From the Ashes

"We had like two pages of really bad band names: The Polish Trash Compactors, The Paper Plates, Eagle Eagle, Calling All Cars," says drummer Coady Willis, explaining how his new band, Dead Low Tide decided on their moniker. "We narrowed it down to like five different nautical names and then we narrowed it down to this one."
You may remember Coady from his old band, the rock 'n' roll explosion that was known as The Murder City Devils. After Murder City's demise, three of the Devils, Willis, guitarist Nate Manny and vocalist Spencer Moody teamed up with Mike Kunka, former bass player for Enemymine and Godheadsilo to play some music. Judging from "Barrel Vault" - the one song currently available to masses on deadontheweb.com - Dead Low Tide has fused well. The song is dynamic and rocking and will be on a seven inch on sale during their first tour.

Why don't you tell me a little bit about how the new band came together.
Before Murder City Devils went on our very last tour we knew the band was pretty much over. I had been trying to figure out what was gonna happen next. I ended up running into Mike Kunka, we were both at the same show. We'd known each other, we'd been on tour together, so we kind of knew each other, but not really. We just started talking about what was up and I told him what was going on with our band and he told me about his drummer was moving to New York, so his band was pretty much done and it was pretty much like, "Well, we need a bass player." We kind of exchanged numbers and I didn't talk to him again for another month, until we got back from that tour. We ended up hooking up and trying it out and it ended up working.

With him as the bass player, he's like a really, really unique bass player, I'd expect that to affect the style that the band's taking. Did you guys have a direction in mind, or did he come in and shape direction?
He plays bass in a really, like you said, unique way and it definitely affects the songs. Going into starting the new thing we had some ideas where, "We want to make it sound like this. We want it to sound like really heavy new wave. Or we want to make it sound like noisy whatever." But it kind of became its own thing like it always does. He had some ideas. We were going in one direction and Mike plays a certain way and we played around with it for awhile because it wasn't going in the direction we thought it was going to go and it wasn't going in the direction that he thought it was going to go, but it ended up being something different that we both liked. It is real different, but it is still rocking. It's not what we expected it to be, but I'm really proud of it, I think it's really awesome.

Yeah, I heard the MP3 that you guys have and it's really angular and still really rocking. It doesn't have that Murder City Devils retro feel, it's moved totally forward. Is that song a good example of what the rest of the stuff sounds like?
There's a couple of those that are really fast and rocking like that and there's a couple of slower ones, some prettier ones that are really sad, but it still sounds like the same instrumentation. Our whole goal the whole time is to try to make up a new kind of music or try to be a new kind of band not like anybody else - definitely not like our old bands. Just to try to write songs in a unique way and to try different stuff.

How does having less instruments than your last band affect the way you guys write songs?
It's been working out really great, actually. In our last band there was six people in it so you could kind of get away with being sloppy or not paying attention to what you're doing that much. That's definitely out the window here. Everybody's forced not only to pick a part and play it, but pitch in to the framework of the song so everybody has to pull their weight more. It's not just what you play, but sometimes it's what you don't play that's important, so we've all been forced to think about that like that a lot more. Our last band you could have a few drinks before you played, or have a few beers and it wasn't that big of a deal, but I think it's gonna go way different with this band. I think if I got drunk at all before we played it would be hopeless.

As far as a practical matter, is it nice to play with a smaller number of people just because it's easier to get together?
Yeah, it feels a lot better. It feels a lot more like a tighter group. I'm really excited to go on tour and not have eight people in the van at all times. I think everybody's looking forward to that. So far, we've all gotten along so well. I think it's just gonna be really, really fun. It's exciting too, 'cause we're getting ready to go on our first tour and we're never gonna have another first tour, so everybody's just ready to go. This has all happened so fast. We actually started playing in December and we just now have written our eighth song, so we're kind of doing this all on the fly. I would have rather been able to play a couple of shows and then get ready and go on tour, but it's all just happening so fast.

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