mrandmrsmays -- if it weren’t for the spelling you would expect to hear them on the Grand Ole Opry. Fronted by a sexy banshee brit and her husband, the Reverend, this group of Austin hipsters, might seem unlikely to deliver a spiritual punch. But hey do... like space age kung-fu fighters.
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“mrandmrsmays the name is a bit of a joke and it isn’t. We are a real normal ol’ married couple, which isn’t that glamorous, yet we full-on freak out on stage, so if you’re expecting a sweet safe married couple… that’s not what you are going to get, on stage anyway” says Kate Kind – the “mrs” of the band.
The Austin, TX based and self-described - indietronic/dance/rockers with a punk vibe - will be releasing their self-titled debut July 15.
“Recording at Austin’s Bubble over the course of a year and some change gave us the flexibility to try out a new process. We tend to write independently and then meld our ideas together. With a song like introduction (hate to love), we had written two entirely different songs. I played intro and Kate sang hate to love right over the top. They magically fit together. We are amazed every time that happens however not surprised somehow…we don’t really write songs, they come from somewhere other than our minds, so whatever force ‘writes’ them must know we are working together.”
Working with Frenchie (Bubble Studios/Producer) helped the husband and wife to realize that having a full band was essential to the sound of this record.
“mrandmrsmays is a band of many. We started as a duo, as a writing exercise. We both were working on solo projects when we met in New York. Then, we started playing out together as a natural progression and found we got 6 times the tips singing together, so that was that really. Adding friends into this sound and sharing the musical experience as an ensemble has been - and is - a trip.”
Although far from “straight up the middle” the two Mays’ are “straight edge”.
“Life is definitely less painful now for us without the constant need for drugs and booze. Although I think the term includes abstinence from sex, which we obviously do not live by. Thank God! We’d be mental cases otherwise…well James would be!” laughs Kate.
Their son Merlin, now three, loves skate boarding, drumming and covering himself in paint. “He’s got the artistic childhood we would have loved to have…so he’ll probably grow up and say he’s going to be a doctor.”
This record, mixed and mastered by Grammy winner Rob Fraboni and produced by Grammy nominee Frenchie Smith, takes us into the Mays’ world of spiritual searching, singing about higher states of consciousness or God while doing a screaming banshee-pagan-dance-ritual.
“We took the demos to Frenchie and he understood where we are coming from… he calls it ‘the world of mrandmrsmays’. The great thing about Frenchie is he isn’t afraid to commit crazy sounds to tape. He would wrap his tight panted legs around his Eventide and ride across the control room until he found sounds that Jeff Lynn or Yoko Ono might appreciate.”
Rob Fraboni is perhaps most famous for his work with the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and The Band.
“Working with Rob is a trip. He’s a mad scientist” says James. “A true scientist, he even puts cooking oatmeal through an A/B process to see if 3 minutes can taste better than 5 on the stove! We mixed everything in Pawling, NY and then went to his house in Connecticut for mastering. We are extremely lucky to have a legend spending so much time getting every detail right on the mix. He actually has a technology that makes a CD sound like an LP… it puts the entire feel back into it. When you play the music, you can’t hear it so much but you can feel it.” Fraboni’s technology is appropriately labeled “Real Feel.”
The Band / Credits
mr (James Mays) has music credits from Emo’s to CBGS via London’s Troubadour and back to Carnegie Hall.
mrs (Kate Kind) recent transplant from the UK, reigned supreme as one of London’s premier-club-promoters between French MTV festivals and gigs with her then band Kate Kind and d’ cruel2b’s in UK and Europe.
Glynn Wedgewood has toured with the likes of Oasis, The Bravery and The Pretenders as guitarist and singer for the IV Thieves.
Chris Laurel joins after his stint as drummer for Madori Umi and Sweet Daddy.
David McComb brings the cinematic view of bass playing that only a filmmaker can.
The record release date for mrandmrsmays is July 15, 2008.
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mrandmrsmays
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