One of our favorite parts of each interview is when we ask bands who they are listening to. The consistent love parade that we’ve experienced in talking with local acts about other local acts gives us faith in the state of the Boston music scene, and gives us a heads up on who is making waves in the community and who we should be keeping an eye on. One such recommendation came from former-Bostonian, Brian Hamilton of Cymbals Eat Guitars, who couldn’t pour enough praise on his friends, local disco-dance revivalists Mystery Roar, when we talked with his own band on the deck outside Great Scott.

We managed to corral the boisterous bunch on that very same deck after their spellbinding, hip-shaking set at the Allston venue. Between greetings from both fans and friends hanging out nearby, we got them to talk about their storied beginnings, complicated songwriting process and how they decided to “be a real band about it.”

–Jessie Rogers

Hey Mystery Roar. Introduce yourselves…

Jake: Jake Dempsey. I play guitar, keyboards and I sing.

Andrew: I’m Andrew Dole and I play drums.

Nathanael: I’m Nathanael Bluhm and I sing.

Patrick: I’m Patrick Dole and I play bass.

Tia: Tia Carioli and I play keyboards.

Joseph: I’m Joseph Wawrzyn. I play keyboard and guitars and I sing.

So how did Mystery Roar start?

N: …you had to go there.

T: Oh man.

P: You guys got a minute?

JD: Nate, Joe and I met in Pennsylvania and we were in a band. The three of us move to Boston. Joe and I become the Western Trail. Nate forms Cassette. Cassette becomes bigger and adds Joe and Pat and becomes Fantasy Mirrors.

P: We all hate each other, we break up.

JD: So Joe, Pat, Nate and I start working on songs again, together. And that becomes Mystery Roar. And we bring in Andy and Tia to flesh out the band and make a live set.

A: The really short version is these four dudes, minus myself and Tia made really great songs in their bedroom. And they were awesome. And they were like, “Yeah we should play live.” And they were like, “Well we need a drummer and we have a million keyboard parts.”

P: We made a lot of stuff on this little Yamaha keyboard and we just threw it on the computer so we could do whatever we wanted. So we’d have songs with 70 tracks and it was like, “How the hell are we going to play this with 3 people?”

N: Nine-minute songs….with 50 tracks…

P: The original concept was to just put out 12-inch disco mixes for all the kids in art school to listen to.  And then it turned into something more and we were like, “Oh we can be a real band about it. Let’s do it.”

So you started out making 70-track keyboard songs… What is your creative process like now?

J: We get together and fight a song out of it.

A: Somebody puts some chords down, and then it’s like bombardment dodge ball. And then we have a song.

N: With the program we use… you can build songs, uh, down or across. And we write them down and then we put them across. And you can loop shit and then you can add. And we just add, add, add, add. And then we go [grand sweeping gesture] and just throw it across and it sounds fucking marvelous.

JD: We come up with two parts and we layer the living daylights out of them and we put them next to each other. And it’s like, “How are we going to get these parts to sound good together?” So we write six minutes of song to put in between them.

N: We also write songs, like from start to finish. With pre-choruses and bridges.

JD: We write bridges.

A: Actually what we do is we write five songs and five verses and put it all into one song.

T: … So, do you have a clear answer?

N: We have a really good time doing it.

P: Everybody here is pretty much a songwriter. We have old songs, we have skeletons of songs, sometimes we just make a cool sound a we’re like, “Wow that sounds awesome, what do we do with this?” And sometimes Nate will write a whole song and we’ll be like, “Oh, that’s cool.”

N: Ha! That’s exactly what you’re like…

P: Or Joe and Jake will have a song from their other band and we’ll be like “Oh, that’s great.”

Well you all clearly bring different things to the table… What are your influences? Either individually or as a band.

P: Well, Nate and Joe and I were on tour with Fantasy Mirrors and our friend gave us a zillion old-school, deep disco cuts from post-70s, early 80s stuff and Nate alphabetized them…

N: We’re talking deep disco. Deep, deep disco.

P: We’re talking B-sides.

J: C-sides.

P: We drove across the country and that’s all we had. We listened to the whole alphabet of these tracks.

