postlethwait: Of course! To me, a Mega Beardo album cannot be complete without Brian’s epic artwork. He really outdid himself on “Belmont.” He always gives me an idea of what he is going for before he starts working on it. So I have a pre-determined idea of what I think he’s going to do. Then when he sends me the finished product, I’m blown away every time. He does incredible work.

-----
rockscene: Do you expect or plan on having guest appearances/musicians on the record, or do anything different?

Postlethwait: It depends on what the song calls for. I had a couple of my friends do guest vocals as Medusa and Dracula on “Belmont” simply because I heard their voices when I wrote those parts. I felt like it added an extra depth to the songs and gave it a bit more character. I have a couple of friends who are into djent more than me, so I may need to have them come on board for a bit and add some flavor.

-----
rockscene: When do you expect Ledjent of Zelda to be done and out?

Postlethwait: The plan is to get everything written and recorded by the end of summer, so it will definitely be out by the end of 2012.

-----
rockscene: Do you plan on not shaving your beard until it’s out, something cool like that? Talk about a mega beard…

Postlethwait: Haha. Probably nothing beard-related. The one cool thing I did while recording “Belmont” was make a progress chart, on which I would mark off each track of each song with a cut-out sprite to represent that track. I can see me doing something like that for “Ledjent of Zelda.”

Or maybe I’ll just shave the Triforce into my beard?

New "Moon" Over Morgantown: The Phantom Six plays The V Club tonight

photo: Suzanne Reynolds

Together in various incarnations for twenty years as Moon, The Phantom Six (L-R: Woody O'Hara, Clint Sutton, Billy Matheny, Billy Sheeder, Mark Poole) plays its first Huntington show with a new name and new energy.


Reposted from The Huntington Herald-Dispatch

Whether it’s his band, The Phantom Six, or his studio, Zone 8, Mark Poole is all in when it comes to both.

After twenty years, the mutually reinforcing processes of writing and recording songs have, for Poole, culminated in and with The Phantom Six. But The Phantom Six isn’t a new band; Poole has fronted his Morgantown-based rock band for years under the name Moon.

“For me, it’s pretty much the most exciting time it’s ever been,” Poole said over the phone, describing what it’s like fronting the band he started back in 1990.

The Phantom Six’s 13-song debut effort “Plastic Rain,” released last October, has been getting a warm welcome from fans and critical praise as well.

“So far, it’s been great,” the singer, guitarist and producer said when asked about “Plastic Rain” getting airplay on Chicago radio station WXRT and thumbs up in general from online outlets. The Chicago station named “Corianna,” the opening song on “Plastic Rain” its Big Beat song of the week in late February.

“Getting those accolades on the radio is a thrill for me,” Poole continued, describing the response to what would have been Moon’s fourth record.

“The [powerpopaholic] blog, those guys are pretty well respected. There’s a whole big subgenre of like, power pop geeks,” Poole said with a laugh. “It’s weird, because we’ve always kind of marketed ourselves as a garage band, but we don’t really fit into the garage band genre. I feel like we fit more comfortably in with those power pop fans.”

The Phantom Six plays The V Club Friday night as part of a weekend jaunt that takes them to The Empty Glass in Charleston Saturday.

Evoking something more recent, like Tom Petty jamming with Matthew Sweet, but with nods to and roots in everything great from the 60’s and 70’s, The Phantom Six, not surprisingly, reflect Poole’s own decades-long love of rock and roll.

“Musically, I can’t hide my influences, and it’s basically stuff I heard on the radio as a kid growing up,” he said. “So a lot of British Invasion bands like The Beatles, The Kinks, the Stones, The Who. And 70’s power pop stuff like The Raspberries, Big Star, I liked them a lot. Even if I tried, I don’t think I could hide those influences.”

You could say The Phantom Six are pretty much to Morgantown what AC30 is to Huntington: a local all-star power pop super-group. Poole is joined by twenty-year friend and band mate Billy Sheeder on guitar, Billy Matheny, a prolific rocker in his own right, plays bass, Clint Sutton plays drums and Woody O’Hara rounds out the very rich, hard rocking sound out with percussion. Sheeder moving from drums to guitar gave the band a whole new energy and bigger vocal harmonies, Poole noted.

Despite any lineup or name changes with his band, Poole said not a whole lot has changed; it’s just him writing songs.

“I knew I wanted to lead a band, just for the sole reason I knew it would never break up,” Poole said. “It’s frustrating when you put everything into a band and someone loses interest, and then it’s gone. So having my own band, writing my own songs, has allowed me to have some consistency, even though the lineup would change every couple of years.”

It’s been roughly twenty years since Poole, frustrated with early Moon recordings, decided to clear out his house and take out as big a loan as the bank would give him ($5,000) to start the nascent Zone 8 Recording studio in Granville.

“I think it was a little more of a risk in, I guess it was around 1993 or 1994, that I took out the loan and did all that,” Poole said with a laugh, remembering the days when home recording became financially feasible for musicians.

“I was working at a Phar-Mor store, like stocking shelves, and it was just a [expletive] job and I hated it,” Poole said continuing. “So in my mind it wasn’t a risk, I was trying to plant the seeds for some kind of future where I could get away from that job.

“But part of it was just, every band I’d ever been in, we’d go into a studio, and it would cost a fortune, and I’d come home unsatisfied with it. We couldn’t ever afford to take our time doing a recording.”

The Phantom Six has begun and will likely finish a new record this year, Poole said. So he is looking forward to time in the studio with his band, doing what he’s been doing for so long.

