MUSIC

THE ENTERTAINER! MAGAZINE AUGUST 2020 MUSIC

LISTEN » JAM » INNOVATE » EVOLVE » ROCK » SING

The Anti-Hero Playboy Manbaby’s ‘Debbie from Zumba’ explores the Karens of the world

By Alex Gallagher

Robbie Pfeffer of Playboy Manbaby doesn’t like heroes.

He prefers the shady, troubled characters who are always more interesting than the onedimensional Ken dolls of the world. That sentiment resonates on the band’s latest collection, “Debbie from Zumba.”

“None of my songs ever have heroes; it’s always villains,” Pfeffer says. “I find them significantly more interesting. I’m always the person who watches a TV show and is way more interested in the bad guys than the hero.

“I like writing about people who have various delusions. And it’s a way to explore my own, because everyone has their own different types of oddities.”

“Debbie from Zumba” could be classified as a concept album about the Karens of the world—the women who will complain at the slightest misstep.

“The whole thing is a narrative of a lady who’s leaving a bad Yelp review about being in hell,” says Pfeffer, who attended Horizon High School. “There’s a song on the EP where the line says, ‘My friend Debbie from Zumba told me,’ and I just thought it worked.”

Pfeffer—who is joined in the band by drummer Chad Dennis and trumpeter/ percussionist David Cosme, both of Phoenix; guitarist TJ Friga of Tempe and bassist Chris Hudson of Mesa— uses the name as a symbol for gossip culture and to satirize people he grew up around. He wanted to portray the image of an entitled woman who is ready to complain at the drop of a hat.

“Debbie from Zumba” fits nicely in Playboy Manbaby’s catalog, although the band’s first album in two years doesn’t feature its trademark musical introductions.

“These songs, in particular, have no fat on them,” Pfeffer says. “They go straight to the core. They’re all quick songs. They have the least extra instrumentation of

any of our songs that we’ve done.”

Playboy Manbaby wrote the EP’s five songs in one day in a cabin Up North—a town so bland, Pfeffer can’t remember the name of it.

“It was really terrible,” Pfeffer says. “But that was good because it, being this ugly town, made it so that we didn’t have anywhere to go. We just stayed in the cabin and wrote stuff.”

One thing that shines on “Debbie from Zumba” is Playboy Manbaby’s personality. Pfeffer says sometimes it can be hard to grasp.

“It’s very take it or leave it,” he adds. “It’s a thing that people really relate to or find it very jarring. But it’s something that’s very us.”

Personalities are inherently important, and by ignoring the naysayers, Playboy Manbaby has become Arizona’s premier anti-rock rock bands.

“I think there’s something dynamic about who we are as people,” Pfeffer says. “We’re interested in being the multidimensional people we are.”

Because Playboy Manbaby is on COVID-19 lockdown, the band released four videos for the songs “Mulligan,” “High End Condos,” “Car on Fire” and

“I Wish My Brain was a Computer,” most of which were produced by filmmaker Carl Jensen.

The latest video chapter, “I Wish My Brain was a Computer,” features animation and shots of Pfeffer inline skating, a task he admits was harder than he remembers.

“I don’t remember myself as a child being good at rollerblading, and I thought that would be a super easy task to relearn, but it was not,” Pfeffer says.

“I injured myself repeatedly in the making of that part. The pandemic has really shifted the dynamic of the band. This has been weird because we’ve been operating in our own little pods. We still haven’t met up as a band.”

The whole pandemic is odd—but productive—for Playboy Manbaby. Dennis covered “Wizard” by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, while Friga offers a guitar tutorial for Playboy Manbaby’s music on its Instagram.

“We’re all getting a chance to put our own individual voices out there, though,” Pfeffer says.

34 UPFRONT | CITY | TRAVEL | ARTS | DINING | BEER AND WINEDINING | BEER AND WINE Every Other M emory | CASINOS | SPORTS | FAMILY | MUSIC | NIGHTLIFE | IN CLOSING

Country singer Ryan Hurd releases nostalgic EP

By Christina Fuoco-Karasinski

Country singers Ryan Hurd and his wife, Maren Morris, are putting their family fi rst during the COVID-19 quarantine.

Th ey welcomed their fi rst child, son Hayes Andrew Hurd, in March and are spending their pandemic-driven break watching him mature.

