After the 2008 release of debut album And You Were a Crow, New Jersey-bred rock band The Parlor Mob
toured tirelessly across the United States and Europe. The album received
critical acclaim and the band became known for their high energy,
rock-your-face-off live shows. As the dust settled on their extensive schedule
and they returned home to the Garden State, the guys put their heads together
and prepared to record their second album, 2011’s Dogs. Armed with the resultant unity of spending the previous years
touring together, the hard-wrought experience of learning their way through the
notoriously treacherous music business, and a new bass player (Anthony Chick
replacing former bassist Nick Villapiano), the band labored together to bring
the music world the next chapter of The Parlor Mob epic.
Longtime fans craving the hard-hitting, bang-your-head licks
that introduced us to The Parlor Mob were dutifully rewarded with Dogs, as you can’t help but raise your
fist and lose your shit to songs like “Fall Back,” “American Dream,” and lead single
“Into The Sun.” The dirty, guitar-driven, and lyrically igniting “Take What’s
Mine” will have you wanting to tear down the walls, and while the sound is
distinctly P. Mob, the band’s growth is clearly evident. Acoustic tracks “Slip
Through My Hands” and “Holding On” show that by raging through anger and
frustration with screaming vocals and heavy guitar riffs, The Parlor Mob have
also been able to reach a more tender and reflective place. And the critics
noticed, too — just last week, Dogs was named the iTunes Rock Album of the Year.
All the pieces that defined this group in the beginning are
still here, but they’ve evolved and been refined to bring us a whole new whole
that is reassuring and inspiring. Dogs successfully bridges the gap from past to present, but really focuses on what’s
to come. EasternSurf.com was lucky
enough to sit down with guitarist Dave Rosen one fall evening at the Dauphin
Grille inside the historic Berkeley Hotel in Asbury Park, the night before The
Parlor Mob’s record release party at The Stone Pony. Over a few drinks in a low-lit,
comfy lounge, Dave talked about the frustrations of the music business, the incredible
experience of performing, and the building success of The Parlor Mob.
ESM: You guys
just finished up a nationwide tour for new album Dogs. How did that compare with the first few years of live
performances?
Dave Rosen: It
was definitely different. With the new record, we’re playing all the new songs
for the first time, and now we’re a few years older and a few years more
experienced in the music business. Also, these new songs have a lot more
meaning for us than the first record did. Not to downplay the significance of
the first record, but we sort of found ourselves after it. You know when you
realize what you want to do with your life and you have this inner confidence?
You know who you are and you’re confident in yourself? That’s more what playing
is feeling like now, as opposed to sort of figuring it out and being a little
more scattered. We feel empowered by the songs and our experience and our
knowledge of what we’re doing.
ESM: You guys
went out to California for the kickoff of the new record, right?
DR: Pretty much.
We did a few shows down to Florida but then we flew out to San Francisco and
did this thing for iTunes the day before Steve Jobs died. Then we drove down to
LA and did the Viper Room. That was definitely one of our favorite shows of
that tour.
ESM: What does it
feel like five minutes before going onstage?
DR: It’s weird
because we used to play and I would never get nervous about anything, ever.
We’d play in front of 10,000 people at festivals and it’s like, “Whatever”
— you only see the first couple people so you don’t really care. It’s
like band practice. But lately, because we’ve been off the road for so long, I
find that I get real anxious before we’re about to play. Five minutes before,
it’s like that butterflies feeling. But as soon as we start, as soon as we get
on stage and the guitar goes on, it’s all gone. You don’t feel nervous at all. I
also find that during the shows it used to be like a blackout. We’d play a show
and I’d just black out for an hour and a half and you’d ask me afterwards what
happened and I would have no idea. Now I feel I’m a little more cognizant of
what’s going on while we’re playing. So it’s different. I used to be super calm
before and super frantic during the show. Now I sort of feel real frantic
before and real calm during the show. It’s nice to soak it in and realize what
I’m doing.
ESM: Sounds a lot
like surfing.
DR: I’m sure. I’m
not a surfer, so I don’t know, but I imagine it’s like when you get out in the
water. Things are super calm sometimes and you sort of have moments where
things sink in for a minute. But there are other times when it’s like this flurry
of emotion. It’s the same way within a set. There are moments when things can
stop and I’m calm and I can see what’s going on and look out and remember that there
are people watching us. And then there are other times when it’s like there’s
no one in the room but the five of us.
