Written on 1/28/16
It’s 9:30 on a Wednesday night, but from my wallflower post at Arlene’s Grocery, it looks like a Saturday. Crowds of rock junkies outfitted in black leather and denim and sleeved in tattoos saunter across the bar slapping each other on the back and handing Stellas to their dates. The atmosphere is buzzed and familial, feeling more like a birthday party than a concert. Everyone seems to know each other, if only by sight. At 10, the throng starts moving downstairs to the hall where Dead Rocking Horse is onstage, tuning their instruments and setting up their equipment.
I move to the front and find a spot by the edge of the stage, where rhythm guitarist Jaster A. Leon strums a chord to test the sound. The amp sends vibrations beneath my feet. A problem with the microphone delays the start of the set by about ten minutes. Vocalist Marron Chaplin makes witty apologies for the wait, but no one cares, as everyone is happy to socialize and listen to the Led Zeppelin pouring out of the speakers.
When the show finally kicks off, it starts with a power chord that appears to electrify the audience into the light head banging so ritual for rock’n’roll. Leon plays blues-infused riffs woven neatly with David Alva’s intense bassline. Dave Brooks’ drumbeats are Bonham-heavy, pounded out with drumsticks so huge, they may have been living trees earlier that day. But the centerpiece of this grungy tableau is the witchy and bewitching Marron Chaplin, whose vocal quality is reminiscent of some of the best voices in rock history. As she croons, my mind conjures comparisons to Grace Slick’s mature alto range, Ann Wilson’s supernatural vibrato, and Amy Lee’s razor sharp belt. She certainly fits the image of a rock goddess, dressed in black, a loose t-shirt and leather pants that sink into leather boots. The only pop of color is a pink bandana tied around her wrist, drawing the eye to her guitar playing, which is just as good as her voice. During the song “Whiskey & Water” her voice oozes with the rich authenticity of heartache gone stale but not forgotten. A song in the vein of classic rock with a lilting beat and soulful melody, the lyrics depict an anger and melancholy familiar to anyone who has ever turned to the bottle for relief. The tune that immediately follows it, “Soul Saver,” goes in an alternative direction. It changes patterns, at once grunge-inspired and discordant, then hard rock tinged with elements of classical compositions, showcasing Chaplin’s songwriting abilities. Her guitar solo in this song is particularly impressive. She tickles high notes out of the strings like a soprano in a Mozart opera. But this is a good, old-fashioned rock concert, and the band’s dense sound and unbridled energy doesn’t let you forget that for one second.
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| Left to right: Jaster A. Leon, Dave Brooks, Marron Chaplin |
She peppers the set with pleas to ignore the continuing technical difficulties, but the crowd is enthusiastic and they came to rock out, shoddy sound system be damned. Before I know it, their set is over, and I realize that despite attempts to give equal attention to all members of the band, Chaplin’s magnetic stage presence captured me for most of the show. Upstairs I run into bassist David Alva and drummer Dave Brooks and after congratulating them on a killer set, I ask if their singer is still around and whether she’d be interested in talking to me for a few minutes. Certain she’d be down to talk to someone who enjoyed the show, they tell me she should be up in a minute.
Chaplin greets me warmly and suggests that the bathroom downstairs is probably the quietest place to talk. On the way, she is ambushed at every turn by friends and fans eager to tell her how much ass she kicked. She’s gracious and too modest, still stuck on the few audio problems. She apologizes to me for taking so long talking to everyone, but it’s really refreshing to see someone so genuinely appreciative of every person who came out to support them. By the time we can get to our chat, the second band is onstage and Chaplin is sure the musicians’ bathroom backstage will be quiet enough. I won’t refuse the chance to check it out. Arlene’s Grocery is a staple of the local music scene in New York. Some of the artists that have played here include Arcade Fire, the Strokes, and Lana Del Rey. The acoustics in the bathroom are pretty good, and the sound of Acey Slade, also featuring Jaster A Leon on guitar, playing ten feet away is perfect accompaniment for this interview.
I start by asking Chaplin what inspires her to write songs. She says that like all musicians, she is a deeply emotional person and that she is inspired by her rocky past and her Christian faith. “Writing music is just, like, something that you do. If you’re a musician… it bubbles up and comes out…That’s a hard question! That’s some big picture stuff.”
