Interview – The Parlor Mob
November 6th, 2009 by RBR
Ruled By Rock’s Richard Heaven caught up with Dave from The Parlor Mob on their latest UK tour supporting Black Stone Cherry.
Is this your first UK tour?
Dave: We were here back in march last year for 12 days or so. This is about 5 weeks so it the longest we have done yet.
For our readers, can you give us a quick rundown about the band?
D: We all knew each other in high school and the general area so we where all friends. We got together in 2004 and have been playing together since. The line ups been the same and we’ve changed our name a couple of years ago and here we are.
That’s pretty stable.
D: We’ve been through some rough stuff. We where signed by Capital for a while and where dropped from there and we fired people, all that silly stuff. We been through the ringer a few times you know but we’re sticking with it.
So you released your debut album last year. How was that received in America?
Dave: It was good. It was a relatively small release. We put it out – there wasn’t an excessive amount of promotion – we just toured non stop. We’ve been touring for a few years now. That was the plan though, we didn’t want to rush for the overnight smash or anything. We just wanted to tour and tour and tour – Get in front of people and play!
It’s a great pairing, you and Black Stone Cherry. Two strong American rock bands. Given the last 9 years do you think there is a resurgence of interest in hard classic rock?
Dave: I don’t really think of us as a Classic Rock band. It’s kind of like, we’re all in our mid 20’s and we know damn well what year it is so we are trying to make music for now and the future and I mean, I think it’s just been a little wild since people have started to play instruments and become creative artists. Not technically good musicians but actually play, actually create sound in one way or another. The fact that we’re doing that… and if it seems to be something that hasn’t been heard in a while… that’s cool. We’re not trying to revive anything.
More Jimi Hendrix then Herman Li.
Dave: Sure.
Talking about your time with Capital, you got dropped and chose to release you EP for free. How has free download culture affected you?
Dave: I’m of the opinion that is it doesn’t matter how people get music. It’s very obvious to me that the whole concept of downloading music for free has crippled the music industry and record sales for that matter. But people are always willing to come and see bands live and in the long run I think it will probably be a good things as, if you can’t perform and pull it off in the live setting no one is going to care you know what I mean?
You can sit in your bedroom and make music on your computer, which is cool, but people buy records. What it comes to is if you’re an artist and can travel and do shows people will understand. I’m not too worried about that kind of stuff so that’s why we decided to give away that EP and anytime we can give stuff away we will. We’re about to start a whole campaign.
We’ve been recording a lot of shows so we’re going to start giving away a lot of live tracks so anytime we can give things away we’re going to because its just good. I think if people hear stuff they like for free they are more likely to come and see us live and that’s more important to me. We want to make good records and just get out there and play. We have to be able to pay rent and support ourselves but that’s going to come. I mean, we’re at a point now that we’re travelling and touring. It’s such a small scale but we can pay our rent and bills right now. Not comfortably but it beats the 9 to 5.
What about the gear on the first album?
Dave: We basically went into the studio in Ashville North Carolina, and we had drums, guitars and bass’s already in the live room. We recorded it live however many times it took to get it right and we went back into it later and added bits like keyboards. We used a Moog Voyager a lot which was pretty cool. We used Piano’s and Organs and all different stuff because we wanted to give it more of an atmosphere and I mean, we sort of achieved it but we’re looking to expand upon the whole aspect of sound more on our next record.
We have a whole bunch of stuff that we have been messing around with now that has been helping us out a lot in the live setting to give our material more of a sound you know. Yeah, the record was pretty simple. It was pretty straight forward – we have all these songs, lets just do them and get them on tape.
So how do you approach song writing?
Dave: One or two of us will come to the table with an idea but we never have a fully fledged song which the rest of the band learns. Someone has an idea and we all get together, work on it and labour over every little detail. Sometimes things happen in an hour, we sort of blast the song out but sometimes we’ll work on something for a few hours, forget about it for a few months and come back to it. It’s kind of different every time – each song has its own different story behind it.
Is their a particular song on the album which is your favourite?
Dave: I really like ‘My favourite heart to break’ and ‘When I was an orphan’ the most because…to me… those two, more so then the others, are bigger and darker and I think are a little more representative of where our next record is heading because it’s got a kind of vibe to it.
You’ve been pushed by a few magazines as an amazing live band. Where do your live influences come from?
Dave: I think we where all big fans of At The Drive-In when we first started and Bad Brains. There where a lot of earlier punk bands we where into and even bands such as the MC5 which was Detroit Rock. Stuff like that was just rowdy you know, and to a bunch of us that came from Metal and Hardcore backgrounds we where also of the mindset of… We’re not a folk band, we’re not going to stand there and gently give you what we have. Like it or not we’re going to give it everything we have.
I think it’s kind of weird as we started playing festivals and stuff with more indie bands. We where so much heavier then them. It was cool as a lot of kids who like softer music still enjoy us for musical integrity but come to see us and it’s like a big smash in the face. I don’t think they expect it but that’s how we all came up and it’s how we all play together.
Lastly, what is your ipod top five?
Dave: For me personally… Lets think… I just got the new Muse record which I like a lot… God there’s a lot of stuff. The funny thing is we did a big six week tour is the US and we got home to New Jersey and our van got broken into. Our ipods got stolen so I don’t have an ipod anymore to listen to.
But I just got the new Arctic Monkey’s record Humbug which I really like a lot. I like Josh Hommes from Queens of the Stone Age and he produced the album so I think it was a great, great record. I also got the Dead Weather’s record. I was kind of so-so on that record, kind of ‘Ok that’s cool’ but then I got the chance to see them live at the Austin City Limits and they blew me away. I’m really into that right now.
Words: Richard Heaven