“The two are so closely intertwined for me,” Poole said when asked about the symbiotic relationship between Zone 8 and his band. “I started the studio to record my own band, and as I got better at it I started recording other bands. Having the studio as my job was kind of a byproduct of starting a studio so I could make a record that I thought sounded good.”

Given his passion for his own band and studio in particular, and rock and roll in general, Poole said the more things change, the more they stay the same.

“It’s a cliché to say it, but it’s a huge passion for me to write music,” Poole said almost solemnly. “Basically, since skateboarding wore off, there hasn’t been anything I’ve found as fun as playing music, writing music, and recording music. I think I’m going to be doing that well into my old age.”


WANT TO GO?
AC30, The Muggs, The Phantom Six
When: Friday, April 6, 10 p.m.
Where: The V Club, 741 6th Ave.
Cost: $5
Online: www.reverbnation.com/ac30, http://themuggs.com, http://thephantomsix.com

Review: Sasha Colette & the Magnolias 'Ridin' Away'

By Dave Mistich

On the surface, Sasha Colette may appear to be an innocent country girl with a pretty voice. And while that evaluation is certainly accurate, her newest release—with the magnificent Magnolias backing her up—signals that it’s high time we start taking this young lady and her band very seriously.

Having recently transplanted herself into the Huntington, West Virginia scene that’s embraced her, Colette and company would have been hard pressed to find a title more appropriate than Ridin’ Away.

It’s an EP release that stretches—in more ways than one—far beyond it’s 17 minutes. But more importantly, it explores deeply rooted themes of country in songs about goodbyes and cowboys and fables of the faux-west that Colette identifies as Appalachia.

While the first two tracks (“Leroy” and “Hi Ho Silver”) zip by without ever quite grabbing hold past clever fictional storytelling, “Red Bandana” opens up, yet somehow goes introspective. Towards the end, Jeremy Short’s tasteful solos and Colette’s gut wrenching repeated ending lyrics steal the moment: “I pull my heart out every night and go for broke.” It ends strongly, yet almost too suddenly, giving way to the soulful title track.

“Riding Away” strikes as the rawest song on the record, even though it sounds the most produced. It's a tune heavy on vague storytelling, moments of precise tension and release, and solidified with a memorable chorus; there’s a ton of Americana stations that would eat the track up if given the chance to play it.

But it’s with “Goodbye Buffalo” and Short’s melodic slides that stretch nearly as wide as the miles covered and emoted through Colette’s geographic nostalgia. Sure, it’s a personal acknowledgment of her recent move to Huntington, but it’s a universal subject that isn’t lost on Colette herself; there’s a real resonance in this reflection. It’s not sadness over displacement, but rather a coming-to-terms proclamation.

If there’s any disappointment in the record, it’s that it’s simply too short and doesn’t dare to give Miss Colette the chance to display her vocal talents to the extent we’ve seen in a live setting. (Don't confuse this statement--they're damn good, but certainly not nearly as captivating as watching and hearing her perform.) Maybe it’s humility or a dedication to serving the song, but let's just hope Ridin’ Away serves as a springboard for Colette vocally, rather than a template for live performances of the songs enclosed.

Valentine's Day: Q&A w/Gazelle Amber Valentine of Jucifer

Together for almost 20 years in Jucifer, Edgar Livengood and Gazelle Amber Valentine return to The V Club Thursday night.


There’s always stuff that has to be left out when putting articles together. There’s only so much space in print, but we don’t suffer the same limitations here. So in these cases we like to excerpt the quality nuggs from interviews and run ‘em as an exclusive here, as a supplement to the article there.

In advance of their show at the V Club tomorrow, we thought it would be awesome to take some questions from our Herald-Dispatch interview with Jucifer’s Gazelle Amber Valentine, and post them here.


Herald-Dispatch: How is the RV and gear holding up? You two somewhere between Shreveport and Birmingham? Enjoying the few days off?

Gazelle Amber Valentine: So far so good! Yeah, we’re headed towards Birmingham. The days off were a booking agent screw up, but it’s working out pretty good because we’re right in the middle of making a million arrangements for the European tour we’re about to do, and we had a few interviews to get done. About 500 miles of driving too.

-----
Herald-Dispatch: You two famously live the life of a nomadic rock band, calling nowhere in particular home. How much work, how stressful is it, driving all over, unloading all your equipment and having to maintain a schedule?

Valentine: ...Trying to catch up because on days we play, we literally don’t have time for anything besides making the show happen.

On “off” days we have to do a million dumb regular chores -- laundry, bills, fixing stuff, cleaning up, getting groceries -- and very-rewarding-but-time-consuming things: interviews, making records, planning tours with booking agents, friendships, family. And sleep. Deep, desperately needed sleep.

Stress... yeah, lots of that! Dealing with traffic, on the highway all the time with drivers who almost get you killed, then when you arrive maybe dealing with rude people. People from the venue, or from other bands, who are freaked out by all the gear, or just have bad attitude to begin with.

Strangers who threaten to kill you because you’re taking up street parking -- truth!

Booking agent screw-ups that cost you money or piss off people that are important to you. People you have to work with not being professional when you are -- so frustrating. Being too hot, being too cold, getting soaked and trying to protect the electronics when it’s pouring rain. Always worrying about things breaking, because you’re using them all the time; so it’s always just about to happen. And when things break, it’s a different obstacle course every time to get them fixed.

Whatever it is, you still have to power through.

-----
Herald-Dispatch: Do you think being married makes this kind of lifestyle easier at all? Do you two fight about a bunch of nonsense like a lot of married couples, or does being on the road, dedicating yourselves to the band like you do, together as a couple almost 20 years, kind of keep that stuff blocked out?

