ARTIST: Dead Confederate
TITLE: Dead Confederate
LABEL: Razor & Tie/TAO
GENRE: Rock
BITRATE: 199kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 25m total
RELEASE DATE: 2007-11-20
RIP DATE: 2007-11-20
Track List
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1. Memorial Day Night 3:14
2. The Rat 5:10
3. Tortured Artist Saint 6:37
4. Get Out 4:50
5. Shadow The Walls 5:29
Release Notes:
a "buzz band" from atlanta, ga. check it out
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With a name like Dead Confederate, a band might be expected to embrace Southern
rock's history, not carry around the weighty expectations of those looking to
them as one of the genre's brightest future stars.
Despite their name's appeal to the South's past, the Atlanta-based Confederates
are a stark departure from Lynyrd Skynyrd or the Allman Brothers, boldly
blending moody, emotionally charged lyrics and a twinge of garage grunge with an
explosive guitar presence.
For all the praise the band has received for its contributions to the new
direction of Southern rock, however, lead singer Hardy Morris said the laurels
were unexpected and won't be rested upon.
"We just want to be ourselves but do something different, not let ourselves get
pigeonholed or stay in one place," he said. "(We need to) keep moving because
what's kept us going already is to keep changing things up. The minute we slow
down is the minute we're gonna slip up."
Morris, along with Brantley Senn (bass, vocals), Walker Howle (lead guitar),
Jason Scarboro (drums) and John Watkins (keys, vocals), got his start in
Augusta, Ga., on the club scene while in college. During their days there, the
quintet played under the name of The Redbelly Band with a looser, jam-band brand
of rock. They later graduated to more-structured music in 2005 with a move to
Atlanta, where they adopted the Dead Confederate name.
Now, with work well under way on their first full-length, untitled album
following the 2006 release of a self-titled EP -- both bearing a tighter, darker
sound that hit Atlanta's airwaves like a runaway fire truck through a fruit
stand -- their eyes are firmly fixed on the future.
"Redbelly was just a college band," Morris said, citing the band's experimental
approach to playing as a way of defining themselves as musicians. "Now, we're
totally tapped into what we're good at, and we've come into our own."
Dead Confederate's brand of rock wouldn't have had as rapid or far-reaching an
introduction to the public had the band not taken on 100-plus contenders during
last year's Open Mic Madness, a battle of the bands in Atlanta. As a result of
their win there (their first public performance since adopting the new name and
sound), two days of free recording time at Atlanta's Nickel and Dime Studios
yielded the four-track demo that has since found play time on stations as far
away as Birmingham, Ala.
Currently, Dead Confederate is putting the finishing touches on a contract long
in the making with an as-yet-unannounced label in Atlanta. As with the EP, the
new album will feature the band's new, darkly mature sound and songs by Morris
and Brantley bearing lyrics drawn from intense emotion and personal experiences.
The South has given birth to a wide range of musicians, from James Brown to
R.E.M., and Dead Confederate's sound simply adds to that variety. In the
process, it challenges some people's rigid definitions of what Southern rock can
be, Morris said.
"We're kind of in a place right now where we're like, 'Should we just try and
lose the label of Southern rock because it does have such a shallow
connotation?' or, should it be, 'No, this is the new version of Southern rock?'
" he said. "Really, I don't know -- rock 'n' roll is rock 'n' roll, and we'll
just stick with that."