MARCH 2006
ROCKBANDLOUNGE.COM INTERVIEW

Marty Casey and Lovehammers

Often described as "The most Un-Pretentious Fuck-You Rock-N-Roll Band," the Lovehammers are no longer Chicago's best-kept secret! The band's self-titled Epic debut CD hit stores January 24th and charted at number 67 on The Billboard 200 in it's first week.

Lead singer Marty Casey, fan-favorite on Rock Star: INXS, and his band mates, guitarist Billy Sawilchik, bassist Dino Kourelis and drummer Bobby Kourelis, are currently on tour with INXS. ROCKBANDLOUNGE.COM met up with them in Southern California and while Billy slept, Marty, Dino, and Bobby talked music, fans, and success on their own terms.

ROCKBANDLOUNGE.COM: Do any of your songs mean more to you than the others?

DINO KOURELIS: I've got favorites. I like Straight as an Arrow - just because of where it came from and what was going on when we were writing it. We were in our old rehearsal spot and Billy brought it in and I remember working on it with our old guitarist Ben – it brings me back to that time.

It was one of the first songs that I like actually loved and thought was, in my eyes a hit. I remember letting Nikki Six listen to it and he agreed, and that gave me the faith I could pick a good song. It kind of validated that the things we were doing could be accepted in the music world and that people liked them. It was the same with Steve Albini.

Nash Kato from Urge Overkill sold us his van, and Marty and I went to his house and we were talking about the song and he sang the words to Marty. So all these different music people and industry people first started recognizing us for that song. We were getting respect from peers and from people at a much higher level than us, with that song.

Another favorite is our first original, Into the Deep End. I was in college and I came home and these guys told me it was a Foo Fighters song that I had to learn. And they asked "You like this song?" I said, "Yeah it's great" and they said, "Well it's ours, asshole!" And I'm like, "Cool! You guys are pretty good." Those two songs are the ones that stick out in my mind.

BOBBY KOURELIS: At our old place in Chicago the three of us were living in a house, and Marty was like, check this idea out. It was just the three of us jamming it downstairs and it ended up as The Tunnel. We didn't know, we were just playing and all of a sudden, Is this a chorus? Is this not a chorus? We didn't know what to do with it – it just kind like stuck. I'm not saying it means anything, it's just a memory that I have. Here's an idea, let's roll with it.

ROCKBANDLOUNGE.COM: Is that how you like to write – where it just kind of rolls?

BOBBY: Sometimes it's the best way, because if you over think it… There's probably a different situation for every song.

DINO: With Eyes Can't See, Wait for No One and a third song, there's a trilogy. Marty came from New York and he had some songs he'd worked on and I remember hearing Wait for No One and getting chills and thinking, I really like that song. Holy cow it's a great song – but the verse was the chorus. And I remember telling Marty, "Dude, the cool part of that song is actually what you were considering the verse."

I think every song, I'll ask these guys or someone will have an idea and we just try to kind of work it out – and we'll talk about it bass-wise, and the drums too and guitars.



MARTY CASEY: For me songs are like babies – you definitely like them all. And even the ones that never got released or never even got completed, you still have like this direct connection with them - you don't want to let them go – you want to see them get finished eventually.

I don't keep a journal really, I don't take a lot of pictures. So it's a way to take a snapshot of time – because there's a lot of autobiographical stuff in each one of them. It's not necessarily a perfect story, like a Bob Dylan song, but I'm trying to get to the point where there's more and more story and personality in each song.

I think of the New York songs that I wrote - like Call of Distress – three hours in New York sitting in my girlfriend at the time's room. She was at work and I said I'm going to work on a song - in three hours. And a different trip to New York, Trees, in three hours, sitting in New York in a room by myself.

ROCKBANDLOUNGE.COM: With both of those songs, did you set out to write a song in three hours?

MARTY: I always say I'm going to do a song in this amount of time, but my brain goes elsewhere and I just can't finish it. A lot of times as a songwriter you get so far, and then you say I got two really great parts, I'm good for today. And you don't finish it. And if you don't finish it in that instance, it can end up taking a year. Where, if you're right there and you're in the moment and if you just spend that extra hour… but it can sometimes be hard to diligently do that.

And then sometimes, like The Riddle came while waiting for the van to go to a show in Atlanta, and having fifteen spare minutes. The chorus wasn't really finessed, so I played it in the back of the van and I didn't have any words. "Do, do, do" and they're like, "That should be the chorus." Right there – you don't need words. So they're all their own little pieces.

With Sleeper, I was dreaming and when I woke up, I had written a whole song inside The Stranger, a book I was reading at the time. I just wrote it out right there and woke up the next morning glad that I had written it down because I never would have remembered it. I just came up with it all really quick, wrote it down, because Billy had this riff that he was playing, and it was just a song. So they all happen so organically.