Valentine: ...We fight sometimes, but it’s not nonsense like ‘why didn’t you get me a tennis bracelet’ or ‘I need my time with the guys’ or some bulls--- like that. When we fight it’s either we’re trying to agree on how to make our situation better and have to hash through our ideas. Or we get snappy because we’re under so much stress without enough food or sleep. But we have this core of loving each other that gets us through those things. Neither one of us has any use for that drama kind of relationship: we’re not playing. We’re honest. In the end the constructive arguments help us reach better decisions, and the stupid ones we just forget. We got each other’s backs!

-----
Herald-Dispatch: The one big thing of course since 1994 and recording on old four-tracks is the advent of the internet. Talking about getting something like Nadir out to your fans, how cool is it to have that kind of positive feedback every day like you do on your Facebook page?

Valentine: It’s pretty awesome! Very cool to have that instant response. Not just for songs and albums, but also to know people’s experiences from your last show. It’s good to be able to write with fans too, like on Facebook and twitter, to help them find out where to get stuff or when we’re playing their town. We like getting to know people. And it’s really interesting to actually see who we touch, if that makes sense?!

Of course the downside of instant-reaction web is those trolls and haters everybody gets in comments sections. It’s part of the internet effect that people without the balls to confront anybody in real life can get away with slander and hate speech because they’re hiding behind a screen name.

-----
Herald-Dispatch: I’ve talked to a few musicians who have been operating since the pre-internet era, and they talk about the pros and cons. The pro being you can reach waaay more people with a youtube clip or something. The con being that kids in particular are more picky, more savvy if you will, about music.

How important has the internet been in building this fan base you’ve got? Or do you think you’d still (like you did) be able to operate on non-stop touring and word of mouth? I know that’s a long-winded question, but talk about operating in the internet age and even winning over newer, younger, Jucifer fans…

Valentine: They’re probably more picky, but not necessarily more savvy. At least when they get their info from the web.

The internet has created a skewed hierarchy for information. The most popular answer equals the correct answer, even if it isn’t. The newest info is the truest info in search-engine land.

Most people believe what they read. So they end up taking someone’s mistake or outright lie and spreading it, until it has so many “hits” it becomes the “best answer.” Misinformation self-perpetuates.

In the good old days of print media and paper books, people actually had to know the topic (and go through an editor) before they could publish. Online, any moron with an opinion can state it as fact. The truth is subjective. When every single person with internet access contributes to the information pool, the sources are flawed.

So I think instead of being more savvy, everybody’s more gullible! Fake news reports like Jon Bon Jovi being dead, for example, are perfect proof. Lies, repeated by people who think they’re repeating truths, which are then treated as news and shared ad infinitum.

The picky factor: somebody I follow on Twitter was talking about this recently and described how they used to buy an album, and if they didn’t immediately love it, they’d work at loving it. Because they liked the band and they’d spent money on it and here they had this LP or cassette or CD and they had to either find something about it to enjoy or throw it away.

That attitude is pretty much gone because of the internet. Everything can be gotten for free, and without any physical object to make you feel guilty for not trying harder. Everybody checking out a new band, types ‘em in on Google, listens to ten seconds of the top resulting video or song clip, and decides. Bam. Woe unto bands if that ten seconds isn’t what the person was hoping for. They haven’t invested anything and they’ll drop that band forever unless somebody they trust tells them to look again.

So when you reach people this way, is it really a good thing to reach more of them?

I think, unless you have a kind of referral, somebody who explains what songs or videos their friend should check out, knowing that person’s taste, the internet can be a pretty bad tool, even turn listeners away from something they might like.

We’d probably still be ok without the internet, because we did it for so long before. For bands I don’t think it really even came into play that much until MySpace got big. Which was like, 2005ish?

The best thing about the internet is our ability to just directly write to people. Fans, other bands, writers, whatever. It’s so much easier to let people know where you are, what you’re doing, how they can help if they want. We wouldn’t have necessarily felt like we could start our own label without the internet.

Winning over new people is part of the pros and cons deal. Because of that more shallow approach to discovering bands that the internet developed. You know, back in the day underground music was such a precious thing. Now that anybody with a computer can put their album online, even without knowing how to play any instruments, that reverence is gone. People are really quick to dispose of bands or make weird assumptions.

We run into a lot of younger people assuming we were influenced by bands that were actually influenced by us or at least came way after. Newest is truest. If they dive in and find whoever sludgy drone-y band with big amps, or some duo -- whether it started in 2008, or 1998 -- that’s their reference for anything they discover in the future. There’s no history lessons when people get into music. There’s just random clips and bits of information, lots of it without any explanation for what it’s part of. What came before. What came after. Again, people experiencing information hierarchy as truth. Anyone’s achievements can be erased in that context.

I think the internet has heavily tipped ALL learning in that direction, and word of mouth from people who actually know is the only antidote. So hopefully some of them (probably older) stick around, follow technology, engage and proliferate truth. If not, the movie ‘Idiocracy’ is really our future. And soon.

At the same time it’s so much easier for our fans to show us to their friends. That’s where I think the internet really helps; people can immediately show each other stuff, and a lot of them have a pretty good network with other people that have similar taste. So your audience can build really exponentially, really exactly the same way it did without internet, but a lot faster. The word of mouth takes seconds and broadcasts worldwide.

Like, we just went to Russia for the first time last year, and we already had this great fanbase who had our albums for us to sign after the shows and knew song titles to yell out. They could only have found out about us through the internet. That’s an example of the positive aspect to the new digiworld.

