AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
The Nude Party's brand of '60s- and '70s-inspired rock evokes everything from Thin Lizzy...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WALK THAT WALK")
THE NUDE PARTY: (Singing) Walk that walk before you talk that talk, talk that talk.
RASCOE: ...To the Rolling Stones...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CAROLYN")
THE NUDE PARTY: (Singing) Carolyn, how come you never let love in?
RASCOE: ...To The Velvet Underground.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOOK WHO'S BACK")
THE NUDE PARTY: (Singing) Look who's back again. Look who's back again. Look who's back...
RASCOE: That last cut is the title track from "Look Who's Back," the fourth album from the seven members of the groove-heavy garage rock outfit.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE NUDE PARTY SONG, "LOOK WHO'S BACK")
RASCOE: Patton Magee is The Nude Party's lead vocalist. He also plays guitar and harmonica. Welcome to the program.
PATTON MAGEE: Thanks for having us.
RASCOE: And Don Merrill plays the piano and also sings. Thanks for being with us.
DON MERRILL: Happy to be here. Thank you very much.
RASCOE: Patton, you all met while in college at Appalachian State in Boone, North Carolina. Tell us a bit about how the band got together.
MAGEE: Yeah, I met most of these guys in the dorms at App State, and the first thing that happened was the guitarist Shaun and I met at a party, and we were just talking about Creedence Clearwater Revival and how badly we just wanted to play Creedence songs, but none of us knew how to play music, so we bought some pretty crappy instruments online, and we just spent a whole summer playing the riff from "Miss You" again and again. (Vocalizing).
RASCOE: So none of y'all had experience playing instruments before college?
MAGEE: Not really. I mean, Sean had played...
MERRILL: Sean did. Yeah.
MAGEE: ...A little.
MERRILL: He was in a lot of bands.
RASCOE: And so he could play a little bit.
MAGEE: Yeah, and I could play a little, too, but I was - I'd only ever played in my bedroom. I lived in Utah, and I would drive out into, like, East Canyon in, like, Summit County, Utah, and just practice singing into the Canyon, where, like, houses were being built. Could where I - it's the only place where I felt like I could be full volume and try to, like, teach myself. And I remember one time turning my head and, on one of those unfinished houses, just seeing a woman standing on the porch, like, 30 feet away.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TAKING HANGERS OFF THE LINE")
THE NUDE PARTY: (Singing) Taking hangers off the line. Taking hangers off.
RASCOE: Was it something about the environment of Appalachian State that kind of helped shape the band? Was it, you know, the mountain air? What was it?
MERRILL: I think it was just, you know, we were all, you know, leaving high school, going to college, and we just want to do things our way, have the best time we could do and the adventure we wanted to be on.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TAKING HANGERS OFF THE LINE")
THE NUDE PARTY: (Singing) Someone was seen last night creeping round neath this window sill. Down in the kitchen, there's a very different feel.
MAGEE: I never - if you found an old journal entry, I think I could prove that I never intended on getting an education in college.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
MAGEE: I watched The Doors documentary, "One Year Strange," narrated by Johnny Depp, like, 100 times, and I was like, you have to go to college and start a band. That's how you do it. You go to college, and you start a band. And App State was the only school I applied to because when I was a dishwasher at a restaurant in high school, the line coach said that Boone was cool.
RASCOE: OK (laughter).
MAGEE: And it's the only school I applied to in America, and it worked. We started a band, and it actually did happen, so...
RASCOE: It worked out.
MAGEE: Destiny.
RASCOE: Well, tell us about the sound of this album. There's plenty of, like, vintage rock influences, but there's also, like, a bit of country, Americana-type thing.
MERRILL: We had played the sounds that we like to hear.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE NUDE PARTY SONG, "JUAREZ")
MERRILL: We all like that old country rock 'n' roll, Rolling Stones, Sir Douglas Quintet kind of styled rock and being with our friends in the studio just conversing and adding to it to make something fun to listen to.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JUAREZ")
THE NUDE PARTY: (Singing) A stolen Jaguar. Crossed the border into Juarez, drove it down real far.
MAGEE: It's a particular brand of country. Like, it's not like southeastern U.S. country. It's like Texas, California country is really the stuff that - little Waylon, little Byrds. Gram Parsons kind of stuff more so than, like, Nashville country or something like that.
RASCOE: Well, you give a nod to The Byrds with the song "Sweetheart Of The Radio."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SWEETHEART OF THE RADIO")
THE NUDE PARTY: (Singing) "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo" on the radio. "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo" on the radio.
MAGEE: I mean, that's what we listen to. Neil Young. Yeah.
MERRILL: Yeah.
MAGEE: Like, all that jingle-jangle morning.
MERRILL: Yeah. That's what we live and breathe, kind of, I feel like.
MAGEE: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SWEETHEART OF THE RADIO")
THE NUDE PARTY: (Singing) Cities pass on like bright headlights. I see them, but I never stay. The dial turned, another cigarette burned. Searching for a conscious soul (ph).
MAGEE: We all have different tastes. It's like a seven-piece Venn diagram. I guess the record is that overlapping space in the middle.
MERRILL: Like, all the circles, you know?
MAGEE: Yeah. Yeah.
RASCOE: How do you make that work? Do you guys have group therapy sessions?
MAGEE: We probably should.
RASCOE: Especially after all these years.
MERRILL: It's hard. I mean, different things are important to other people, and it's all moving puzzles, and I think if you just take a step back and just kind of look at the bigger picture, it's much easier. And we're all at the end of the day best friends. We really are. But no, therapy would be nice if we could afford it.
MAGEE: Yeah. And we've gone through something of a transition in the last few years. We lived together for, like - what? - 12 years or something.
MERRILL: It was way too long.
MAGEE: Lived together, toured together and worked together - we worked at the same restaurants, like, an insane amount of overlapping, like, more than I ever saw my brothers when I was a kid at home, you know, like, so deeply entangled...
RASCOE: Meshed.
MAGEE: ...And mashed. Yeah, there has been, in the last few years, as we've kind of, like, moved out from group living, and, like, Don just got engaged, which is awesome...
RASCOE: Congratulations.
MERRILL: Thank you very much.
MAGEE: ...To his fantastic now-fiancee, Ellen (ph). Like...
MERRILL: Ellen, I love you so much.
MAGEE: You know, I moved in with my girlfriend, and everyone's going onto their own path, and I think that, like, to feel it kind of coming apart is scary. But as it's rolled on, I feel more optimistic now, to be honest than I did last year. I do. I like seeing my friends happy. I like seeing them make life choices that are making them happy. And yeah, we're entering a really good phase, actually.
RASCOE: That's Patton Magee and Don Merrill of The Nude Party. The group's fourth album, "Look Who's Back" is out now. Thank you for speaking with us.
MERRILL: Thanks, Ayesha.
MAGEE: Thanks for having us.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
THE NUDE PARTY: (Singing) When you love somebody... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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