“These boys make waves of savage punk energy coupled with über chillness like you’ve never heard”, says the official press release and this seems extremely well said. “Drunk Snake” unveils a dirty nature of these suspicious river boys and shows what they are capable of. Watch it, check out their new record and enjoy our interview below!
DIRT NAP‘s eight track fuzzy garage rockish EP was released earlier this month via Rough Beast Records.
Hey guys! Thanks a lot for being here. What’s up? How are you?
ALEX: I’m doing pretty good. Feeling dangerous
RAYMOND: I’m doing equally as good as Alex.. I’m just more naked than Alex.
CALVIN: …
Ok, so the new, wicked video is here! Where did you get this crazy idea from? Does the band create video concepts as a collaborative whole, or is it a singular process for
just a one of you or someone from outside the band?
CALVIN: Our free time usually consist of sitting around burning up slugs and thinking of ridiculous things, so I don’t exactly remember but it was an idea sparked after a few high life’s (beer) and kvsh (weed) daddy load blows.
RAYMOND: The idea was certainly a drunken/high idea. I was hanging out in my friend Joe’s backyard where he had buried this snake he killed. Looking at this snakes grave I was getting some very heavy sacrificial vibes. Then I was kind of thinking it would be cool to be plumped up with food then sacrificed to a serpent from the sky. After a couple more beers, and drunken text messages I think I talked the boys into the idea.
How about the technical stuff? Who has directed and produced it?
RAYMOND: The production was pretty much just a gang bang of an event. We ran around town and grabbed wieners and beans, then met up at our friend Garrett’s house. I kind of set the staging up for how the event would play out, then we all just got fucked up and thrown around by Garrett. He’s a very big boy.
CALVIN: We had our friends Andy Wolff and Drew Mittman help us out with filming and editing it. Then we asked our friends Garrett and Phoenix to be the courageous actors.
RAYMOND: We cooked like 420 wieners. Thats was a pretty technical aspect of production.
No doubt, haha! The track comes from your new release “Oh, Just a Few Boys Horsin’ Around”, which was recorded in… a basement. Drop us some more details on the process. Did the recording go smoothly?
ALEX: The recording went incredibly smoothy. We did everything live to tape, which was a real fun experience. Jason Kearbey who helps run Wee Rock Records engineered the whole thing, and he was mad down with all the stupid shit we threw at him— breaking bottles in his back yard stands as a memorable high/low point. Jonathan James of Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin fame mixed & mastered it, and really put a sensual touch on the whole thing— really brought the whole sexuality vibe of the album together, in a way i think all of the real boys ;) will appreciate.
How do you distribute this outing? Can you introduce Rough Beast Records for those not familiar?
RAYMOND: This is our second release via cassette tape. The album is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and it can be streamed from our Bandcamp. You can order the tapes from the Rough Beast website. The tapes are 5 bucks, so pretty cheap as fuck, and for that five dollars you also get a cool picture of our butts. As far as Rough Beast goes it’s a label run by our boy R.J. Jennings, based out of Springfield, MO. He started doing releases in 2013, and he’s got a bunch of rad artists pumping shit out lately. Be sure to check out our label fuck buddies Ghost Dance, Casey Jack, and Gigantic.
What do you think are the highlights on the new record? Any favourite aspects of finally having it?
CALVIN: I really like how we recorded it all live, in one day, in just a few takes. I think it sounds like how Dirt Nap really sounds. Besides that, just the variety of sounds, ya know chocolate covered ants is a little different than drunk snake and I like that.
RAYMOND: Along with what Calvin said, the variety of sounds is one of my favorite
things. Its always been a goal of mine when writing for Dirt Nap to really fuck with the medium of our sound. Mostly because I know I can always bring the boys a riff thats off the wall comparatively to our other songs and it will still work. I’m a very scatter brained person and artist, as I think Calvin is too. When it all comes together it’s a pretty big clusterfuck.
Are you still working with Drunk Dad Records?