N: Well it’s not that I put them in alphabetical order…iTunes did that. It sounds really great to think I put them all in alphabetical order, but I wasn’t like, “I’m going to alphabetize these rare disco tracks…”

A: We can all agree on that [influence], but then everyone comes from a different place.

J: We all listen to a lot of different stuff. And then it all gets smashed together.

JD: Change, Mtume…

P: Mtume.

J: Mtume.

P: Mtume is a big influence.

A: Giorgio Moroder.

N: Mtume is wonderful. Tawatha Agee–she’s the singer. She sounds fantastic. She sings back-up in Hercules now. I looked her up on Wikipedia. I was like “Oh my god! She’s in Disney movies now.” She deserves so much more. She’s one of the best singers I’ve ever heard in my life.

P: That’s a great story.

N: She’s making money. She’s still doing it, which is amazing. “I am a working singer. I had hits in the 70s and I am still a working singer.” Fuck that. That is fucking amazing. I hope I’m still…God knows I’ll be on a cruise ship somewhere but I’ll be having a good time and I’ll still be singing.

So you formed in Pennsylvania… are you all from Pennsylvania?

T: Incidentally, I’m from Pennsylvania, but I didn’t know those guys.

N: She is from Pittsburgh, Ohio…

All: Oooohhhh!

N: We are from Scranton, thank you.

A: Where The Office is filmed!

N: And Mr. Joe Biden. It’s Joe Biden Country. I’m just a hardscrabble kid from Scranton.

How did you get to Boston?

T: I went to college here.

N: So did Joe. And then I quit college and I had nothing better to do. We followed him. We packed up the U-Haul and the first time I saw Boston was when I came up here. That’s how it is to be a hardscrabble kid from Scranton. You get the fuck out.

J: Joe Biden did it.

P: Andy and I are from New Hampshire. We pretty much did the same thing.

Do you feel like Mystery Roar is a Boston band? Do you feel connected to the scene here?

T: Oh yeah. I’ve lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere else.

P: As far as being part of a scene, it comes in waves. It feels cool… we were a part of a scene a while ago…

T: What scene was that?

P: I don’t even know. The indie dance scene?

JD: There were lots of basement shows and things like that.

N: Cambridge is where I found myself. I’m at home. I am safe here. I’ve got these beautiful friends that I make music with. It’s awesome.

J: Yeah. Nate said it better.

N: We’re refugees. From fucking Middle America.

JD: But we were like, “OK let’s play some shows.” Boston opened up for us.

T: We’ve brought a lot of experience from the different bands we’ve been in and I think that’s definitely helped us out. It’s just been a lot easier for this band than any other bands we’ve been in.

N: We’re friends. I can’t imagine…I don’t want anybody but Patrick to play bass.

All: Awww!

N: This is so stupid but I have to concentrate to turn around on stage and face the crowd because I’m so interested in what’s going on with Patrick’s bass playing and Andy’s drumming and Joe’s guitar work. The keyboard work. I’m, like, watching my band. And then it’s like, oh shit I have to turn around and see the audience. I’m so enamored with their playing.

P: We should all get T-shirts that say “Nate, sing.”

N: That, and a big, flashing, neon “SAVE” above the computer. Otherwise…you… lose albums. It is not good.

So who are you favorite bands in Boston?

P: Tigercity. They’re actually a New York a band.

N: Well didn’t they go to Berklee?

P: ….do you guys go to shows anymore?

JD: Back when Joe and I were in separate bands, my favorite bands were Cassette and Fantasy Mirrors.

N: I go to Scullers Jazz Club and watch Lou fucking Rawls. That’s what I do. I go to Scullers Jazz Club, I watch Shirley fucking Horne. That’s who I watch.

A: Night Rally. Night Rally was the best Boston band that ever was and ever will be. Night Rally.

T: OK how about bands that are not defunct…

P: I like the kids in Mean Creek. They’re good. Hooray For Earth. They’ve been doing that shit forever. Andy and I actually went to band camp with the drummer.

N: We’d probably be way better at identifying local DJs.

P: Colbourne, Die Young…

N: Fucking Colbourne? Alright. I’ll go to ZuZu’s every night of the week and there’s fucking great fucking music in that place. Middlesex, fucking representing with some awesome disco nights happening.

