INTERVIEW: Podunk
- Al Muzer
Friends since kindergarten and jamming together since they were 12-years-old, Port Arthur, Texas, natives Paul Soroski (bass), Bryan Jones (guitar) and vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Jason Touchette form the front line of one of the crispest, crunchiest, radio-ready rock outfits since Lou Gramm and Foreigner lied way back when and said it felt "Like The First Time." Together with Austin-born co-songwriter and Podunk drummer/vocalist Dwight Baker since 1996, this Lone Star State quartet crafts earnestly sung "boy meets girl, boy longs for girl, boy gives girl the 'world,' girl is still cold as ice, uh, hey! come onnnn, girl!" Ötype, no frills AM radio pop-metal with soaring, sing-along hooks, an urgent bass/drums pulse, monster choruses, sweeping guitars and the staggering, Gramm-was-Grandpa chops of Touchette.
Not as raw, rough, raucous or ragged as 1996's_Murlin's Doc, the just-released, William Poppy (Smash Mouth) -helmed Throwin' Bones (on the group-run Matchbox Records) has already been named one of the Top 10 most added "Radio & Records" rock chart discs and features The Album Network's No. 11 most added track and the group's first single, "Wings."
A diehard Podunk fan two verses into "Wings" -- Al Muzer recently chatted with Baker about touring, roots, fitting in, "King Of The Hill" and an album that packs the sort of big league punch that could turn a bunch of sun-fried rednecks from Heatstroke, Texas, into the hottest thing to hit radio in years.
CO: The other three members of Podunk have known each other since they were kids and have been jamming together for almost 10 years; did you find it hard to fit in when you joined? Especially when you consider the fact that you're the group's first and only drummer?
Baker: Jason, Paul and Bryan had a lot of time to get used to each other and learn how to, like, "read" each other, so there was a period there where I would, uhm, sometimes get lost. [laughs] They're good, small town folks, though. Nice, caring fellas, not a bad bone in their bodies, so I never felt like there was an agenda or that I didn't fit. They never treated me like an outsider. On the other hand, those three go back so far that they'll always be inside each other's head, they'll always kind'a know what the other guy is thinking. Our live shows can get pretty interesting sometimes, [laughs] like, "out there," because of the closeness of the band.
CO: You've toured with Shannon Curfman and Tesla and have shared the stage with a wide variety of musicians playing a wide variety of styles.
Baker: That's the truly great thing about this record and about this band. We can play comfortably with a wide range of acts. We can tour with just about any band out there and hold our own. We get blues fans likin' us, metal fans, straight up rock fans - it's great to see folks that didn't know who we were when we picked up our instruments cheering when we finish our set. Ya' know, we used to have a mostly male following but, in the last year or so, there's been a huge increase in the number of women, loud women [laughs], at our shows. I dunno, maybe the gals are lookin' to rock again?
CO: When you think about it, Throwin' Bones is a daring record to release in the era of Christina, Mandy, M2M, Britney and Backstreet. It's completely unlike anything else out there right now, yet it's so commercially accessible that I can't believe no other band has thought to revive the genre.
Baker: We don't think of it as "reviving" anything, actually. We just wanted to make a solid, riff-y rock record loaded with nothing but great songs that stayed as true to our roots as possible. That's what we've always been about. All four of us grew up listening to Van Halen, the Black Crowes, Foreigner, Tesla, ZZ Top, 'Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, Willie [Nelson], Stevie Ray [Vaughn], Doug Sahm and Johnny and Edgar Winter and, I think, we manage to pull a little bit of all that together in our sound. It just wouldn't have been right -- it wouldn't have been us -- if we'd tried to sound like, say, Korn, Blink 182 or Limp Bizkit. The way we sound is the way we sound.
What we were ultimately aiming for on Throwin' Bones was to create something that would find a place on "Rock" radio. Something that stood half a chance on today's charts. We wanted this album and these songs to really stand out on the radio -- so we mixed everything with how it would sound coming through a set of car speakers in mind. We mixed the record loud, phat, full and convertible-ized! We aren't out to change the world, you know. Just getting people to sing along to one of our songs, I think, would be accomplishment enough.
For Podunk updates including shows, news and special appearances point your browser at: http://www.matchboxrecords.com/podunk-news.html .
