Musician Spotlight: Blackhouse

I recently spoke with Kevin Grant, lead singer of the New Bedford based band Blackhouse about rocking the low end. You can follow them on their Facebook page.

Eric: Who is in the band and how did it start?
Kevin: My prior bands (Iron Oak and Judo Heirs) had imploded, and I had the idea of an all-bass band for awhile. I’ve always been interested in doing something different than your typical rock band lineup. I also was tired of being in bands that formed organically between friends. I wanted to make some calls and basically say, “You, you, you and you. We are the band and we’ll practice this Sunday.” Lucky for me most of the people I’d initally asked said yes. I really didn’t cast a wide net. I have Ed Macomber (Satellite Elvis) on drums, Mike Means (Blue Hollow) on bass, Tim Catz (Roadsaw) on bass, Mario Costa (Gaskill) on bass, and I sing and write words. I had us all meet at my house for a birthday party that I was having because none of the other guys knew Tim.

Where did the name come from?
Kevin: Well, technically we work for Blackhouse Technologies, which is a privately owned company with only government contracts. We are essentially a community outreach program for them. Our practice space and expenses get covered and I was able to get “government employee” car insurance this year, which is pretty awesome.

What’s up with all the basses?
Kevin: I think the guitar/drums/bass/vocals format of rock bands is pretty worn out. It’s really only in place because of the limits of 1950s audio equipment, and has become this sort of sacred thing. Meanwhile, every band in the world is either downtuning or droptuning their guitars, so I thought to myself that this is the obvious next step. I grew up playing alot of classical music on piano, and we didn’t have any rock and roll in my house, just jazz and classical, and in neither of those genres is there a standard grouping of instruments. There is music written for four cellos, or a group of violins, etc, all the time. Another reason is that I have a kind of deep voice for rock music. Your average band has a bassist covering the low end, a guitarist playing mid-range tones and a singer covering all of the high end, the treble. So if you have deep voice, you have a couple of options. You either lower everything else, like we’ve done, or you give the voice the low-end frequencies– like the Doors, who, not coincidentally, had no bassist but were keyboard-heavy. I think the all-bass lineup definitely helped get us noticed by Blackhouse Technologies, given their work with gravity and sound manipulation it was a perfect match, and that has certainly helped us financially. I also wanted to get back at Peter Hook, who turned down my request to audition to sing for his all bass band, Freebass, and then made a really lousy record.

How are the songs written, what are they about? Is there a running theme between songs or a concept?
Kevin: We typically just jam and record it. When something starts jelling I take the recordings home. I look at writing songs more like a forensic or archeological job than a creative one. I’m trying to solve the case of the missing vocals. I do try to keep on track with the subjects that Blackhouse Technologies work with, so there are songs about solitude, paranoia, xenophobia, loss of identity, etc. I don’t write songs about free will or empowerment, not in this band. We play fatalist music. But I’m given alot of leeway. I haven’t been asked to redact anything or steer in any certain direction, but I know what they expect from us and I’m here to do the best job I can with it.

What are some of the influences on the band as awhole and individually?
Kevin: Every song is quite different from its siblings. I think people might imagine that a band with three basses might be interesting for about 30 seconds, and that it would all sound the same, but stylistically we are pretty diverse. When you have given a bunch of guys who are always been sort of in the backround as bassists a level playing field and center stage, they really cut loose. We are pretty psychedelic at times. It would be hard for me to accurately describe what we sound like. We are both stranger and more listenable than people might assume.

What’s planned? Long term or take it as it comes? Touring, recording?
Kevin: I don’t have interest in touring. The lifestyle doesn’t appeal to me and never has. I like my bed. We just recorded a seven song album and it’s about 35 minutes. Our songs are pretty long. I’d love to have it come out on vinyl. We’ll probably leak some copies and see what happens. We’ll be playing live, but I think very sporadically. We have our first show on Friday the 13th of April at The Pour Farm. We’ll have a Boston gig after that at some point. I wouldn’t mind playing just a few shows a year and recording an EP a year.

Thanks Kevin. Check out Blackhouse on April 13th  at the Pour Farm Tavern in New Bedford.