Interviews    Darediablo
by Chris Barnes

My relationship with Darediablo went from "Oh no not another instrumental rock band" to "These guys are friggin' genius!" after just a single spin of their upcoming Bedtime Stories album. Tight, jazz-tinged rock that sounds like , as drummer Chad Royce put it "The instrumentation of the Meters, the quirky sound of Bitch's Brew and the balls of AC/DC." Hell, they know how to work the the sound of a Hammond B-3 and Rhodes piano like nobody's bizzzness and that's good enough for me. Keyboardist Matt Holford, drummer Chad Royce and guitarist Jake Garica speak.


Hellride Music: I was going through your bio and I read Pink Floyd and Foo Fighters meets AC/DC. I'm an asshole. I don't hear that. Maybe Pink Floyd. I hear Jon Lord jamming with with John McLaughlin and the Minutemen. I guess that's a good thing for you guys. No one is going to agree on what it is you sound like. Darediablo defies categorization. Let me ask you... if you can step outside the role as contributing band member, what do you hear when you listen to "Bedtime Stories"? How would you describe the band? Do descriptions even matter?

Matt Holford: It used to be that this was a big question for us -- something you could argue about and try to influence. Now it's become a non-issue. We just sound like what we sound like, and we're done wasting our own breath trying to hit the mark perfectly, so that somebody can say, "Oh, I get it" before they've heard the music. All I say now is "instrumental rock", because that's about as many words as I can fit around it.

Jake Garcia: I agree. For some reason I never really listened to the lyrics of my favorite rock songs, just the riffs, solos, bass lines, and drums. Because none of us can really sing, and because all three of us love rock in all of its forms, we decided to try staying instrumental, as long as we could be catchy and succinct. Now, not everything on Bedtime Stories is exactly succinct, but we're heading in that direction. So, if I was an outsider, I'd be refreshed to hear a compelling, punchy instrumental rock album, because I think most albums in this genre are too boring or abstract or demanding. Do descriptions matter? Well, if to most people "instrumental rock" means the same thing it means to me, then yes, and in that case your description of us as Deep Purple-meets-McLaughlin-meets-the Minutemen is totally flattering and by all means keep telling people.

Chad Royce: Yeah, definitely! Also, our sound has changed a bit from album to album. For one album one description works and another album it doesn't. That's one thing I love about playing in this band -- we really work hard at evolving our sound and the kind of songs we write. For instance, Matt just added a Nord keyboard to his set-up and Jake is playing mostly guitar, instead of bass, now. As far as our sound right now if someone who had never heard Darediablo before wanted a description other than "instrumental rock", and was holding a gun to my head in order to get it then I'd say we have the instrumentation of the Meters, the quirky sound of "Bitch's Brew" and the balls of AC/DC.


Hellride Music: I'm curious...and I guess this goes back to descriptions... when you guys play live, what type of crowd do you get? Is it a mix of moshers, mullets and indie rockers? Or is it pretty much one or the other? I imagine that you might appeal to the stoner set as well... Hammond B-3 and Rhodes Piano and all....

Matt: Our crowd includes a lot of the indie rockers, and a lot of music geeks like us who always wished they played big fat guitar or keyboard solos. We got an e-mail from a guy in the UK recently who said, "You've inspired me to try something new with my music and follow my passions!" I mean, we should start a self-help group for frustrated guitarists or something.


Hellride Music: I wish you could start one for hack rock journalists. I'd be first in line. What are your thoughts on reviewers who spell "Rhodes" "Rhoads" when it comes to the classic Fender instrument?

Matt: I love them. I think they rule.


Hellride Music: My thoughts exactly. How did you guys hook up anyway?

Matt: In college, I used to go to all these gigs by this band called The Benders. Chad was the drummer, Jake was the bass player. I obsessed about getting into that fucking band. But I was a wuss, and I never talked to them. I just practiced my Rhodes in my room. Years later, I ran into Jake at a birthday party in a deserted theater in the Lower East Side (Manhattan). We started playing, and two drummers later we signed Chad up. We've settled in together and now we're really starting to get some momentum.

