Warped Tour, Eric Clapton and Bigger Than Elvis this week
Iceland’s volcanic ash cloud wiped out overseas work for the Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band this spring, but it’s not as if the Indiana-based trio had an empty slate for the rest of 2010.
The Warped Tour, scheduled to make a July 6 stop at Verizon Wireless Music Center, gives the Big Damn Band a high-profile opportunity to spread the word about new album “The Wages” and a one-of-a-kind video that promotes the song “Clap Your Hands.”
“The Wages” features new versions of fan favorites “The Train Song” (previously featured on debut recording “The Pork n’ Beans Collection”) and “Two Bottles of Wine” (until now available on a limited-edition run of 1,100 vinyl singles).
Vocalist-guitarist Josh Peyton, washboard player Breezy Peyton and drummer Aaron Persinger made the “Clap Your Hands” video in a barn with dozens of seemingly mismatched dancers.
On the topic of incompatibility, how does the Big Damn Band’s country blues — albeit country blues played at a rapid pace — fit on Warped’s punk rock caravan?
Just fine, according to Josh Peyton.
After the volcano scrapped your European dates, how did you spend your free time in Brown County?
We added a few shows to our schedule, just so we weren’t sitting around doing nothing. But when I have free time in Brown County, I’m fishing or hiking or spending time with my family. We got to see the redbuds and dogwoods bloom. It was pretty good.
You played the Warped kickoff party in Los Angeles with hard-rock wild man Andrew W.K. and the Pretty Reckless, featuring “Gossip Girl” actress Taylor Momsen. Do you feel comfortable on shows that are as stylistically mixed as that?
I take it as a challenge. We stick out like a sore thumb, but I believe we can get in there and hang with the meanest punk bands or whatever there is. To be honest, our history with (selected dates on the 2009) Warped Tour sort of proves it. And Warped makes it easy. The kids are so happy to be there. They’re excited to see music, and they want to find something that’s maybe new.
Were you surprised by anything that transpired during the video shoot for “Clap Your Hands”?
That it even happened. The video was Breezy’s idea: She said, “We should get a bunch of different dancers together. We’ll get breakdancers and cloggers,” and on and on. I said, “How are we going to get people like that to come out for nothing? We have no money to pay anybody.” She said we’d be able to pull it together from our friends and fans. I’m ashamed for being such a skeptic. Making that video that day in that barn — with all these people who came from all over Indiana — I was humbled in a way that’s hard to describe. I told someone, “If I found out there was no film in those cameras or if they got dropped in a river and we lost everything, that would still be one of the best days of my life.”
You’ve said that “The Wages” is the closest you’ve come to nailing down the band’s pure sound. Why is that important?
I don’t want the music to sound like some 1930s throwback thing. That stuff influences me, and I love it. But I want to have something that feels fresh — and at the same time is real. The world has gotten pretty margarine, and I want to be butter.
