I heard Rose Hill Drive for the first time just a few weeks ago. I remember getting an email from my brother, who’d just come back from a taping of Conan O’Brien’s show in New York and was amped as all hell about the musical guest. “Sick vocals, sick bass, nasty lead guitar and solid fucking drums! They look like the Hanson brothers all grown up,” he told me. “Like the White Stripes on steroids.”

Understanding fully that Jack White on steroids would pretty much cause the universe to collapse in on itself, I took this news for the slight exaggeration it had to be. But my interest was piqued. I caught ‘em on Conan later that night, and after seeing them tear the shit out of their new single Sneak Out, I understood what my brother was so excited about. I knew we had to talk to these guys.

Rose Hill Drive is a young rock trio out of Boulder, Colorado, whose hellbent revival of classic hard rock and blues riffs with updated arrangements often draws comparisons to 70’s rock bands like Zeppelin and Cream. You know you’re doing something right if you’re mentioned in the same paragraph as the greatest bands of the past 30 years.

The band (Jacob Sproul on bass and vocals, Daniel Sproul on guitar and backups, and Nathan Barnes on drums) has released two albums so far: their self-titled 2006 debut gained the boys a good amount of recognition, but this year’s excellent Moon Is The New Earth is catching on like fire and pushing the band into new markets. However, their biggest exposure and validation came when Pete Townshend and Rachel Fuller invited the band onto their In The Attic podcast. They had impressed the ornery windmill legend with their performance at a festival headlined by The Who, and minutes later found themselves being interviewed by one of their biggest heroes. The artists have since shared the stage together on more than one occasion, an opportunity musicians twice their age would kill for.

We got tracked down drummer Nathan Barnes to get a bearing on what the band’s up to, where they’ve learned from the legends and what it means to be a band breaking into a dying industry.

Antiquiet: You’ve toured with everyone from The Who to Queens Of The Stone Age and The Black Crowes- any particular nuggets of wisdom they passed on that you’ve kept in mind?

Nathan Barnes: Eddie Van Halen told Daniel (guitarist) something that stuck with him, I think. He told him to just be a channel for the music, instead of trying to force creation. We were huge fans of Gov’t Mule in high school, and meeting Warren Haynes… He’s the nicest, most down to earth, humble guy. He treats the fans well, he treats other bands well, and he’s just got such an amazing energy about him. He’s a great guy, and we all learned from him, basically, to just stay humble and focused on the music.

Antiquiet: You recorded and produced your last album entirely on your own, right? What was the setup like?

Nathan Barnes: We did it at Coupe Studios in Boulder. The owner of the studio is a guy we call the Godfather- he’s always been our go-to guy for input on business decisions. He basically gave us free reign of the studio at night, which really allowed us to get to know ourselves in a recording atmosphere. And when we went in and did demos for the record, we hadn’t actually planned on recording the album there, but realized in the process that the formula was right- we didn’t need to go somewhere else or involve some big producer or whatever. We had our sound.

Antiquiet: Where does your drumming style come from?

Nathan Barnes: The first rock CD I got was the Jimi Hendrix Experience. So I guess Mitch Mitchell would be the fist real rock drummer I was listening to, but a lot of his stuff was way over my head in the sixth grade, especially since he’s a jazz guy playing rock. After that, I got into Chad Smith from the Red Hot Chili Peppers a lot. But bands like The Who and Zeppelin and the Beatles… I didn’t really get into them until later in high school.

Anything you listen to with any passion is something that you’re bound to regurgitate in one form or another. A lot of what you listen to goes a way to determining what you’re going to play.

Antiquiet: Your sound translates well with the jam band audience, as well as straight rock and blues rock audiences. Did you set out to appeal to a broad base?

