I am wasted in a hot tub with Natural Child, the wonderfully wild, hilariously sleazy currently-five-piece-but-originally-three-piece Southern blues-rock outfit from Nashville, who just finished their first show with tourmates Black Lips.
I am wasted in a hot tub with Natural Child, the wonderfully wild, hilariously sleazy currently-five-piece-but-originally-three-piece Southern blues-rock outfit from Nashville, who just finished their first show with tourmates Black Lips.
The guys killed it, as they always do, playing straight up, no-bullshit rock & roll inspired by the Rolling Stones, Willie Nelson, and pretty much every great rock outfit in the 60s and 70s. Natural Child is a band born too late, and thank fucking god they were. With songs like “Firewater Liquor,” “Laid Paid and Strange,” “8 AM,” and “She Got A Mind,” these guys are rowdy, self-assured musicians who make some of the best rock rock & roll in the US right now.
Zack Martin (drums), Wes Taylor (bass), Benny Divine (keyboard), and I all sit on the ledge of a giant hot tub, while Seth Murray (guitar) flops around in the 104-degree water in his red briefs. The conversation begins with Luke Schneider (pedal steel) walking in to discover the water temperature, a number he finds despicably high.
“What the fuck! It should be, like, 99 degrees!”
“No way, man.”
“Turn it down, turn it down, man.”
“Do not turn it down. This is not too hot.”
“This is regular hot tub temperature.”
“Yeah, this is standard hot tub temp.”
Getting an intoxicated Natural Child member to honestly answer questions about band formation and their new record, Dancin’ With Wolves, proves damn near impossible. Everyone’s just too drunk and these dudes are just too irreverent, a fact unsurprising to anyone even slightly familiar with the band. Aside from being great musicians, these dudes are fucking funny, each member spouting off beer-through-the-nose-inducing one-liners every few minutes.
Active since 2009, Natural Child began as a trio consisting of Murray, Taylor, and Martin. They’ve recorded singles and EPs on Infinity Cat, Almost Ready, Jeffrey Drag, and Suicide Squeeze. Their first full length, released by Nashville label Infinity Cat, was packed with odes to booze, bud, and butts. They’ve since moved to Burger for their last three LPs.
For their newest record, Dancin’ [not Dances, they’re “not tryina’ get sued, here”] With Wolves, the guys brought fellow Nashvillian Schneider on to play pedal steel and New Orleans-native Divine to tickle the keys. When asked what prompted them to add two more bodies to the band, the guys say they had no choice. “[Benny and Luke] just kind of made their way in,” Taylor and Murray explain.
“Well, me and Wes had a tag team match,” says Murry.
It was called Russlemania. “It’s this backyard wrestling tournament that we have every year in Mobile, Alabama,” says Taylor.
“That’s where we met Ross and Dru,” Martin chimes in. Ross and Dru are Schneider and Divine, respectively.
“There was one move where he [a vague reference that could have been about anyone in the room, or not in the room] picked me up by my feet and made me flip twice and then I kicked people in the face,” says Taylor. “We got a lawsuit out of that… So we kind of came up with [the idea to add them to the band] there. After we won the tag team tournament at Russlemania, I said, ‘Hey, maybe we should play some music together.’”
“We tried to keep the name Dirty Dawgs,” says Divine, referring to their Russlemania team name.
“Spelled like D.I.R.T.Y D.A.W.G.S,” says Martin.
The guys insist on using D.I.R.T.Y D.A.W.G.S as an acronym, although none of them will explain what it stands for. “We can’t tell people that,” says Taylor.
Natural Child’s roots are rumored to have begun with Martin, Taylor, and Murray jamming without the intention of starting a band, but that’s apparently not true. Natural Child started with a dumpster and a glisten of kindness.
“2007, there was this man. They found him naked and beaten in a dumpster outside of a Burger King,” says Taylor.
“Yeah, they found me at the Burger King,” says Martin. “They named me BK because I had amnesia and I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t remember my social security number. And, so, Wes and I started jammin’ together. That’s really how it started… You guys found me and I found my new self and became the drummer of this band.”
Heartwarming shit right there. At this point, Murray throws his briefs – I think it was his briefs. Could have been a shirt, but I remember it as his briefs – against the wall, in the vein of an Italian mama testing her spaghetti for readiness.
“How’s your first night of tour going?”
“Dog, I’m in a hot tub,” says Martin.
“It’s actually our fourth night of tour, but our first night with Black Lips,” says Taylor. “So far we’ve been bowling, went to South of the Border, [are] chillin’ in a hot tub. Played a lot of arcade games, played a lot of skee ball. We’ve been eating for free!! Played a lot of basketball.”
The guys describe this particular tour as a vacation. “[The National] is about seven times the size of everywhere we’ve played in Richmond, so that’s kind of weird,” says Taylor. “And there’s a gigantic hot tub, so that’s pretty good right there. I love playin’ – fuck, what’s that place with the arcade games?”
“Strange Matter.”
“I love playin’ Strange Matter!”
Natural Child, a band of dudes known for their country lifestyle and “let’s get fucked up,” mentality have – erm – matured a bit over the years.
“Our first couple tours we were just Robotripping and we were just doing it all,” says Murray, who has retrieved his briefs from the wall.
“We were taking poppers, huffing gas,” says Taylor. “We would just do anything we could to get fucked up.”
In fact, the first time I met Natural Child was in 2011 when I lived in Harrisonburg. That night, the guys collectively chugged all of my friend’s NyQuil. “You know, I believe we did that,” says Taylor. “But I don’t remember it.”
These days, they still get fucked up; they just “do that slowly, and focus more on playing.”
Natural Child has certainly tightened up the screws over the years. Whereas their debut album, 1971, was more of a sloppy garage rock record, everything they’ve put out on Burger, including Dancin’ With Wolves, sounds more like the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed and Beggars Banquet. Or, as one of my friends so poignantly put it, CCR on a shit-ton of speed.
Dancin’ With Wolves was a record of firsts for Natural Child. Not only did the band expand from three to five members, but they also recorded the album under water.
“It’s actually not hard to rent a small submarine that’s the size of this hot tub,” said Taylor.
“What’s hard is hanging out in it for eight hours,” said Divine.
“Luke got really claustrophobic at one point and started screaming,” added Taylor.
“We ended up using it on the album,” Martin said.
“If you turn it up really loud in between track eight and track nine, you can hear Luke screaming. Thirty feet under water,” revealed Taylor.
Renegades, these guys.
Murray and Divine exit the hot tub. Turns out 104 degrees is a bit high; apparently 100 degrees is considered safe for a healthy adult. Everyone else quickly follows. As we dry off, conversation drifts back to Russlemania.
“RUSSLEMANIA SEVEN AUGUST 13th, MOBILE, ALABAMA,” shouts Taylor.
“Russlemaniiiaaaaaaaaa!!! Dru and Ross, Dirty Dawgs,” hollers Martin.
“Do y’all wanna start Russlemania early?” asks Taylor.
This article is taken from the Summer 2014 print edition of RVA Magazine, out now! Look for copies available for free at your favorite local Richmond businesses. To read a digital version of the full issue, click here.
