Let’s face it: Cinco De Mayo is a bastardized holiday. Much like St. Patrick’s Day, most people view it as an excuse to get drunk on whatever alcohol they deem appropriate and make complete fools of themselves. It’s the pre-summer edition of amateur hour that ignores that the day commemorates an unlikely victory that the Mexican army had against the French at the Battle Of Puebla in 1862. Regardless of the history lesson, the day should serve as a celebration of culture and freedom. What’s a better way to celebrate than with a multi-cultural and multi-national band?
Boston R&B funk pop dynamos Bad Rabbits will be taking the stage at The Met in Pawtucket on May 5 with synth pop act Communion and Providence party starters Jetty. Ahead of what should be a raucous time, I had a chat with drummer Sheel Davé about the band’s latest album American Nightmare, cherishing creative freedom, the current political landscape and staying the course.
Rob Duguay: Bad Rabbits’ second full length LP, American Nightmare, that came out last year, is a lot more edgy with harder tones than the band’s previous releases. What’s the artistic vision behind the album?
Sheel Davé: There wasn’t really a specific vision besides us just getting into a room together and just making noise. I think a lot of it was inspired by us kind of playing by the rules of everyone that was around us and our team along with labels, writers and producers. I think at one point we just lost the emotional connection to the music. Myself and Salim [Akram], the guitar player, essentially one day after dealing with writers, producers and doing the typical industry thing with “chasing hits” got fed up and we told ourselves that we were going to go back, invest some money in new recording equipment and bootstrap the whole recording process. We bought a bunch of recording equipment, set up a bunch of mics and instruments in my basement and we started making noise.
We hit record and that’s really what came out. At the time, Dua [Boakye], our lead singer, was living in Salt Lake City and we were like “Hey Dua, we’re writing some stuff, what do you think?” and he got his pen going. He was super inspired by what we were sending him. We sent it to a couple of other guys in the band and they weren’t really too keen on it because it’s definitely a departure from our stuff that was leading up to that. There was definitely a bit of a challenge to keep the creative spirit alive among the collective crew. We actually lost a member of the band among the process, so that was a little tough.
I think losing a band member led us to feeling like we had to prove ourselves, that we could do this on our own. We don’t need some famous producer in some huge studio to prove a point and to really record what we felt. At one point I remember Dua called me and told me that he was tired of flying to L.A. and working with writers and producers that were writing songs for him and he lost touch. I feel that when the singer loses touch then the connection is fading away and there’s a bunch of confusion. The songs that we made for this album stuck.
Like I said, it was a bit of a challenge to keep everything together and trying to convince people that it wasn’t worth trying to fight the creative process. We just wanted to continue to make noise and write songs and record them and put it together in the most cohesive and professional way. Salim and I produced the whole album and our keyboard player R.P. Thompson, who has played on most of our records, helped co-produce and co-write some songs along with Jarrett Ring. It was this creative process where we did everything ourselves. It was a very, very super DIY process.
We were like “You know what? The songs on this album and the album in general might not sound like the typical Bad Rabbits but the members of Bad Rabbits essentially made the album so why not put it out? Let’s see what happens.” The goal was to put a very honest and very genuine record out and that’s what we did. Some people were like, “What the fuck are they doing? They’re completely switching their sound up.” For us, we never played by anyone else’s rules and it never works when we do. Even with our managers, there’s a sub-standard where everyone things that you’re supposed to do things a certain way in the music industry.
I personally think that there are no rules anymore. We had the opportunity to do whatever we wanted to do and we did it. I think the aggressive tones on the album came from fighting back and saying, “No, we can do whatever we want.” That kind of played a role into the aggressiveness and most of us grew up on heavy music. A lot of us are big Deftones fans and we channeled that side of our musical palate a bit more on this album but we all knew that we were going to come full circle to the funky shit.
That’s what’s coming next. We’re going back full circle and that’s in us. We all grew up listening to R&B, we all grew up listening to hip-hop and we all grew up listening to metal and punk music. This album happened to be grabbing more toward the aggressive side and the punk, hardcore and metal side. It’s still very much a Bad Rabbits album to us and we made it.