Nathan Barnes: I think it really just comes from the collection of our influences. We grew up on rock bands, and guys like the Beatles and James Brown, but as far as the jam band thing goes, we sorted adapted to that scene. We found out that our manager also did work with Widespread Panic, so he was connected in the jam scene, and we ended up getting booked at a lot of the jam clubs that they book bands at. People took well to our sound, and we learned how to stretch the shows out and change our setlists up. Cause that’s the kind of stuff that those kind of fans really like, and they’re some of the most loyal, devoted fans we’ve ever seen. They’ll come to your show every time you’re in town.

Antiquiet: Given that you’re an up-and-coming band in the industry, how do you perceive the current state of the music industry?

Nathan Barnes: It’s interesting. You watch these labels trying to bring back boy bands, digging up New Kids On The Block and shit…. They’re holding on so tightly to this dying cash cow. Those major corporations aren’t embracing YouTube, they’re not embracing the fact that you can have your music heard by millions of people just by putting it on an FTP program.

And now you’ve got Live Nation doing these big deals with Madonna and Jay-Z or whatever, trying to take another profit angle and get a cut of what bands are earning for themselves. They’re starting to realize that the well’s running dry, and they’re doing everything they can to plug the holes. I think it’s just unfortunate that so many labels are so stuck in their ways, like ‘We’ve just got to stop piracy, it’s just gotta stop.’

Antiquiet: You can’t close that box once it’s been opened.

Nathan Barnes: Exactly. You’re never gonna stop piracy. I don’t know what it’ll take beyond going belly-up to make them embrace this shit.

Antiquiet: When there’s such a wealth of new music out there, how do you stand out?

Nathan Barnes: Our hope is that people will catch on to what we’re trying to do. We’re making music that comes from an honest place, and it’s a representation of us. There are no other agendas, its not manufactured like the fuckin’ Jonas Brothers or some shit. And I think music fans are looking more and more for authenticity nowadays. Choices are important to people, and if something doesn’t rub them right, they’ve got a ton of things to choose from.

Antiquiet: It’s gone back to being all about quality of music and touring now, for the artist anyway. That’s how things used to be, before the record industry, before the singer from so-and-so band was on your TV, eating Taco Bell in his Nike track suit with his Verizon earpiece, telling you to buy whatever the fuck he’s being paid to push. But we take all those things in stride these days. Society has come to expect the mainstream to be full of shit.

That being said, how do you feel about the state of Bush Americana these days? Attention spans aren’t quite what they used to be.

Nathan Barnes: Shit is fucked up, for sure. (laughs) Bad shit is happening, man. But as for the election coming up, it’s good to see speaking about the issues rather than just talking about how much Bush sucks. People are looking to change the way that things are done. You can’t just keep buying into such a failing system, even if it’s still comfortable to give in and do that. I mean, if a guy like George Bush can be president for eight years, yeah something’s off track.

Antiquiet: What does the rest of the year look like for you guys?

Nathan Barnes: We’re home for the rest of the month, but we’re playing the Rock The Vote show on August 29, then we head to Europe for a batch of dates.

Antiquiet: Your New Year’s shows are becoming legendary.

Nathan Barnes: Last year we did Aerosmith’s Toys In The Attic album. The year before that we did [Hendrix's] Band Of Gypsies, and the year before that we did Zeppelin I. I had it easy on that one, cause in high school I drummed to Zeppelin I incessantly, so I already knew every fill on the record before we’d even decided to do it. But Jake was over there, trying to learn how to play John Paul Jones’ basslines while trying to sing Robert Plant’s parts at the same time, and Daniel had to learn how to play like Jimmy Page. So my job was cake by comparison.

Antiquiet: What advice do you have for a kid trying to learn how to play?

Nathan Barnes: I think the most important thing is to listen. I used to just sit with a pair of drumsticks and a drum pad, and I would just hit the pad along in rhythm to what I was listening to. That’s what’s key- you don’t need the best gear, it’s not about how fast your hands can move or how amazing your fills can be. It’s all about your feel and musical ideas.

Put on some headphones and listen intently. Analyze.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 11:39 AM and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can comment, or trackback from your own site. Tags: Conan O'Brien, Led Zeppelin, Pete Townshend, Rose Hill Drive, The Who