Above a brewery in Buffalo’s Old
First Ward is a nondescript warehouse. The space is large, with exposed brick
walls and no heat, but somehow the building still has electricity. The dusty
wooden floors are crowded with all the typical band accouterments; amps,
microphone stands, a drum kit—all of it illuminated by a single small lamp and
about a dozen candles. The lighting is ambient, the windows are frosted, and the
mood is laid back. A whiskey bottle is getting passed around before practice. I
am doing my first interview with one of Buffalo’s more popular bands, Randle and the Late Night Scandals. Randle
was introduced to me by a friend as, “being one of those people who are just
excited about life” and so far she is living up to the introduction.
So
tell me about your music…
“I would describe us as a vague
bastard child of a genre,” she says after a beat, “We do a lot of blues covers
but there are few others—Johnny Cash—we’re not a cover band but we’ve always
had to do covers-- fucking disco, Led Zeppelin, a mix of everything, pretty
much, blues and rock and roll.”
She turns to her drummer Mike, “What
did that one promoter call us?”
He leans back on an amp as he
tries to recall, “‘…a mix of Janice Joplin and Amy Winehouse with a whiskey
soaked guitar’ or something like that…”
Randle nods, “It’s familiar, you
know what it is, but you can’t put your finger on what’s a cover and what’s an
original.”
Can
you tell me about your original music?
“We just like having fun, and
whatever comes out, comes out. "Cat Walk Blues"—what the hell is that? "The Boppy New One"—kind of fifties sounding—I think we have a song for every
genre—"The Itch" and "Comin’ Undone" are somewhere between the two.
We’ve just been throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. I really
really really like "Whiskey Pillow"—so much fun to play and crowds really
like it.”
“Don’t Pass Go,” Mike adds with a
laugh.
“Oh yeah,” Randle snickers, “When we got arrested—that’s a totally different
story—a cautionary tale!”
I heard you guys split not too long ago—is that what "Don’t Pass Go" is about?
“No, the split was different.
With the split, I found out I was getting a divorce, I lost my job, and had a
really bad night in Rochester—I don’t want to get into it too much, I don’t
want to slam people, and it ended really badly. We lost our second guitar
player and harmonica player—but really, it was a mercy killing. I have a strong
personality, and they have strong personalities, so we both had different ideas
about where the band was gonna go. Luke was here, he was the first one to join,
and then Mike—we have a different bass player and now Kim—if I were to pick a
band in my head, I would pick this band. I think these laid back
personalities—you don’t want to be competitive and stomp other bands. If one
band opens up the scene, everyone benefits.”
“The moment in Rochester” Mike
continues, “it had been building to that—it shouldn’t have gotten to that
point, but it did, and everyone aired their stuff at once. It was like nuclear
fall-out.” He pauses for a second, “But we came back stronger!”
Randle laughs, “Yeah, the next
day, I was booking shows—we took members from Fleet Street and picked up the
slack. Fleet Street totally fucking helped us, they were so supportive. We love
them, we were gonna to play their wedding, but we lost our bass player.”
“I went to work, and got a text
from Amanda that said, ‘We’re gonna stay the course.’ I would have just stayed
in bed, but she got up booked up shows.”
“It was like nothing after the
split though. We moved on, and they
moved on, did their own thing—it all worked out and all of us are better off.”
Can
you tell me about some of your favorite Buffalo venues?
“My favorite venue is
Nietzsche’s—they’re very good to us—or McCarthy’s—both them are very nice to
us, the crowds are receptive, and they get us in there once a month. That’s
where we met Kim.”
Can
you tell me more about Kim? She’s being pretty quiet.
“We did a bunch of shows for
Infringement Fest, and we went down to Nancy’s art space. [Nietzsche’s] People
are wasted at two in the afternoon sitting in a baby pool—it was weird. I look
up, and I see Kim—playing along on saxophone…” Randle looks at Kim, asking her
to continue.
Kim puts down her saxophone to finish the story, “I hadn’t played for seven
years, and I just got dared to do Infringement, and I was warming up and
filling up the holes as they practiced, and I wanted to freaking jump up—I was
looking at her, and she was looking at me.”
“I told her to stick around; I asked her to come down to see us play…”
“I started watching all their
videos, and I said, ‘I want to do this.’”
Randle can no longer contain
herself. “She just blasts straight out of the gates. Holy Fuck! We’re blown
away about what she’s doing with the song!”
“And Randle comes up to me and says, ‘Kim, I love you—I want to travel the
world with you—will you never leave my band?” Kim smiles, “So I didn’t.”
That’s
so awesome! You know, I see your logo all up and down Elmwood—even around UB
sometimes. What is it?
“Oh, that’s the shame face— our
logo is the shame face—our old bass player was always late, and one night, we pinned
him down and shame stamped his forehead. Of course, everyone wanted one. We
shame stamped the entire bar staff, shame-stamped the entire crowd. People
would come up to us and say “spilled my beer” and we would shame stamp them. We
shame-stamped people all up and down Elmwood. It was hysterical.”
Is
there anything else you guys want to add?
“We are entered in the Art Voice
contest, BOOM. There are four total BOOM bands—whoever wins goes to the quarter
finals—and in June, there will only be four bands left. We fully intend taking
this show on the road, 3 days a week, as far as we can go—we wanna go! If we
win [BOOM], that’s a down payment on a little van, or paying for our CDs—it’s a
$5000 prize and it would really mean a lot to us. Our first real EP is coming
out in March or April—Cheap. Boozy. Dangerous. We gotta raise about $2000—we’ll have a kick
starter— but winning BOOM would mean a lot to us.
EDIT:
Since this interview was conducted, Randal and the Late Scandals have
progressed to Round 2 of BOOM. They will be playing on January 26th
at Nietzsche’s. Make sure to follow the contest, and continue to support local
music by voting for your favorite bands.