RD: It sounds like you guys took your own artistic freedom and put it out into the forefront, grabbed it by the horns and did what you wanted. It’s probably the best thing any band could do.
SD: It was the only way we were gonna become better friends, especially after losing a member. I think better friends make better music. At one point when we ended our last tour we were going through all of these writers and producers and we were confused as to what was everyone’s role in the band. We didn’t really know at the time. We have nothing against working with producers and writers. We worked with one of our good friends, Brad Lewis, who produced American Love with us.
It was the album before American Nightmare and he produced our upcoming album. We worked with Gavin Castleton and a couple of writers on that, but at that time we didn’t want to really continue to struggle in that world. We got this album off of our chest and we feel that we did it well. We might have lost some fans along the way but we definitely grabbed up some new ones. I think you’re right, it definitely showed us that we can be free when it comes to making music.
That’s the biggest advantage we have as an independent band. We can do whatever we want, we don’t have to submit songs to a label and pray that they love it. At times, we submitted songs to our management and they were like “What the fuck are you guys doing?” and at this point I personally don’t care. This is the music we make, if anyone wants to work with us or for us and alongside us then cool. We’re too old for this shit to try to play some sort of industry game.
Let’s make music from the heart, make it genuine and we’ll make an album that maybe will make people want to mosh and cry and be angry. We made that album and we’ll move on to the next. This next album is funkier, it’s a little happier, it’s more of a party vibe and it goes back full circle to how the band started. There’s this cyclical pattern that Bad Rabbits has always had and the biggest advantage to being an independent band is being able to do whatever we want to do. We’re taking complete advantage of that now, there’s definitely some struggles because as an independent band money is a huge issue.
We don’t have a label or investor funding fusing money into our project so everything is being bootstrapped super tight and it costs money to be creative and do things right. Like getting a good mix done and get a good master done. If we can’t accomplish those things ourselves such as getting artwork done and getting photos done, the typical things that get a band into the world of publications and press and PR and stuff like that. We’ve had to struggle financially but I think we’ll be able to release the next album by July if all goes well with finances and stuff and raising some money. That’ll be another independent release.
I feel that the more we can hold on to our music and do it in an independent way, I think continuously in the long run it’ll prove itself. Having that creative freedom is very important to us.
RD: I love the album cover. Who came up with the idea to have a kid in the Captain America costume? Is the kid a friend of a friend or was he chosen randomly?
SD: That photo was taken by a photographer from New York City named Joey Lawrence. He’s a friend of our friend Jesse Korman who actually used to manage our band. I remember when Joey put out this photo set called “Halloween In Brooklyn,” this was like five or six years ago, and this one picture really stood out to me. There was something about the kid’s eyes and I’ve always loved that photo. When we made the album, I was thinking of art concepts and the imagery that we could put along to the album.
I circled back and looked at the photo and I thought it was the perfect photo for the album cover. We reached out to Jesse and Joey to see what they would think about us licensing that photo to use for the cover of our album and they were all about it. They approved it, we got licensing from the kid’s parents and that’s how it became the album cover. The cover has a very youthful vibe but there are also very serious undertones of kind of what is happening in our country. There are so many that it would take forever for me to list them all but the music definitely helps describe that.
For example, the song “The Wire” on the album. If you listen to that song and just stare at that image on the cover, that song sort of encompasses the cover of that album and the aesthetic of it.
RD: Everyone in Bad Rabbits has a different ethnic background, has the current political landscape affected any of you or anyone in your family?
SD: I’m a first generation Indian man in America. My parents were born and raised in India and I was born in America. All of us in the band grew up in very good families. We were fortunate enough to have roofs over our heads so the struggles that we had compared to what other families now in our country might have that come from different cultures, we can’t even compare those. We also complete understand where those things are going because all of us in our band at one point have experienced racism. The way I met Salim and we became friends was when we were 12 years old at day camp together and someone called him a n****r.