“We’re enjoying being home,” says Hurd, who lives in Nashville. “We’re proud to be with our son, and that part has been a huge positive. We wish we were on the road with our teams so we could see our fans and play shows. Th at’s who we are, and that’s a huge part of our identity. It’s been cool to see Hayes every day and not miss anything, though.”

Th e break hasn’t been all about family, though. Hurd released his latest collection, “EOM,” on June 26. Th e EP includes an acoustic recording of his latest single, “Every Other Memory”; a live version of “Wish For the World” recorded at Nashville’s Cannery Ballroom; his cover of Taylor Swift’s “False God”; as well as new versions of his best-known songwriting hits, including “Heartless” and “Sunrise Sunburn Sunset.”

For “False God,” Hurd says it’s fun to dive into other artists’ songwriting.

“When her album came out, I wrote on my story how much I loved that song,” he says. “She reposted my story, so I covered it. I love that song and that album (‘Lover’). She’s somebody I have so much respect for as a songwriter.”

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hurd was playing it live. He says it paid off .

“When you play live music and you have fans in the room, you have Taylor Swift fans in the room,” Hurd says. “She’s the biggest artist in the world. I think it’s cool, too, to hear a man sing a song that was originally written by and performed by a woman. It brings a diff erent perspective.

“I didn’t have to change any pronouns to make it work for me, either. It’s a testament to her writing and the gender norms we express.”

Th e new single from “EOM” is the title track, “Every Other Memory,” which he cowrote with Cole Taylor and Nathan Spicer. Th e song is a nostalgic romp through a man’s former relationship, with lyrics like: “Th at last call, fi rst kiss never left my mind/Th at old school Springsteen gets me every time/And when I see that leather jacket/ Th ink about how you had it.”

Speaking of lyrics, Hurd has had co-pen credits on some of country music’s biggest hits, including “Lonely Tonight” (Blake Shelton), “Sunrise, Sunburn, Sunset” (Luke Bryan), “You Look Good” and “What If I Never Get Over You” (Lady Antebellum), and “Heartless” (Diplo ft. Morgan Wallen).

“As far as lyrics go, we work so hard on them,” he says. “It’s nice to have people listen to them. I thought the one thing we do so well in country music is nostalgia and painting visual pictures with song.

“It touches on so many diff erent nerves for the listener. I really love the way it turned out. We knew immediately ‘Every Other Memory’ was going to be special. Everybody’s eyes went up when the band fi gured it out.”

Music has been Hurd’s calling since his formative years in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

“I think this is the only job I ever wanted since I was 11,” says Hurd, who earned a sociology degree from Belmont University in Nashville. “I did school, but I thought I would give this a go. I’ve always loved writing songs. Once I found out this is the job I can do, I made sure I really cherished being a songwriter in Nashville.”

And he has done so since then. COVID forced the cancellation of the back part of his headlining tour, and he’s “bummed” it didn’t work out. Hurd says it feels “strange” to be home in July, but to be home with Hayes and Morris is priceless.

“We’ve enjoyed being in Nashville in the summertime,” he says. “Th ere are good parts to this pandemic. We miss the teams, and we miss our fans and all the people on the buses and our friends we see in every city—the people we count on seeing on tour. We’ll see them next year.”

Ryan Hurd

ryanhurd.com facebook.com/RyanHurdOfficial twitter.com/ryanhurd rh.lnk.to/EOM-EP

35 THE ENTERTAINER! MAGAZINE AUGUST 2020 REINVENTING HERSELF Singer Arielle Silver is all about second chances

By Christina Fuoco-Karasinski

Arielle Silver had a successful music career when she just up and quit 10 years ago.

Following years of regional tours, and then a six-month national tour with her trio in support of her third album, she put away her guitar, moved to Los Angeles and landed a behind-the-scenes job in the music business.

After hours, she studied and taught yoga philosophy, won awards for her literary writing, got divorced, got married, and performed at SoCal world music festivals as a background singer and instrumentalist.

But her own music came calling.

“The reason I quit and came back both came from a really deep place inside me,” says Silver, who has family in the Valley. “When I stopped playing, I couldn’t do it anymore. I had done it my whole life. It was the life force for me. It was just something I needed to do and loved to do until I didn’t.”

