If you are like me, you hate it when people say rock and roll is dead. It’s a genre that is far from being dead and it’s more diverse than it ever has been. The Baltimore, Maryland based rock band Charm City Devils are believers in rock and roll. They live it, breathe it and bleed it; they are real musicians who play their own instruments and write real songs. There may be many in the industry who still continue to say that rock is dead, but these guys beg to differ and they are willing to prove you wrong.
The band, consisting of lead vocalist John Allen, guitarists Vic Karrera and Nick Kay, bassist Anthony Arambula, and drummer Jason Heiser, was formed back in 2007. It wasn’t long before their appealing rock and roll compositions started to catch on. Those songs, combined with a killer live show started a buzz that grew very quickly. Their album Sins caught on in a major way in 2012, fueled by an interesting interpretation of a folk song written way back in 1913. Lead singer and founder John Allen recently sat down with us to talk about these charmers and the huge year that 2012 was for them.
Hey John, how’s it going today? What are you up to?
Hey man! I’ve got some time off so I am sitting down to work on some new stuff. I’m trying to use it wisely, you know?
New material, that’s good to tease the fans with (laughs).
Speaking of fans, you guys really gained quite a few new ones in 2012. I don’t know if you noticed it or not, but your album Sins popped up on quite a few Best Albums of 2012 lists, including lists from fellow musicians.
Oh really? I didn’t know that; that’s pretty cool. 2012 was such a great year for us. We recorded Sins back around August and September of 2011 and you never really know how things are going to turn out. We gave the first single to a local station here in Baltimore, 98 Rock, and for a couple of weeks it didn’t seem like anything was really happening for us. I guess we all just expected it to immediately take off for us, but in a couple of weeks it did just that. All of a sudden, all of these other radio stations out West picked it up and it really took off. We were really fortunate that the song really struck a chord with a lot of people. We ended up spending quite a lot of time touring because of it, so it was a really busy year for us. We logged more miles in 2012 than we ever had and that even includes when we were out with Mötley Crüe and Godsmack on the Cruefest 2 tour.
Let’s talk a little bit about that single. I remember the first time that I read about you guys, that you did a cover of “Man of Constant Sorrow”, which most people associate with the movie Oh Brother, Where Art Though. I thought that was, for lack of better words, a bizarre song to cover, mainly because of the connection to the movie. I was totally blown away when I heard your version of it. When you guys were going into the studio, did you know you were sitting on something pretty special in doing that song?
I think so. I didn’t have any hesitations going into it, but if I had known going into it what I found out later, things may have been a little different. I found out later that, besides in that movie, a ton of artists had already covered that song. It goes back to the early 1900s and everyone from Bob Dylan to Rod Stewart had done a version of it. So, if I had known going into it that all these great artists had already covered it, I probably would been a little hesitant to tackle it. I guess ignorance truly is bliss (laughs). We decided to go for it and we really didn’t just do a straight up cover of it; we really dismantled it and reconstructed the song with the help of our producer Skidd Mills. He had a big impact with giving it that eerie kind of vibe that the track has.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXL5iBGYp8g]
What a great way to come blasting out of the starting gate with a single. You guys also have had a lot of success with your single “Unstoppable.”
Yeah, there have been quite a few football teams have been using it this season in their stadiums during their games.
I even heard it on WWE programming a few times. Didn’t they use it for a pay per view of theirs? Did your management pitch it to them or did they approach you guys about using it?
I actually reached out to them around January of last year and told him that we had a song or two that would work out great for them. A couple of months later he got back in contact with me and told me that he might have something available for me. He said that some people there wanted to use Shinedown and I told him that I understood. I mean, it’s Shinedown; you can’t go wrong with that. I figured we weren’t going to get a call back about using our song, but a couple of months later we were out on tour and our song started blowing up. We were getting all these texts from fans mentioning that they were watching wrestling and that they heard our song in the background when they were talking about the pay per view special. That’s really how we found out about it; it was through our fans that we discovered they were using our song. They got in touch with us and told us that they were using our song for the theme song of the pay per view and we were like, “Hell yeah!”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=8zrIucWCYR0]
Were any of you fans of wrestling growing up or before this ended up happening?
Sadly, no, but I think maybe our drummer was growing up. I’ve become a huge NFL football fan over the last ten years. Our bass player and guitar player are brothers and they grew up in a suburb of DC and they are die-hard Redskin fans whose heart was broken in that game against Seattle. RG3 really excited him and for great reason. That kid is really exciting to watch even if you’re not a Redskins fan. I’m a Ravens fan myself.
