Texas Hippie Coalition Mayhem Festival Interview
From deep in the heart of Texas rise the Texas Hippie Coalition; the forefathers of red dirt metal. This heavy weight quartet is one of the surprise highlights of the 2014 Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival. Mayhem founder John Reese made a wise pick adding them to this year’s bill. The band is set to release its fourth studio effort, Ride On, September 9, but as frontman Big Dad Ritch revealed during an interview with Metalholic, THC is already playing a couple of new tracks for fans on the Mayhem tour. Ritch and bassist John Exall, took time to talk about performing on Mayhem Festival, the new record, the return of drummer Timmy Braun, and their pride over young guitarist, Cord Pool.
This year marks the decade anniversary of the band started in Denison, Texas in 2004 by Ritch and Exall. The group self-released its debut album, Pride of Texas in 2008, and followed it up with its first national release, Rollin’ in 2010. The latter featured the THC’s first hit, “Pissed Off and Mad About It”. The music world began to take notice in 2012 with the release of Peacemaker in 2012. The album launched the hit single and video, “Turn it Up”.
The THC sound encompasses everything from the groove metal of Pantera, to the edgy southern rock of ZZ Top and Lynyrd Skynyrd, to outlaw heroes like Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash. All of these elements and more combine with THC’s signature style to create the “red dirt metal” sound.
As Ritch shared, down in Texas and Oklahoma artists like Stoney LaRue, Kevin Fowler, and Cross Canadian Ragweed have developed a style that has come to be known as red dirt music. For THC, playing on bills with such bands and often being the only hard rock or metal act, the group developed its own loyal following even among the bands they were performing with. Those same bands dubbed the quartet “red dirt metal”. “It’s just good old storytelling, outlaw music,” offered Ritch. “We wear that red dirt badge with honor.”
For Ride On, Texas Hippie Coalition once again worked with producer and songwriter Bob Marlette who recorded the band’s previous effort, Peacemaker. Offered Ritch of the THC-Marlette connection:
Bob was big-time on the arrangements and was a great help with composition. Oh man, he is a great songwriter. He has wonderful ideas. Bob hears everything. He already knows where the song’s going, what’s gonna happen next — he just helps us get all the stuff that we have that might’ve been just a little scattered out, a little out of place, and he just kind of helped us make sure that everything was in a nice neat package.
In the video below, recorded on Day 4 of Mayhem Festival 2014 in Nampa, Idaho, you can catch the full conversation with Big Dad Ritch and John Exall.
All photos © 2014 by Suzette Mansfield Photography
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TEXAS HIPPIE COALITION Mayhem Festival Interview: THC, Bitches Texas Hippie Coalition Mayhem Festival Interview From deep in the heart of Texas rise the Texas Hippie Coalition…
