It’s been a wild and crazy ride these last two years for the People’s Blues of Richmond.
It’s been a wild and crazy ride these last two years for the People’s Blues of Richmond. The psychedelic, rock and roll blues trio signed with Colorado-based Madison House Booking, released a 7-inch single with Black Keys producer Mark Neill, recorded their third full-length studio album, and are currently on an East Coast tour promoting said album, Quit or Die, which is due out in June.
That’s not to say years prior we’re dull and boring for the band RVA has grown to know and love since their humble beginnings in 2009. They were anything but. I think if you’ve ever seen one of their electric live shows, listened to any of their music, or watched one of their carnival-like manic music videos, you already know this group is more than a stand there and slightly bob your head kind of group.
Hell, just hanging out and chatting with Tim Beavers II (Vox/Guitar), Matthew Volkes (Bass), and Neko Williams (Drums) on a sunny afternoon at Joe’s Inn drinking coffee is an experience unto itself. Which is exactly what I did when I caught up with the goofy guys about their latest shenanigans and their upcoming album, which RVA will get to hear at a special release party this weekend at The Broadberry.
“It’s been great, we’ve been busy right now, but the album is hopefully going to jump us into overdrive,” said Volkes.
The band’s newest 12-track album is a roller coaster of ups an downs, trials and triumphs and of course their usual good-time party vibe. It’s a bit of a different sound from their past albums too, with a mix of prog-punk with raw garage sound tossed in. But don’t worry, they haven’t lost that dirty, gritty, feel-good blues sound that they’ve built a reputation around.
“It’s all over the spectrum,” said Beavers. “There’s crazy rock and roll, there’s reggae, psychedelic, it’s all over the map, super bi-polar.”
Quit or Die is a follow-up to 2013’s drug fueled and ballad-heavy Good Time Suicide and their hard-hitting, emotion-driven debut EP, Hard-On Blues which was released in 2010.
Beavers said Quit or Die was the longest they’ve worked on an album which was recorded at The Ward studio on West Broad St. over a span of a couple of months. They worked with Ricky Olson, who recorded the very first tracks for PBR. The band wrapped it up about a month and a half ago.
“There was no air condition and I feel like you can hear the sweat on the album,” Volkes said. “I think it’s the best thing we’ve worked on together.”
I agree. Musically, lyrically, and production wise I think this is the best material to date we’ve ever heard from the band.
And they’ve even been tempting us with little tastes of what’s to come over the last few months. PBR released the album’s title track, the punk-influenced “Quit or Die” on Consequence of Sound in March which deals with drug addiction and how life can literally come down to those two things according to Beavers.
“The narrator has had troubles with drugs in the past and when you get to a certain point with some drugs, your tolerance is so high it’s dangerous. The amount that you do just to get by is an amount that could kill something that doesn’t have a tolerance,” he said. “It’s playing with fire when your addictions start to get out of control, so compromise can be suicide if you’re choosing between quitting doing heroin or eventually accidentally dying of an overdose, than you compromise with your mind…saying, ‘fuck it I’ll do a little bit, that can kill you.”
The trio recently premiered “All the Things (I Couldn’t Say to You),” another new track off the album on Relix Magazine last month which deals with a man in love with a woman who won’t give him the time of day, despite his unrelenting efforts.
Other tracks on the record, like “The House on Oregon Hill,” is a tribute to where it all began for Beavers and Volkes who originally formed People’s Blues of Richmond. Beavers said this song was written before their 2013 album came out.
“Cigarette burns on the sheets, empty beer cans everywhere… well my mattress is on the floor and there’s rats under the stairs,” Beavers howls over a funky, bouncy beat on the track.
“Just Tears” comes off as a love tune, but ends with an almost anti-love twist.
Volkes said they plan to do a vinyl release of the album in fourth or five months.
PBR recorded some material in early 2015 with Black Keys producer Mark Neill, but decided for this go around they needed to keep the cost down and keep it local.
“We did two tracks there, he’s a good guy, love the stuff that came out, but it’s expensive and it made sense for us to be at home,” said Volkes.
Even though they chose to go with Olson for this record, the band agreed it was a great learning experience working with Neill.
“It was cool playing on the same drums as the Black Keys drummer played on,” Williams said narrowly avoiding a ketchup catastrophe at Joe’s Inn.
Volkes added Neil had them step outside the box of how they normally play.
“I think we learned a lot about how we want to record and certain things we didn’t know we were capable of,” he said. “He had me play with a pic, it stripped it down, but it was awesome.”
The group has steadily hit the festival circuit hard the last few years, playing Lockn’ in 2014, 2015’s Electric Forest in Michigan and the Atlanta-based SweetWater Festival last month. Beavers said the Electric Forest was their biggest show yet and unlike anything he’d ever witnessed.
“Probably the biggest festival we were at, it’s three times the size of Lockn’, and the wildest,” he said. “It’s just a woods full of different stages that are art installations. It was a circus.”
Electric Forest was about the music, but also about the all-you-could-drink Tito’s vodka backstage and theatrical characters for Volkes.
“They had a slushie machine, there was like a 7-Eleven girl in an afro” he said. “They hired all these people to act like different people to creep you out that would be hiding in the woods that pop out and scare you, dressed like rats and stuff like that.”
Williams recalled a story where he got lost at Electric Forest.
“There was different EDM stuff everywhere so I was like, I’m going to go to the disco EDM and it’s underneath this tent where they serve food and I was with the general photographer Isaac and we go to get our backs buffered,” he said.
