Interviewette by Allison Schnackenberg | June 2004
Darediablo are a band from New York City. Check your preconceptions at the door, please, as these three young warriors have nothing to do with the The New Wave Of The Old New Wave or indeed herky-jerky art punk. Darediablo are essentially your classic power trio, employing muscular drums (Chad Royce), bass riffs the size of ocean liners and soulful flourishes doled out on Fender Rhodes and Hammond (Matt Holford) and crushing guitar riffs (Jake Garcia). And no vocals. NO VOCALS! Talk to the hand! Don't need 'em!
Darediablo were signed to Southern by the sharp witted folk in our Chicago office, who released their album stateside last year. We were too stupid to to let Europe in on the fun. No, okay - we were waiting until the band could come over and slay you live. On tour. Which they will be doing, presently, in September of this very year.
And now, here, the band have addressed a few pressing matters for us. For this interview they channelled their personalities and answered our questions in one voice, presumably through a Fender twin cranked to 11.
DD : We'd all known each other for about 10 years, and we all liked loud rock. And we all came from the same place - we had seen each other play a million times, we'd had plenty of beer together, and we knew that we all had hearts of solid gold, so it was basically a risk-free, high-octane situation.
We also shared a desire to be part of something musically more adventurous than the bands we were seeing in New York at the time. There was a lot of geeky instrumental rock, and a lot of dumbed-down classic and garage rock, and we wanted to use the best of both scenes in our music.
DD : The first question is, which three albums should they own?
It's not that we sound like them. Not at all. But it's important to have the blueprints of rock and roll handy in case of emergency.
As for "what do they own?" Our audience is eclectic. Very tough to pin down. Most likely they all have at least one Led Zeppelin album, and probably some Radiohead. But you could also say that for most people under forty in the U.S.
DD : We don't think of it as "brave" -- we started out instrumental because none of us could sing! We compensated for that by shaping our music to keep the audience's attention at all times, and by the time we did that a singer seemed extraneous.
By now, we've thought about doing an EP with a few different singers we know, or maybe hiring Billy Squier. We've written a song for him: it's called, "Lonely Is The Stranger In The Rainbow In The Heat Of The Still Of The Night." Basically, if we get Billy Squier, we'll stop being just instrumental.
After shows, some people come up to us and say "That was amazing! But if you had a singer, you'd be *huge*. "But we also get people that say, "Thank you so much for not having a singer. I'm so sick of listening to people bitch and moan about their love life." We kind of agree with both of them.
DD : The thing that surprises us most is the wide range of people that like us. Stoner headbangers: yes. Indie rockers: yes. Moms: Big-ups from the moms. Seriously, families love us. It's possible that if we had the kind of vocals that would normally fit this kind of music, we'd turn off a lot of the "normal" people out there. At the same time, some of the most evil, badass motherfuckers we've ever seen have come up to us and hugged us and bought us Jagermeister shots. It's great to see bikers and little sisters and nerds all arm-in-arm like that.
As for spazz dancers: although there is strictly speaking no such thing as spazz dancing in New York, there is one man our audience has dubbed "The Butt Man", because most of his spazz happens in that area. In most areas of the U.S., it generally breaks down like this: 3% headbangers, 33% chin strokers, 33% headbanging chin strokers, and 1% spazz dancers.
DD : One historical event, and one recurring event. The historical event was getting signed to Southern. Then all of a sudden we got a booking agent and we started reshaping our lives so that we could devote ourselves to this.
The recurring event is coming home from tour with more money than we left with.
DD : We used to be a lot more abstract about it, and then we realised after the fact that Feeding Frenzy has a ton of animal references in the titles. We don't know where the hell that pattern came from, honestly. We name them as we write them, so clearly we went through an animal period for about a year there.
You should see the song titles of the tracks that didn't make the record; it's like Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. Our song names generally crack us up, and that's often the biggest factor in agreeing on a new name. At our shows, we hear people burst out laughing when we introduce the next song. It has also become a tool in winning over a new audience. If we're in the midwest somewhere, or the South, which generally has no great love for snotty NYC bands, it's nice to say: "This next one is about panthers."
DD : Three things: one is to tour much more, this year in Europe as well as the U.S. We are addicted to playing live.
Another is the new album, which we're recording in June.
The third is doing a song with Billy Squier. We really would like to do a song with Billy Squier. We're trying to find his agent.
More info on Darediablo can be found at: