To keep things fresh and exciting, sometimes it’s good for a band to switch things up. It doesn’t have to be a major overhaul, but a slight shift in the songwriting and recording process can give life to new ideas and vibrant sounds. Oxford, Mississippi garage punks Bass Drum Of Death did this with their fifth album, Say I Won’t, out January 27 via Fat Possum Records.
Rather than frontman John Barrett functioning as a one-man band for the project, he employed a couple other musicians to help with fleshing out the songs. This fueled the creation of a kick ass rock ‘n’ roll record with tracks such as “Head Change,” “Keys To The City,” “Wait,” and “White Vine” being the highlights.
Barrett worked on the upcoming album with his brother Jim on guitar and Ian Kirkpatrick on drums, which made for a more collaborative experience. After recording a few rough cuts, they went into Audio Eagle Studios in Nashville with The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney where their thoughts and ideas started to bloom.
“Basically, Jim and I had been working on these songs for probably about a year,” he says about the making of Say I Won’t. “We were demoing them over and over until we got them to where we liked it to be. Before we went up to record, we brought Ian in to get him familiar with the songs and then once we got into the studio ideas started flying around. We had the bones of what we already wanted to do kind of set up before we got there. That was the first time before I went into a record with people who’ve been involved basically from the start.”
“It was a lot more collaborative, and it was definitely a good thing,” Barrett adds. “That’s how I keep it moving forward.”
Both Barrett and Carney have a few mutual friends and they both would run into each other fairly often while living in New York City. It wasn’t until a failed proposal of a game of golf via Barrett that Carney jumped on board as the producer.
“We had some mutual friends, and we ran into each other at bars a few times,” He explains about how they got connected. “We eventually discovered that we were both into playing golf, so I would always needle him about that. I was trying to get him to play golf in Nashville one time, but he wasn’t able to do it, and I told him how I was going to do the old-school business thing to convince him to produce my record on the golf course. He told me that I could just ask him; we didn’t have to play golf for that, so that’s how that all came about, and honestly it was a blast. He’s super fun to work with.”
“Everything was very quick as well,” Barrett adds. “If something wasn’t working we’d move on or wouldn’t dwell on it. That was a really great way to work because sometimes, if you’re doing things over and over, it can get monotonous, but we were basically able to move through everything pretty quickly and kept it moving pretty well. It was a lot of fun, and I would do it again in a heartbeat, for sure.”
In terms of what he wants people to take from the upcoming album, Barrett doesn’t have anything specific in mind other than to have them recognize his forward-thinking nature as a musician. He wants that to come across as they listen while also having them appreciating it.
“My idea for this record and what I wanted to happen was to have our signature sound on it while having it be a bit more updated and a little bit clearer all the way around,” He mentions. “Essentially, the way the songs are structured and that whole process hasn’t changed. The only thing that’s changed is that now I’m doing it in a studio, so that’s one of the things I hope people would appreciate and take away from it but that’s pretty much it. I’m trying to keep moving forward, and I never want to make the same type of record twice.”
Photo courtesy of Bass Drum of Death
