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Interview with Dead Confederate, by Sarah Vasquez.
During this past SXSW, Dead Confederate's singer/guitarist Hardy Morris and bassist Brantley Senn chatted with me about Austin, TX and some of their experiences here and about the upcoming album "Sugar" which will be released on August 24th.
So SXSW. It's the last day. Well the official last day.
Brantely: Yeah. Everybody's worn out, but we're doing less shows this year which is kind of nice.
How many shows did you do last year?
Brantely: 12?
Hardy: Something crazy. A bunch.
So 12?
Brantley: Maybe last year was like eight to ten but the year before was like 10 to 12.
Hardy: Yeah, this year we just did four. Just took it easy. We did an actual showcase and then the other things have all been parties that are affiliated with friends and just stuff that we know is going to be fun. We're doing it with our friends instead of before it's like we'll play anywhere. That way, it's a little more tight knit. It's cool.
Have you seen anybody awesome?
Hardy: I thought Lucero was pretty great yesterday.
Brantley: Yeah, they were fun.
Hardy: With the horn section and everything.
Brantley: Yeah that was cool. Who else did we see that was...
Hardy: Those Darlin's were good.
Brantley: Trying to remember. Twin Tigers. They were great. We saw them last night. Their official showcase was awesome.
Hardy: It was. They're about to play right in here again.
So you've played in Austin a lot, I assume.
Brantley: Yeah, we have. Well we recorded our first album out here. So we spent a good month out here and we played a Super Bowl party.
Hardy: Was that Club Deville?
Brantley: Club Deville.
Hardy: We're friends with a lot of bands out here. We've done a record out here. We've done SXSW a few times intermittently. We did an after party for Austin City Limits one year. We've happened to spend a lot of time in Austin which has been lucky but yeah, it's good. Second home.
How would you compare the music scene in Austin to your hometown's music scene?
Brantley: Just a little bigger. It's a lot similar.
Hardy: It's a bigger city, yeah.
Brantley: Just a bigger city. Austin to me is like a mix of Atlanta and Athens because Athens is really small. You can walk from one end of downtown to the other. It's like five minutes.
Hardy: Three blocks. About six blocks. And it's tiny.
Brantley: And it's crammed with a lot more musicians. And Austin is too but it's just much more bigger so it's real similar.
What is the vibe of the music genres?
Hardy: In Athens?
Yeah.
Hardy: It's all over the place.
Brantley: You go to that party that's going to happen there and it's all Athens bands. And you will not hear two bands that sound alike. I guarantee you.
Brantley: It's really incestual. There's metal bands. There's like weird quirky indie bands and there's more like rock bands like us and The Whigs and stuff.
Hardy: Everybody plays shows together. You kind of have to because there's not enough metal bands to have like a metal night. And not enough tweet pop bands to have a tweet pop... It's like well there's gonna be a hip hop band with a metal band and everybody's all friends. It's really small. So it's just like anything goes and everybody's appreciated by everybody else which is cool. It doesn't get all sectioned off.
Yeah. That's different about Austin. We do have that portion of...
Hardy: ...Sectioned off. Yeah, that doesn't happen because it's so small that if you did, you'd be all alone. It'll be like "Uh, I'm a metal band. I'm gonna hang out with nobody." You'll be like "Yep. You hang out with no one."
So what's coming up for you?
Brantley: New record's coming out.
Hardy: Over the summer.
Brantley: We'll release Sugar over the summer. We're taking some time off in April just to get our head straight before we tour our asses off. Once the record drops, it'll be see ya for awhile.
Hardy: Pretty busy.
How would you compare this new album to the last one you released?
Brantley: It's a lot different. It's got a lot more variety, I think. I don't know, it's kind of weird because I didn't know where we were gonna go with it until we really got in there and started working on it because we had all these demos done and they're all really odd and different. It goes in the direction of it's got our heaviest most insane song we've ever done and recorded and then it's got easily the happiest poppy thing we've ever recorded. So it's goes in both directions away from the Wrecking Ball. It's totally different than the Wreaking Ball, but there's some stuff that's...
Hardy: There's moments like the last record but there's moments that are very unlike the last record.
Like the songs you performed today, was that like the new songs that are going to be on the new record?
Hardy: There was a mix of but yeah, most of them were new stuff.
Brantley: The last song wasn't new. That was old.
Yeah, I could tell.
Brantley: We've been playing that old song.
Hardy: I think that was the only old song we played.
Brantley: I think we're a lot happy with our new stuff.
Yeah, because it sounded more rock. I've heard the album like millions of times so I'm a huge fan. So I agree the newer stuff is definitely a lot more rocking.
Hardy: Did you like it?
Oh yeah, definitely.
Hardy: Ok cool.
Brantley: The songs are definitely a lot shorter by like half too and all the new songs are like three minutes long. Our old songs were like six minutes on average. So it's nice because we can fit a tons more songs in the set now. So it's a lot more fun for us. It doesn't drag out as much. We can mix it up.
All right, so what else do you wanna add that people need to know about?
Hardy: Just watch for the record over the summer.
Brantley: Definitely. Looking forward to releasing it.
Hardy: Buy it. Don't break the law. Go to your local record store and help everybody out.
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