Rio Bravo is a 3-piece rock outfit from Manchester, NH who has generated a nice amount of buzz during this past year. Consisting of John-Paul Padfield on guitar, Rachel Bacon on vocals and Ryan Clark on drums, Rio Bravo was recently declared Best New Band in New Hampshire for 2011 by the Boston Phoenix.
Below is part one of a detailed interview with JP, the guitarist. Enjoy!
D: So, Rio Bravo put out an album in Dec. 2010 right?
JP: Yep, we released a self titled album we released with Flyrock Records in Dover, New Hampshire.
D: I remember being at the record release, I really liked that album, especially “Date with Yolanda”. I thought you three had a fresh and interesting take on the traditional rock sound. How did you all meet?
JP: Ryan and I went to high school together so we knew each other. We both did music and our circles of friends started to intertwine, he was from Bedford and I was from Manchester. They had separate middle schools, but both went to the same high school. We were like two separate groups of friends doing the same things at separate middle schools, so when we got together we had a lot of similarities. We were in a lot of music classes together, did Jazz Band together, did Chamber Choir together and then also a bunch of high school rock bands. Ryan was going to school in Boston for a while, and when he came back and we started a terrible terrible cover band called “Love Child and the Son Born to Save The Marriage”. We mostly got drunk and played stuff like KISS, AC/DC, Van Halen rock god type stuff. At this time we started writing, and actually wrote the song “Slow Pill” not even really thinking about it, and decided we’d like to find a female lead singer to give a different angle to the punk, garage rock thing that we were doing. That was Rachael.
D: Okay, so you’re starting from this rock, punk background, any other influences?
JP: Yeah, just, mostly that. Ryan was into the punk side, and I’m a huge garage rock fan, minimalist rock with no frills. That was the mixture, we both like music where there’s no bullshit.
D: So, no fluff?
JP: Exactly. It’s a lot more, what’s the word? Straightforward. Honest.
D: You’ve always struck me as an innovator, so coming from this minimalist rock, punk background, what were some new things that you were excited to bring to the table?
JP: I feel like I’ve always worked most creatively in a box. When I put limitations on myself that I can push on, and look at differently. So one of the big limitations we put on the band was having guitar and drums with no bass. Ryan was on board, and was very supportive even though we originally had a bass player. When we lost the bass player, we started looking for a female lead who could sing and play bass. We found one (Rachael) who was a great singer with excellent style, but couldn’t play bass. We ended up not being able to find a bass player, and I decided to fill in the bass frequencies by splitting my guitar signal in two, and running one signal through an octave pedal and dropping it down an octave. This has limited what I can play, but the challenge causes me to think differently. To play the chorus of a song, rather than straight power chords, it makes me approach it differently.
D: That’s what I was going to get around to, different limitations cause music to evolve differently. So with you covering the low end in this way, new sounds are bound to arise out of that.
JP: Yeah, and I think sound wise, it helped lend a simplicity to Rio Bravo. There wasn’t really a lot added to the basics of the songs. It’s not like the bass and guitar can go off in different directions to expand things. It’s all coming from me. I’ve always been a fan of viewing the guitar from a percussive angle, so I’m able to add little things like rhythmic hits, little sounds to add something to the song. I still think that if I were to play Rio Bravo songs on an acoustic guitar, solo, some might sound a bit strange, but they’d all work, because the music is not complex. It’s simple. It’s more about the song than about technical ability. It’s not about how great of a drummer Ryan is, or how well I play guitar, but more like, the sum being greater than it’s parts… There’s probably a better way to say that…
D: A Gestalt.
JP: Exactly.
D: So, you had the record, which was noticed by the Boston Phoenix and prompted them to label you “The Best New Band in New Hampshire”…
JP: For 2011, even though the album came out in late 2010. They have an annual “100 Best New Bands” story and we were the pick for New Hampshire. A nice little accolade. It was really out of left field because we had taken a hiatus for the summer. It wasn’t something that we sought out, which was interesting, because it was like, someone I had no idea was even listening, thought enough of the album to put us out there like that.
D: So, you had a really good run of awesome shows in late 2010, early ’11, but then something happened. Your drummer moved or something like that?
JP: Yeah, Ryan moved to NYC in September actually. Before the record came out. We actually had him come up to play the record release because, he did all the drums on the album and in fact was the predominant songwriter for Rio Bravo. So we were looking for a new drummer, and we went through a few. This one kid played just one show with us, and then disappeared. His face was on the flier and everything, real cool flier done by Jesse Coumo. He’s immortalized in Rio Bravo history, but after that show he just fell off the face of the earth. I still have his drum kit. Very weird.
Keep an eye out for part two later in the week!
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