The older style of songwriting we did was all getting in a room and just hashing it out and trying different stuff. Top of your head – like the inkblot theory of songwriting. Throw some colors on the wall and what do you see? What is that? What are the lyrics? The lyrics aren't necessarily always story-driven; they're very off the cuff. And maybe there's a lot of honesty, because we're not over thinking and it's just whatever comes into your head.

We don't really stick to a particular methodology for songwriting. Wherever our songs come from, we just try to capture them and eventually make a CD. That's kind of what I like about our CD - there's not one definitive sound and style - it's all over the board. I think we're lucky because we're not afraid to do that.

Trees is just this ear-worm pop-friendly song and then you've got Eyes Can't See. I didn't know if a person that likes Trees would like Eyes Can't See - but somehow they do. Sometimes I think we're going to freak people out... [because] we're used to all-ages shows in Chicago and a gritty pub or club environment, and these are theatres and show time is 7:30 and everybody is in their seat at 7:30.

It's fun because there's the same amount of energy and enthusiasm in the thirteen-year-olds as the forty-year-olds. The cool thing is it seems like this show and the Lovehammers have kind of reignited that love of rock.



DINO: Even though some of the songs are heavier in a pop sense, everything is pretty friendly. There's not swearing - well sometimes! But at the end of the set everyone usually has a good feeling about what we are and what we're trying to do. We're not trying to scare and discourage people from being themselves. We're trying to promote good times, and enjoying yourself, and having fun.

BOBBY: The thing about the heavier songs is that they're still melodic – and that's the difference.

DINO: And Marty's not just screaming, when he's screaming he's screaming a melody that people can sing along to. A lot of people are saying, "this is the first concert I've been to in 20 years."

ROCKBANDLOUNGE.COM: During Rock Star: INXS, fans of the show fell in love with Marty and went actively looking for more of his work, and found the Lovehammers on the web. Despite the fact that most of these new fans have never seen the full band on TV, never heard you on the radio, and never seen you perform live, they've embraced the band. How has this changed your fan base?

MARTY: In Chicago we organically developed a relationship with the fans. We really don't like to consider them fans, we like to consider them friends because we really have met them all. We've had them all over at our house for parties, pig roasts. We've been at their houses for their birthdays. If somebody said "You really got to show up for so-and-so's birthday – they'd just die if you came," we'd go. We dedicated a lot of time to organically developing our fan base as friendships really. And it became very big – sometimes we'd have over 500 people at our house. Just huge parties throughout the day - we'd have weekend-long parties. We'd say bring your pajamas, bring your sleeping bag, and come. So it was a strong bond because there was so much interaction.

And now, it's so interesting because we've never met these people – some of them have seen me on Rock Star: INXS, some of them never saw that show, but heard through another friend that we're a great band to check out. It's really opened our eyes and enlightened us to how effectively you can communicate through the Internet and still get an emotional bond.

DINO: We try to be as visible as possible even on the Internet. You know Marty was saying we had the parties and we'd meet people one on one - now we're still trying to meet them one on one, but it might be via email or Instant Messenger or Video Messenger. We still want to do that – and it's funny because people are like "Oh my God, thank you so much for returning my email," and why wouldn't I? When someone writes you an email you're supposed to respond – my Mom would kill me if I didn't. It's rude.



MARTY: It's nice having the tour bus and it's nice being hooked up wherever you go – but really the part that's the most fun is freaking people out by meeting them. The fact that they really enjoy meeting you and they're spending money on your CDs and stuff – just the fact that you can go out there and shake hands and sign autographs and take pictures is so fun – for us!

And you get such a reaction out of everybody – that's why you get in music in the first place – to get a reaction out of people and communicate.

One of the most surprising things has been how quickly we've gained such a massive fan base. We were expecting that with a TV show with millions of viewers a week, [that fans would] see me and maybe say I'm a Marty Casey fan, but people don't say that – they say they're Lovehammers fans. And that's the cross we had to bear with naming the record. Epic wants Marty Casey. We want Lovehammers. So it's Marty Casey and Lovehammers, and we have to work to get to a point where it can just be Lovehammers. We have to earn it.

DINO: The shows have been great - the fans have been unbelievable – they've been there like Marty said, on time. As soon as we start it's probably ninety to ninety-five percent full. By the time we're in the middle of our set, it's capacity. And they're really getting it – which is cool. It's not a surprise, but it's definitely refreshing.

I think inside, these people want to rock and we're letting ‘em rock. We're the guitars that they want to play. They want to let it out, and we're giving them the medium to do that.

ROCKBANDLOUNGE.COM: Do you have any words of advice for baby bands out there that who'd like to follow in your footsteps?

