With venues closing and becoming more restrictive in their hometowns outside of Massachusetts, Rish, Adam, Jesse, and Matt all found themselves drawn to the feeling of community that the Boston music scene provides.  In the few years that this four-piece has been together, they have gained some serious momentum, receiving praise for their dynamic live sets fueled by the crunchy guitar attack of Rish Green and Adam Ritchie.  Now defined as a Boston band, The Lights Out have embraced all that Boston music has to offer, playing the WBCN (R.I.P.) Rumble, a Ryan’s Smashing Life Showcase, and even Gillette Stadium before the Pats’ season opener.  The members of the band are also firm believers in the Boston music community, frequenting The Rock and Roll Social and seen across the city checking out sets by their fellow Boston bands.

After a loaded summer playing festivals in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, we met up with The Lights Out who were back home for the release show of their new album, Color Machine, at TT the Bear’s.  Super excited the about their record, The Lights Out played through Color Machine in its entirety as their set for the night.  The crowd was just as pumped– rocking out and dancing around to the punchy, energetic hooks of the new tracks.  Before the show, we had a chance to talk with the whole band, who shared stories about how fun it is to play in Boston (but also what they’d change if they were in charge), running from the police, and some really, really, ridiculous tattoos.

-Kevin Junker

OPENING ACT: THE LIGHTS OUT AND THE TEAPARTY TEN

What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?

M: Cocoa Puffs!

J: I got mine, Life. I don’t know why.

Cinnamon Life or just like regular Life cereal?

J: Cinnamon Life.

A: Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

J: Oh, the sweeter version of Life.

R: I gotta go with Cap’n Crunch Crunchberries.

Who would you rather punch in the face: Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles or Mouth from The Goonies?

J: I’ve got a another answer, which is that guy from the FreeCreditReport.com commercials.

M: Mouth was Corey Feldman right?

Yep.

M: Oh, yeah. Fuck that guy.

R: Yeah I’m going to go that way, because I heard Long Duk Dong on NPR and he’s all like “You know, I take so much shit for that role… Asians don’t actually talk like that.” It’s pretty offensive.

A: I’ve never seen either movie so I’ve got to say Scott Stapp from Creed.

If you were a kitchen appliance, what kitchen appliance would you be?

M: Coffee maker.

R: An iron skillet, a cast iron skillet.

A: A beer opener.

Like a corkscrew one or just the bottle opener?

A: No, just the basic.  I have a Homer Simpson one that goes “Alcohol: The Cause Of and Solution To All Life’s Problems” every time you touch it to a beer cap.

J: I guess I’d be the mini fridge that you keep all your good cold beers in.

You go to bed, wake up the next morning, go to brush your teeth, look in the mirror, and you have morphed into one of Jim Henson’s Muppet overnight. Which Muppet are you?

R: Dr. Teeth.

M: Janice.

J: Kermit theeeee Frog.

A: Animal.

J: I was going to say Gonzo maybe.

After a raucous night out, you wake up at some point the next day and you realize that in your fit of crazy you got inked.  What tattoo did you wake up with?

R: I’ll tell you what, I’ve got two dolphins kissing right across my chest.

M: I’m going to have to go with Janice again.

A: I would say a jaguar coming out of my ass.  I actually saw someone that had a tattoo of a jaguar going like this and ripping out of someone’s ass.  Because that’s forever burned in my memory I think that if I blacked out that’s what I’d end up with.

J: Flamingos on my neck. That’s what I’d definitely get, I’ve always wanted flamingos on my neck.

You guys like animals… and Muppets apparently.

M: Wait until you see the show!

Would you rather be a rodeo clown or a sumo wrestler?

R: Rodeo clown.  You’ve gotta get really fat to be a sumo wrestler. There’s a lot of adrenaline rush in a being a rodeo clown though, you know, you’re like chasing that bull off the guy so he doesn’t die then you gotta get in that little barrel and let him roll you around.

M: I had a roommate who was a bull rider once, and he was saying that rodeo clowns are the reason that half of them are alive. You gotta be crazy to be a rodeo clown because you’re basically like with this enraged animal, like a boar is like charging.  I’m picking rodeo clown.

J: I’m going to go with sumo wrestler just mainly because rodeo clown is definitely not my personality type and if you’re that big then you could eat whatever you want and everyone worships you… What about like a sumo wrestler that turns rodeo clown?

R: A sumo clown! I want to be a sumo clown. The sumo wrestler gets mad and a clown comes out and like scares the sumo wrestler off.

A: I’ll say sumo wrestler just so I can break through brick walls and yell “OH YEAH!”

M: I want to change my answer. I want to be a rodeo clown that wears a sumo wrestler fat suit.

If you were a particular kind of cheese, what cheese would you be?

A: Palio string cheese.