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| Left to right: Dave Brooks, Marron Chaplin |
She tells me about the band’s formation five years ago in January of 2011, which commenced with meeting Alva when the two were both going through a rough patch. Her father and Alva’s grandmother had recently died and they were “raging alcoholics. Like, just ridiculous, not even cool drunks. Just annoying drunks that you didn’t even want to be around. And at the time, I was playing open mics and acoustic shows, but all I ever wanted was to play rock and roll. And I didn’t know how to get it together. I was just out there on my own, trying to figure shit out. And…Dave was in a band and we started working together. And we started a Misfits cover band- Danzig only- and… he showed me how to take the songs that I wrote and turn them into rock songs. I wrote all the music, but Dave was the one who showed me how to arrange it.”
While they were working on original tunes, Chaplin and Alva definitely had fun doing Misfits cover shows. “I was ‘Glennda’ Danzig, I’d get onstage and ‘WAAAHHHH’ and all that stuff and I’d eat raw steak and throw it at the audience, and they’d throw it at me and I’d throw it back at them, it was awesome. But while we were doing the Misfits stuff…I got this burst of creativity, songs were starting to come to me.”
The ideas have kept coming. Dead Rocking Horse recently released a three song EP called Triptych, on which “Whiskey & Water” and “Soul Saver” can be found. I ask her what it was like making this EP. “Eye-opening,” she responds immediately. “I was working with a producer who brought out the best in me, Dave Caggiano…He would do a lot of different takes. He forced me to clean up my guitar playing. He forced me to get very precise on my vocals. The only thing that was confusing about it was that doing these recordings, it was just me. I was using a session bassist and a session drummer. It just feels awkward…because I don’t know how to promote the project.”
Promotion. This is the perfect segue to my next question, which is how does the Internet age affect her as an artist? Everything is heavily promoted online. Music is bought and sold online. What does that mean to her? Chaplin’s boyfriend and bandmate, Leon, has an opinion about online promotion before she can form an answer. “It’s silly because she posts a vanity picture and it gets a lot of hits, but where are these people [at] the show?” Despite the margin between likers and audience members, Chaplin notes that social media is the best way to fill a venue. “That is really all you can do these days, because the days of running around stapling flyers to telephone poles, it doesn’t happen anymore. The best thing you can do is just…post and post and post until you know your friends have seen it for a fact, like, you KNOW they’ve seen it, and then you can make them feel guilty as hell if they don’t show up.”
These days online presence is as important as stage presence, and musicians have to do more than just play shows to get attention they way they used to. “I had someone from Island Records contact me the other day…and he texted me saying, ‘Hey, I went to look you up on YouTube and I really couldn’t find anything, is that wrong?’ And I was like, ‘No, I don’t really manage my YouTube channel,’” she says with a sheepish laugh. Chaplin laments having to maintain different social media platforms instead of focusing on creating meaningful music. “I suck at technology…I would kill to have a social media manager. All I want to do is play guitar and sing. I want to play music, I want to perform music, I want to write…It’s really hard to be someone who is an emotional songwriter, because technically you have to be some sort of mess to write emotional music, so how do you balance that with also being a level-headed businessperson who knows how to market yourself on social media and manage that? And balancing the two worlds is absolutely, mind-numbingly horrific.”
Asked her thoughts on New York City’s local music scene, she had nothing but love for the rockers of the Big Apple. “Everybody’s so kind, and cool, and we support each other. We give each other honest feedback, we play together. It’s a real community and these people are true friends. Man, you walk into a room and see everyone standing around in their leather jackets and spikes and metal studs, and if you’re from a small town and you’ve never been around people like that you might be afraid of getting your ass kicked, but really these are the kindest people you’ll ever meet….and this is probably the first time in my life I’ve felt like I had a community. They truly feel like family.”
I thank Chaplin again for her time and an amazing show. There are no Dead Rocking Horse shows in the immediate future, but I’m definitely going to keep an ear out, ‘cause this bird can sing.
Listen to "Whiskey and Water" here:
HJ
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