Taddy Porter by Andrea Leigh
I really do consider myself lucky to have been able to sit down with Kevin Jones (bassist) from Taddy Porter. His youth was almost contagious, as was his consummate passion for the music they play. Taddy Porter is a group of guys that really have much older souls than their outwardly youthful appearance reveals. They are a newer name in the rock world, but I think they will remain a fixture. Kevin and I had a great time sitting around in the press tent at ROTR just talking about their music and the music scene in general. Their debut CD comes out late June, but their single Shake Me has already made the rock charts.

Cover: I did get to listen to your debut CD yesterday by the way.
Kevin: Awesome!

Cover: I actually facebooked everybody and told them all to listen to your band on myspace.
Kevin: That’s awesome!

Cover: It really was refreshing, because I love metal and hard rock but Taddy Porter is really different, kind of bluesy…
Kevin: …with some modernness to it.
Cover: Right!
Kevin: One of the main ways that we describe ourselves is kind of like a modern southern-fried Led Zeppelin.
Cover: Well, really that’s the first thing I thought about. It sounds like Zeppelin, maybe old Aerosmith.
Kevin: We’re totally into those guys and those are our heroes really; Zeppelin, Hendrix, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles.
Cover: I thought was great because you are such a young band, but the lyrics talk a lot about the human experience and you have really captured that. Is that something you try to do?
Kevin: Yeah, we try and send a message and basically, it’s been said a thousand times, The Beatles said it with “All You Need is Love”. That’s really what we’re trying to reiterate. I’ll be honest, and I’m not going to say any names, we’ve played with some other bands and I’ve watched them and I just feel like it’s too violent. It is too violent and when you have a crowd, a mob essentially, if you’re a little violent then they’re going to get a lot violent and there’s enough violence in this world in my opinion. I think it’s time to bring back love and togetherness. Let’s just be people because we all love people, there’s no reason to hate another.

Cover: You and your brother obviously have amazing musical talent. Is that something that comes from your family?
Kevin: Yeah, my dad was a drummer and he was in a band when he was fourteen. They didn’t do anything, they just played around, but he loved music. My brother Doug (drums) started playing guitar at about ten. I remember that I held out for awhile and was like “I’m not playing music like Doug. We’re different! We’re different brothers!” Doug had started out on trumpet originally so I started out on violin in orchestra and chose the other path so then I was like “I’m still in music, but I’m not doing the same thing as you.” (laughs) So, yeah, I played classical violin for seven years and then guitar for four and then I played bass for about three and half years, just shortly before I joined the band.

Cover: Taddy Porter is also a beer. Is that where you got your name?
Kevin: Yes! It is in fact. (chuckles) Andy, our singer, and Doug went to a bar called Mike’s in our hometown of Stillwater. At the time it was just a beer bar and they were underage, so they would go in with an empty beer and just put it up on the counter and be like “Hey man, let me get one of these.” They would give them one and that’s how they would get in and get beers. One time Andy was looking at the beer list. He was looking at the most expensive beer so he looked down and was like “Taddy Porter, that’s an interesting name. Nine dollars! Whoa, I’ll have a Coors.” Ever since we all thought it was a great name and thought we should really go with it. It has fit us so well, even if didn’t necessarily at first, it has grown to be a part of us. We actually got permission from the brewer over in England. It’s not sponsorship, but we are stewards of the name and they really believe in what we do. It turns out that Taddy Porter is the second oldest trademark in the world. Yeah, it’s insane, we had no idea that it’s one of the first beers ever and there’s just so much history behind it. We just thought it sounded cool (laughs).
Cover: I was googling all kinds of sites about Taddy Porter to find out about you guys and all these links for the beer kept coming up so I wondered if there was a connection.
Kevin: We’ve actually never drank it.
Cover: Oh really?
Kevin: Yeah, superstition. If we drink it…
Cover and Kevin: …the bands gonna break up (laughs).

Cover: Taddy Porter didn’t want to go through a predictable record company path. Why is that?
Kevin: Definitely. We went through a company called primary wave and they’re a publishing company. They’ve never done record deals or anything like that, but they own the publishing to Nirvana, The Allman Brothers, Jacob Dylan, the Julian Lennon side of John Lennon so they own all that. They heard us and the president of the company came out to see us. Virgin was also offering us a deal so the president of primary wave said, “I can’t offer you nearly as much money, but what I can offer you is my word that I’m going to push you harder than any other band will be pushed this entire year.” He told us he had thirty-five people for a record label that has one band so we were going to do alright. We thought that was a good idea, not to mention they’re huge fans of the music. They really love the music and are behind us and they believe in what we do. That’s really what we’re about. If someone is going to work for us and with us, they need to be just as passionate about it as we are. It’s got to be even. If one guy is slackin’ off then it’s going to hurt the whole team. We wanted a good team that could really back us and really deliver. It seemed like they were really the people that could deliver and they have. They have worked with us, given us advances, tour support. Without them we wouldn’t be here to be honest and we’re thankful everyday to have gotten what we have. We even have artist control still. So we can say what goes on the album and what doesn’t. It’s not the label deciding that, which is a great thing to have. It’s a great feeling.