J: Is that a type of cheese? What’s that, mozzarella, right?

R: Bleu cheese.

M: Sliced, packaged, individually wrapped American cheese.

J: I would be Locatelli Romano, which is the best cheese for grating over anything pasta related.

A: He’s Italian.

R: He almost said it with his hands!

If you were a particular style of facial hair, what style would you be?

J: I will be stubble. Just because it’s a little bit rough, but kinda tender. Rough but gentle.

A: I’m going to go for a wizard beard. It would give me something to twirl as I ponder… why I chose to choose a wizard beard.

R: I would be like Mark Pinansky from Township… kind of a ZZ Top thing.

J: That is commitment I must say, that is a badass beard.

M: I’d be those curly sideburns you see on orthodox Jews, that’s the neatest facial hair as far as I’m concerned.

Everyone’s got a “I’M GONNA DANCE AROUND NAKED IN MY APARTMENT LIKE TOM CRUISE IN RISKY BUSINESS YAY” guilty pleasure song.  What’s yours?

J: Oh man I have the gayest one ever though. It’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen.

M: I feel like that’s a montage song.

A: “Remedy” by the Black Crowes.

R: I’m drawing a blank here… I’m going to say “Breakin’ the Law” by Judas Priest.

M: “Carry On My Wayward Son.”  That is the only song to inspire air keyboard.

What is your favorite word?

J: Fart.

M: Peruse. Wait, no: Exfoliate..

A: Free.

R: Opulent.

THE MAIN EVENT: THE LIGHTS OUT TPB INTERVIEW

Hey friends!

TLO: Hey!

Let’s get down to business.  What are your names, where are you from, and what do you play in The Lights Out?

Jesse: My name’s Jesse James and I’m from Brookhaven in Long Island, New York. I’m the drummer.

Adam: Adam Ritchie from Freehold, New Jersey, (the home of Bruce Springsteen!), and I play lead guitar.

Rish: Rishava Green, from Lincoln City, Oregon.  I play rhythm guitar, sometimes lead guitar, and I’m the lead singer.

Matt: Matt King. I’m from Vermont, and I play bass.

So, Matt,  you’re the closest one we got who’s actually from the area? What brought you guys to Boston?

M: I came with a band.  Basically, the music scene got legislated out of existence in Burlington and they closed all the clubs to 18+ shows and that just sucked, so I pulled up stakes and moved down here in 2001.

J: Similar thing for me, actually: I played with a band in Syracuse throughout and then after college, and all the original venues in that town started to close one by one until you had to play three or four hours worth of covers to even play in front of an audience. Eventually, my band broke up and I decided to move to Boston.

A: I just moved here for work and took a couple years off from music which were the most boring, unexciting, depressed years of my life.  I got back into it once I had established myself professionally and felt like I could go do something and join the circus.

Well the circus is happy to have you.  How about you, Rish?  How’d you come to be making music in Boston?

R: Well, Lincoln City, Oregon kind of stinks and not much is going on so I originally came out here to go to college. I wound up at Berklee and I just liked the city and stayed.

Can you guys take me through your creative process? Does somebody head up the majority of the writing or the compositional quotient of your songs, or is the creative process behind the music of The Lights Out completely collaborative?

R: It’s essentially a complete collaboration as far as the music goes, and then it’s sort of a partial collaboration as far as tweaking melodies. I usually do most of the melody making although somebody will come in with a snatch of a melody or “Oh, I like that melody but what if you did it this way?” I hear that a lot.  There’s a lot of pushing and pulling in the best possible way.

J: We’re all very open to creative input from each other.

M: I think one of the most important parts about being in a band and not fighting is that you have to completely separate yourself and your ego from the process and that’s a really hard thing for a musician. Basically everyone wants to be a rock star, to get their just dues and be that guy, so for us we really have to check [egos] at the door of the practice space.  It can be tough, too, because you can come up with a part that you think is awesome and nobody else will like it, and you just gotta be like, “Okay, well, that’s that, then.” You can’t take it personally and you just have to roll with the punches.

R: I think oddly enough ego kinda comes into play for me in that it’s more like “Okay, well they don’t like that, that’s all right, I can roll with whatever. You don’t like that? Alright, how about this?”  I think we definitely work hard to establish a setting where, you know, it gets a little uncomfortable sometimes but it’s never like… nobody throws beer cans at each other.

J: There’s never any immature fighting going on.

R: Everybody wants to be heard.  We do have egos and that’s why people get into the arts anyway, because of their egos. So it’s this tension between having enough ego to make the music good, and have the balls to make it in the first place, and then be able to set that aside and say, “Well… alright.”  It’s going to be better and ultimately it’s going to serve everyone’s ego better if we’re on a thing where the music is coming together really strongly. Once that happens, the switch flips and all the little fights and little arguments that happen during the process kind of fall away and it’s like, “Alright, this is awesome!”