One day she woke up from a “crazy dream” and it inspired her to do something she never considered. “It compelled me to go in the backyard and clear a space,” she says. “I didn’t know I was going to build a shed in which to write songs. I just suddenly felt I needed to clean the backyard and get back to something elemental, I guess.”

As soon as she built the shed—six weeks later—she started writing songs again.

“I was feeling my gut instinct,” she says. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.”

Despite 10 years off, when Silver launched a spring 2019 crowd-funding campaign, she raised over $26,000 to record the just-released indie folk Americana album, “A Thousand Tiny Torches.” The title comes from a lyric on the album.

The songs are about fireflies, wildfires and shining a light into the darkness.

Produced by Shane Alexander, the project was recorded by Michael Gehring at Secret World Studios in the legendary Sound City complex in Los Angeles. It’s being mixed by Grammy winner Brian Yaskulka (Lisa Loeb) and mastered by Grammy winner Hans DeKline (U2). The album features drummer Denny Weston Jr. (KT Tunstall), keyboardist Carl Byron (Rita Coolidge), bassist Darby Orr (Naked to the World), steel guitarist Jesse Siebenberg (Lady Gaga, Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real), and mandolinist Mike Mullins (David Grisman).

The first single was “What Really Matters,” which hit streaming services on February 28. The song was inspired by the November 2018 shootings at the Borderline Bar in Thousand Oaks, and the Woolsey and Hill fires. The events made her think about what really matters most.

“‘What Really Matters’ emerged from

my process of challenging myself to write a song a week,” Silver adds.

“All of California looked like it was on fire. A lot of people lost their homes. Thousands were evacuated. The sky was dark and ashy. That week, I wrote two songs. One was ‘What Really Matters.’ We have our personal tragedies in our lives, and then there are these cultural tragedies or local tragedies that are public. It’s terrible.”

The first song on the album, “You Were Light,” is luminous and uplifting in its forgiveness after a rocky relationship and accompanied by the reassuring strums of the guitar.

Another album track, “Someone Else’s Dream,” describes the rigorous internal battle between who you are and who you want to be.

Silver’s songs have been licensed internationally for film/TV. She has performed at venues around the country, including Club Passim, 12th and Porter, and Eddie’s Attic, with many of her favorite songwriters, including America, Elizabeth & the Catapult, Kris Delmhorst, St. Vincent, Jay Nash, Rebecca Loebe and Chris Pierce.

Also an essayist and poet, Silver’s literary work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets and has appeared in Matador Review, Moment, Lilith Magazine, Under the Gum Tree, Brevity and Jet Fuel Review.

Silver says she can’t wait until the COVID-19 crisis is over so she can hit the road again. At 5:30 p.m. Fridays, she hosts livestream shows.

“It’s been a hard year,” she says. “It’s a hard time and it’s a strange time to have something to celebrate. I think, first of all, all of us need a light in the dark.

“We can’t just reside in the despair of global, economic and health crises. All of that said, we need music, art, connection and good food—all of the things that help us feel human together.”

36 UPFRONT | CITY | TRAVEL | ARTS | DINING | BEER AND WINE | CASINOS | SPORTS | FAMILY | MUSIC | NIGHTLIFE | IN CLOSING

SOCIETY UNDER A MICROSCOPE

Río Wiley’s newest album studies society’s obsession with social media

By Alex Gallagher

Río Wiley is tired of the impersonal world, and the Phoenix-based ASU alumni shares that on his latest album, “I Hate the Internet.”

The pop release examines society’s obsession with documenting their lives and how it can become detrimental.

The first song, “Roll Deep,” shares: “I just don’t deal with drama and I’m sick of all this hate. The internet’s impersonal and I only know your username. We bottled it all in. Block me out so we can’t DM.”

Initially, the album was meant to have an entirely different title—“Happy Birthday, Say It Back.” Wiley garnered it from a popular internet meme.

“It came around the time when everyone on the internet was saying ‘Good morning, say it back,’ which I thought was really funny, and it was right around my birthday,” Wiley says.

“I just remember having that thought in my head, because I had seen an Instagram story or something and I was being trite and I said, ‘Happy birthday, say it back.’”

