Night Beats @ SXSW 2016 (Photo: Paul Bachmann for Live4ever Media)
Who are your influences?
Lee Blackwell: “I didn’t grow up in a musical family. I grew up with a brother that messed around with the sitar. I’m half-Indian so there’s a lot of Indian classical music like Ravi Shankar stuff. I heard that for first time when I was ten and saw him when I was eleven. I’ve been surrounded by that kind of music, and my brother played with The Doors when I was around 9 or so, and then I just got obsessed with the blues. Being a child of the 90’s, being around the Napster age, and being able to download music, to steal a little bit, the beautiful part about that is I got to all of The Velvet Underground, Jesus and Mary Chain, stuff like that at a pretty early age.”
Describe your sound.
“The band Night Beats is based off a Sam Cooke record called ‘Night Beat’, so we have underlyings of R&B. We’ve been classified as garage rock, punk rock, psychedelic, but we play rock n’ roll music with soul. At the end of the day we play soul music.”
What are you trying to accomplish with your music?
“You never really know what you really want to accomplish because at the end of the day you know you want to say something, and speak your mind, and not have people listen to a certain extent, but if they don’t really listen it’s not going to change what you say. If anything, if you can make someone feel good about themselves, and that it’s okay to be yourself, and speak your mind, and to be real, then maybe that’s the goal. At the same time, goals change. For instance, if you just want to play coffee shops and small venues to two or three people a night that’s one thing, but you can say the same thing.”
Do you use music to express your political opinions?
I (Lee) personally will never shy away from speaking my opinion. If there’s a problem and I have a way to bring light to that then I’m going to do it. Thing is, a lot of people these days if they first heard of us with this new record they may say, “you’re becoming really political”, but no, because our first single was called ‘H-Bomb’, and in it I basically call out a lot of politicians. On ‘Puppet On a String’ I talk about the Iraq War, and how there’s a consciousness that gets thrown away sometimes when you have people that are in power and they’re corrupting their authority. I have no problem saying that because I don’t think there’s much repercussion, if there is then I’ll willingly take it. We live in a pretty draconian era right now, so it’s a little weary, but its nothing I’m not afraid to say.”
What was it like working with Robert Been from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club?
James Traeger: “Playing with him on bass is like playing with a whole other bass player. He has such a unique feel, you kind of just mould into and develop something new. He’s just an overall good presence. He has such a commitment to making the best overall sound and not trying to make it his sound. It was fantastic working with someone who thinks and works that way.”
Live4ever:
The hazy rain of Seattle has inspired and sprouted a long, rich musical history; usually synonymous with the grunge and emo scenes, and gentler bands such as The Postal Service and Fleet Foxes, the grayish seaport welcomes, embraces and cultivates a certain ‘alternative’ vibe. However, it’s the misty, garage soul-psychedelia of Night Beats which has been a hometown favorite since their inception in 2009.
‘No Cops’, the first single off their spectacular third album ‘Who Sold My Generation’, blends the fuzz of chamber garage rock with the classic chugging soul of twelve-bar-blues. Meanwhile, Lee Blackwell subtly narrates and rages a revolution against a tense, systematically violent police system and climate in America. A rumbling rhythm roots the track as guitar freak outs shoot off between verses, eventually leading Blackwell for the head-shot before firing off one last time in a melodically hypnotizing guitar frenzied outro.
Plenty of bands provide the ‘rock’ without the ‘roll’, however Night Beats provide a heavy dose of both, all while being rooted in a vintage soul tradition of expressing one’s anger and sadness through the blues.
