By Ben Rhudy Jun 14, 2007, 16:39 GMT
M&C recently had the honor of sharing an Austin staircase with The Dollyrots, Blackheart Records’ hyper-punk trio who are currently bopping from city to city on a nationwide tour.
Anyone looking for group to inspire thunderous chants and pumping fists should definitely make it a point to see The Dollyrots on tour this summer. While their sound isn’t revolutionary in the traditional sense, the freshness, personality and down-to-earth humor they pump into every song brings them several notches above other bands in the genre.
The group’s latest album ‘Because I’m Awesome’ has been in heavy rotation on several radio stations around the country and is in stores now. The band recently released a music video for the single with a theme involving contestants auditioning for an American Idol-esque program. For more information on The Dollyrots visit http://www.dollyrots.com.
M&C: First off, is your car OK? When I interviewed Kelly several weeks back, she said her car was being towed.
Ogden: Oh, that’s right! It’s surviving. When we turn it on there’s a lot of white smoke right now. Once we get back to Los Angeles we’ll deal with it.Chris: It’s alright…just a little moisture in the gas tank.Luis: Either that or a crack in the head gasket…Kelly: Yeah…I’m hoping it’s just a little leak or something.
M&C: So you’re three quarters of the way through the tour. How has it been so far?
Kelly: It’s been really fun. It’s been great!Luis: I think slowly, but surely, we start getting a little worn down, even if we sleep a lot. We’re kind of at the tail end now, and so the shows are a little different. We’re not as voracious, or as excited.Kelly: I almost think the shows are little crazier. It’s like normal shows have gotten routine, and we’re so tired. We’re doing a lot of things that don’t make any sense. Yesterday, at the end of “Because I’m Awesome”, I was just like, “Well, what if we just let all the kids get up on stage?” And so we didn’t finish the song until every person was up there.Chris: We totally vamped the last verse and chorus. It was great!Luis: Did you just say “vamped”?Chris: “Vamped” means you just repeat something until it’s time to end.Kelly: I was thinking “vampish,” like a goth kid or something.Chris: It just means “to hold the same note for a long, long time.”Kelly: See…Chris knows all about this music stuff.Chris: I was a marching band geek! [As Beavis, of “Beavis and Butthead”] This one time, at band camp…Luis: Ok, so…we’re at the “We’re tired and we don’t give a fuck” stage.
M&C: Any crazy road stories?
Chris: Well, we had a wild, demon-possessed hotel in Iowa.Kelly: All throughout the night, we woke up. The first one up was Chris, and he woke up like, “EEEAAAAHEEE!”Chris: I didn’t sound as much like a girl, though.Luis: And so we all did it. We all woke up sequentially, like “What the fuck?! What the fuck?!” And we had the whole sleep paralysis thing, where you can’t move or anything when you wake up. So, the next day we collaborated and shared our experiences, and it turned out we all had the same dream. There was this creepy guy with long hair in the hotel room. He was at the end of Chris’ bed.
Kelly: We’ve had some really good shows, too. Chris: We almost broke ourselves in New Jersey. Kelly jumped back into my set, thinking there was a wall to lean against, but there wasn’t any wall there. So we all just fell back. The stage was like four feet off the ground, too. I think my back got re-aligned. It happened, and I was like,” Wow…I feel better!”Luis: In Tampa, though, Kelly crashed his drums, and then I jumped on top, and somehow a beer bottle came up and got smashed underneath…Kelly: It came up and hit me right [in the head], and so I was covered in beer, but I didn’t have any cuts or anything.
M&C: How do you guys keep entertained out on the road?
Kelly: Lots of random inside jokes that don’t mean anything at all.Chris: There’s a Quagmire [Family Guy] doll up on the dash of the van. Every time we go somewhere we say, “Hey Quagmire, does this country have an ‘o’ in it?” He says, “Nope, now off to Austin, TX! Giggidy-gig-gig-giggidy goo!”Kelly: We also kind of live from snack food to snack food.
M&C: What’s your favorite been so far?
Kelly: We eat a lot of burritos. Taco Cabana, Taco John’s, Del Taco and Taco Bell, when we’re out of options.
M&C: What’s the hang up on Tex-Mex?
Luis: It’s just the only available non-burger stuff on the road. Chris: Most of those places make their stuff fresh in the morning, like Salsarita’s, where we just ate.Luis: Man, you sound like a commercial for Salsarita’s.
M&C: Maybe now you’ll get some free stuff from them.
Kelly: That’s our goal. We’ve got the music endorsements, now we’re just working on the food.Chris: We also buy a lot of stuff from truck stops.Luis: No, not “we”…”you”.Kelly: I have a thimble collection.
Chris: They get crazy in Boston. They got all crazy in Reno, too. I wasn’t sure if I needed to call the fire department or not.
M&C: Which one of you is the most awesome?
Luis: I’d say Kelly, by default.Chris: I think we’re all awesome at our own things. Like, Luis is awesome at focusing on the task at hand.
M&C: So you’re like the “Awesome Team”. When your powers combine…
Kelly: When we come together, we become the most awesome thing ever. We’re the A-Team.Chris: We meet with the Justice League every month. We wear purple capes.Luis: Again, speak for yourself. [Everyone laughs]
M&C: Is it hard being away from loved ones on the road?
Kelly: It’s just my cat, really. Other than that, I don’t really care.Luis: I’ve got a fish named Chomsky. I miss him. I trained him to jump out of his tank when I feed him.Chris: But we get to see family out on the road, too. We’ve had family at a lot of shows and friends at a lot of shows.Luis: On our way through Florida we got to see some of our siblings and have a day off to spend with family. It was cool.
Kelly: You mean emotional, or van-wise? Because neither one has really happened.Luis: Well, we do have this ongoing thing with the van…it’s always the same thing. It wasn’t too ha and we figured it out. We took it to a mechanic in Appleton, Wisconsin. It just sucked because they charged a lot for some diagnostic thing after I told them, “Look, all you’re going to do is tie this tube to this tube.” They didn’t like me though. I should’ve brought the girl or the presentable boy with me.
M&C: So I guess there aren’t too many late night parties?
Luis: We can hang.Kelly: Yeah, I mean…we’ve only had four nights on the whole tour where we had nothing to do.
M&C: What changes do you make in the sets from show to show?
Luis: It really depends on the crowd. If it’s a lot of young punk kids, we’ll probably play some of the faster stuff.Chris: When we get back to L.A. and have a break, we’d like to go into the studio and work on some of the songs that we haven’t played on tour yet. Stuff like “17,” “Cat-Calling” and “Nobody Wants You.”Luis: So even if people don’t hear us on the tour, we’re still working on new stuff to play later on.Kelly: Our new game in the middle of “Jackie Chan” during the break is to just throw some awful, random thing out there. Like the theme song to “Growing Pains”.Luis: Or some Muppet thing.
M&C: What’s the reception been like so far for “Because I’m Awesome”?
Kelly: Really, really good. I think as long as people get the sarcasm behind the title.Luis: Well, I mean, it could really be more of an empowering thing.Kelly: We’ve had reviews where people have said, “Man, that singer is really full of herself! She thinks she’s the best singer in the world!” It’s actually just cute when something like that happens.Luis: That really only happened twice. We’ve really had a lot of press coverage thrust upon us. Lots of college radio stations and stuff. It’s really cool. We’re just gonna to keep workin’ it.
‘Because I’m Awesome’ is now available at Amazon. Visit the music database for more information. Click Here to read M&C's concert review of The Dollyrots at Emos in Austin, Texas.
Your Talkback on this Story