-----
Herald-Dispatch: And you’re still working on the new full-length, right? But playing some new songs off it? How have the fans reacted and what’s been the general response to the new stuff?

Valentine: Yeah, we need to go back in for a couple weeks to finish it, it’s about half recorded right now. We’re planning on finishing it in the summer. We’re gonna record a little bit in Italy and then go back to the studio in Canada where we did the first half to finish it up. We’ve been mixing in some of the songs at shows and they seem to be inciting a lot of fist pumping and circle pits, so that’s a good sign! Of course there’s also gonna be some stuff on the record we won’t play live, but people who know us are used to that by now, haha.

-----
Herald-Dispatch: What’s the best/worst thing or anecdote you can relay about how Jucifer’s mass of sound affects people or objects?

Valentine: Hm. Best thing that happens to people -- so they tell us -- is orgasm. Too much information? Worst thing would be pee, shart or vomit. And people drop their drinks on the first note sometimes.

Stuff falls out of ceilings a lot. We like to say we include a ceiling cleaning as part of our service. If there’s dust, soot, loose tiles. One time a building we played in had an outer wall of 19th century brick that was already in pretty bad shape, and some of that wall fell.

Every once in awhile bottles or glasses fall, but we always tell the bartenders to push em back if it’s the kind of room that’ll really compress the sound, so it doesn’t happen too much.

-----
Herald-Dispatch: When we talked last I asked about your book “The Grease,” is that still in the works or on the backburner?

Valentine: I haven’t been writing very much because our schedule’s just been insane. But I wrote a chapter about David Gold from Woods of Ypres when he died. His death touched off a lot of feelings and thoughts that were in me related to creative need and the sometimes self-destructive devotion that artists have to their art, which is the main theme of the book.

At first I thought I’d write a kind of eulogy to post online but I realized I didn’t feel I had the right to be commenting publicly at that moment since I didn’t know him, and I didn’t want it to be me getting publicity off of his tragedy. So I’m just keeping it for the book. I’ll probably be writing that book for a few more years, but that’s ok I think. It’s a big topic.

-----
Herald-Dispatch: Aside from the new full-length, what if anything awesome are you two looking forward to in 2012? Big fests like Roadburn or anything like that?

Valentine: Oh yeah definitely stoked for our first Roadburn, and our return to the SWR Metalfest in Portugal. Both of those festivals and lineups absolutely rule.

We’re hitting the UK before Roadburn which is awesome because we had to skip it the last couple times we crossed the Atlantic. We have a really good support band for those shows, Bastard Of The Skies, and we’re also gonna play with Orange Goblin and Black Sun while we’re there so psyched for that. Then a full tour of Europe, which we love, a bunch of new cities this time.

And we’re going to the Ukraine for the first time and going back to Russia and doing a longer tour with some new cities there too. Very excited for all that! And stoked to go back to Canada and all the rest of the US that we haven’t hit yet this year.

‘Nadir’ is coming out in a limited edition cassette licensed for the UK by English label Future Noise, and also gonna be out on LP soon. We’ll premiere the video for “Crossless” too. Lots of excitement!

-----
Herald-Dispatch: Doing what you two have been doing for so long, aside from the music itself, is impressive, and speaks to your devotion to each other and Jucifer itself. But is there going to be a point where you two will settle down? Or not?

Valentine: Motion is life. Action is life. Until the light takes us....

--- Jucifer plays The V Club Thursday night with Hyatari and Deckard...

Related: On the road with Gazelle Amber Valentine of Jucifer (3.16.2011)

The Heptanes reunite for St. Patrick's Day V Club show

photo: Shannon Guthrie

After a decade apart, Chris Tackett, Kevin Allison and Alex Kendall are back as the Huntington-based psychobilly trio The Heptanes.


Reposted from The Huntington Herald-Dispatch

Together again with the original lineup for the first time in over a decade, The Heptanes March 3rd rehearsal at The V Club was all of the above: effortless, energetic, and, electric.

“Once we started playing, we were firing on all cylinders,” singer-guitarist Kevin Allison said over the phone. “Even though it’s been ten years since we all played together, it went well, despite the electrocution.”

Electrocution?

“I’ve got a vintage amp and it’s actually got the original plug on it,” Allison explained. “I had a ground thing rigged on it, and when I started to play the vibrations knocked it loose, and I went to sing, and I got electrocuted right through the mouth,” he said with a painful chuckle.

“I’ve had that happen several times. You can taste your fillings, it sucks.”

Drummer Alex Kendall said that despite the time apart, he, Allison and original bassist Chris Tackett hadn’t missed a beat.

“When the three of us get together, it’s effortless,” Kendall said over the phone. “It’s not that we’re great, or that we’re amazing, it just clicks.”

There’s definitely some effort put in, though. Tackett has to drive in from Lexington, and Kendall has a bum ankle leading up to the show, not a pleasant experience for a drummer. Still, the show must go on, he said.

“As soon as I heard about [the show], I think my response was, ‘I’d like to see who’s going to stop me from playing this show,’” Kendall said laughing. “Regardless of whatever health problems, I’ll take a shot of whatever steroid or miracle drug, or if they have to lower me into a giant metal casing to keep me upright, I’ll do whatever it takes to make this show happen.”

The Huntington-based psychobilly trio reunites for a St. Patrick’s Day show Saturday night at The V Club with Deadbeats and Barkers and AC30.

Formed in 1999 out of Allison and Kendall’s work together in Fuzzbucket, and their mutual appreciation for The Stray Cats, The Heptanes, after recruiting Tackett, released their debut, “Phantom Cadillac” a year later.

