Out of Brooklyn, New York, here’s a band that extracts the sweetest alternative-country from the south, blends a rocking sound and live show that hovers above the most diverse music scenes in the north, bleeds the infectious pop produced in the west, and delivers all the indie charm you could ask for. Country? Pop, you ask? The radio has you fooled. The Damnwells throw the formula out the window and create music that your boyfriend can rock out to, your girlfriend will fall in love to, and the parents will welcome home with open arms.

They’ve shared the stage with everyone from piano-rock acts The Fray and Augustana, classic-rockers Cheap Trick, to most recently, alternative rockers Blue October, and the Dixie Chicks. Their follow-up to 2003’s addictive Bastards of the Beat entitled Air Stereo is a sophomore slam-dunk that proves The Damnwells are the leader of the rock game. Their first single from the album, “Golden Days”, is starting to shine through several radio stations across the US and it could not happen any sooner. This is a hidden treasure that’s just begging to be discovered…

I had the privilege of sitting down with this genuine, hilarious band while they were on tour with Blue October in Columbus to see what they had to say about their latest record, tourings, how they got to be part of a documentary festival entry, and some classic television characters.

TMC: Introduce yourselves and your role in The Damnwells.

Alex: I’m Jackie Coogan. I was the original Uncle Fester from the show The Addams Family. I’m Alex. I am the singer, guitar player, and main lyricist for The Damnwells.

Ted: I’m Chim-Chim. I was the monkey from Speed Racer and I play the bass. My name’s Ted.

David: I’m David and I’m the guitarist.

TMC: Explain a little bit about your motivation to start a band and then how the band came to be.

Alex: Ted and I met in college in upstate New York.

Ted: Bard College, a community school, in 1996 and we were in adjacent dorms. We just became immediate friends. We were in the same orientation class, which takes place over the couple of months before freshman year. We just immediately started playing together after school.

TMC: What bands have influenced you over the last few years that we might not expect?

Ted: Actually in college we had widely divergent musical tastes. Alex was into a lot of really cool indie bands like Gastr Del Sol and Trans Am and stuff like that and I liked jazz and bad jazz. Bands like the Flecktones. They’ve got some nice stuff. We did bond over music nonetheless and we both had common roots in classic rock.

TMC: How did the band name come about?

Alex: Our drummer’s from West Virginia and it was a saying like “you better damn well get on your horse and ride” kind of thing. We’d just make fun of him cause he had a southern accent and that was kind of novel in Brooklyn,New York to be hanging out with someone with a southern accent. So in the process of making fun of him, we collected some words that he said. He’d say “Damn well” all the time and we thought that was probably the last good band name left.

TMC: What does the title of your album Air Stereo mean to you?
(Steven, drummer and back-up vocalist for The Damnwells enters and greets us)

Alex: When we were in the studio, we were really experimenting with different types of instruments and arrangements. We were drawing on and listening to different records from when we grew up and Air Stereo was the first record we were able to make in a proper studio. Bastards of the Beat was more or less a collection of demos we put together and was basically a makeshift record. We were mixing different kinds of ideas and references to different eras of music such as with the first song on our record, I’ve Got You, which references things like 80s power ballads and all kinds of stuff. In that way, it sort of represents the stereo that’s playing in your brain and following you around everywhere and plays the soundtrack of your life. It was kind of an homage to those influences and a thank you to the soundtrack that plays in your head.

A second explanation, it’s more of a personal thing. The lyrics to the b-side were “I keep you with me all the time playing on my air stereo”. More like something in existence that’s spiritual and a strength out there to draw upon and use to facilitate your dreams. So like with that air stereo, you can turn it up a little louder.

TMC: Is “Golden Days” your first push for a single on the radio? What’s special to you about this song that made it the obvious candidate at first single on Air Stereo?

Alex: We started on Epic Records and that’s who we made the record for. They had a slightly different vision of the record than we did. I think that for us and for the producers, we felt like Golden Days, I Am A Leaver, You Don’t Have to Like Me to Love Me were more singles than some of the other songs on there and represented more of where we were and where we were going. Those were some of the best songs. It was kind of a collective effort. When we got dropped by Epic and they let us go with the record, we started talking to Rounder, who is our label now. Immediately they suggested that Golden Days should be the single and they thought it was the most catchy and best song.

TMC: Are there any songs that came about from an absurd concept of inspiration such as did you think of the phrase “Kung Fu Grip Kiss” after watching a martial arts film?

Alex: For that, I was just thinking about some analogy or metaphor like you try to do when you’re writing. Some new silly metaphor that will capture what you’re thinking at that moment. I had kung fu actions figures and I imagined the kiss as some crazy kick- a “kung fu grip kiss”.

TMC: There seems to be a huge focus on lyrics and use of words. Do they usually come first in your songwriting process or does the music bring the lyrics to you?

Alex: I write them at the same time usually, but there are some cases where the lyrics may come first. It really just depends on the song.

TMC: What’s the most fun song to play live?