ESM: Any past The
Parlor Mob performances that were really special for you?
DR: A few. Two
years ago we played Lollapalooza on my birthday, which was crazy because it was
at that point the biggest show we’d ever played. There were probably like 8,000
people in front of the stage. And you know, it was my birthday, we had just
driven through the night so we were all deliriously tired, we had no idea
what the hell was going on, we’re half asleep, we don’t know how many people
are coming to see us at this thing… We’ve played festivals where there are like
100,000 people there and only 20 of them are watching us play. So we walked up
on stage and looked out, and it was like a sea of people as far as the eye could
see. And [singer] Mark [Melicia] says, “It’s our guitarist’s birthday, and we
want to wish him a happy birthday.” And the whole crowd, thousands and
thousands of people, are singing me happy birthday. That was pretty crazy. I’ll
remember that for the rest of my life.
ESM: You’ve
played with tons of big bands. Which have you been most excited to share a bill
with?
DR: In Orlando we
played a show with Le Blorr, who we actually played a show with in Tampa a
couple years ago. They’re a two-piece and it’s this strange blend of
psychedelic music and dirty, guitar-driven, almost bluesy type of shit. They
have a lot of synthesizers that they use to get a lot of different tones. They
sort of expand the horizon.
ESM: How does
your new album Dogs differ from And You Were a Crow?
DR: I told
someone this on tour: the first record is sort of like a yearbook photo in some
ways. You’re not necessarily embarrassed by it, but it’s you when you were a
lot younger. We wrote those songs when we were younger. We had no experience
with anything. We were just kids, having fun, which was great. This record, we
wrote in a more concise period of time. We went into writing this record with
nothing. We didn’t have a few songs from the road that we had developed. We
can’t really write songs on the road, because we write all together. We
basically got home from touring the record, locked ourselves down, and spent
eight months just writing. We literally clocked in, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.,
five days a week. It’s that sort of mantra that when it comes to art, people
say you can’t force creativity — you just gotta do it when you do it. But
we didn’t really believe that and you don’t necessarily get as much done [that
way]. We felt like, “We just need to work at it everyday like a job.” Some days
we banged our heads against the wall and just screamed at each other and fought
all day and got nothing done. Then some days we’d go in and an hour later we’d
have a song. We wrote “Into The Sun” in probably two hours, front to back,
start to finish. That’s the single off the record. And then “American Dream”
took forever. So it was a lot of pounding the pavement. Sometimes there’s
nothing, sometimes there’s something great.
ESM: So there’s a
lot more to the songwriting then?
DR: I think the
biggest difference in this record for sure is the message behind it. It’s not a
concept record or anything like that, but there’s definitely a universal theme
throughout the whole thing that maybe the first record really didn’t have as
much. It’s really documenting the last couple years of our lives and our
struggle within the music industry. You separate the band from the fact that
we’re human beings with lives, you know what I mean? You get shit on so much
and you have people kicking you around all the time and everyone else thinks
they know what’s best for you. Everyone thinks that they can map our career out
and tell us what’s good for us, and they end up sort of shoving you around. You
find yourself in situations that you would never in a million years put
yourself in if you were in control of your own destiny. Eventually you reach a
point where you get sick of that shit. Us, as people, we need to be able to
look in the mirror at the end of the day and be happy with ourselves, and that
involves standing up for ourselves and fighting for control of our situation. We’re
not 17-year-old kids getting signed to a label, like, “We’ll do whatever you
want — just make us famous.” I’m 27; [guitarist] Paul [Ritchie’s] almost
30. This is our lives. And this record, it’s hard to take all your life’s eggs
and put them in one basket and hope that it goes well. Especially when you have
companies who can basically just tip the basket over anytime they want to.
ESM: What’s next
for you guys?
DR: We’re not exactly
sure. We’re going to go over to Europe in the new year, when the record’s going
to come out there. As soon as we know, it’ll be up on the website.
For all things The Parlor Mob, visit www.TheParlorMob.com
UPCOMING THE PARLOR
MOB TOUR DATES:
12/15 Horseshoe Tavern Toronto,
Canada
12/16 The Pike Room Pontiac,
MI
12/17 The Loft Lansing,
MI
