I dig the way retro rock group – Them Vibes – makes music. It’s funky. It grooves. It always sounds like they’re having a party. You can feel it in their music and you get to live it when watching one of their videos. Formed in East Nashville the band is composed of lead singer Brother Love and guitarists Alex Haddad and Kyle Lewis. They just released a five song E.P. entitled, Why The Funk Not on February 21st. Sonically, the album moves right to left on my speakers and keeps my musical brain stimulated the whole way. The mix feels like an analog dream. Warm and wide. Just the way I like my audio to sound. Huge ups to the mixing job on this short but satisfying record.
Besides being a fan of the mix, I find myself locking into certain musical performances in each song. Meaning: there is some great play by a multitude of musicians. The bass guitar was the first thing I started to obsess on. The excellent bass sound and delivery here deserves high praise. The drums are blessed with an amazing snare sound. Pay attention – this is how a snare should sound. My favorite drums performance lives on Sinners Revelry, some terrific snare work with a few toms thrown in for good measure. Busy percussion and an array of organ/piano work and a stellar horn section fills the sound up in my headphones. Guitar-wise, there are many different things happening here – and that’s a great thing. Whether it’s double tracked acoustic guitars, slide/steel guitars or electric guitars that sit in their own space and owning that part of the song. The overall guitar tracks are busy but don’t over take the space in any song. They just seem to sit in perfectly. Vocally, this album has some serious swagger. It just feels like they tracked these in the middle of a party. They feel fun and invite the listener in with their playful but professionally executed sound.
I was able to catch up with Alex Haddad and Brother Love and talk about the players and recording process of this E.P. Brother Love and Alex tell Sound Vapors, “It’s the same band, by the way. It’s not like we got different players because we wanted a different sound. We’ve had the same players. Sarah Tomek on drums. Kyle Whalum on bass. We have the Nolan Brothers, Matt Nolan and Kevin Nolan, Kevin on keys, Matt on percussion. So it was a family affair once again, so it was great.” They continue on about incorporating a horn section. “Finally getting to record with a horn section was a blast for us that we’ve never even done before. We’ve always wanted to experiment with that kind of stuff.”
The direction of the E.P. equates to a cohesive sound throughout. Alex and Brother Love explain, “These are just the songs that we wrote and honed in one as opposed to having a full length record that, maybe there’s a funky song and there’s a ballad, there’s sort of an acoustic thing or maybe there’s something a little more Stone-sy. We just streamlined and said, let’s just put five songs out that have that dance vibe to it. It came really naturally and wasn’t too planned out. We had the songs ready and we were like, man, time to put something out because we hadn’t put out anything for about a year. We put out Right On the single which features Maggie Rose and we put that out last year. We had a bunch of these songs and were like, let’s just go back in. We went into our Pentavarit studios in Nashville with our Producer, Bobby Holland. He just gets us right away and not a lot of tricks to it. We set up, we play live and we do some minimal overdubs and we just kind of tinker with it. Just kind of add the sugar and the spice. We’ve always been fans of Sly and the Family Stone, Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder. This time around we just really decided to bring on the groove. The groove was numero uno on making this E.P.”
The band definitely succeeded on their mission.
Like pretty much every other band – due to Covid-19 – shows and live performances have been cancelled and postponed. Them Vibes have been leveraging technology to produce streaming live shows or virtual concerts. This is a great way to keep engaged with fans and is a useful outlet for bands wanting to play music and connect with fans that are also at home due to this – Coronavirus quarantine, time in history. So make sure you go to the bands social pages as they are updating when one of these events will take place!
The band wanted to mention one other thing that was important to them. Their new video for the song Powers Collide was directed by their manager Kim Paige!
Great group of people all around.
You can hear my entire conversation with Alex and Brother Love of Them Vibes by clicking on the link to your favorite place to listen to podcasts.
-Tommy Marz
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