Pete from Melbourne band Black Devil Yard Boss was happy about the forthcoming new release. ‘It’s 13 tracks of a bluesy rock and roll,’ he tells me.
Black Devil Yard Boss, has an interesting background. Pete’s creation the tale involves university days in Lismore, living on the coast, he was staying with his uncle whose five year of sun had a cat he had named “Black Devil Yard Boss,’ it was a name that stuck in Pete’s mind, there to be called forth when the need arose. The cat is no longer around. The name stuck. ‘I’m ripping off a five year old!’ he laughs.
Recorded by Lindsay Gravina from Birdland studios ’’We went with Lindsy and Birdland, because we wanted a sound that typified the band. Lindsay is a man who often brings out an aspect of the band in ways the band hadn’t thought of. How had Lindsy done this with “Black Devil Yard Boss?’
‘He definitely really pushed us with structures and stuff, moving things around. In one bit he thought we were banging on a little bit too much. I expected great stuff from him and that proved to be a no brainer. No real surprises!’
The album, went over a few sessions and in fact the boys extended their time on the release.’All up three weeks to mix, record and put together.’ The album was written over a six to twelve month period. ‘Once we got a flow on it didn’t take too long.
Listening to the release it definitely had a southern bluesy sound.
’It may have turned out that way with the players that we had but it wasn’t intended to be southern blues or blues rock.’
I wondered whether the resultant sound was the happy coincidence of Pete’s feeling for blues rock?
‘I guess you had me pushing from the blues angle. Dave and myself played in Mammal which was a heavy rock band, I had always been more of a blues man anyway, so when I came to this project I wanted to do something that was rootsy and bluesy with a rock edge. It was different. When I wrote the songs, I played them back and they were definitely a rootsy type collection, but when I got in there with the band, the songs took a different form and ”rocked” up somehow.
I asked about lyrics? Pete was honest. They had stemmed from things that had happened in a recent period. ’It was how I felt about things at the time’
It was time to talk about Mammal.
‘We had so many things lined up. it was going to be a dream run. We had just got back from the UK, the live reviews were really positive. But when there are internal problems within a group, we were backed into a corner and forced to make a decision about our future. I don’t think we would have made it to tell you the absolute truth. We had to be smart about this and cut our loses. It was a dvestating decision at that time. We had put so much work into the band, to have it pulled out from under us was incredibly hard.
Do the experiences of being in a band like Mammal: of making it, breaking it and losing it all, does that form any basis of the music/lyrics within ‘Black Devil Yard Boss?’
‘Definitely. The album was a good one to get done as a healing experience. It was therapy just writing it. Getting that record out was essential for my own musical growth. It was a real challenge abandoning a style we had worked on for five years for a completely different musical style.
See them December 11th at The Tote.