M: What it comes down to is it’s all about what the song needs.  The song is the ultimate songwriter in a sense because whatever that thing shapes up to be, that’s what you’re playing to and that’s what you’re writing the parts for and you have to make sure that whatever you’re doing serves the song first and foremost. I think that’s something we’ve got a good handle on, recognizing what the song is asking for and how it’s supposed to sound, just trying to do our best and make that as best we can.

Any there any songs in The Lights Out catalog that you feel especially connected to, or any tunes that stick out as favorites? I know it’s kind of like asking you to choose between children somewhat, but…

R: The latest one. It’s always the latest one!  The last one you wrote is always the best one.

Anything you’re really excited to share with us tonight for your big CD release?

M: Our CD!

The entire thing?

M: We are going to be performing our CD for the only time from start to finish. This is going to be the only time we’ll ever do this and that’s what we’re sharing tonight and that’s why we’re here.

A: I’m really looking forward to playing “Gottagetouttahere.” We’re shooting a video for it. We actually shot part of the video at our last show here.

J: -Which is why I can’t cut my hair any shorter and I really want to… I’m like stuck in this middle ground like waiting to grow it out for the next photo shoot.

How has The Lights Out differed from other projects that you guys have been involved with before? You’ve all mentioned that you were in bands before.  How does The Lights Out differ compared with other stuff you’ve been involved with in the past?

J: Ive definitely been in other projects where I didn’t trust the other members to be a spokesman for me in the sense that there were a lot of egos in those bands and it was just always this constant fighting, and that’s just something I’m so happy to not have in this band. That was the first thing I noticed and it’s lasted for three years already and I don’t think its going anywhere.

A: It’s the first band I’ve ever been in where I didn’t have to do all the work. There are four people in this band that work hard both on the music and everything that goes around the music.

R: I’d second what Jesse said. Part of the work that Adam’s talking about is the work of cultivating this culture and it doesn’t just happen by accident. There’s an intention on everybody’s part to make it a place so you can walk into the room and basically know that you’re going to feel better three hours later instead of like “Goddamn it, that guy was an asshole! Fuck!” You know, there’s been plenty of moments like that in everybody’s past bands and we’ve been in enough bands where maybe you get to the spot where you’re like “Ah, enough of that, let’s just get on with it. We really want to just write so let’s do it.”

M: I like the lack of fighting.  I like the lack of the asshole lead singer… (Laughs)

J: We do debate. We do debate but we don’t fight.

A: I really like how we’re fighting about not fighting right now…

J: They’re lively debates though!

Better to be lively than boring!

M: Nobody ever gets shouted down though, no one ever gets told “NO!”

A: No one’s ever walked out of the room in anger, and we’ve been doing this since 2005.

How is this Color Machine a departure from previous material released by The Lights Out?

R: It’s a stew of everybody’s thing. Everybody brings something to this band in that they’re influenced by someone that probably turns everybody else off like… I don’t want to name names of bands, but I’ll like a certain band, and everyone else will be like, “Aw, are you kidding?”

A: Steve Miller, right?

R: Steve Miller! Alright, naming names…

J: We’re definitely willing to respect different aspects of each band that any other person likes. I think even if you completely hate the band that the other person likes, that you have a little bit of respect about something about that band and you understand that that’s why the person likes them.

And you think that’s kind of encapsulated in Color Machine?

R: Well, it’s encapsulated in everything we do.  I think that a lot of bands and artists in general feel that volatility is the secret to good creative process and that’s very tiresome and tiring, it wears me out.  I think that our sync and harmony and flow is actually what’s allowing us to work so strongly together and that’s what comes through in the music rather than like the fighting.  Volatility can yield great stuff but it’s no fun to be around that kind of thing.

M: If you’re going to spend as much time making music as we do it has to be fun. You have to be ok with it, you can’t have that kind of tension for that long… it’s a really refreshing thing.

In terms of influences, we kind of touched on that recently but can you give me the laundry list of people that you really look up to or people who have really helped cultivate your creativity?

R: I always have to say Kiss. Kiss was the first band I ever got into and Kiss led me into Zeppelin and Bowie.

A: I really like Alex Lifeson from Rush, Marc Ford from the Black Crowes, and Jeff Beck.

J: I grew up with a lot of soul and Motown and stuff, and I got into rock a little later in life.  I like Chad Smith from the Chili Peppers; he’s still one of my favorite drummers.  As far as music goes, I tend to like a lot of female lead singers.  I listen to my collection and I’m like “Man, I never played in a band with a female lead singer,” but I love Morcheeba and The Cardigans and Fiona Apple.