MARTY: We never gave up. We kept going even past the stage where most people would give up and say, it didn't happen. We just kept on sticking it out.

And the thing is we took any opportunity that came our way – and we'd execute twenty-five of them. Even though twenty were extreme long shots and two weren't worth our time, [there might be] three real possibilities. If we could just get a few things to happen, that would be our story of the month. It could be something monumental like touring with Nickleback, or something on the Internet, or a great article. We'd drive down every road, and most of them would be dead ends, but one or two or three or five of those things would work out, and it was all those little things that eventually got us to this point.

The [TV] show did a lot for us, but the music is what got us the record deal. That's what Epic signed us for – they signed us for Lovehammers music. They didn't sign me because I'm this reality show dude. They didn't sign me to do a cover album.



DINO: You're going to get discouraged, and its naïve to say don't get discouraged, because you're going to. But when it happens, get over it, or make sure someone in your band makes you get over it and move onto the next thing. Like Marty said, a lot of stuff you're going to do thinking it's going to be a great gig, or great exposure, great experience, and then it's not. Ninety percent of them are going to suck, but the other ten percent are going to fuckin' rock.

MARTY: We invited hundreds of people out to this gig – it was the first time we were going to being advertised on the radio. We were the Swinging Lovehammers at the time and we thought, "This is phenomenal!" It was in Peoria, at the biggest musical festival of the summer in this big amphitheatre – and this friend from Peoria said, "You're playing that weekend?" And we said yeah, assuming it was this thing called Sun Lovers Festival – so we thought perfect, hang out in the sun, it's going to be awesome!

We show up and it's at a 4-H fairgrounds and it's the Son Lovers Festival and we're playing with two Christian rock bands, the sound guy's a reverend, and there's no alcohol. Imagine our fan base, which is pretty alcohol-fueled… We were driving though Peoria and we drove right past and went, "There's the big amphitheater – but we have fifteen more miles to go according to this map."

It's things like that where you get discouraged and think, what are we doing this for? But you just keep going. You've got to laugh at yourself. It's got to be about the whole ride. It's got to be fun.

Even now people ask, what if the band breaks huge and you sell a million of records, what's it going to be like then? But you can't wait for that – this is IT now. This is happening. This is fun. This is a good time.

And were just doing the same thing we've always done – trying to build it and build it and get to the next level. There's always a next level.

DINO: We've played in front of zero people before. We played a show in Milwaukee – it was the two bartenders and one other person. So we just had fun and played. That other person? He booked Summerfest, the biggest music festival in the world.

BOBBY: And the opening band, one of the guy's girlfriend works at a radio station…

MARTY: And she just added Trees last week.

DINO: So we got radio play and we got Summerfest in front of 10,000 people, because we played that one show in front of nobody and gave one hundred percent.

BOBBY: Exactly. We were just alright, lets do it!

MARTY: We were goofing around…

DINO: Because you never know…



Interview conducted by
Cheryl Spelts
ROCKBANDLOUNGE.COM


Discuss this interview
Lovehammers Official Site
Lovehammers on ROCKBANDLOUNGE.COM
Lovehammers Forum
Marty Casey's Rock Star: INXS Bio

February 28, 2006

lovehammers: Marty Casey & Lovehammers Fans of Lovehammers, the band Marty Casey fronted before putting his name out front seemed a smart publicity move, will love the bulk of these 11 songs, especially the pained and furious "Clinic" and the hot-headed "The Tunnel." Format: CD BUY AT AMAZON

lovehammers: Murder on My Mind Lovehammers have stepped up to put the spark back in modern rock and they've brought their welder's torches with them. It's about time a band has turned up with full guns drawn, ready to delve out some serious rock and roll without skimping on the sex and debauchery that grunge so foolishly discarded. Their latest release Murder on My Mind, which has independently sold over 8,000 copies, encapsulates the Lovehammers' arrival as an act that sweeps aside the mope for pure sweat and energy. Murder collects the best elements of grunge and hard rock with a twist of punk that stems from the pure adrenaline the band possesses. Singer Martin Casey has best been described as a cross between Mick Jagger and Axl Rose, while the Kourelis brothers man the rhythm section with a sex appeal that is reminiscent to the early days of rock-n-roll. At the same time, guitarist Billy Sawichik effortlessly rips through riffs and chords to complete this power quartet. Format: CD BUY AT AMAZON BUY AT CD BABY

lovehammers: L'Strange Released in 2002, "L'Strange" is straight forward in your face rock-n-roll. No smoke, no mirrors, just straight-up rock from Chicago's favorite band. Includes the single, "Rain on the Brain," a runner up in the John Lennon songwriting contest. Format: CD BUY AT CD BABY

Back to Top