July 25, 2013
The Heavy are going to do their best to tear things down and get everybody involved when they play for the first time in Orange County at The Constellation Room on Aug. 6.
Their runaway hit, “How You Like Me Now”, still seems to be everywhere even though it came out on the 2009 album, “The House That Dirt Built”.
Interest in that song was a sort of turning point for the band and led to the David Letterman performance among other things. Letterman was so impressed with the band’s music and stage presence that he asked the group for an encore, which had never been done before.
“I don’t think any of us had a clue it had never been done before. I think not really being American, and not realizing the full scale of how important the Letterman show is was a bit lost on us the first time we did it,” drummer Chris Ellul explains. “It was all a surprise and it was also a surprise to find out how great a thing that was at the time. It’s probably for the best, really. Otherwise we would have been so nervous that we would have ruined it!”
The Heavy has a unique style of music that is difficult to pin down as it combines funk, rock, blues, and soul.
“Whenever I describe it it always sounds so wrong and so terrible but it does work,” Ellul said.
The band was originally started by Kelvin Swaby, vocals and Dan Taylor, guitar with Spencer Page, bass and Ellul joining later.
“The intention was always to do something old but make it sound new,” explained Ellul. “It was blues and rock and roll and then taking it and treating it like hip hop. Mixing stuff from the ‘50’s, ‘60’s, ‘70’s and bring it up to the now. That’s how it started really.”
They listened to just about anyone – Tom Waits, Muddy Waters, The Sonics – while discovering their own sound.
“The Glorious Dead” is the latest album from the band and features the funky single, “What Makes a Good Man?”.
“New Orleans, big band, voodoo, the vibes from down there” inspired the title, Ellul said. “It just seemed like ‘the Glorious Dead’ made the most sense. Like a lot of things we do, it ties in with the films that inspire us. It felt like a great name for it.”
The album was self-produced with the band doing the entire recording and producing.
“The only thing we went to someone else for was for the more elaborate horn and string arrangements. We went to work with Gabe Roth from the Dap Kings. He contributed some of the lines, some of the horn parts,” Ellul elaborates. “And then because we’ve know Paul Corkett (The Cure, Placebo, The Chameleons producer) for a long, long time it seemed to make sense to work with him. He knows what we do. He just sort of took it, mixed it and presented it. We are all quite involved and Paul is very diplomatic and good assessing where to take it.”
They might approach the next album slightly differently.
“We usually start with a demo and then build it up but a lot of the original elements from that demo will be kept,” Ellul said. “I think we may want to do something a little outside our box. You know, try writing the whole album out of rehearsals and working a tune that way. Hopefully work with a producer from start to finish to sort of get their input on the whole record and the whole process, which we’ve never done before. It’s always been a bedroom thing, or you know, essentially it’s just the four of us.”
There are a lot of shows on the horizon, including festivals over the summer to keep the band busy.
“Then I think it’s time to take a minute, take a couple months off and then start writing again for the next record. It’s how it is. It’s pretty much a never ending cycle,” Ellul laughs. “You write, you record, you finish your record, you promote that record. Then when that cycle is done you write another one, record another one and promote another one and it goes on and on like that until we make it as successful as it can be.”
Swaby’s impressive high-energy performance accompanied with heavy-guitar and a mash up of funk, rock, soul, and r&b music is an experience not to be missed!
concertgirlca 