The Southern Belles are taking off right now, both in Richmond and on the Eastern seaboard. It’s easy to see why, as the four-piece jam-rock outfit plays groovin’, improvisational original tunes, as well as some creative covers. The Belles are on the heels of promoting their critically acclaimed latest release, Sharp as a Knife, which came out in September of last year. Their sound is a heady, jammy mix between Southern rock and roll, jazz, and funk elements, recalling bands from Steely Dan to Phish and The Band.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE NEW ISSUE OF RVA MAGAZINE!
The Southern Belles are taking off right now, both in Richmond and on the Eastern seaboard. It’s easy to see why, as the four-piece jam-rock outfit plays groovin’, improvisational original tunes, as well as some creative covers. The Belles are on the heels of promoting their critically acclaimed latest release, Sharp as a Knife, which came out in September of last year. Their sound is a heady, jammy mix between Southern rock and roll, jazz, and funk elements, recalling bands from Steely Dan to Phish and The Band.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE NEW ISSUE OF RVA MAGAZINE!
I had the opportunity to chill with these dudes at The Camel when the band came back from its longest tour ever (17 days!). They were surprisingly fresh, funny, and just fun dudes. These guys are close, too, which shows not only in their onstage rapport but also when shootin’ the shit. They were finishing each other’s …sandwiches. No, sentences. Take a peek as we find out about the band’s personal Bermuda Triangle, how they deal with tension on the road, and that one time they kicked it under an easy-up in the middle of a highway for a few hours.
What do you think is most memorable about this recent tour?
Zachary Hudgins (bass, vox): Most memorable?
Raphael Katchinoff (drums, vocals): Not least memorable, because you probably wouldn’t remember that.
Adrian Ciucci (guitar, vocals): I thought it was cool going to Boone and seeing Tommy’s friends from Appalachian State.
Tommy Booker (keys, vox): I hadn’t really played there in years. I’d kinda visit for brief times but I hadn’t seen my friends like that. So I was happy; I was vibing off the crowd a lot.
How did you get together as a band?
Adrian: I don’t even know anymore. We’ve all known each other for a really long time.
Zach: We played in bands together throughout our music careers… since high school.
Adrian: Zach and I were spending a lot of time together playing music and we started to think about how we needed this guy [points to Raph] to play drums…
Raph: …and immediately regretted that decision.
Adrian: Every single day. Then Tommy moved back from Boone, and moved away again, and came back from New York and was around. [Things] sorta just came together at that time. We had some opportunities.
Zach: It was like a snowball effect, with a lot of momentum going. I’m buried a little; I can’t get out.
Do you want to, though?
Zach: Sometimes. but not always. Sometimes you dig deeper and sometimes you bite it.
Who writes your songs?
Adrian: We all do. I start a lot of them but it goes through the cycle. We work with Joey [Ciucci, Adrian’s cousin], actually. We’ve used some old ideas that me, Zach, and Joey put together a long time ago and revamped them to spark. Tommy writes, we all partipicate but it generally starts with me and Joey.
Are you guys working with a manager?
Raph: No, it’s all us. We were lucky enough to be on the road with our good friends Eric and Billy who just started a production company [Loco Pickle Productions]. We’re both in a symbiotic relationship where we can be on the road and we need lights and sound, and they need to start honing their craft down and making connections. So we brought them on the road. It’s been a blast.
You took a lot of pictures on tour, I noticed.
Zach: That’s Billy. A master of many trades, and photography is one of them.
Raph: Yeah. He helped got our van unstuck, built a bench in the van while we were driving, took a nap on it…
Zach: You know those cooling armbands? He was sewing them together to make a headband so it could cool your head instead of your arms. He is the master, man, a champion boy scout.
Is there a cover song that one of you wants to play but no one else is on board?
Zach: Tommy wants to do all of Meatloaf, and we just won’t do it.
Raph: We are at each other’s throats constantly over covers.
Tommy: We are like old married people about the right way to do things. It’s pretty funny.
Raph: You wanted to do some Abba. “Fernando.”
Adrian: I get shot down with covers a lot. I wanted to do Grand Funk Railroad’s “We’re an American Band.” So this is the messed up [stuff] that happened. I said I wanted to do “We’re an American Band.” Everyone pooh-poohed it, right? Like it’s a terrible idea. Then someone talks about going to Europe, and everyone starts singing it and are like, “We should cover this song! What a great idea!”