Hellride Music: I'm going to guess that you guys write your songs mostly out of jam sessions. Let me know if I'm wrong. What I want to know is who the hell gives these songs their titles?! "Gonna make you squirm like a baby worm"? "Sigurd the Dragon Slayer"? Then there's the matter of "Ear Meat Records".... can you clear us up on how each song is awarded their name?

Matt: The songwriting process has changed a lot over the last couple of years. We used to jam everything out. Someone would come in with a bit of an idea and we'd play it and play it until we teased it out into a longer arrangement. That was a good process, and we got some great songs out of it. But lately it's been more about bringing a more fully-formed song to practice, and then the work just involves arranging the parts into the most compelling story.

With an instrumental band, you have to be careful. You can veer either way too much -- you can write songs that are just normal rock structures, but then listeners always say, "Man, think about how much better that would be with vocals!" Because it's basically a normal rock song without the vocal track. Or you can go over the deep end and write extravagant 70s prog bullshit that can't settle into a compelling groove for longer than three seconds. It's a balancing act, and the way we meet that challenge is always evolving as we become better songwriters.

The song titles...well, it's pretty arbitrary. Shit just happens. Somebody looks up and says something, and that's a song title. Or we talk about it for a while and we settle on a working title, and some version of that ends up becoming the real title. "Sigurd" got its name because Jake went on a solo fishing trip to Iceland and read a lot of Icelandic mythology in a hotel bar.

Jake: Matt is totally right, except it wasn't a hotel bar. It was a regular bar. Every Icelander I talked to at that bar was impressed that I was reading such a classic saga. There's a series of main characters, and they all (including Sigurd) die within a few pages, so it's relentless bloodshed. Goes great with beer.

Chad: Ear Meat Records is the moniker we decided to use to put out our own records without the help of a record company. It's actually the title of a song that we used to play a couple of years ago, a song that was the beginning of a new sound for us, a heavier sound.


Hellride Music: Matt, I read that d boone is one of your inspirations and I almost cried. I remember talking with Mike Watt with a friend a couple of years after d passed away, and the guy still got a tear in his eye. How great were the Minutemen anyway? What was it about d that inspired you?

Matt: All my good friends growing up loved the Minutemen. We loved the SST label, we loved the do-it-yourself aesthetic. We loved the way the Minutemen mixed populist politics and quirky writing and ass-kicking rock. I still love it. D Boone and Ian MacKaye were the musicians that made me think, "Shit! I can't believe I'm stuck on keyboards. What can I do to be more like these guys?" That's when I started shopping for distortion pedals.

I grew up outside Providence, where the indie rock scene was and is really well supported. There was the most creative shit going on, and we got to go to classic Providence places like AS220 and Club Babyhead and soak it all up. There was a sense of humor about the rock that was happening that infected me, and to this day I get a little turned off by a band if it sounds like they can't take a joke. That's what I love about D too, and Mike and Hurley for that matter. Good guys, great, hardworking musicians, but with a sense of humor about themselves and their weirdness.


Hellride Music: Jake, your prowess in your selected instruments of bass and guitar are exceptional. Who do you count among your inspirations and how long have you been playing?

Jake: Wow. Thanks. I've been playing bass for 19 years and guitar for about 2 years. I was always accused of playing bass like a guitar player, loud, with distortion, chords, and solos. I was really into Stanley Clarke. Up until recently, because I hate playing with a pick and because there were millions of guitarists and, like, no bassists, I stayed away from guitar. Then a few years ago I realized that some of my favorite guitarists (Jeff Beck, Jimmie Vaughan, and John Lee Hooker) play without a pick and I got inspired. So now things are kinda opposite, I play guitar like a bass player, if you can picture that. The walking fingers, thumb plucks, etc., still with the volume, fuzz, power chords, & solos.