Wiley changed his tune, so to speak, to the digital age and society’s reliance on it.

“Eventually that changed, because as I got more into writing the record, I was starting to home in on the stories in the songs and the lyrics,” Wiley says.

“What I ended up realizing, through some deep thinking and introspection, was that I was thinking about the internet and how people remember your birthday now because they have Facebook and things like that, and so I was just questioning or challenging the validity of somebody saying happy

birthday to you.”

Wiley then gave it more thought and changed the title to “I Hate the Internet.”

“It (the internet) creates this space and separation for us. It makes us feel more connected, when it actually distances us,” Wiley says. “The fact of the matter is that we leave it up to social media to dictate our lives and things like that.”

While Wiley’s album aimed to put social media under the microscope, there was another event in Río’s life that he wanted to share.

“I had written this record after a breakup, and another thing I was thinking about during that time was how even though we get out of relationships, we can still access people. We can still follow people and we can still block them,” Wiley says. “The fact that my last relationship is just a click away on the internet is just kind of daunting to me.”

Wiley acknowledges the album’s title is a daring exclamation at one of the largest technical enhancements. He adds it’s purely a sarcastic remark at the importance of social media. He hopes the title doesn’t overshadow the album’s underlying theme.

“The biggest theme of the album is trying to move on from somebody when you know it’s the right thing to do, even when it’s hard,” Wiley says. “I wasn’t necessarily upset with this person, and I think the record doesn’t necessarily promote a negative perception of it but

more promotes the perception of how we handle the breakup.”

Wiley didn’t pen the album based on this sole incident. It’s a study of the conclusion of most of his relationships.

“It’s how we handle a breakup, or the loss of someone we love or when somebody leaves us. It’s how we handle that in the digital age and how the anxiety of all that manifests itself even more as a result of having access to them on the internet,” Wiley says.

Wiley found himself reminiscing through social media, and he wanted to examine this on the album. He cites this as the lyrical driving force.

“Just knowing you love this person but wanting the best for them and trying to have the self-restraint to not go and do it,” Wiley says.

Wiley cites his song “Famous” as best encapsulating the message of the internet’s eternity.

The lyrics “I hate the internet because you won’t ever go away, can’t even kick it when you’re dead” are among the more morbid on the album. Wiley says he feels these lyrics best examine how saddening these posts can be.

Wiley’s favorite song on the album is “She Bored,” as it best exemplifies everything he wanted to say on the record, just like the upbeat “Unfollow You” and “Faded.”

Wiley also recorded the album at home and is working on a new set of releases.

“Over the past couple of years, I’ve been able to develop my studio and gain the ability to do it on my own,” Wiley says. Wiley’s first records were recorded with knob-turner Hiram

Hernandez, who helped him learn the art of producing and perfecting his vocal style. Wiley also attributed his unique style as being influenced by artists ranging from Mayday Parade to the Foo Fighters and most closely to rap artist Blackbear, whom

Wiley feels he emulates the most. Though Wiley’s album contains 10 songs, he does anticipate releasing three new EPs, including new music coming as early as

August. “Right now, I’m just locking in vocals and getting everything tight and preparing to see what I want to release first,” Wiley says.

“You can expect to hear new stuff in August for sure.”

Neck Deep tries to fi nd its way with ‘All Distortions are Intentional’

By Mckayla Hull

Some performers are avoiding releasing albums during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Neck Deep lead singer Ben Barlow says he believes this is perfect timing for “All Distortions are Intentional,” the alternative pop-punk band’s fourth collection.

“Th roughout lockdown and throughout the cultural shifts that are happening, I feel like there are sentiments and lyrics in the record, that are defi nitely more pertinent now than they were at the time (they were written),” Barlow says. “Despite it not being political, it’s still going to resonate.”

Barlow describes the record’s feeling as “looking at the world around you and how you fi t into that (i.e., society’s standards), and whether you fi t into that and if you’ll ever fi t into that, and what do you even need to fi t into that?”

Th e fi rst song on the record, “Sonderland,” explains it all. “Sonder” is defi ned as “the sudden realization that everyone around you, even just strangers passing in the street, have a life as vivid and complex as your own,” according to Barlow.

To help fans understand that message, the Welsh band wanted to take fans through a tale that is relatable to listeners. “It’s a pretty simple story—a boy and a girl and fi nding a place in the world,” Barlow says.