ALEX: Drunk Dad Records only exists as a handful of buttons and lost tapes; memories & old flyers. In a sense, it’s an ideology. You’ll know it when you smell it. Nothing stays dead long, though.
Ok, so gig-wise, what’s up in Springfield? What are some of the characteristics of your local music scene?
ALEX: Springfield’s scene is remarkable. The younger hardcore scene is incredibly
talented, and all of their bands are blowing up. The older garage scene is as organized as it’s ever been— I dunno, it’s easy to generalize a scene into the sum of it’s cliques, but I feel like Springfield doesn’t really have that as an option. For the most part, everybody apart of the scene will go to any show. The occasional shady promoter aside, everybody really bands together to help make Springfield be the place it ought to be. For example, we haven’t had an all-ages venue in a few months, but the house shows this summer alone have made up for that tenfold. I just used ‘scene’ four times in one answer because i am a fucking dork and you should kill me.
Who are some of the new artists that you think have shown promise in your area?
RAYMOND: Personally, I’m really fucking stoked for this Gigantic release that is about
to happen. They are also on Rough Beast Records. These dudes fuck shit up. I went to house show they had one time and they we’re popping paint-filled balloons while they we’re playing. Madness. They’re all weird ass dudes, and thats a compliment.. I also can’t leave out Alex’s other band Grammer (if you’re into the whole tinkle emo music thing) Tinkle? Yeah, thats the right word.
How do you think a place like Springfield might affect the arts and an indie/punk musicians like yourselves?
ALEX: Springfield holds down it’s own filthy trash-hole sect of the bible belt in a way that can be hard to appreciate to many. The fantastic art community sits opposite to a poverty ridden meth crisis on a teeter-totter of deranged Christian fundamentals, and the whole place is really full of conflicting ideas. It makes it really interesting to live in, particularly in the context of the rapidly maturing music scene. I could give you some examples, but The Blood Oath wouldn’t exactly will that to be, now would She?
Ok, so before we say goodbye, let’s reveal more about DIRT NAP. How did you get into this kind of music?
RAYMOND: I don’t fucking know, maybe “Formative punk and bullshit” is a competent but horrible answer for that. Everyone in Dirt Nap is pretty different with taste in music, but I’m pretty sure we all like the idea of being a weird punk band, even if we’re a shitty excuse for one. We just wanted to play house shows, drink beer, fuck shit up, and probably piss some people off.
Are there any offbeat stories behind your forming? How was the band called in the first place and why did you decide to become DIRT NAP?
ALEX: Okay, so basically– well, not basically. Nothing about it is basic. We owed this sketchy promoter dude (we’ll call him Jeth) something like $14,000 from some dumb shit like property damage to his home, and hospital bills from this fire we started at a show. Anyway, the only way we really knew how to make money was, like, playing in shitty bands at shitty bars, so we just did what we had to and started Dirt Nap. Things got really fucked up when the dude starting like sending dudes after us (alex got held hostage in these Indian dude’s house one time, and Calvin’s been seriously fucked with by the dirty fucking cops that Jeth knows real well) and we had to scare the dude out of town. Dustin had this like… I dunno man, it must have been like 50 baby bats that lived in this cave behind his house. We snuck into the dudes loft and filled it w/ bats and we hid waiting for him to get back from whatever the fuck rich cokehead promoters do at 4am. Dude got home, we told him he was gonna take a dirt nap if he doesn’t get out of town, and that’s sorta how the name came up.
Oh my God… Where do you see DIRT NAP in 2 or 3 years?
RAYMOND: Dead, and in a ditch.
How’s sweet. Thanks a lot for the check in and once again, congratulations on your intriguing new video! Cheers!
RAYMOND: I’m going to take a swing at some Polish Slang to represent Dirt Nap…
Zamieniać się w słuch! Dirt nap are just some fiksum-dyrdum boys who like to jarac szlugi, obalac browara, and ćpać. Huj W Dupe Policji!
Ahahahaha, thanks Ray!
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