Cover: You started out with a lot of grassroots support from your hometown. Did that start from all of your friends who spread the word, or people who saw you and just really took to Taddy Porter.
Kevin: Kind of both. It’s a college town and all the other guys in the band went to the college. My brother was in a fraternity so a bunch of his fraternity friends came out to the shows and when they heard us they were all like “Holy crap! They’re really good.” Because when it started out, of course, everyone was just like, “my friend’s band is playing come out and see ‘em” and then it became “Taddy Porter is playing” and our friends kind of spread the word, but it wasn’t because they knew us, it was because we were then Taddy Porter. There’s a big bar in Stillwater called Dirty’s that we play at all the time and it’s got a capacity of about eight or nine hundred and we’ve actually filled it three times in one night. Stillwater is just a good place to start as a band. They’re a little fickle at first and they don’t want to really come out. A lot of people there just don’t really go to shows that much. They drink, that’s what they do and they go to bars, so we started playing in bars. Then after a while it just got bigger and bigger to where they would leave Taddy Porter on the marquee and people would come in everyday asking, “Is it tonight? Are they playing tonight?” and they would be like “no, it was last week, you totally missed it.” That’s how it is in Stillwater, everyone is just that laid back and would leave stuff around. It’s a cool little town though.

Cover: Yeah, I was reading up on Stillwater. It seems pretty cool…
Kevin: They call it little Austin actually because a lot of bands are coming out of there. I mean first off Garth Brooks, biggest country star ever, also Chris Gaines…I have to mention that every time. All-American Rejects, Cross Canadian Ragweed, another country rock band.

Cover: So, you guys all come from this small town and now you’re Taddy Porter. You’re obviously making a name for yourself. What kind of ride has that been for you guys?
Kevin: Crazy! That’s the best way of explaining it. Mind-blowingly fast. As soon as I got out of high-school, we could actually work day-to-day and then it just started taking off.
Cover: Right, because you’re the youngest member of the band.
Kevin: Yes…yes. I’m the youngest (laughs). You know, it’s really hard to explain. My dad was always like, “you’re gonna be a big star one day.” I was always just like, “yeah, whatever dad,” and now it’s actually happening, but it’s humbling. I think that’s just the best word to describe it. To me, it just makes me look back and think that just because I made it, doesn’t mean there’s a difference between who I was when I hadn’t made it and who I am now. I’m still that same person and we’re all still that way. We think that’s a very important part of a band. We’ve met some bands that have had way to big of a head for themselves and you don’t like them afterwards. Even if you were a fan, you don’t like them, you can’t. It’s like, “that guy was an asshole to me why would I listen to him”. It’s an experience, that’s for sure. If anything I tell everyone to at least drive across the U.S. just one time. We were in the van and drove every day all throughout the country to Reno and all that and we’ve really driven through some cool places. I love the outdoors so Montana was awesome. It was just mountains everywhere. We stopped halfway through and played frisbee on the mountain and made a bunch of these videos of us being mountain men(laughs). It was great. It was a lot of fun.

Cover: What’s it like getting to go out there and meet your fans?
Kevin: it’s awesome. Definitely…meeting people! I love to connect with people. That is just what I am all about. A lot of people are just like “Ah, you’re a rock star now!” and I’m just like, “Not really man. Me and you are exactly the same. We are people, you know. There’s no reason you should idolize me.” At the same time if I thought I was going to meet Paul McCartney or John Paul Jones in ten minutes I probably couldn’t talk. I would just be flustered. I understand where that comes from but I don’t know about the whole worshipping rock artist thing because there are a lot of people that you probably shouldn’t worship. I want you to be a fan of my music. I want you to like the music, but again, it’s about the music. We’re just the people playing it. It’s hard because everyone keeps telling me that I’m going to be a rock star, but I don’t want to be that cliché old crap. I want to change something. I want to shake something up.
Cover: Which is good. It’s not always like that in the rock scene.
Kevin: Exactly. People just like to copy each other and I don’t like that.
Cover: And like I was saying earlier…I love hard rock and I love metal, but this is so different.
Kevin: I do too. I was in a hardcore rock band before Taddy Porter. It was a trip and we were not good, but it was fun. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. It was a good time and I was really into that music, but then all these new bands started coming out like Black Keys, White Stripes, Wolfmother and then I hear our singer Andy and I’m just like “that’s where it’s at”. When I was in the eighth grade I would listen to all my dad’s vinyl’s like Hendrix, Zeppelin and The Beatles and I liked that stuff but then when I went back to it, I didn’t realize what I had been missing. I realized that was what I really needed to go back to and it just felt right.

Cover: Do you find that people even in the hard rock/metal scene at ROTR are responsive to your music?
Kevin: Yeah, actually today has probably been the best response we’ve gotten because usually we are with bands that don’t necessarily fit us so half of the audience will react really well and then half are just kind of dumbfounded at first. They usually warm up to us by the end of the set. Crowd response is getting better and better and as a band we are getting better and better at getting them excited and hyped up. That’s what is good about the experience of being an opener for a long time. You really get to see what works and what doesn’t

Cover: Taddy Porter is a band that is going back to the roots of rock. Rock has changed so much in my lifetime, which isn’t bad because we have had some amazing changes, but sometimes it’s also good to go back to where we started from.
Kevin: It’s really the whole throwback to the blues essentially. We say classic rock all the time, but we are all really big fans of the blues like Freddy King, Robert Johnson, B.B. King and also Otis Redding, Allen Greene, Spinners, pretty much anything old like Ray Charles…that’s my man right there. My mom got me onto Ray and I haven’t been off since. We try to throw it back. I’ve recently come up with a theory. There were the years of Beethoven and Bach. Well, All the music that’s around today and has been around for a while, even pop and metal, are all based on blues progressions. This last hundred or so years, has been the blues period.

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