{"id":3443,"date":"2011-08-18T23:07:58","date_gmt":"2011-08-19T06:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3443"},"modified":"2011-08-18T23:07:58","modified_gmt":"2011-08-19T06:07:58","slug":"band-of-heathens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/band-of-heathens\/","title":{"rendered":"BAND OF HEATHENS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

BAND OF HEATHENS<\/h1>\n

The secret to this Austin collective\u2019s success? Don\u2019t plan, just play<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It\u2019s noon in Austin, but the Band of Heathens\u2019 Gordy Quist sounds like he\u2019s still sleepy. \u201cI\u2019m a bit hazy,\u201d he says by way of apology. \u201cIt\u2019s been a long 24 hours.\u201d With upward of 200 gigs a year, the group\u2019s devotion to its packed-out schedule comes naturally by now. In fact, the Band of Heathens was quite literally born on stage\u2014the group came about as the result of a series of Wednesday night solo singer-songwriter showcases at Austin club Momo\u2019s featuring Quist, Ed Jurdi and Colin Brooks, each a talented singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt certainly wasn\u2019t planned,\u201d Quist says. \u201cWe were playing one after another in separate bands and didn\u2019t even know each other. After we met at Momo\u2019s it became a loose jam session, and we ended up making it one long rotating set. It was just a scene, all these musicians hanging out on Wednesday nights.\u201d Bass player Seth Whitney was added to the lineup, followed by drummer John Chipman in 2007.<\/p>\n

The Heathens elected to make two live albums before ever setting foot in a studio together. \u201cThere were no rehearsals,\u201d Quist says. \u201cWe threw songs out on the fly and the show became our rehearsal. We\u00a0had a live audience and a good energy, so we said, \u2018Shoot, let\u2019s record one of these,\u2019 because we thought it would be fun to document. That seems the nature of this band. We don\u2019t plan things very much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even the group\u2019s name happened by chance. \u201cWe referred to the Wednesday-night\u00a0gig as the Good Time Supper Club,\u201d Quist\u00a0says. \u201cIt was just a joke. But somebody probably noticed the massive consumption of tequila on the stage and thought it would be funny to call us the Band of Heathens, so when we released the first\u00a0live album [Live from Momo\u2019s<\/em>, 2006],\u00a0that\u2019s what stuck.\u201d<\/p>\n

That loose, everything-goes attitude informs their three studio albums as well, including the new Top Hat Crown & The Clapmaster\u2019s Son<\/em>, produced by George Reiff. The Heathens survey a broad musical terrain on the album, one far wider than the \u201cAmericana\u201d tag with which the group is often pinned. \u201cAmerican music is much broader than that,\u201d Quist says. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of blues and R&B in that spectrum that often doesn\u2019t get represented. To us, it\u2019s just rock \u2019n\u2019 roll, but we\u2019re also trying to do something different.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Lee Zimmerman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BAND OF HEATHENS The secret to this Austin collective\u2019s success? Don\u2019t plan, just play It\u2019s noon in Austin, but the Band of Heathens\u2019 Gordy Quist sounds like he\u2019s still sleepy. \u201cI\u2019m a bit hazy,\u201d he says by way of apology. \u201cIt\u2019s been a long 24 hours.\u201d With upward of 200 gigs a year, the group\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[2407,1807,10156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3443"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3443"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3446,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3443\/revisions\/3446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}