Tighten Up Tighter Now

How Dead Confederate Got Attention, Got Hyped & Got Good

originally published September 17, 2008

Hard work eventually pays off. It’s a commonly repeated mantra in the world of independent music. Bands that have been around for years still struggle just to get a few pairs of feet through a club’s doors, and a night’s hard work can often result in barely enough cash to gas up the van and trudge on to the next unknown. For local band Dead Confederate, though, years of toil with little payoff are finally starting to see some serious returns.

This weekend’s show at the 40 Watt Club celebrates the release of its full-length album Wrecking Ball. It’s the first release from TAO Records, the new management/label project started by legendary industry figure Gary Gersh, who signed Nirvana and Sonic Youth.

Dead Confederate got its start in Augusta, in the mid-‘90s, when its five members were still in their teens. Back then the band was called Redbelly and focused more on open-ended guitar jams and loosely structured improv. The band moved to Athens for a while and played fairly regularly. Some people liked ‘em; most people ignored ‘em.

But a 2006 move to Atlanta allowed the band to refine its sound and develop a tighter, more focused aesthetic, and resettling once again, this time in Athens, has continued that trend as the guys have buckled down and gotten seriously into their guitars. Another wise move was to dive into the at-times-insular Athens music scene whole hog and without ego; the guys offered themselves to benefit shows, made friends with other bands, played DIY venues, found a tireless manager, built personal relationships with club staff, didn’t act like primadonna assholes and generally convinced people to at least check out their band. It took a long, long time, but about a year ago one of the more frequently heard local-music conversations around town went something like this:

“What’re you up to this weekend? Any good shows?”

“Yeah, I’ll probably check out Dead Confederate.”

“Really? I’ve seen them once or twice, I didn’t really li…”

“…No, no, I know, but they’ve gotten a lot better. You should check ‘em out.”

And people did check ‘em out, starting with a fundraiser show where Dead Confederate played a set of Sonic Youth covers. Local musicians started going to their shows, and over the past year the band opened for Dinosaur Jr., was hand-picked by R.E.M. to prep that band’s South by Southwest audience, and signed a record deal thanks to a recommendation from Widespread Panic bassist Dave Schools. Dead Confederate just wrapped up a summer tour with the Drive-By Truckers where they also hit up several big summer festivals. On Oct. 10, Dead Confederate will make its national television debut on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, while later this fall there are plans for a European jaunt. Expect to hear some new tracks alongside album tracks on this current tour. Spin and Esquire, among other publications, have both praised the band, particularly for its album knockout track “The Rat.” In a recent “Bands to Watch” article, Rolling Stone spotlighted Dead Confederate and called the song “a slow-burning poke in the eye at Bible-thumping evangelicals.”

“The fact that people are paying attention at all is huge,” says singer/guitarist Hardy Morris, “and you never know until you get to that point - until what you’re doing is really worth doing as far as a full-time career is going - just so you can know whether this music thing can be a career thing or a thing you do on the side. It’s pretty mind-blowing, so that’s real nice.”

Wrecking Ball boasts numerous, killer layered guitar-rock tracks, heavy and lumbering, thanks to Dead Confederate’s foundational rhythm section, yet Morris’ drawl - slowed down, stretched out and turned WAY up - keeps them scorchingly Southern. The tunes call to mind the noisier moments in Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr., with a heavy Nirvana influence on many of the songs’ breakdowns. The technique’s been tightened up while the songs have been opened wide.

Earlier this year, Dead Confederate went down to Texas to work with producer Mike McCarthy, who has notably engineered albums by Spoon, So Divided and …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead.

After touring the Southeast and visiting several swank prospective recording studios, bassist/songwriter Brantley Senn says the band was taken aback by McCarthy’s stripped-down aesthetic, if only at first. “It was just a warehouse shed with amps pointing in all the wrong directions, according to studio norms, and he basically just told us, ‘Okay, go!’ It was like a practice, basically,” says Senn. "His gear’s really cool; it’s all vintage stuff. The first couple days of pre-production he didn’t really change much [with our songs], so we thought he’d whip us into shape, but he just let us do what we were doing. And we’d just spent all this time scouting these nice studios with TVs and bedrooms and minibars, etc. His studio is his own gear, he just takes it around to different places.”

Morris, too, was initially reluctant upon seeing McCarthy’s ramshackle setup. “One of the things I said when we were first a little hesitant,” he says, “was, ‘Well, won’t it be cool if we can make a good record out of that place?’”

Although Wrecking Ball is being pushed as the band’s debut album, it’s more of a “coming out” release. (The guys locally released a transitional album called Petition to the Queen in 2006 under the Dead Confederate name - it was a more Built to Spill-ish, My Morning Jacket-y Southern rock album, but they've put much of the material behind them, although an earlier version of “The Rat” is the album’s second track.)

“I think the whole band just at one point decided we needed to move in a different direction,” says Senn. “We said we’re not going to break up, we don’t like the old band anymore, so we just said let’s come up with a new name, new songs… it’ll be a new band, just with the same members, because we’re all best friends. We couldn't ever not play with each other.”

With a new name and a sonic shift, Senn and Morris took to writing new songs, approaching the tracks with specific results in mind rather than having the rest of the band - keyboardist John Watkins, drummer Jason Scarboro and guitarist Walker Howle - jam things out during the writing process.

“I think our tastes changed,” says Senn. “We did shift gears. We graduated from college, hanging out with different friends, listening to new music and our tastes changed.”

Dead Confederate’s manager asked if I could not mention the guys’ former band in Flagpole. He’s more eager to look forward rather than backward. And sure, I can make that deal - after this article. Because in trying to shape the band’s narrative by turning away from its past, Dead Confederate runs the risk of becoming just any other very good band. What that robs the band of, though, is of what it has accomplished through perseverance, smart decisions and musical growth.

And Athens audiences aren’t like other audiences. One of the more rewarding aspects of our town’s music scene is that we can watch a band develop, change and mature in public and onstage rather than at home in the basement.

“We were fortunate that when we made the leap to something new,” says Morris. “Everyone in the band was on board and wanted to do something new. And even now, I see the next chapter of what we do as something new and different than what we’re doing now.”

“The Rat,” the track that’s getting the band most of its newfound press and Internet attention, is also the oldest song on the album. Dating back to the Redbelly shows, the song’s evolution and continual use sums up the bandmembers’ savvy decisions: they identified what they liked and what they did well; they trimmed the fat; they focused on their strengths and expanded upon them; they found that cohesive core; they believed in the value of what they were doing, and thought other people would, too.

Too many bands try to have it all, writing songs all over the map, but Dead Confederate pulled back. In doing so, the band pushed forward.

Chris Hassiotis

WHO: Dead Confederate, Twin Tigers, Kuroma, Gift Horse
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Friday, Sept. 19
HOW MUCH: FREE! (21+), $2 (18+)