I didn’t even know what that word meant, but I just remember hearing that word being called to Salim and then watching Salim beat the absolute shit out of this kid at this predominantly middle-class white suburban day camp. That was my first experience with racism so as far as the Trump rhetoric and stuff like that, I personally don’t give a shit. I keep my circle tight and everybody in the band keeps their circle tight. We’ve all been very fortunate in our lives, we’ve been blessed to be able to be creative and play music.
Racism was there even before Trump was president. We’ve experienced it before then. When it comes to politics, I personally don’t give a shit. I live my life and I find my happiness in certain ways. When someone gets in my way or they’re racist to me I understand that’s the world we live in now. Obviously I’m not going to fight or throw punches.
I’ve been in fights before defending the color of my skin but at this point I’m older now. I’m 34 and that’s not the way I react to it now, I just understand that people are different and their views are different. People do judge other people by the color of their skin and that’s just the way things are. I’m personally not going to be able to change that, I’m going to stick to playing my drums and making the most beautiful music I can possibly make. If someone didn’t respect me because of the color of my skin then maybe they’ll listen to my music and then respect me after that. Maybe they won’t and they’ll hate me more.
RD: And then they can go fuck off.
SD: I’m not trying to change the world or anyone in the band is. That’s my personal take on it, everyone else in the band has their own take, but I don’t give a shit about politics at all.
RD: Recently Bad Rabbits posted the date of May 5 on your Facebook page, which happens to be the same date as your upcoming show at The Met. What can fans expect on that date? Can you reveal anything?
SD: On May 5, we release our single called “Mysterious.” That is one of the singles off of our upcoming album titled Mimi. There’s no set release date for the album yet, we’re hoping to release it during the summer but that song is definitely one of the singles off of the album. That song encompasses what we have coming next. I feel like we kind of kicked a beehive with American Nightmare and now we’re coming full circle with the next album that we’re rolling out.
RD: For most of the decade Bad Rabbits have been viewed as one of the big acts in the Boston music scene along with local contemporaries such as Speedy Ortiz, Passion Pit, Cousin Stizz and Michael Christmas. What does the band view as the next step to reach even higher levels of success?
SD: Honestly, it’s so unpredictable and I feel that to even try to answer that question is impossible. There are things that we can hope for but I know that the next step is that we’re just going to release music. We’re going to pick and choose our battles when it comes to touring and our placements as far as where we’re putting the music. We’re just going to release music and essentially see what happens. We went into this whole situation of being a band and doing it because we loved to do it.
Obviously everybody who joins a band, at the most part, at some point has envisioned being the biggest rockstar in the whole world and playing in front of thousands of people. For me, I think a lot of my dreams of being in a band playing music have already come true. We’ve been on national TV, we got the opportunity to play on “The Jimmy Kimmel Show,” “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson” and “The Arsenio Hall Show.” It’s things that I can tell my grandkids about. When we got to that level of success, we definitely had a lot of the underground support and the underdog support from a lot of our peers from Boston and surrounding cities like Providence.
We had the support of everybody who has ever booked us because we did that with no label support. We got to that level but we had a lot of interest from labels and managers and booking agents on a very, very high level. We got a taste of what that next step could have been so we went into the studio and made a bunch of songs with writers and producers. These labels were saying “You guys just need that one hit.” We all kept hearing that word “hit” so we were like “fuck it.”
We went into the studio to make this “hit” with these hitmaker producers and we tried that. It didn’t work out, we had songs, we pitched albums to labels and we ended up sitting around burning daylight for around two years. At this point, I feel that the next step is just putting out music and keep continuing to put out music from the heart. Obviously, we would love to get to headline a tour and play in front of thousands of people again but that’s not that much of a concern of ours. Our main concern is putting out good quality music with content surrounding it.
Buy tickets to see Bad Rabbits, Communion and Jetty at The Met here: ; Bad Rabbits’ Website:badrabbits.com