The attraction of rockabilly, the energy, and fun, was apparent to Allison and Kendall even in Fuzzbucket.

“It’s actually kind of funny, because the way we came upon the idea was kind of like how The Stray Cats did,” Allison explained. “They had their band the Bloodless Pharaohs before The Stray Cats, and they’d do a few rockabilly tunes before closing out their set. And we’d kind of do the same thing in Fuzzbucket.

“In fact, one of one of the Heptanes’ tunes, “U.P.D.,” was written when we were in Fuzzbucket. We’d play it at the end of the shows, and people would just get up and dance, and I mean, it was funny because we’d play the whole night, and then we’d play that song and everybody would go crazy,” the singer-guitarist recalled with awe.

Gigs were booked, fun was had, but, like so many other bands, they couldn’t keep the band intact.

“To be honest with you, with all the other times we’ve done the band without the original lineup, it never really felt right,” Allison admitted. “To have it back to the original lineup, it’s pretty cathartic, I have to say.”

While the show on St. Patrick’s Day is a reunion for the band, both Allison and Kendall stressed their desire to have old friends and fans of the Huntington scene from the 90’s reunite, too.

“With the band and the whole scene we had going at the time, we’re trying to get people who went to Calamity Café or Gumby’s back in the day to get together,” Allison said.

“You’ll see on my Facebook page I’m trying to pump this thing up and bill this as a Huntington reunion,” Kendall added. “I’ve heard from a lot of people who are coming to town, booking rooms to get back together and see everyone again. I’m hoping for a big reunion of the old school people.”

Allison recalled first being exposed back in the 90’s to the preeminent, pioneering psychobilly artist, who also just happened to be a West Virginia resident.

“I saw a flyer one day on campus for a Hasil Adkins show, and I thought ‘Oh this sounds interesting.’ So I went and checked it out and it blew my mind. To me, in my heart, part of this music, psychobilly, was created by HIM, HERE. He had a huge impact on the whole reason I got into rockabilly.”

It’s that excitement, both for the music The Heptanes play and for the experiences shared with friends and fans over the years in Huntington that Allison and Kendall say they hope to recapture Saturday night.

“It always feels good to get back out there and do it,” Allison said. “I think the reason we were popular back then, was, it was a very straight forward version of high energy rock and roll.

“For us, the basis of a Heptanes show was to entertain people,” Allison said, summing things up. “There’s no big message. People just want to enjoy themselves when they go out, and that’s what it’s all about. We all still enjoy it, and that’s why we do it.”


If you go:
AC30, The Heptanes, Deadbeats and Barkers
Where: The V Club, 741 6th Ave., Huntington (304) 781-0680
When: Saturday, March 17, 10 p.m.
Cost: $5
Info: www.vclublive.com

Q&A w/Matt Thomas of Uglyography

Matt Thomas (top left) brings Uglyography to The Empty Glass tonight…


When WVRockscene was in its infancy, an important discussion was had between the H.M.I.C. here, and another nice dude who ran an alternate, West Virginia-based site dedicated to covering local (and beyond) music. Haha it’s crazy to think that you can’t find my name hardly at all on this site, the first thing you see on this site when you revisit it now, is the true identity of your host, narrator blogging, guy.


But as far as West Virginia-based sites dedicated to covering local music went, it was an important philosophical chat. Should WVRockscene focus more on covering local bands, or expose readers to bands we like who might not ever even play here?


Well, for what it’s worth, the first approach kind of won out. But since “the dark ages” of mid-2007 or so, not really blogging or doing stuff for newspapers, up to now, we’ve kind of just naturally fell into the habit of being in touch with bands who might pass through periodically. Exposing these bands, and more importantly developing kindly acquaintanceships, to our fellow Mountain State residents is something we take seriously, and really like.


So, speaking of time periods, the “quirkadelic,” Hampton, Virginia-based act Uglyography came across our radar. Time travelers they may (or may not, hilariously) be, we caught up with front man and bassist Matt Thomas in advance of their stop at the Glass Wednesday. Seriously check out the tunes and their site, you will laff…


WVRockscene: You guys set to hit the road for a week or so? Got everything packed? Is this your first big out-of-state run of shows?

Matt Thomas: Yes, I believe we are all set and ready. Booking and preparing for this tour has been one of the most challenging tasks I’ve taken on for a long time, being a relatively unknown band at most of our stops. Now that all the booking and logistics are worked out, we just gotta pack our bags (and not forget Tums, Band-aids, vitamins and all that other necessary rock star stuff) and we will be rolling!

This will be the first time that Uglyography’s current lineup has played outside of Hampton Roads. In 2009 I toured Uglyography as a solo act and went out of state but nowhere near as far and wide as we are going this time. We hope to do as many out of town shows as in-town from here on out.

-----
WVRockscene: What is up with you guys not being from this century? New Uglyography fans will literally rofl when they even dare to begin to read DJ Blake’s hilarious bio. Does that make it tougher for you guys to fit in, not being from this time period?

Thomas: DJ’s time traveling beard has gotten him into a lot of trouble. Jack was the only one who actually wanted to time travel, and the rest of us got here by chance happenings in the universe that have a one in a billion chance of occurring. Since we were all spit out into this overpopulated and overbuilt time together, we figure if we bond together we could give audiences a taste of when we came from and hopefully find our way back there.

We’re not sure what to make of the current state of the music industry but we do hope that audiences will lend a sympathetic ear to a bunch of outcasts who are trying to figure out what it is that people want to hear in this time. This overwhelming dependency on electricity that society has adopted is making it easier for us to play to larger audiences than back in the 1870’s so I do feel we can use that discovery to our advantage. All we really wanna do is find the magic frequency to send us back to our various home times, and so the more audiences we play for, the better chance that magical frequency will be hit. And, we hope the frequency will ring strong with our audiences as well.

