Photo by Jeff Gentner/Getty Images

Last November I met the Athens based Dead Confederate at a Thai restaurant next to Spaceland where they were performing later that night. The entire band was there: Hardy Morris (vocals, guitar), Brantley Senn (bass, vocals), John Watkins (keys, vocals), Jason Scarboro (drums), Walker Howle (guitar) and manager Dawson Morris (Hardy’s brother). It was obvious that I was hanging out with a tight-knit, laid back group of friends. After dinner Hardy and I went to the bar for a beer where they told us they weren’t serving. So, we walked across the street to the 7-11 where Hardy talked me into buying the caffeinated beers we “enjoyed” on the corner outside the store during this interview.

Dead Confederate are one of the hottest bands on the scene with the September 08′ debut of their first LP ‘Wrecking Ball’ receiving praise from Spin and Rolling Stone. They have also played the Conan O’Brien show and opened for REM at SXSW last year. Hardy’s howling vocals have been compared to Kurt Cobain and with the lyrics and often heavy guitars, the band’s music is considered dark and haunting. Hardy is definitely the leader of the band, but he and Brantley each wrote 5 of the album’s 10 songs. And, while the band is Southern, they prefer to be known as a rock band that hails from the South.

R&G: Tell me a little bit about growing up in Augusta.

Hardy: Growing up in Augusta was a little culturally depressing. It’s one of those small Southern towns that’s unlike Athens where there’s a college, or Atlanta. It’s just kind of there.

R&G: Do you think living in a small town inspired you to become a musician?

Hardy: I guess every town, even cool towns, are crappy. Either way, kids get together and play music. My mom was always big into music. She’s an artist and musician, too. I had her pushing me along as kid. I tried a lot of things before I really got into doing the band thing. Around our town, there was football and baseball.

R&G: Were you a jock?

Hardy: (Laughs) Of course not. I’ve weighed 130 pounds since I was in 9th grade. I’m not built for that shit.

R&G: What type of music did your mom turn you on to? 

Hardy: The first song she taught me to play on guitar was “Heart of Gold” by Neil Young. 

R&G: How old were you?

Hardy: I was either 11 or 12. She gave me ‘Harvest’. She had it on vinyl. We would listen to it all time. The funny thing about “Heart of Gold” is I think we were playing it in the wrong key.

R&G: When you moved to Atlanta you started thinking about becoming a serious songwriter. 

Hardy: Playing in bands when I was younger, we would play old funk songs or try to write songs, but they were just skeletons of songs to bang the drums to or to try and break your strings to; we played them as loud as we could. Then in college, we listened to a lot of Pink Floyd. We became more experimental, jammy kind of stuff. Then Brantley wrote “The Rat”. That was the first time I felt like we were becoming a ‘real’ band.

R&G: When was that?

Hardy: About three years ago, in 2005. “The Rat” was the catalyst to starting The Confederate. Bentley played “The Rat” for me on an acoustic guitar one day and I was like, “That’s as good as any of the songs that we’ve ever written as a band”. The others were not even in the same ballpark. That’s a great song. I was like, “Wow.” And Brantley said, “I was just pissed off and sat down and wrote the song.”

R&G: Did he envision writing “The Rat” knowing that you could put the voice behind it?

Hardy: Yeah, Brantley and I have known each other for a long time. It’s really cool of him to trust me enough to deliver a lot of his lyrics, which both of us write from a very personal head space.

R&G: Did he explain to you what he felt while writing the song?

Hardy: In some of the songs he tells me a little more than in others. When I am singing those songs, I always try to remember what they were about and translate my friend’s emotions. I don’t want to be like, “Listen to my voice.” He poured so much into the song; I want to pour as much back out. We’re all pretty timid guys, and I didn’t want to be the singer for the band, it just kind of happened that way.

“In a separate follow-up conversation with Brantley, he told me that he was depressed when he wrote “The Rat”. He’s agnostic and was tired of the religious” nuts” in his life pushing God, religion and their ideologies on him; telling him that he needed to find Jesus (the song is clearly “tongue-in-cheek”). Brantley and Hardy bonded over tough times like these in their lives; he said he bared his soul to Hardy and that they are like brothers. He also said he and Hardy bring music (lyrics) to one another and things seem to flush out naturally.”

R&G: You’re delivering some fucking hardcore emotion. Do you try to make it your own?

Hardy: Yeah. “The Rat” or “News Underneath” or “Flesh Colored Canvas”, or all of his songs, are from when he was in a rough spot. At all of those points I was living with him, but it wasn’t necessarily me going through all the same stuff. He wasn’t in the greatest place. Same thing with my songs; I just happen to be singing them. 

R&G: You weren’t in a great place when you wrote your songs? 

Hardy: Not a lot of them. For the most part, I wrote them when I was a little misplaced, a little detached. It’s not like we were cutting ourselves and needed to be committed.

R&G: Were you guys worried that if the band didn’t work out that you would have to get a 9 to 5 job?

Hardy: Honestly, a lot of our issues were about girls. 

R&G: What do you say to people that think your music is dark?

Hardy: What I used to tell people when they’d ask, ‘Why is the music so dark? Why is it negative?’ is ‘It’s not negative. It’s honest.’ It’s hard for Brantley and me to write about something that doesn’t affect us. We’re not going to just sit around and write for no reason. When you’re sitting down to actually pour out a real song, you’ve got to be affected by something. And, lots of times, if something affects you enough to write about it, it’s probably something negative. If things are good, you’re going to be like, “Hey, let’s go get a beer!” You’re not going to be like, “I want to go to my room.” It’s when something bad happens that you’re like, “Fuck off. I’ve got to clear my head.”

R&G: You guys are getting some good praise for “Wrecking Ball”. How do you feel about your new found success?

Hardy: I don’t know. Success? We probably played for thirty people last night (laughs).

R&G: Your vocals have been compared to Kurt Cobain. Are you worried about being pigeonholed?

Hardy: Kurt Cobain was one of the reasons I first picked up the guitar. He’s the first artist I focused on when I was younger who kind of fit my feelings, and not only as the typical Nirvana fan who was a displaced youth. I admired him as a musician and for his whole mindset of being very raw and emotional and into a lot of the same bands: Credence Clearwater Revival, the Beatles, the whole aesthetic that was very un-cock rock, take-it-or-leave-it. That’s always been something that I’ve identified with.

R&G: So what’s up with you guys in the New Year? 

Hardy: I really want to go to the UK. We’ve never been over there. I’ve been writing some new songs, so the next record’s going to be far different than “Wrecking Ball”. It has songs we have locked down and had toured on for a year, so they were very seasoned. I would love to move away from the Pink Floyd, Neil Young and Nirvana imprint that’s on everything we do.  We’re not like, “Oh, we gotta get away from that. We can’t do that anymore.” I just don’t feel like writing songs in that vein anymore. That’s not what’s coming to my fingertips. I play a lot more acoustic guitar with different tunings. I have this whole batch of songs recorded demo-style at our house, but we haven’t played them together as a band yet.

Dead Confederate will be playing @ Spaceland on February 25th (Click Here for more info)

Download:
MP3: Dead Confederate – The Rat
MP3: Dead Confederate – Heavy Petting

Download:
Dead Confederate – Wrecking Ball (eMusic)
Dead Confederate – Dead Confederate EP (eMusic)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 12:57 pm and is filed under SXSW. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.