Death Valley Girls – ‘Music, it’s not a fucking hobby’


Death Valley Girls

Death Valley Girls @ SXSW 2015 (photo) Paul Bachmann for Live4ever




For some bands music is an imperative, an act of urgency. It’s guttural, primal. Not just in their sound, but in their actions and instincts. And in the true Garage Rock spirit that so infused bands like The Stooges, the Death Valley Girls are all about actions right down to their most base instincts.

Meeting them for the first time at our Ei8htball Media Lounge at SXSW, they are genial, jovial and welcoming. Shooting the breeze easily about whatever comes to mind. When not talking about the music, it’s hard to imagine just where such a primordial soup of a sound could come from.

“I don’t really know what the rules are. Just don’t fall. And if you do, then you have to leave as fast as you can, and then some other guy goes.”

What sounds like their musical ethos, summed up to perfection, actually has nothing to do with music at all. But is prescience is not lost. It almost seems as if the band somehow see something of themselves in the skateboarders they have just been watching, and are excitedly telling us about. Even if they don’t realise it themselves. Kindred spirits. And this is a band searching for like minds.

Much of the interview centres around their love for other bands, they talk with utter passion and excitement about bands they have worked with (and consider friends). Their generosity of spirit, and genuine passion for these artists is compelling and infectious. Other bands would not miss an opportunity like this to self publicise, but for the Death Valley Girls when asked about music, they can’t help do anything except be honest.

It’s this honesty throughout the interview that cannot be escaped. Even when asked questions they would rather not answer their simple honesty in not answering says more than many bands do in entire interviews.

“I don’t want to be honest about this question…”

Is a wonderfully unexpected answer to the seemingly simple what if proposition of “if you could change any about the music industry, what would it be?”

As throughout our meeting, it’s playful, and you know there’s more to come, but the simplicity of this response’s initial punch is brilliant. It’s salacious and indecent, but thoroughly enticing. This is the genius of everything the Death Valley Girls do. As with their music, like on recent single “Electric High”, they drive straight through you, right to where the excitement is.



“I think it’s bullshit that the only way you can make money is selling songs. That’s a fact. If you try make money any other way, you won’t.”

For any young band this realisation must be a daunting one. It’s not a forgiving industry, so why keep going?

“I like the idea of writing songs and selling them or whatever, but I don’t think it’s fair that we have a job that we don’t get paid for. And I have no choice but to do this job.”

But surely we all have a choice?

“We can’t do anything else, we have to play music. I don’t know why. It’s not an emotion, I physically have to do it.”

Again this notion, that for the Death Valley Girls, although they talk about it being a job, there is a feeling it is so much more. Like a calling or higher purpose, all their language is suggestive, they couldn’t do anything else, even if they wanted to.

“Treat it like a job, not a hobby. It’s not a fucking hobby.”

And it really is not a fucking hobby. They are working as hard as any band out there. Touring constantly and releasing single after single. Coming straight to SXSW from a tour with their favourite band of the moment, Wand. And leaving SXSW to release and single and go almost straight back on the road with Australian duo Palmer Gooch. It seems like an old fashioned approach to making music, have they not heard of the internet? Some bands these days have found it quite useful.

“A lot of people are focused entirely on their internet presence … but when we started bands before, you just toured forever. You didn’t make any money, maybe you broke even. Now it’s like it’s better to go on tour with a bit bigger band, and then cheat a little bit, because they use their fans.”

So why not cheat a little bit?

“Even if you get all this hype on the internet, it won’t really matter if people then come and see you, and they are just like ‘uh, whatever’, and it doesn’t impress them.”

And this is the crux of the matter. If you truly believe in music, like the Death Valley Girls so clearly and expressively do, then everything has to be about the music. Hype is, well in all honesty just hype. But music is so much more. Great music is more powerful than any amount of hype could ever be. And it’s seems like they know this.

So that’s a no to the internet then?

“We have Facebook and all that, because it is a good way to let people know we’re gonna be in your town. And we have fun with it, we’re not just hyping the crap out of it.”

For the Death Valley Girls, the internet is not a magic success machine, it’s a tool. It’s something to assist them, it is something that allows them to focus more on what is important.

“We like making flyers and posters, but are too lazy to actually go and pass them out, so the internet is easier for us.”

So, now they are here at SXSW, are they excited about playing?

“It’s all so new playing together, that every show is exciting … every show is rad, just seeing how you fly into it, and then we get to play together. And we get to sing with our friends.”

And they are not kidding about new. The bands current lineup seems to have only been finally cemented during our conversation with them.

“Larry and I started playing together, and we would always go and see Jessie’s other band. They had a residency at this place and we fell in love, that was a while ago. Then we found the ‘Kid’. And Bobby. And, then we forced Jessie to join us. That’s pretty much the story.”

It sounds fluid, because it was fluid. This isn’t a planned machine, there were no adverts or meetings or discussions. It’s wandering souls coming together.

“It’s been all these weird occurrences. I’d see her around L.A., and then she’d just be like: ‘You’re cute, I want you in my band.’ And I was like, ‘Oh! Okay? I’ll come see your band.’ And I saw them and they were great.”

And coming together over shared passions. The music they make has a distinct lineage:

“We all love MC5. We all love Stooges. Velvet Underground. Black Sabbath. Roky Erickson.”

And they are all their on tracks like “Shadow” or “No Reason”. They have MC5’s fire, The Stooges sleaze, the Velvets’ wit, Roky Ericsson’s irreverence, and Black Sabbath’s well Black Sabbathyness. Their rhythms are driving and tortuous, with wonderfully eerie 50’s b-movie vocals.

It all sounds so natural, like it just happened. But this kind of sound takes more than just passion, you have to put in the hours. Like The Rolling Stones, you have to be extremely tight as a band to sound this loose.

“You put the thing in the factory and you get the output. You’d be amazed. We put in a mountain and get out a pebble, but we have no choice.”

Although they may have no choice, they do have the fire and ambition to drive their destiny to it’s very limits. They are a band who’s dreams know no limits. Not because of the size of their dreams, but because they are yet to dream them. They are still so in the moment of the music they create and the time they spend together, that planning is something you do when you’re not making music and they are still making music.

Even with the sarcasm they intend, you can’t help but almost believe them when they say: “there are other bands in the world?” with startled incredulity. There may be other bands, even in the Death Valley Girls world, but they just part of the thread.

“You always have to rock and roll. It’s a spirit, it lives on. It’s a thread. There’s no envelope to push with rock and roll, it’s been done and now just is what it is. And either you are it, or you aren’t. But it’s still fighting and in there, and a rock and roll band can still be as mind blowing an experience as it was years ago.”

And they are not wrong, as they are the ones blowing minds. They have the songs, they have the experience, the rest is down to you.

“You either come see us now, or come see us later. But come see us now.”

Dylan Llewellyn-Nunes


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