of five bands [on the bill] and right as we were finishing up our last song the people at the venue working there came and said, ‘Hey, you guys got to stop…cops!’” While the police may have busted up the renegade show, the band forged on and their efforts transformed from just playing music and having fun into a serious musical endeavor—ultimately materializing into their first EP, simply titled Ben. “Once we did our first recording it started to get a bit more serious,” Wiegert explains. “It really was just to play local shows as first; we hoped we could do more than that. We’re just now starting to venture out of town, but there wasn’t a particular goal in mind. We found a small label to put out our album and I guess that was somewhat of a goal.” Huddled around a cell phone in the back of Wiegert’s dark blue Dodge Caravan in the parking lot of their practice space (House of Hits Recording Studios in Del Paso Heights, near the Marconi-Arden Arcade light rail station and next to the 7-Up factory), the quartet spoke to Submerge about their early influences, the driving force behind their sound, the dynamics of the band’s creative process and their latest album Space Camp. “I was a band geek starting in fourth grade, I played trumpet and all that stuff and then I heard Green Day and saw [the movie] School of Rock and I decided I wanted to play drums, and that was that,” Mayo says. “Not many of the people my age like the music I like, and the specific music I had in my head that I wanted to play, which was some sort of poppunk that was reminiscent of the old Bay Area poppunk bands,” Wiegert, the elder statesman of the band, explains. “And we all smoke a lot of pot and get weird, so it just really worked out that way.”
SubmergeMag.com
And while you typically don’t see many females in town wailing away behind the drum kit, Mayo is quick to dismiss the idea that being a woman in a band with three dudes is anything remarkable. “I don’t think it’s any different than having a group of four guys or anything like that,” Mayo says, elaborating on the guy-girl dynamic in the band. “They’re just my three best friends, so we inspire each other, we drive each other nuts, we write good music, we write some bad music, it’s not that much different than [any other band out there]…I’m in a band with girls as well, [and] to me I don’t think gender plays a huge role in the dynamic.” The band’s second EP, released earlier this year, was recorded by a mainstay in the local music scene—Patrick Hills, who is also a musician in the punk band Bastards of Young. However, it wasn’t something that the group banged out in a couple of weeks—quite the contrary, whenever the band and Hills had any free time
“I was a band geek starting in fourth grade, I played trumpet and all that stuff and then I heard Green Day and saw [the movie] School of Rock and I decided I wanted to play drums, and that was that.” —Lys Mayo, Dead Dads they chipped away at bringing the 10-song record to life. “We started recording it, I think, at the end of the 2013 and we didn’t actually finish recording ’til probably around the summer of 2014,” Wiegert explains. “And then it took a long time for us to find somebody to put it out and everything. But we recorded
it with a guy named Pat Hills at his place called Earth Tone studio in Rocklin. It was a long process; finally just in the last few months we were able to put it out.” And yes, for all of you movie buffs out there, the inspiration for the album’s title did, in part, come from the teen flick Space Camp as well as a bit of mix-up with the lyrics during the recording process. “What happened was, we were listening to Cory record his vocals for one song and one of the lines I thought he [sang that] he was going to space camp, and I just kept singing it over and over again and then yeah [it just stuck],” McKinney explains. “Also, I missed seeing movies where people went to space camp. It is a total ’80s/ early ’90s thing,” Wiegert continues. “When I was a kid I always thought it sounded so cool.” The artwork for the cover, a collection of ethereal jellyfish on a black and gray space-like background, was brought to life by a friend whose artistic vision spoke to the foursome. “We had a few different ideas…but a friend of ours Jessica Vosburg drew up the cover and then I colored it just using Photoshop and such—she did a sketch of it in black and white and we colorized it,” Wiegert explains. “She drew that probably early 2014—it was probably one of the first album cover ideas we had and we tried about 30 other things and that was the one we always came back to, so two years later we liked it and chose it,” Mayo continues. So, a jellyfish walks into space camp…OK, bad joke, but check out Dead Dads at their upcoming show at Café Colonial on May 3 and get weird!
2708 J Street Sacramento 916.441.4693 HarlowS.com 2014 Blues Music awarD winner
JohN NEMETh
FRIDAY
WEDNESDAY
4 /29 FRIDAY
5:30PM $12
SATURDAY
5:30PM $25adv
SATURDAY
9PM $12adv
5 /02 5 /02
6PM $8adv all ages
ThURSDAY
9PM $15adv
5 /07
ThURSDAY
7PM $20adv
5 /14
8PM $30adv
ThE MoTh & ThE FlAME
lIFE IN ThE FAST lANE SoNgS oF ThE EAglES
anDy McKee ThE KIllER QUEENS All-gIRl QUEEN TRIbUTE
ThE JEAN gENIES DAvID boWIE TRIbUTE
SUNDAY
5 /03
lC | E. bRoUSSARD
Big Data
6PM $17adv all ages
the Beatles 1965 TIMoThY blooM
KEv ChoICE | hARlEY WhITE JR. JAMES CAvERN
CoNCERTS IN ThE PARK AFTER PARTY
oNCE AN EMPIRE, ICoNoClAST RoboT, TEll ThE WolvES
FRIDAY
9:30PM $8-$10
SATURDAY
6PM $10adv all ages
JoSEPh IN ThE WEll RASAR
SATURDAY
9:30PM $12
solsa
WEDNESDAY
7PM $27.50adv
hoWARD JoNES SElF.SAME
5 /08 5 /09 5 /09 5/13
*all Dead Dads are playing with Bay Area’s Cut Up and Weekender as well as locals Area Gray on Sunday, May 3 at the Café Colonial (3520 Stockton Boulevard). This all-ages show starts at 8 p.m. For more info, checkout Deaddads.bandcamp. com or their Facebook page.
5 /05
5 /01
DRU hIll
“Betty” 20th anniversary show
TUESDAY
9PM $20
5 /01
hElMET
times are d o or times*
COMING SOON 05/16 05/20 05/23 05/23 05/24 05/30 06/04
Strangelove Ex hex Shuggie otis Midnight Players (late) Mike love California honeydrops ZoSo (led Zeppelin Experience)
06/05 06/11 06/11 06/13 06/13 06/17 06/19
brothers Comatose hot Club of Cowtown Electric Six (late) Mason Jennings Melt banana (late) orgone / The Nth Power Johnny Cash Tribute
06/20 06/21 06/24 07/06 07/10 08/02 08/06 08/22
Issue 186 • April 27 – May 11, 2015
Duran Duran Duran vetiver glen David Andrews Aristocrats built To Spill Torche Mother hips Milo greene
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