Yes, you read that right, they got their backs buffered with a car buffer at a festival.
Williams added he couldn’t find Beavers or Volkes so he decided to just get drunk with the people around him before stumbling back to their van where the three all eventually reunited.
And playing these festivals has been a huge stepping stone for the band.
“{We} started with small festivals and it ended up being a good ladder to climb because if you can build some fan bases at small festivals that will give you a shot at medium-sized festivals and the next thing you know you’re at big festivals getting better slots,” said Beavers.
Volkes said before they started playing larger festivals, they spent much of their time making friends with fellow festival-goers and musicians over a bottle of whiskey.
“We used to stop at every tent we could before our set and get drunk with everyone,” he said happily, noting that now that they’re on bigger bills, one bottle of whiskey for thousands of people isn’t exactly going to cut it.
Despite finding continued success on the festival circuit, Williams added they still love to play all sorts of venues, no matter the size.
“I’m trying to be everywhere,” he said. “The small ones are fun because you can actually meet everybody, but the bigger ones are fun because it’s like, holy shit, look at all this production.”
The boys are slated to play Laid Back Fest at Red Rocks this September and the Americana Beer Fest in Leesburg in June.
In April, the band embarked on a tour up and down the East Coast and will continue on that trek until September when they head for Colorado. And Volkes said constantly being on the road is the norm for the band.
“We want to play as much as we can,” he said. “In February, we went to California, we did Tahoe, we did San Francisco, we did a whole West Coast tour and back and we’re going to be doing that again.”
In the last seven years, the hard-working trio has only come off the road twice, once when Williams joined the band in 2013 and last year when Volkes injured his arm.
As always, with a life lived on the road in and out of a cramped van, there’s plenty of good stories. And the bandmates did not disappoint, they each had their own, unique, tale or two to tell.
“The last tour we did was the craziest,” Volkes said. “We had to go from Richmond to Colorado, we get in the van and start driving and there’s this crazy snowstorm in Kansas. They close the road and I’m like, ‘that can’t be real,’ so we drive until they won’t let us drive anymore. We take this alternate route that takes us two hours north on this trucker route and its scary. We’re driving in white out conditions, it was so bad we were the only ones out there, we slid once and then slid again and pulled over. We had to go another 100 miles in that white out to find a cheap, shitty hotel.”
The band ended up going to check out an abandoned train in the ice and snow, getting in a bit of trouble with a cop and getting their van stuck in the snow.
“After 30 minute we got it, we ended up screaming at each other, ‘hide the weed!’ but we got out of it,” Volkes said.
Beavers had a story involving Hunter Pease from fellow RVA group, The Shack Band.
“We played with Shack Band in West Virginia and I’m drunk and its 5 am so I go to bed on the floor… and I wake up in the morning, and I’m covered in piss,” Beavers said. “I’m like damn, I peed the bed again, I did it when I was little but it’s been awhile, but I look over and Hunter is laying next to me on the floor, he’d peed both of us somehow…”
Williams added he loves being in different places everyday on tour, but instead of a tale of a beautiful city, shared his own personal incident with pee…which was much better for the record.
“Our homie Carter Anderson {Save The Trash} used to tour with us all the time and hook up merch, he’s sweet, but this one time..he wasn’t so sweet,” said Williams. “We went to a McDonald’s before I passed out and I got a huge tea. I go to sleep. Carter’s a dip-spitter so he’s driving and I guess he decided to dip spit in my tea and on top of that, he peed in the tea so everyone’s in the studio and I wake up and I’m like, ‘fuck i want that tea’…big gulp…throwing up for three hours.”
All the boys cracked up at Williams’ incident adding their own little bits to the story trying to string the events of the night together piece by piece.
Hearing their tales of silliness, mishaps and down right debauchery were easily my favorite part of our chat. To see the three laughing together as each of them told their own stories and chiming in to pick up where the other left off showed just how close these individuals have become.
There’s this strong camaraderie and brotherhood with them that’s very seldom seen in a band that’s been together this long.
Beavers shared a similar sentiment.
“It’s crazy to find somebody to be a band with you anyway, but somebody who doesn’t mind sleeping on the floor, begging for a place to sleep and a bite to eat and not taking money even when you’re making it,” Beavers said.
The boys have proven they can stand the test of time and continue to push out great music with that same edge, fire and passion that’s fueled them from the beginning. Volkes said the band hopes to put out an album a year if not more.
“Its taken us way too long to put this album out and we’re not going to let that happen again,” he said. “The whole point of why we started playing music was to write music so I think that should be the focus.”
And with all their success, and managing to claw their way to the top beyond the local and regional scene sans label, the People’s Blues of Richmond won’t be getting off this wild ride anytime soon.
“We’re grateful for everything we have…it may not be next month we’re going to be in Germany, but we want the world,” Volkes said. “We want our show to be a 90 minute movie where you don’t want to get up and go to the bathroom, you get your beer before the show, and you’re just entranced with what’s going on. We want it to be a circus, we want people to be inspired by what we do.”
People’s Blues of Richmond will perform their new album, Quit or Die at their release party this Saturday, May 7th, at The Broadberry along with Rikki Shay and Dalton Dash. You can purchase Quit or Die at the show for $10 and the album will be available on iTunes June 10.
Oh, Beavers is “contractually obligated” to advocate “smoking Maverick cigarettes.” And FYI, the band digs cheap whiskey and Yoo-hoo to all the fans out there.