Tommy: In Europe it’s cool.
Tell me about the brush with death you guys had on the road.
Raph: We almost died. Adrian was driving. It was just an all around not fun day for driving. We had to drive about 6 hours from Wilmington to Athens, GA. to make an afternoon show at Terrapin Brewery. We got as far as Florence, South Carolina and our front tire blew. It ripped the [van’s] side step-ladder off into the highway. We put the spare on and we kept driving. Our buddies who were following us, their car broke down, and we stopped just to make sure they were all right. We kept driving, and about 20 minutes later we were about a mile away from the Georgia border when the left tire explodes and blows the right tire off, so we lose both back tires. Ciucci was trying to swerve off the road and it trips the trailer, which flips over…
Zach: …sending sparks and smoke everywhere.
Raph: [It was] the loudest, craziest noise. It came flying around and knocked the back of the van and skirted us into the other lane.
Zach: We pulled over and yanked everything out of the trailer, bought 4 new tires.
Raph: We hung out on the side of the highway playing spades under an easy-up…
Zach: for about 2 and a half hours…
Did you just happen to have one of those?
Raph: We were very prepared. Then [we] got some waters from some locals. They [finally] came back with the van and we made it to our gig which was at the Nowhere Bar [Athens]. We had only missed one show due to our ordeal.
Did you have any beers on the side of the road?
Zach: Did not have any beers. We had like three people stop to bring us water…
Raph: …but no cop car.
Zach: Not a single cop, nobody to help us. I would have been pounding beer.
Had you known…
Raph: Had we known our trailer was going to flip…
What do you love about the RVA music scene?
Tommy: I love the diversity of it.
Raph: You stole my idea!
Do you think there is anything that needs work?
Zach: I think what I thought needed work as I was growing up and being a part of it is starting to happen, in the art scene [and] bar scene. Bar owners and musicians are all starting to collaborate and work together to benefit each other, and becoming way more of a family and a scene instead of just musicians. We’re starting to network. I think that’s going to push Richmond way further.
Raph: We’re all in it together.
Tommy: It’s like a form of the union in a sense.
Zach: I have a good friend from California who’s a wanderer. [He] came through here couch surfing, and he really likes Richmond. He says Richmond is the next cultural epicenter. Now he’s living here and won’t leave.
Raph: It’s a black hole.
Even if you leave for a little while, you’ll always come back. How do you avoid tension with each other after being in the van together for so long? Are there any funny arguments that happened?
Raph: It’s all fleeting, spur of the moment testosterone.
Tommy: I think flexibility is key when you have seven people, and four of them want to do this, and one wants to go that way. You have to be able to compromise and come to an agreement somehow.
Was this your first tour?
Zach: We did one last summer and our van broke down again. In Florence.
Raph: It’s our Bermuda Triangle. We’re going to avoid that.
Do you still get nervous before shows?
Adrian: I get some version of nerves–a very particular, very unsettled feeling of like sort of ready to get on with it–30 minutes before going on.
Raph: I get really anxious, yeah.
Adrian: Sitting there thinking about the thing. There’s no time to do anything. I always get a little jittery or anxious, but not necessarily nervous.
Zach: I remember my first two shows I got really nervous, and as soon as I started playing, I opened my eyes and realized, “Oh, I’m playing, I feel fine.”
Adrian: I feel like after day 10 [of the tour], I went into total muscle memory. I could relax and just rely on routine a little bit. We were playing so much similar sets in new towns trying to showcase these tunes.
Tommy: If you’re confident with your instrument and you know the tunes well, there’s not really anything to be nervous about. But sometimes it happens. The excitement. It’s not like being scared, or [wondering] what’s going to happen.
Are you heading to the studio any time soon?
Zach: [We’re] hoping November.
Adrian: We’re kicking around that idea. We’re just getting to the point where we can seriously start thinking about it with the material, time, and financially. It takes a lot of effort all around.
Where do you get your music engineered?
Raph: Last time we went to Sound of Music Studios and worked with Bryan Walthall. John Morand helped on a track [plus guest instrumentation by] Stephen Keister and the guys from No BS! [Brass Band]. Our fine experience has made us want to go back there for round 2. We’ve already talked about it.
Zach: We’re going to use a lot of the same people and get a lot of guests again. We’ve got a lot of big ideas; we just need to start focusing in a little more.
Raph: Big ideas, little wallets.
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