But the number one reason for switching to guitar was that I became obsessed with AC/DC, especially the less famous Young brother, Malcolm, the co-creator and 30-year practitioner of mankind's greatest riffs. I got to meet him once, in 2000. That's basically when it clicked and I started playing guitar all the time.

It's totally cliche to be a rock guitarist these days, especially because I was a guitar-mocking bassist for so long, but I love it. I still play bass, if a song calls for it, but guitar has totally taken over my brain. It would take yours over, too, if in any musical situation you asked yourself, "What Would Malcolm Do (WWMD)?"

Hellride Music: How do you pull off the bass and guitar in a live situation? Nice double-neck. Reminds me of the good ol' days of Rick Neilson and Jimmy Page.. do you see Darediablo ever becoming a four piece with the addition of a bass player?

Jake: The doubleneck is the key to pulling off both bass and guitar in the same song. It's a heavy motherfucker on stage, so I'm trying not to use it too much. Maybe I should, like, shave off half of the wood on the back side, which I heard Chris Squire did to make one of his basses lighter and brighter-sounding. As it stands, the doubleneck is a big, beautiful 40-pound albatross. So most songs are guitar-only or bass-only for me. Most of the bass lines are done by Matt on the organ, so I'm free to play more guitar. I can't really see us adding a bass player, although I could see that being a big relief for Matt! Our first priority, new-member-wise, is to see what we'd sound like with a singer.


Hellride Music: Chad, you definitely can do the rock drumming thing very well but I think I hear some jazz influence in there too. Grant it I don't know two shits about music, so I could very well be wrong. Who do you consider to be the champions behind the drum kit?

Chad: No, you're right, there is some jazz in there, although I do not by any means consider myself a jazz musician. At one point I thought I wanted to be a jazz drummer so I tried it out for a year and realized it just wasn't in my blood. I grew up with Van Halen, The Police, and the Stones -- not jazz. It felt unnatural for me to have to play that softly, you know, with that jazz touch. So I switched back. And when I came back to playing rock, I guess I maintained a little bit of that jazz approach -- some of those ideas stuck with me.

Here's a list of some of my favorite drummers: Keith Moon, John Bonham, Phil Rudd, Stewart Copeland, Charlie Watts, Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Zigaboo Modeliste, Dave Grohl, and Buddy Miles. Lately it seems like I've been inspired a lot by Phil Rudd, Dave Grohl, and Keith Moon. Kind of drawing off of their vibe for some of these songs.


Hellride Music: I enjoyed the hell out of Bedtime Stories. What is next for you guys in terms of releases or recording?

Matt: Jake's been writing songs like a freak for the last six months, and we're going to start recording them soon. But Southern Records isn't releasing Bedtime Stories until March 2003, which means whatever we're recording now won't come out until October 2003 at the earliest. But that's okay. We'll have five more albums to record by then.


Hellride Music: You've had some tunes in some TV shows too, haven't you? Has this increased your exposure at all in your opinion?

Matt: It's increased our exposure to editors and producers, which helps us make a little money. But we haven't done any work where we get a lot of on-screen credit, or where there's a soundtrack on disc that gets sold afterwards. But it helps us pay for shit, and it's fun to see how editors deal visually with our music.


Hellride Music: Who are some bands that you think deserve a little recognition?

Matt: Slut 'Em Go -- but you know that. The Modey Lemon, from Pittsburgh -- one of my favorite live shows right now. My brother, Casey Holford -- he's a singer-songwriter who floors me every time I listen to him.

Jake: AC/DC -- I know they're big and everything. I just think they deserve MORE recognition.

Purchase Darediablo's Bedtime Stories at the Hellride Music Superstore

Download an MP3 of Bedtime Stories

Read the Hellride Music review of Bedtime Stories

Visit the Darediablo website at www.darediablo.com

Copyright 2002 HellrideMusic.com
Interview by Chris Barnes 12/01/02; Photo by Dave Valex, Exact NYC