Quick Hit Band Interview: The Dead Coats

The Dead Coats at Redwood Bar

Interview with the band (with Lormin Warner). Enjoy:

How would you describe your music? Genre-wise, I would describe it as experimental punk. We really love incorporating different genres into our songs and challenging ourselves to see what we can do next. Merging the old rock and roll with the new, bringing our own vibrant feel. Keeping our honest, genuine-selves into our music is important to us, in a world where being honest and genuine seems all too foreign. We always incorporate humor into our music live and in our albums. People have told us that our music, no matter the venue, brings a sensation that we are playing to them in their bedroom, exposing our souls for them so see.

You mentioned that the Redwood Bar was your last stop of your tour. Do you have a fun story from your tour? In San Diego, we played this cool place called, "The Che Cafe," where this guy who came to the show brought this giant loaf of bread. He got us all to sign the bread-loaf, and gave the bread a good life. He sent us pictures of the bread being tucked into bed and being read to. The bread had a good life.

We have a song called "Celebration Time," where we do quick-stops and our bassist, Joe, does funny snippets. At the Redwood Bar, Joe actually called his Mom during one of those snippets and told her that we were on Cash Cab. He told her that money was at stake and that he needed to know the person who invented Lego. Fortunately, his Mom thought it was hilarious when we explained later that we were never on Cash Cab, but instead we were on stage in Los Angeles playing a gig.

Own Q&A. How do you keep your live performances so interesting? We love new ideas and gimmicks. We all have these different versions of ourselves we will bring out; whether that be our drummer undressing into a complete fishnet-underwear set on stage, our singer bringing audience members onto the stage while throwing around a stage prop-head or covered in blood. Even hiding our drummer in a storage container and bringing him on stage secretly has been an option. Every show is completely different and we love to inspire and entertain our audiences while keeping our own sense of how to do that.

(Interview was first posted on CaliforniaRocker.

Redwood Bar: Vigil of War with Chump, The Great Sadness and The Dead Coats

I caught Vigil of War for the first time last year. I saw them twice in 2018, but the last time was way back in June. That meant over a year had gone by since I last saw the band. About a month ago, I ran into Alicia, lead singer, at The Satellite. She mentioned to me that she was playing the Redwood Bar. I looked up the date on the Redwood Bar's website and immediately entered it into my phone calendar.

This band brought their metal rock to the tiny Redwood Bar stage. I just love Alicia's vocals. At one point, those vocals snarl and at another you get a power vocal that ranks up there with the the best '80s metal bands' power ballads. My experience seeing them on the Sunset Strip is that this band loves to move, which was restricted by the small stage of the Redwood Bar. They did their best with their lead guitarist busting some knees on the wood stage.

The band has replaced one of their guitarists with another, Kiki Wong. I'm not sure when exactly this occurred, but obviously within the last year.

There were a number of photographers in the audience. All of us; however, were the old guard. I wonder when the young guard of photographers will discover this band.

Vigil of War

Opening the night was Chump. I caught perhaps half of their set. Their Instagram indicated that this was going to be their last set ever. If so, they killed it. Their bassist/lead singer sprawled himself across the floor, putting on some Dr Jekyll shifts to Mr Hyde like moves. Or maybe I should say he was going from Banner to The Hulk. What I did find interesting is how he played the bass for part of a song. He grabbed it by the neck and then tossed it in the air a few times, grabbing it by the neck again while making sure he shook those strings. 

Chump

The Great Sadness is a band I've come across a few times. They're a band that seems to play with many of the bands I follow. I've seen them do some art-type shows. Other times, I've seen them go with just some straight up desert psychedelic rock. On this specific night, they went with the desert psychedelic rock. As always, they had some devoted fans in the crowd. And I do believe they won some converts, as well.

The Great Sadness

The Dead Coats was closing out their west coast tour. This is a band from Austin, Texas. This band loved to tell the jokes and actually explain the idea behind each of their song titles. It was actually pretty cool. For example, they have a song called "Coke." They mentioned that every band has to have at least one song about cocaine even if they'd never used cocaine themselves. Yeah, as they mentioned, they were stand-up comedians. I couldn't help, but notice how excited their lead singer came across. There was a sparkle in her eye throughout the set. She was playing one of the smaller venues in Los Angeles, but she looked so thrilled by the fact she was playing the Redwood Bar.

The Dead Coats