"We never do a soundcheck, original music never gets a soundcheck. There's no such thing as a soundcheck, we just plug in and play when we're ready to go," laughed Our Marvelous Lives keyboardist Mike Fury as he and vocalist/guitarist Max Huber discussed their upcoming gigs, new release and their recording process.
Saturday March 29 finds the band at the popular Cape May Singer/Songwriter Conference, a record launch party for "Five Amigo Lockdown" on April 27 at Factory Records in Dover, NJ, May 3 finds them at Finnegan's Pub in Hoboken and Saturday June 14 at Artie's in Frenchtown.
Our Marvelous Lives have been a unit for more than three decades with very little turnover; something that's not necessarily common in the music industry, especially with so much longevity.
"We used to be a band called Maximum America," began Fury. "Then the three of us, Jim Shargay, Max Huber and myself, we've been in the band for a long time and the drummer is Marc Ziccardi and the other guitar player is Javier Pombo. So, Our Marvelous Lives kind of evolved from Maximum America; we actually had a name in between called, Our Savage Garden, who were an Australian band but we had to go to a court case with them and they bought us out of the name and we had to change the name again."
"Maximum America was a group we started in '85 or so and that's the band where we played with Little Steven, Joan Jett and we opened for the Ramones and a ton of different people. We played all through the '90s and then our original drummer left and we just kind of needed a new direction and we kind of like our lives and we said, "Let's call it Our Marvelous Lives" because our lives are so marvelous continued and it kind of resonates with people," continued Huber with a laugh. "It's kind of a long name but now that's kind of a thing that's in, like My Chemical Romance; originally people were like, wow, that's really too long of a name, you ought to be The Donuts or something (Laughs). We've played venues all over the state, New York City, down in Washington, D.C. at the 930 Club with The Primitives who were fronted by Tracy Tracy back in the day; we've done a lot of work. We're openers, we do a lot of opening shows and we've met a lot of characters, we've had some fun and met a lot of cool people over the years and that's what really makes it fun.The crowds, the people like the music and we like to create and I like to write songs; you're just sitting in the basement and something pops in your head and you just put it down on paper and the band helps write all of the parts and it just kind of takes on a life of its own. So, that creative process is really the fun part of music if you will, at least for us and then also the performing.We are from Dover, New Jersey in Morris County near Factory Records and we've done a couple of shows there. Ethan and his crew are very cool people and they're very receptive to live music and certainly original music. We've had some good shows there and we've seen some good shows there; James Mastro and the guys from Television, it's a cool room. We are there on April 27, we do Sunday afternoon shows from like three to five and it's nice for our fans, they don't have to come out too late."
With the recent issue of their latest album, the band continues to be creative both in and out of the studio but this record, well, it's a little bit of both.
"It's out now and we call it "Five Amigo Lockdown" because we're like five amigos," explained Fury. "We lockdown every week, sometimes twice a week and we write songs and jam and then we decided to put this CD out, it's probably our tenth one. We've had 10 albums over the years with various different names; this is the band that has been together for a while; this is our lockdown and it means a lot because these are just five guys who just pound out music. We love playing live, we still play live and we pull off live stuff sometimes better than the studio but we went into the studio with this guy, Chris Gibson who we call "Gibby" and he is out of Hoboken in his Upstart Studios; he produced and engineered the entire thing. So, we brought him on board and he did a great job of getting the best out of us. We did six original songs on this and a cover song by Siouxie and the Banshees called "Cities in Dust," which we thought came out really good. We've heard of other versions of the song but we think this is a pretty groovy rendition of "Cities in Dust."
"We like ours and Siouxsie's version the best," adds Huber. "We have this very interesting rehearsal place in Dover that has been like our little clubhouse for years and it's in the basement of an industrial complex and nobody bothers us down there and hopefully we don't bother anybody else and we call it "The Bunker." We knuckled down and we beat ourselves up and we recorded some songs and Gibby did five out of the seven and two we did with a good friend, Ray Miller who is more of a jazz guy believe it or not but he does great mastering and mixes on the rock side and he kind of likes our band, so we worked with Ray Miller on two of them. Gibby came out from Hoboken and did a remote session. We recorded all the basic tracks in the bunker. Usually, we would go in the studio and do it but we asked; would you be amenable to this? It's done quite often, they've had mobile units since Led Zeppelin recording in a castle somewhere with The Rolling Stones truck; he brought out all of this crazy computer stuff and we just had lines and plugs and microphones everywhere and the sounds were great and we had great drum sounds, we're very happy with it. I think that's (The drums) is the hardest thing to get in any recording. We suffered a lot when we were doing our own recordings and kind of messing around with it and I thought, the drums are cool, the performances are good but the sounds are anemic compared to what's out there today. Here we are on a budget, we're trying to do something for 5,000 bucks and we're up against people listening to product from different bands who are spending 250,000 bucks on stuff. So, it does make a difference and it's what people have come to expect; it's like, oh, that's the way the band should sound. Then of course, you go see some bands live and it's a different story but as Mike said before, our live sound is similar to the recorded sound; it's actually probably more energetic, studio recordings can be tough."