Sorry about that football segway; let’s get back to the music and talk about how you guys signed with Eleven Seven Records and from what I have heard, it came as a big surprise.
The music director for our local radio station 98 Rock came out to one of our shows and told us that he really dug one of our songs and that he told us that he was going to add it to the playlist. Stuff like that usually doesn’t happen, so I thought he was just talking like people do at parties and stuff, but he really did add it. A couple of weeks later, he called me up and told me that the song was doing really well and that fired me up. I started sending out emails to a bunch of people in the industry that I knew from the past and I even sent blind emails out to people that I really didn’t know. The people I knew never responded, but the blind email to Eleven Seven got a response and I got a phone call the next day. In my experience, that kind of stuff never really happens, but my phone rang and it was them. They asked me a bunch of questions and they told me that they wanted me to come up and meet their CEO. So, I went up for the meeting and at the end their CEO, Allen Kovac, looked at me and said, “let’s do this!”
You’re kidding me! That’s crazy! I bet you thought someone was pulling your leg or that you were being punked.
I know, right! Again, that kind of stuff never happens to me. I mean, they had never even seen the band live, but they wanted us. It was just so surreal! We sign and then we immediately go out on the road with Mötley Crüe on Cruefest. I kept waiting to wake up from this dream; life is just really strange how it plays out sometimes, but a good kind of strange.
I read something about after Cruefest that you found out you had skin cancer. How scary is that? Are you ok now?
Yeah, knock on wood, I’m doing ok. The whole thing was pretty mind-blowing, to say the least. We had finished up with Cruefest and had been off the road for about a month and I was at home and noticed something on the side of my nose. It’s really strange because I was in my studio working on an idea and the lyric line in it was “I’m never gonna die, I’m never gonna die” and my phone rang. It was the doctor and he told me that I was going to have to call a surgeon and tell them that I had skin cancer. I had to have it cut out and I had to have a topical chemo cream put on my face and that was painful for about a month. I looked like Freddie Krueger and my skin was all red and peeling off; I was pretty scary looking.
Wow, that’s some pretty scary stuff. I’m glad that you’re doing ok now. Now, were you affected by it in any way when you went back out on the road?
It just kept us off the road for a few months, but that’s about it. We jumped right back out on the road as soon as I was cleared and we opened for Bon Jovi and Fuel at Hershey Stadium in May of 2010. We got back on the horse pretty quickly as far as going back out and playing live.
Since we’re talking about health issues, it has to be tough on a lead singer when your voice is your tool. The guitarist can plug in and tune up his guitar until it sounds right, but if the singer is sick, it’s a totally different story. Your voice is pretty dynamic and powerful. Are there any precautions that you take or anything that you do to keep it in shape?
That’s a tough thing now because thanks to social media and YouTube, if I have an off night, it’s out there for everyone to see because everyone has a cell phone. The biggest thing that I deal with is lack of sleep and that will kill you – as well as talking a lot, and I do both of those. I’ve been really lucky on the road because everyone around me was getting sick and I stayed well up until the end of December. I have problems in the spring with allergies, so I have to remember to take my meds prior to all of that happening. You try to warm your voice up a little bit before you go out because it is a muscle. There’s also a tea that I drink that seems to help me a little bit. I know that probably sounds like an uncool answer, and definitely not a rock and roll answer. Have you ever seen that movie Rockstar? They asked him about his voice and he started to say that his choir teacher always told him to warm up. The guitar player grabs the mike and says that he eats a lot of pussy (laughs). So, I know it’s an uncool answer, but being the singer, you have to take care of yourself. You have to make sure you get plenty of rest and you can’t go out there partying like crazy. Fortunate for us, we have a crazy drummer who’s the wild, partier, drinker guy in the band.
It’s great that he will pick up your slack for you! John, I think our time is done here and I will let you get back to making more music. In closing, is there anything that you would like to say?
We’d love for the fans to hit us up on Facebook and we’ll answer back and go to YouTube and check out our videos. There’s a ton of great stuff on there that people have shot. We love to play live and when we’re not out touring, please write to us because we love to write back.
Check out the Charm City Devils on the links provided above, or below:
www.facebook.com/charmcitydevils
https://twitter.com/CharmCityDevils
https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/charm-city-devils/id303282696
