Exposed Vocals: Thank you for being part of our interview, Shower Me Blue. We would love to learn more about the band and the musicianship. Where did you meet?
It was a dark and lonely night, she lit up a cigarette <ha ha!>… This story goes back a few years. Around 2008 Bill and Dingo (Bill Teags – Bass & Dingo Holtz – Drums) met when asked to form a trio with the late Mikel Thomas. (There’s a very sad story there – Mikel died of brain cancer before we could record or perform live). We promised each other that we would get together again and that’s how we get involved with Gilles. Gilles (Gilles Palmarini) started Shower Me Blue around 2010 and had asked Bill to sit in on a few shows. Other projects took us all in separate directions until 2017, when we suddenly found ourselves eyeball to eyeball, sticks and strings, in a little room making a great big sound! Since we all come from very diverse music backgrounds, Bill from jazz, fusion / prog rock, blues – Dingo from heavy metal – Gilles from blues rock, we are really excited to create a global gumbo of heavy blues rock. Having all come from different cities as well, Gilles – Paris, Dingo – LA, Bill – Chicago, we each have different musical experiences that we bring to our sound.
Exposed Vocals: Please describe the challenges and advantages of being a musical trio.
It always seems like we each need at least 3 more hands to fill up the sound. Being a 3 piece can be a bit sparse when playing live – BUT – it also gives us tremendous space to just explode sonically and not worry too much. The drums and bass can put a huge amount of drive into a song, and what we do as a rhythm section provides a lot of support to the guitar and vocals without being in the way. (We get lots of compliments about how we are loud but the vocals are really understandable!!). There is a sonic space we each get to play in and the challenge is to use our own space to compliment the other 2 sonic spaces.
Exposed Vocals: If Shower Me Blue could share the stage with any artist living or dead who would it be?
Where do we start – there are so many cool artists. Maybe The Who, The Rolling Stones, Dave Mathews Band, Judas Priest, John Mayall, Muddy Waters… Or maybe some crossover bands like STS9 or ???
Exposed Vocals: Top Musical inspirations for Shower Me Blue?
Each of us bring our own top inspirations – that’s part of what’s so cool about SMB (Shower Me Blue). I think we are all inspired by great artists and music that seems to never fade with time.
There are artists we all admire and respect and some are not part of the rock, blues, metal scenes. Music that evokes a mood, a feeling, a memory – there’s definitely some inspiration there and that can come from just about any music.
Exposed Vocals: We hear you are going into the studio soon, can you tell us a bit about that process and how do you find inspiration while recording?
The process usually starts by plugging in a few guitars and mics. Inspiration usually happens when you plugs things in wrong – it’s amazing how inspired you can feel after getting zapped a few times… Actually, we are going to track in eTown Studios. It’s in Boulder, Colorado – you know – the town between the Rockies and Reality – and it’s a really nice place to make great music. A lot of really cool music comes from eTown and they are very into helping the environment and stuff as well. We also have the fabulous Stuart Sullivan coming up from Austin to produce – he’s done records with an amazing bunch of people – some guy named Willie Nelson and another dude with 2 first names – Stevie Ray Vaughn. Also Eric Johnson, Sublime, the Meat Puppets and a bunch of other people who he helped make awesome music in Austin. eTown has a setup that lets us play more like we play live, which adds more to the inspiration level. The plan is to track in eTown and then mix at Wired in Austin.
Exposed Vocals: Will your new music be released on vinyl?
Yes!! We are building a turntable using fiddly bits we found – you know – nails, drum sticks, a doggy cone of shame – so we will have something to play it on! We might call it a Grammyphone in honor of some music awards they have on TV.
Exposed Vocals: Where will our readers be able to purchase new Shower Me Blue music?
There’s a guy on this street corner uptown – but ya gotta know the password. Other than that you can buy our music on iTunes, CD Baby, Amazon, Reverb Nation, Sound Cloud – the usual suspects for Interwebby stuff.
Exposed Vocals: Thank you for your time and please feel free to share anything else you would like to tell our readers at Exposed Vocals about Shower Me Blue.
Well, there is this funny thing about Dingo… But you’ll have to come see us live to learn more about it. Yeah – live music! Everybody go see live music… and dance… and be happy to each other!!