-----
WVRockscene: Seriously though “Undercover New Machine” seems to have been warmly received since its release in early 2011. How cool has the warm reception and the favorable coverage been to you guys?

Thomas: We could not ask for a better local reception. Most of the Hampton Roads publications that mention music at all have featured something about “Undercover New Machine.” Our CD release was extremely well attended, reviews have been stellar, and the CD was nominated for Best CD in the Veer Local Music awards. The support from the local industry is very flattering and encouraging. Our fan base is growing slowly but steadily and all this promotion and support is adding hot fuel to the fire.

-----
WVRockscene: You operated as a solo performer until recently, between the whole time traveler angle and theme, how if at all has your vision of what Uglyography is and will sound like changed as you’ve moved it into a band?

Thomas: The songwriting process was very much the same for both albums (2005’s “Love Boat” and “Undercover New Machine”). Both albums were recorded on my own before I met my bandmates. But these guys are much, much better guitarists and drummer than I am, so the songs now have a whole new dimension to them, while keeping the same quirky songwriting style that I have settled into.

As far as the time-traveling thing, that has evolved as time has gone on. I suppose the seed for the idea came when I commissioned the UK lowbrow artist Doktor A. to draw up the album cover artwork for “Undercover New Machine.” I had a very specific idea of what I wanted, and had been a big fan of Dok’s steampunk style and his line of toy characters called the Mechtorians. He provided me with a fresh new aesthetic including the parchment paper background, a slick logo, and a general 18th century feeling that has been present on the website and CD case since early 2011. Not until earlier this year did we take it a step further and build ourselves a steampunk banner stand and start wearing 18th century attire to add to the theme. I think we have found our niche and will be keeping it in mind as we move forward. It is impossible to say where this is going, we don’t know ourselves.

-----
WVRockscene: The lineup, time travelers you guys may be, has just recently changed. How have DJ Blake and Jack Morgan fit into the band since joining late last year?

Thomas: We had the need to replace a former guitarist, and DJ stepped right in and sounded fabulous on his own. About three weeks later, DJ’s friend Jack said he still wanted to try out. My first reaction was that DJ was already set as the guitarist and we would be fine as a three piece since that’s what we had been before the switch. But after hearing Jack play “More than a Miracle” at an unofficial audition, I was sold! The “dueling guitarists” as I like to call them, complement one another perfectly and the sound is really big and full now. And all of my band mates are great guys. And, we all get along and have a great time together, which is probably the most important thing when it comes to making a band successful.

-----
WVRockscene: Anything cool in 2012 you guys are looking forward to? Shows or recording new stuff?

Thomas: We have a project slated to begin in April. We will be collaborating on a couple of songs with a local hip-hop artist called Shakespeare’s Ghozt. He has performed with us one time so far, rapping his rhymes over top of a couple songs from “Undercover New Machine.” We want to perform with him as much as possible and will be producing new recordings of those songs along with him. We will probably record a few others while we are at it and hopefully release an EP later in 2012. So yeah, good things are on the horizon!

-----
WVRockscene: You guys are playing seven states in as many days on this tour, is this your first trip to play in these places? Obviously you’ve never played the Glass, hoping to turn some people onto your band in the current time period?

Thomas: This will be our first time at six out of seven of the venues. I played at The Hideaway in Johnson City back in 2009 and really liked the people and atmosphere there. We are looking forward to meeting all you fine modern folks this time around and hopefully return again to see you before too long! That is, if we haven’t hit the magic frequency and traveled back to when we came from.


--- Uglyography plays The Empty Glass Wednesday with Bad Employees and The Belt Notches…

DTES w/Sly Roosevelt T.A.N.D. show 2.23 @ the V Club

Every so often, a Facebook status update comes along that, deep down, you know sounds too good to be true.

This was exactly the case late last night when we noticed (via their ReverbNation page) that the Lexington, Kentucky-based prog rock band Dream The Electric Sleep was playing at TBA in Charleston tomorrow, Thursday, February 23rd!

It was weird because we knew they were scheduled to play the V Club that night for a This Ain't No Disco show with our friends in Sly Roosevelt.

We knew this because we'd saved Jimbo Valentine's most awesome flyer to our desktop to remind us of the show daily. Maybe there was some scheduling snafu, and DTES was coming to Charleston, making it entirely possible that we could make it to said TBA venue, see the band, and then maybe camp out at the Transit Mall or something.

You know what they about stuff that sounds too good to be true. Just as we expected, after confirming it with bassist Chris Tackett, something silly happened deep inside of ReverbNation, and it confused Charleston for Huntington.

But make no mistake dear readers, just as you've come to expect subpar coverage here, Charleston's loss is Huntington's gain Thursday night. Dream The Electric Sleep and Sly Roosevelt have each been working on new stuff, and we'll look forward to hearing that when it is ready. DTES singer-guitarist Matt Page has dutifully and descriptively been keeping fans abreast of the writing and demo process on their site, even after the band released Acoustics and B-Sides, but the blog is something very cool to see if you're a big fan of the band.

And even though, in our heart of hearts, we knew that DTES wasn't coming to Charleston, we know this show Thursday in Huntington should be killer.

Legendary New York City ska band The Toasters play 123 Pleasant Street Sunday

After 30 years, numerous lineup changes and seeing countless ska bands they influenced form, Rob “Bucket” Hingley (with guitar) brings The Toasters to 123 Pleasant Street Sunday


Reposted from The Daily Athenaeum

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Such is the case for Rob “Bucket” Hingley and The Toasters, the ska band he’s fronted since its formation in New York City in 1982.