Morcheeba?! Definitely haven’t heard that name in awhile…

J: I really miss them.  I wish they’d put out stuff still… Anyways, I like your female voice, Rish.

R: Thank you! I work hard on that. (Laughs)

M: I was always the alterna-kid. The Pixies were big for me early on, Jane’s Addiction, Fugazi, bands like that.  Then I spent some time as a hippie and I was listening to a lot of jam bands for maybe four or five years… came to my senses… and basically I’m the guy who only buys new music.  It’d be hard to buy something for me that came out even a year ago.

J: You’re pretty up on what’s happening.

R: Matt probably is the guy that helps keep our sound current. I think that the guitar attack of Adam and I is probably what makes it sort of heavy rock.  We’re about crunchy guitars, we were saying the other day, more so than fuzzy like Flaming Lips-y guitar stuff. We lay the base of a song down but then Matt comes in with ideas on how to move chords around  Jesse’s really good with melodies and whatnot, and somehow it always works out.

In terms of touring, let’s talk about that for a second, do you guys have any crazy stories for me from the tour bus of The Lights Out, basically?

J: We got pulled over a few times….

M: We can talk our way out of a lot of things. (Laughs)

R: There’s no trashing hotel rooms and misbehavior or anything.

J: Not yet!

So you’re not budding Tommy Lees?

M: Nah… We’ve driven on a few lawns… we’ve had to ditch the car a few times…

With the equipment in it??

A: No, just running from the police… being some places, doing something that we shouldn’t be doing…

Want to elaborate a little bit or…

A: [laughs] No, that’s all everybody needs to know.

We’ve talked about what brought you guys here, can we talk about your Boston fanbase?  Your CD release is a big event in Boston’s indie rock community and I’ve seen eight gazillion people tweeting about how they love the new album and are stoked to see the show tonight.

M: I hope they all come!

J: I thought that the tipping point for the Boston music scene was the WBCN Rumble last year. The Rumble coincided with Twitter really coming into its own, and soon as that happened, it was like the scene just felt really connected and everyone was able to comment on what was happening at every show and just keep abreast of what was going on throughout the whole entire event.

R: This is a bumper crop this year, the rumble was awesome. Especially like, my favorite part was the preliminary rounds, there was 24 bands and everyone was like “We could do it, we could take it!” and everybody basically could have taken it, pretty much.

M: Everyone in all the bands went to as many shows as possible so you see all these people every night for a week and you just kind of start talking, you get to know them that way, rather than just running into them at a show whenever you’re playing together, you see them consistently so you became more friendly, more familiar.

A: The Rumble has been going on for a long time, and there’s this great event called the Rock and Roll Social that we go to every month, every month on the second Tuesday at The Model Cafe.  It’s where we met and formed as a band.

Who are some of the Boston bands that you’re following right now? We’ve talked about this big community where everybody’s bear-hugging at shows all the time, but if you had to give me some names of people who you think are doing some really innovate stuff that you’re really excited about, who would you list?

J: Three of my favorites are ones we’re playing with tonight: Township, Gravehaven, who has now changed their name to Roman Traffic, and Reverse. I also really like MEandJOANCOLLINS.

R: The Luxury, of course. And I’m really liking Gene Dante and the Future Starlets. We played together at Middle East upstairs, we played in P-Town together, we were in the Rumble together… we play with Gene a lot.

J: Great Bandini! I like them a lot, too. I haven’t seen them in a while.

R: And The Motion Sick.

M: There’s Aloud…

R: Aloud, Future Everybody– we played with them at the Middle East last time, they were really good.

When it comes to your favorite venues, it seems like we’ve been about talking this corner a lot…

R: I like playing Middle East Up, I like that room a lot.

J: Yeah that’s my favorite. TT’s is close, Great Scott, very close.

A: Church has been very good to us.

R: We’re playing there for Halloween.

If there was one thing you could change about the Boston music scene what would it be?

M: Probably the two-week rule.

Two-week rule? What’s the two-week rule?

M: Well, you can’t play more than once every two weeks. Now it’s starting to be three weeks.

A: I would say make the drinking age 18 and keep the T open past 2am, or at least UNTIL 2am.

I feel like that sucks for headliners so bad…

M: You’ll notice we’re playing third tonight.  That’s why.

We’ve seen really big acts play the 12:30 slot at the Middle East a lot, and literally the venue will be half-empty three songs into their set.  Some people have to get back to Allston and JP, you know?

R: It’s either that or walk home.

So, what’s next for The Lights Out?  What do we have to look forward to hearing from you guys in the next few months?

A: We’re going to be playing a lot of professional industry conference showcases, so were heading to Delaware next week to play Dewey Beach, then we’re heading to NYC to play M.E.A.N.Y. Fest, then we’re putting together a run of shows down the East Coast for the fall.