Grand Ole Party - "Nasty Habits"
Grand Ole Party’s debut album Humanimals (DH Records) takes a sweeping grab at American pop and theater music and hands it to a scrappy power trio with a drummer/vocalist named Kristin Gundred, who slams blown-out, dark-and-stormy-night vocals to tape like the howling love child of Vincent Price and Karen O. Guitarist John Paul Labno spoke with Performer about the process behind writing their song... “Nasty Habits.“
Q: In “Nasty Habits,” there’s a dark swing element that could be coming from all kinds of sources — Cab Calloway, Cabaret-style musicals, Kurt Weill, Danny Elfman, Tom Waits, Horton Heat — but you strip it all down and cover it in garage grime. What are some of the models you use for this stuff?
A: There is no real set style, mode, or intention to the way we write songs. They all just happen and the process for each can be rather unique. “Nasty Habits” may be more atypical than most in relation to the rest of Humanimals. Nothing in your guess-list made me cringe. In fact, I find Cabaret, Calloway, Elfman and Waits to be rather astute mood comparisons.
Q: How did the songwriting process go for this song?
A: I wrote the words in a bar across the street from an old residence, humming the melody along the way. When I got home, I wrote the basic guitar riff for the song. I brought the song, pretty complete, into practice and we jammed on the music and then added the words back in once we got the groove right.
Q: Did going into the studio bring about any changes in its structure?
A: The studio allowed us to add in the Rhodes piano that I feel opened up the chorus a bit, but other than that, no structural changes were made. Once again, this is not the way most of the songs on our record came together. Generally, the music came together first and the lyrics were written afterward.
Q: Do you ground lyrics in some autobiographical element or are they just really well-crafted genre exercises?
A: About the lyrics — sometimes autobiographical, sometimes fictional, sometimes allegorical ... telling the precise truth isn’t always the best way to get a point or a mood across, yet sometimes it is. Go figure.
Q: How democratic are things in the band?
A: We are a very democratic band. Every song has a lot of communal input which is why all writing credits go to “Grand Ole Party.” It would be impossible any other way. Even a song that one of us brings in with a cohesive vision will become an entirely new thing during its gestation period.
Hear “Nasty Habits” at the band’s website, www.myspace.com/grandoleparty |
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