After enduring numerous lineup changes, and seeing the popularity of ska bands ebb and flow like the tides over the years, Hingley and his legendary “third wave” two-tone ska outfit keep doing what they’ve been doing, touring and playing shows all over the U.S., and the world.

For Hingley, this is what has kept The Toasters going. On the road to Toledo for a show, bringing ska music to its fans, just like he did after crossing the pond from the United Kingdom back in 1980, is what it’s all about.

“We go and play places where people don’t or won’t reach,” Hingley said over the phone, when asked about The Toasters scorched Earth tour schedule, a show per day since mid-January. “That’s been the secret to our success, is that we’ve been road dogs. That’s paying us back in spades right now.”

The Toasters return to Morgantown for an all-ages show at 123 Pleasant Street Sunday.

Over thirty years, ten studio albums, and countless trends and fads generated by the music industry, Hingley has seen it all pretty much. He said that arriving in New York City, leaving a bustling ska scene in the U.K., finding ska practically non-existent, was a bit of a culture shock.

“There wasn’t any ska scene at all to speak of, which seemed strange to me,” the singer-guitarist said with some lingering bewilderment. “I came to New York in 1980, right at the high water mark of ska music in the U.K, maybe the high water mark was 1979. But coming from that environment where everybody knew what ska was, and bands like The Specials, and The English Beat, and Madness were coming off of number one hits. And coming to the U.S., where nobody seemed to know what it was about at all, even to the point of going to the Roseland Ballroom and seeing hardly anyone there to see The English Beat, it really was like going from feast to famine. So, getting the band started in 1982, finding like-minded people and musicians wasn’t easy.”

Fast forward thirty years, after seeing bands The Toasters influenced, like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, achieve some level of commercial success, Hingley said ska music has went where it’s most loved: back underground.

“The support goes up and down, it depends what the flavor of the week is, the way the industry tends to focus on different kinds of music. The way it is now, it’s kind of back in the underground, and that’s probably the best place for it, because it’s a little more nurturing.”

Hingley recalled with fondness playing Morgantown in the past, and the support ska in general, and The Toasters in particular, were shown.

“Of course, big cities like New York, Chicago, L.A., there’s obviously a lot of support there. But we’re seeing pockets in some of the smaller towns, like Morgantown. That’s a real yardstick of how healthy it is when you can come play some of the smaller towns and still have the support. Back in the day, it’s 123 now, it was the Nyabinghi, they had a lot more reggae and ska bands coming through, and I’m talking ten, fifteen or even twenty years ago, there was a lot more support then. But if it’s coming back now it just shows that ska is rebounding a little bit.”

It’s the spirit embedded inside of ska that, despite any trends generated by the music industry, still attracts people to the sound, Hingley said.

“One thing you have to understand about ska music, you got to take it back and look at where it came from. It came out of the Trench Town ghetto in Jamaica, which at the time was a very, very poor area. And the explosion of ska was associated with Jamaica gaining independence from British rule about that time. It was rebel music coming out of the ghetto. It was an expression of freedom, the same as reggae music.

“It was rebel music,” Hingley continued. “In a way it’s managed to retain that energy, because even though ska music was exploited by the mainstream record companies in the 90’s, it wasn’t really the roots bands and not what I would point to as the real ska bands and the core two-tone bands that were exploited. It was punk bands with horns, or studio creations like Smash Mouth that have nothing to do with the ska scene. But because some record execs put that label on it, that was the flavor of the week. But fortunately that didn’t destroy ska music and the real ska bands.

“I think a lot of kids, when they come into it, they see that there’s fifty-five years of roots and culture, they might start out liking Mighty Mighty Bosstones as a portal, and they can trace that tree all the way back to those early artists from Jamaica. They see that it’s real, and people identify with it. It’s not a Frankenstein monster created in some major label lab.”

Coming back to Morgantown for an all-ages show and exposing a whole new generation of fans to ska

That just goes to show the fact that the style is really resilient, and has something to say to young kids. Because if they didn’t like it they wouldn’t come. It attracts kids from whatever they come from, whether they’re punk rock or metal kids. If you can find a way to mean something to kids, they’ll still come out.”

When asked how much The Toasters have left in the tank, how much longer they’ll be playing out, Hingley said he doesn’t expect any changes anytime soon.

“You have to ask my wife that,” he said with a laugh. “We’ve got a few more years, there are still some places we haven’t been yet.”

--- The Toasters play 123 Pleasant Street Sunday with The Staggering Cardoons, Black Action Cop, Call us Next Tuesday and special guests The Business Fairy and QUOTE. Doors open at 5:30, show starts at 6 p.m., cover is $8 in advance and $10 at the door. All-ages.

Online: www.toasters.org/, www.123pleasantstreet.com/

Q&A w/Aaron Sturgill of Old Worlds

The most awesome thing about doing what we do here is just finding out about or getting clued into music that we really like by bands that we hadn’t heard much about, or failed to check out if they passed through West Virginia.

Such is the case for the Columbus, Ohio-based post rock, mainly instrumental but definitely experimental band Old Worlds. Although they’ve played Huntington once previously, at Shamrock’s, we didn’t got exposed to the music they were making.

Well, that has changed. After listening to their debut A Light In The Corner, we thought it was cool so we caught up with Old World singer-guitarist Aaron Sturgill (above pic) in advance of their show Saturday at the V Club...


