Dead Confederate Loves Athens…….And LOTS Of Fog.
Prior to this past weekend and our work on this project, I wasn’t familiar with the music of Dead Confederate. I know that for some that might seem preposterous, as they’ve been on the fast track to notoriety the last few years, but the music they play isn’t necessarily always on my radar screen. But after reaching out to their management to book them for an interview for the Athens Music Project, I was doing my due diligence to learn more about them, and realized they are seemingly, the quintessential rock and roll success story.
They got their start in Athens, and for their frontman Hardy Norris, it was an easy sell. He was in Athens for the now legendary Widespread Panic concert that brought over 100,000 fans into town to mark the release of their live album Light Fuse, Get Away. Drummer Jason Scarboro was sold in five days, after coming to The Classic City to visit friends-and then deciding he never wanted to leave.
Dead Confederate was a good group of guys, who clearly love what they do-Then again, who WOULDN’T like traveling the country, playing to packed clubs and venues, dropping in for appearances on Late Night w/ Conan O’Brien, and generally testing the limits of eardrums everywhere they go. That’s not to say they aren’t good, they are just loud. Very loud. Perhaps it’ s just me beginning to turn into an older man, but they certainly make the decibel level jump when they plug in.
They certainly have no shortage of fans from Athens, as evidenced by their show at The 40 Watt this past Saturday night, which for a moment, was a little hairy as the club was bursting at the seams, and the doormen had to turn people away. A close call for our crew, who at first were told there wasn’t any room, but upon a second mention, we managed to get in. Those that DID get in were treated to a pretty awesome show, complete with fog and lights-The guys warned us in their interview there would be fog, and with good reason. Fog there was………and alot of it. Thanks to Dawson, and the rest of the guys-They were good sports, and clearly have no intentions of leaving Athens, regardless of how much further they go down the musical path. And that, in essence, is what keeps the musical notes in this town going.
Walker Howle, Hardy Morris and the rest of Dead Confederate had The 40 Watt stuffed to the gills.
Jason Scarboro hits the skins. Hard.
It’s kind of odd for you guys to be doing a movie about AThens music, yet you don’t seem very familiar with any of the music or the actual people that know the music in this town. Seems a bit odd. What is your goal exactly? Spread the word about Athens music, which you don’t seem to know much about? I commend the idea of another movie about Athens music, but it seems a familiarity with all types of Athens music would be a must.
hey musicfan-Thanks for reading the blog. We always appreciate the feedback-if you’re not sure of what our goal with the film is, then we’ve failed somewhere along the way to make it clear what we’re trying to accomplish. We’ve got a number of things we’d like to achieve with the telling of the Athens music story-Primarily we’re trying to answer the question of what is it that’s enabled the town to cultivate such a great music community. It’s a situation where the scene hasn’t consciously set out to become something-it’s just happened. And there’s alot of people we’ve talked to who share that sentiment. I appreciate your insight, and it will certainly prompt us to look at things on our end of the process more critically. Sorry for the delay as well, for some reason your comment was filtered into the spam folder!