The Privates

By Matthew Beale

Photo by Jonathon Kingsbury

The Privates are a local indie pop-rock band from Nashville. No, wait, they’re a side project for a bunch of high-profile Nashville success stories. No, no, they’re a group that just released both their own and the label’s first full-length album on Mean Buzz Records.

Getting a grip on exactly what The Privates are up to isn’t easy. In fact, just gathering all of the members in the same room at the same time might be an ambitious goal. Drummer Rollum Hass plays drums for The Features, who were released from their relationship with Universal just last year. Bassist Keith Lowen performs with De Novo Dahl, and keyboardist Ryan Norris brings in his experience from playing with Hands Off Cuba, Lone Official and Lambchop. Dave Paulson writes and plays guitar for the group and recently finished touring and recording with The Pink Spiders. It doesn’t sound like a lineup with the time to form into a band, let alone put together an album, but The Privates have held themselves together with a string of releases and a consistent base of rowdy fans.

“I decided, ‘Who are the guys that you would love to have in your dream band — not only that are good, but I get along with?’ So, I asked all of them, and they all wanted to do it. Pretty simple,” explains Paulson. Of course, things were a little different when the offer was made in 2003: Paulson and Norris were in a band named Character, and Lowen was playing with Lifeboy. Hass had already been with The Features for five years, but none of that seemed to matter as Paulson started writing material and the band rehearsed. Before the end of the year, a self-titled album was pulled together, more simply to document songs than anything else.

The group’s third record, titled Barricades, was released last December, and its creation over the summer of 2006 had to account for a variety of touring schedules and priorities. Placing a lot of trust in Lake Fever Productions and engineer Jason Bullock, Paulson would create a bed of synth and guitar parts for his songs. In turn, the band’s other three members would show up when they could find the time and lay their parts over; even Hass had to lay drums over a click track for some songs. Paulson would return to the studio after touring himself to learn what his song structure had transformed into. “I never knew what they were going to do,” he explains, “but I could always trust them.”

Strangely, The Privates are a band that seems to play out less and less as they get more serious. In the spring of 2005, the EP Louder Than Lightning was released with a different drummer, and the band played a flurry of unusually close-together shows. That summer, Paulson left to tour with The Pink Spiders, and Norris started to play with Lambchop. When they all returned, it was painfully clear they weren’t going to have the time to be touring together. The drummer from Louder Than Lightning had lost interest by that point, and so Paulson had to reconsider who The Privates were. “I was gonna tour with The Pink Spiders, so I said ‘Ok, well, if our schedules are gonna be this sporadic, why not keep it the core guys that were always there?’ And since then, we’ve decided that’s kind of what it’s going to be,” so Rollum Hass was pulled back into the fold for the tracking of Barricades. Not having enough time to tour with The Privates is something Paulson credits for making a new album in the first place. “We were all gonna be very busy, and I said ‘Well, when can we get together? Let’s just focus on writing and making an album.’ Because of everyone’s different schedules, we decided it was going to be more of a recording thing for a while.”

That focus on writing was obviously spearheaded by Paulson and, although some of the songs on their new album are indicative of an older, more scattered and spastic style, there is also new material written while Paulson was with The Pink Spiders on the road. “Our set that we would do every day was all fast stuff all the time, so when I got to play my guitar by myself, I just wasn’t in the mood and I’d try other things,” notes Paulson. Despite calming down a bit, Paulson’s songwriting in Barricades is still chock full of high-speed pop (surely helped by Rollum Hass’ relentlessly attacked drums), only taking a breather on two or three tracks out of 10. It also, possibly for the first time, gave Paulson something to think about while writing: “Lyrically the last couple albums were just much more vague; these songs were more in the moment. I think being out there kind of does that to you; you see a lot first hand. You experience a lot every day. And that’s kind of what The Pink Spiders, what Matt [Friction] does — write about what’s happening around him.”

“For right now, we’re just all home for once and we finally finished a record and we’re really excited to put it out,” says Paulson. The Pink Spiders’ Matt Friction started Mean Buzz Records just in time to offer releasing The Privates’ album, and the band took him up on it for a December release. They had already decided Barricades wouldn’t be self-released, so the timing was right. As for Paulson’s touring relationship with the Pink Spiders guitarist? “I think after a while, not having an outlet and not singing and not performing — after such a long time — that’s kind of your validation, that’s your sense of purpose, that’s your identity in a way, and I just felt like I didn’t have that at a point. I missed it a lot.”

Paulson said a fond farewell to The Pink Spiders and a hectic touring schedule last year, which means the door for The Privates is slowly swinging open again. At least, it’ll be open until someone rolls out of Nashville again.

www.theprivates.net