WVRockscene: Old Worlds has been together since 2008, right? What was the process like taking what you were doing with guitars and loops into a full band with [drummer] Mike [Poston] and [bassist] Adam [Langdon]?

Aaron Sturgill: At first, it was just my guitar, some loopers, and a drum set that I would lug around to every show. I’d jump around and sort of jam on these half-finished songs. Mike volunteered to take over the drums and expand the melodic percussion with bells, and before I knew it, we were a three-piece band opening for The Appleseed Cast. We still rely on loops and samples, both live takes and pre-recorded, but the soul of the band is in these dense orchestrations in which everyone has a hand.

-----
rockscene: You list some kind of obscure bands -- at least some that I haven’t heard of -- as influences or artists you like. Following up on the last question, how did, as the band came together, kind of have a meeting of the minds over mutual influences, or bands you all like?

Sturgill: Mike and I used to party hard while listening to math rock like Q and not U, while Adam and I worked together and sort of found each other via The Appleseed Cast. If you haven’t heard of them, they’re a very unifying band, I’ve met people that were raised on pop punk, emo, electronica, post-rock, even classical and jazz, and somehow, The Appleseed Cast is frequently the common denominator on which we can all agree.

-----
rockscene: You released A Light In the Corner last year, how much time went into getting that record done and just capturing the sonic landscapes you do as a band? And what’s the response been like to the record?

Sturgill: Adam took out a huge chunk of his life to record this album. We met at his church and in his basement, tracking took about three months, and mixing took another three. We couldn’t afford to pay anyone else except to master it, so the rest was on us.

As far as the soundscapes go, it was just a matter of layering and layering and layering. The first track has the sound of air escaping from an accordion, but with all these time and filter effects applied to it, such that it sounds more like the creaking of an old ship’s hull. In another instance, we set up most of the drums we owned in this big hall, so that Mike and I could do this massive percussion segment (found at the end of “Little Human Beings”).

The response to the record has been positive, although we haven’t seen any true reviews, even though we’ve sent it to dozens of blogs and other media outlets. That’s frustrating. Oxide Tones in Germany, however, was a huge windfall -- they helped us get the album pressed, and have been really, really generous with us.

-----
rockscene: Your wife is also in the band, always an interesting angle to see in a band. How did she get welcomed into the band and how neat is it to be able to share the experience of traveling and doing shows with her?

Sturgill: Adding Kylie was kind of a no-brainer. Last year our shows started to incorporate a string section, so her experience in opera fit right in. Both of us collaborating on the music means that we can both just pick up and head out on the road, without losing much of that time that a newly-married couple needs, you know? It’s pretty rad.

-----
rockscene: You teach violin? The strings are definitely something that stands out on the record. Obviously that’s something that you could do live but is that something your wife Kylie does on synth? And how cool is it to be able to incorporate the violin into your band?

Sturgill: Kylie and I both teach music out of our home. I do the instruments (violin, guitar, piano), and she does this awesome mashup of voice and whole-body fitness called Method Voice. My site is arcadiamusic.weebly.com.

Like I said, we started using a string trio last year -- but, of course, we want to keep the touring group as minimal as possible. Kylie certainly handles a lot of those sounds on the synth, but we’ve been lucky enough to score Seth Ellsworth as a full-time violinist. He harmonizes with the vocals and synth, and even does some background vocals, which is fantastic. Just an all-around talented guy -- he brings a lot to the table.

-----
rockscene: One of the great thing about your songs is that there’s just enough vocals in there to really let you get into the music. So many experimental/instrumental bands can kind of lose a listener’s attention by having vocals. How do you approach writing songs for what seems to be a mainly instrumental band, still having vocals and writing lyrics, etc.?

Sturgill: Typically, if a song needs vocals, we put it in. I know that sounds glib and simplistic, but it’s the same with wonky time signatures -- you can write all your songs with shifting meters and tempos so the audience has trouble keeping up, but sometimes it’s better to keep it simple, a nice 4 or 3 or whatever.

But, this is changing all the time -- in fact, a lot of our newer material, which will be on a forthcoming EP, features a lot more of Kylie’s vocals at the forefront than mine. I’m starting to focus on guitar compositions, and letting her do what she does best. This is something that not very many post-rock bands do well or at all, so if we can figure this out, we might have ourselves a niche.

-----
rockscene: What is up with any new material or recordings? Has much changed or have you got much new stuff since releasing what was on A Light In The Corner?

Sturgill: Be sure to check out a couple of songs we did in July for Jacuzzi Suit Records. There’s this awesome remix of “Secret History” by Glenn Davis (Triangle Piece) of the Columbus band Way Yes. We’re super happy with how that project turned out, although it looks like this will be a Bandcamp-only release for the time being.

We’re almost finished writing a five-song EP, which I’d like to see released sometime this year. That’s as much as I can say right now.

-----
rockscene: Aside from any new music or recording, anything you’re looking forward to in 2012 as far as shows?

Sturgill: Touring has been a blast, and we’re hoping to keep it up. We have a strong relationship with Jacuzzi Suit in Chicago, and in June we’re heading out for a five-day tour with Survivalist, from Columbus.

-----
rockscene: You’ve played Huntington once, at Shamrock’s, how were you received there in particular, but in general by new listeners, people who haven’t really heard you before, and how neat is it to just be able to pull people in with your music?

Sturgill: The crowd at Shamrock’s was outstanding, and it’s always gratifying just to be able to meet new people wherever you go. We’re really trying to share a message, or even a feeling, of love, community, and personal responsibility. The more we can talk to people and learn about them, the better.

--- Old Worlds plays the V Club in Huntington tonight with Sly Roosevelt and Sweatband