Mutiny After Midnight:
01 Make America Fuk Again
02 Excited Delirium
03 Don’t Let Go
04 Stay On That
05 Viridescent
06 Situation
07 Venus
08 Everyone Is Welcome
09 Ain’t That A Bitch
What’s Behind the “Mutiny After Midnight?”
In a word, kinship…
The majority of this band has been on the road together on and off and on again for over thirteen years. We have all grown sometimes together and sometimes apart. But we’ve never felt more “together” than right now. I couldn’t be happier.
This is the band I’ve dreamed about being in since middle school. Last year we did two complete laps around the U.S. and a tour of Western Europe. Between gigs this past September, we went into a brand new gorgeous studio in Nashville, Tennessee. Inspired heavily from endless hours on the bus watching old clips of the great fusion-funk band ‘Stuff, and revisiting off-the-beaten-track concept records like Marvin Gaye’s “In Our Lifetime”, where, in what looks like the end of the world, the artist’s response is, “Let’s dance and make love.”…we decided to make an album centered firmly on groove.
We started every day from scratch with a basic groove, I wrote the songs and lyrics in the moment on-the-spot, and everyone established their individual parts servicing the songs and not the individual ego.
You can break down the songs on this album into two categories-the dark state of the world and the bright state of love. Light lives in darkness just as darkness lives in light. I have come to find over time that it’s far easier to just embrace contradictions rather than attempting to resolve them.
Hence “Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds”…
The enjoyment we experienced in making this album of songs will be quite evident for the listener. But it’s a lot more than joy. You can call it a mutiny… an open rebellion.
In any case, despite the motivations behind it the mutiny in the studio turned into a party. To categorize Mutiny is tricky, but many will no doubt come with their glass ceilings to try. We believe the term American Music pretty much says it all. And for all the big ideas behind the ‘Mutiny,’ there’s a simple goal we as a band set out to achieve: to make a dance record.
So this protest, this mutiny is really more about the primary dance. The dance of all creation. To be clear it is a protest against oppression and suppression, and the only tried & tested true antidote to that is pure, unfiltered, unapologetic, relentless disco-hedonism
My voice is just one element in this band and at all times this band is far too good to ever be overshadowed by a vocalist. So I just want to say how grateful I am to be a part of this band of brilliant musicians-drummer and backing vocalist Miles Miller, lead guitarist Laur Joamets, bassist Kevin Black and keyboardist/saxist Robbie Crowell. Each is a star in his own right. And together, we reflect each other’s shine.
I’ve spent the greater part of the last few years trying to escape what we shall refer to as “the static”. Mostly through intense travels. One thing I will say based on observations about the French is their unmatched ability to threaten injustice with a good time. If they feel infringed upon by overreach in even the slightest form, French people will simply go on a country wide labor strike, shut down the subways and the economy, and completely fill the streets with music and people from all walks of life dancing together, sometimes butt ass naked on top of bus stops. It’s refreshing and beyond inspiring to witness this type of manifested unity in humanity. You could say this is where the idea was born.