"We're a very good live band," chimed in Fury. "That's why we did it in the bunker, we brought the engineer to us who has his own studio but we said, "We can get great sounds in this bunker" and he mic'd the whole room and figured it out. That's why it came out closer to us playing live; listen, we've been in a lot of big studios but that doesn't mean it's automatic that you're gonna get a great sound and it's gonna come out great. We kind of did it in our own element, this is where we rehearse, it's what we're used to and we tried to reproduce what we do in rehearsal and we think it came out pretty good."
"We did work at Sound On Sound in New York on some CDs and I would say and I'll stand by this; I like all of the sounds," interceded Huber. "I think each of them sounds a little different but I think there is an idea today, that with all of the digital technology and with everybody having a recording studio in their basement; like you can set up all this stuff and automatically have a great sound and that's not really true. Having a good sound engineer, especially for drums and especially with the way we just did this proved that. Again, we had a guy, Chris, who came in, who does it for a living and really knows how to set up drum mics and to me, that made all the difference in the world. We just didn't know enough about it to do it ourselves and if you're gonna do some lo-fi recording for fun and demos, that's one thing but if you want it to sound like it should be on the radio, you need to go to somebody who knows what they're doing."
Aligned with Deko Entertainment and their distribution network, makes it easy to get their product out there to the masses but both Huber and Fury both still find it amusing when their music is in demand.
"When you hire people to help you, like you and Deko, people who care about the music and know how to get it out into people's hands; Charlie (Calv) just reached out to us the other day and said, "Hey, I need like 40 or 50 CDs, we're selling a lot of stuff through Warner Brothers" and Mike and I were kinda surprised. We were like, wow, you mean somebody may actually like the music besides us and our moms; our moms like the music (Laughs). You get a little bit of validation from it because my dad, he always liked the band but he was like, yeah well, don't quit your day job type thing," laughed Huber."I know it's cliche to say, "It's a labor of love" but it really is. We've been together, the core of the band for 35 years and we still know everybody, the original members, we play once in a while and we have a core following of people who have come to see us play all over the place. We played The Limelight, CBGB in New York and all of these places; it's our marvelous history."
"That's all part of Our Marvelous Lives, we're all in it together," added Fury quickly. "All these people who came to see us and hung out with us, bought CDs and shirts and listened to the music; if we didn't write songs and do this, we'd probably be dead by now."
"Dead by now?" C'mon Mike, you guys surely have more in your bag of tricks; no?
"You need a creative outlet, everybody needs one. Some people watch a lot of football games, we play music.," said Huber. "We love playing live, we're gonna probably start doing a lot more live shows. We slowed down for a while and we just want to get (back) out there. The gig on March 29 is a singer/songwriter conference. John Harris out of Harrisburg runs it and we've done a couple of these before until the pandemic hit. So, he's bringing it back after five years, he's got a lot of acts down there," continued Fury. "We're playing with the Reverend Horton Heat, we're playing with him again. We played with him last year and they loved us and wanted us back. What a nice bunch of guys too, the band was nice, they were like kind souls. They are on the road; I think there are still musicians like that out there, playing on the road and enjoying it and we're doing that with them on June 14 at Artie's in Frenchtown."
"We did some shows with the Smithereens and they're the same kind of guys," said Huber. "Even though Pat (DiNizio) had passed, they just do it because they love it and they're not gonna do anything else; they love rock 'n' roll just like Joan Jett says. Reverend Horton Heat is another one, they probably do 250 shows a year. "Things have been on an upswing since we started this CD project and since we started recording we've been doing a lot of shows, for us, we get out at least once a month, maybe twice a month sometimes."
With multiple gigs coming up, they should be a well-oiled machine and they'll test their readiness beginning on March 29 in Cape May at the resurgent Cape May Singer/Songwriter Conference.
"It's really well attended," said Huber enthusiastically. "A lot of singer-songwriters, acoustic acts, acoustic piano, acoustic guitars and bands. I think Charlie Calv from Deko is on a panel; I think the panels look really, really good. They talk about the industry, it's a great event, it really is a good event. It's fun if you're a musician and it's fun for the public to go in and see what's going on but for anybody in the music business, it really is a great event and we're playing The Boiler Room, which is like the featured club and we're doing Saturday night, I think we're going on at nine o'clock."
After nearly four decades of making music; what's a gig like for a group of well-seasoned players?
"The gig itself starts with the load-in and complaining," laughed Huber, "And for some reason, we never get a soundcheck or we rarely get a soundcheck and then we just hang out and wait for our moment in the night, then take a deep breath, we might have a shot and then we get onstage and just blast it out."
"We draw off our newer material and then we also draw off material we've done in the past which we haven't done in a while," said Fury. We do a couple of covers but we're not really a good cover band (Laughs). We tried to do covers for a while and we almost killed each other, we're not meant to be a cover band. We do the Siouxie song, we do a version of "Just Like Heaven" by The Cure which is on another one of our previous albums and we have all of the newer songs we've just written and we pull songs from the past. There's a lot of years in this band.The three of us, me, Jim and Max, we have literally been playing for 30 years and we're the main vocalists so that's kind of what our sound is."We do a lot of harmonies and that's backed with some pretty solid guitar, I'm a big guitar person so I like that crunchy feel," concluded Huber.
You can catch Our Marvelous Lives at all of the above mentioned shows but to discover more about the band and their entire gig schedule, please visit https://ourmarvelouslives.wixsite.com/our-marvelous-lives
That's it for this week! Please continue to support live and original music and until next week....ROCK ON!
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