P: Bodega Girls. We just saw Bodega Girls, they’re actually really good. Big Digits. The 440R Collective.

N: We’re from this collective of artists called Compound 440, originally—we’re no longer there—but you’ve got artists like UV Protection, well they’re defunct, they’ve got a new band Secret Sea.

P: Paul Foley was spinning the other night. Big Digits are great. Bodega Girls are great. They’re kind of what we’re doing.

N: I was psyched to see Bodega Girls. Mac is awesome (from Bodega Girls), and he did a remix of one of our tracks. Those guys are awesome. They vacillate between the electronic stuff and kind of garage rock which is amazing. Like, they’ll have a song with backing tracks and then the next song  is just tambourines and guitar and it was like my favorite song.

P: I’m a big fan of Drug Rug.

What’s up next for Mystery Roar?

A: I don’t think we’re touring until Spring. We’re going to release a record and then tour.

J: We’ve been talking to a bunch of labels, but one we’re really excited about is Dopamine Records.  They do rock records, they do dance stuff. They started as a hardcore label, which is weird. So we’ll just get the record out and…

N: Promote the shit out of it.

A: My brain is exploding trying to keep track of all the industry people that are emailing us right now. But we’ll just get it out there and tour.

We know you haven’t really gotten to tour yet, by any crazy show stories?

P: We lost a battle of the bands to a high school band.

N: They were very Facebook savvy!

T: We did this contest, sort of as a favor…

N: Oh, now we did it as a favor but at the time we wanted to WIN THAT.

T: Well, we wanted to win it. It was sort of a last minute thing that was thrown together, and the winner got to open for Matt & Kim, Major Laser—a the show at the House of Blues. But the whole thing was determined by text messages. But these kids were in high school so of course they and hundreds of their friends…

N: What’s wrong with high school?

T: Nothing’s wrong with high school.

J: I actually had a really miserable time in high school.

JD: High school was obnoxious.

T: But they had the advantage, man. They’ve been texting since they were born.

J: There was this show on a Wednesday or Tuesday…

T: We totally packed the place. There were like 10-times more people there to see us.

N: We sounds so spiteful.

T: I know!

N: We’re gonna fight those kids…

J: We lost by, like, two texts.

T: They were actually really great.

T: They were a fantastic band.

What band was it?

N: Are we going to call them out? We want a rematch!

T: We want a rematch!

JD: They were Old Abram Brown.

N: This is not over.

JD: We’re coming for you.

A: Another story–well this isn’t really a zany tour story– but we played this really small night at Enormous Room and it turned into the most epic show I’ve ever played.

N: It was amazing because they had risers so we all got to stand on risers.

A: There’s no stage. It’s the smallest bar in the entire world and it was just packed. Nate was in the crowd—the whole band was in the crowd the whole night.

N: Patrick got it on… he was getting his groove on.

A: It was by far the most fun I’ve ever had playing music live.

N: I wish… I wish I’d had a monitor. It was an awesome show though. Gary from Hooray for Earth put that on.

P: We’ll probably be real boring on tour. We’ll probably go back to the hotel and watch Golden Girls.

N: If you want to watch Golden Girls at the hotel, I am there. I will bring the first and second season.

T: We’re going to be tour blogging.

N: It’s going to be boring. We went to SXSW and these guys were partying like motherfuckers and I went to be at 1 every night and went to the gym every morning.

P: We pull into SXSW and we’re all, like, eating mushrooms, playing our first show all on mushrooms, and Nate’s like “I signed up for a gym today, guys.”

N: I got a 5-day membership at Pure in Austin, Texas and their facilities were really clean and really lovely. And I said, “Next year you should offer a special for the musicians.” And they were like, “You’re the only fucking one here. We’re not offering a special.” So I said, “What about for me? Can I get a special?” Actually, the guy at the AT&T store gave me the hook-up, he gave me a pass. Because I lost my cell phone in Waco and this guy named…

P: Corbett Trap

N: Corbett Trap found my cell phone.

MYSTERY ROAR plays GREAT SCOTT on WEDNESDAY 10/28 with HAR MAR SUPERSTAR