Ted: Lately I’ve been really liking You Don’t Have to Like Me to Love Me. It’s fun and has sort of a groove, swagger to it.

Alex: I can dig it.

Steven: I like Death After Life, which is not on the record.

Alex: Death After Life was part of an online iTunes exclusive EP that we made in 2004. It’s kind of a protest song. We play it every night cause it’s kind of a psychedelic jam song.

Steven: And Kung Fu Grip Kiss because I feel like I’m in a different band when I play it and I feel like I have rhythm. *laughs*

David: I just love them all. *laughter from everyone* That’s what Paris Hilton said to David Kiernan when asked what her favorite song was off her new record. She said “I just love them all”

Alex: You were there?! Wow.

David: I have to agree with her.

TMC: Are there any songs on any of your releases that you’d prefer not to play or hear anymore for personal reasons such as being tired of it, being no longer valid to you, ending a relationship, etc.?

Alex: That’s interesting. No, I don’t really think of the songs as being perpetual linear dynamic things. Once they’re done, they’re done. It’s actually not even that personal. Once it’s done and we’re performing it, I’m usually thinking about something else.

TMC: What band have you had the most fun touring with?

All: Ooo, gosh, damn!

Ted: We’ve had a lot of fun tours. The Augustana tour was such an amazing tour. That was so much fun.

Stephen: There’s so many different aspects of fun that you don’t know what the definition of fun’s going to be. The Fray are a bunch of fun guys. Augustana are a bunch of fun guys. How can you not have fun opening for Cheap Trick and the Dixie Chicks? That’s a different kind of fun.

Alex: Opening for the Dixie Chicks and Cheap Trick is not really like a camaraderie type of fun. It’s more like a “Wow, this is an incredible experience” type of fun.

Stephen: And then the fun with Augustana..

Alex: It’s a lot of joking around.

Stephen: Blue October’s fun. We have a good time. Their songs grow on me the more I listen to them. Sometimes you go out with a pre-conception of what a band does and you might think, “I don’t like what they do”, but you get to know them, sit and listen to them, and find they’re playing their hearts out as much as anyone else.

TMC: Are there any bands you’re itching to tour with sometime?

Ted: My Morning Jacket would be great. That would be totally awesome.

Alex: There are a lot of bands we’d love to tour with and we want to have the experience with.

TMC: Do you have a favorite story you like to tell of something crazy happening on the road or in the studio? What happened?

Alex: I vomited all of the van one time and all over myself. I stood on the side of the road in between St. Louis and Nashville with no pants on and a Poison t-shirt. That only happened one time. Tragic.

TMC: What can you tell me about how the documentary Golden Days originate? Who had the idea? What were your goals with it?

Alex: There was a week where our manager asked if we knew if anyone would be interested in filming us in the studio and use some footage for something. Later on that week, my friend Christa called me, who is a filmmaker friend of mine, and said, “I’d like to make a documentary about you guys”. And I said sweet, someone just called me about finding someone. And it of course turned into a different kind of story than we just ended. The story we had in mind was like, here’s this band in the studio making their first record and we’re going to be this successful thing and this is going to be our story of our ride to success. Of course, it turned into the opposite, which was the story of our major label sort of failure and the phoenix rising from the ashes type of story.

Ted: It’s a feel-good hit.

Alex: It’s going to some festivals and stuff and then eventually be out on DVD from there.

TMC: Are there any headlining or supporting tours you can tell us about for the upcoming spring or summer? ?

Alex: We might be going out on a headliner before April, but I’m getting married then and taking some time off before then and after then.

TMC: What can we look forward to next from the band?

Alex: We’re on a soundtrack to a “dramedy” they call them titled Chaos Theory starring Ryan Reynolds and Sarah Chalke. We’ve got about five songs on the soundtrack, but we still have to find out what will happen with that and when it will come out.

TMC: That’ll be your Garden State maybe.

Ted: That’d be awesome. We’ll take it!

TMC: Since this is The Milk Carton, if you can only name any band that you’d love to see become more popular and find a big audience, who would it be?

Ted: There are so many bands like that. Augustana, I hope they do better and they’re doing well. We have a lot of bands in small bands that we hope will do great. Army of Me is another one.

Stephen: I have some friends in Minneapolis in a band called Romantica and they’re great songwriters and I’d love to see them get bigger.

Ted: Julian Velard is a very good friend of ours.

Stephen: If we ever added another member of the band permanently, he gets my vote.

Alex: He’s a great songwriter. He’s great all around.

Stephen: He’s got a great personality. He’s like an angel. He’s very talented.

Alex: Dawn Landis, this girl from New York that I’ve known for years. She’s got this beautiful, beautiful voice, but she hasn’t quite gotten enough exposure.

Stephen: Dawn’s great.

Ted: There’s so many bands.

TMC: Thank you so much for your time and I know as long as The Damnwells are still making music, I will go back to the Sound.

http://www.thedamnwells.com/
http://www.myspace.com/thedamnwells