Th e boy, Jett, is “looking at the world, looking at other people, and then he’s looking at himself and realizes that he doesn’t feel connected to any of it. And he fi nds love and battles with his own head and comes to a realization at the end.” Th e tone is generated on the album closer “Pushing Daisies” and the single “Lowlife.”

Neck Deep’s versality runs deep on the record, from angst-riddled poppunk songs to ballads like “When You Know.” Despite that, “All Distortions are Intentional” is cohesive.

Barlow would love to promote the album and its story with tours and interviews, but COVID-19 has made that nearly impossible. Neck Deep was slated to set off on a global tour this year. Instead, the musicians are creating music videos from their homes

and streaming live on Twitch to talk to and meet fans, as well as promote the album.

Barlow says canceled tours are devastating, as bands make most of their income from touring.

“It’s not the ’90s anymore,” he says. “We don’t really make money off record sales.”

It’s a domino eff ect, too, as the cancellations aff ect the income of the touring crew, management and booking agencies. With the pandemic, riots and protests, Barlow reminds fans that “everyone is in the same boat” emotionally. “All Distortions are Intentional” is meant to be a diversion from those issues.

Th e album acknowledges Neck Deep’s fans, who have stuck by the band, who avoids the mainstream.

“I think if you’re a fan of Neck Deep from our fi rst EP—whether you’re a fan of ‘Life’s Not Out to Get You’ or ‘Th e Peace and the Panic’—I think there’s something on this record for you,” he says.

“It was written with fans in mind, whilst also pushing ourselves and challenging ourselves and making ourselves uncomfortable in the age of evolution.”

A TABLE FOR TWO?

AXE TO GRIND

TSO guitarist Angus Clark and local musicians rip through ‘Burn’

By Christina Fuoco-Karasinski

Trans-Siberian Orchestra guitarist Angus Clark vividly remembers the day the world shut down. He was playing guitar for Cher and took a side trip to an NBA game in Oklahoma City.

Clark knew something was wrong.

“This year I was slated to play 10 shows with Cher, and the second one was in Oklahoma City,” Clark says. “The whole band drove to Oklahoma City to see the Utah Jazz play.

“We sat there waiting for the game to start, and then the cheerleaders came out and did the halftime show before the game started. Then they said the game was canceled. Our shows were canceled. The basketball season was canceled, and I haven’t left home since.”

Instead of laying low, Clark has been creating music with friends. His latest project is a cover of Deep Purple’s “Burn” with singer Bobby Sisk (Drop Diezel) from Cave Creek; bassist Greg Smith (Dokken, Ted Nugent); drummer Jason Hartless (Ted Nugent); keyboardist Marine Lacoste (Uncle Kracker) and Phoenix guitarist Brian Buzard.

“I just recorded and there was Bobby, who has a lot of touring credits,” says Clark, photographed here with a Jackson guitar. “He’s a tremendous singer. I just recorded my parts and put the video and the audio in a Dropbox. It came out great. After I submitted my parts, that was pretty much it.

“I’ll do anything that helps people stay connected and to give people something to do and makes them feel better about the fact we all have to stay on lockdown right now. I want to keep people safe and healthy until we have a national strategy.”

“Burn” was a logical choice for Clark, who has played with a Deep Purple tribute band.

“Ritchie Blackmore is a huge influence for me,” he says about the original Deep Purple and Rainbow guitarist. “I had, in particular, been a fan of the early Rainbow (Ronnie James) Dio material.

“The Deep Purple material is much more popular than Rainbow material. When getting together with Greg Smith a few years ago, we had always done Deep Purple material; the stuff that has Glenn Hughes in it. I had learned all that material.”

To put this project together, he had to “dive deep” and make sure he was getting the guitar solo “YouTube ready.”

“You don’t want to mess it up on YouTube,” he says with a laugh. “It was a personal challenge. I feel I got a good result out of that.”

Clark grew up in New York City with an opera singer mother and a father who played the cello. Music filled his home.

“I took up the guitar in earnest when I was 13, the same year Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ came out,” he says. “After that, I was just learning Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath and ‘London Calling’ by The Clash. Then I discovered Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow.

“I was a huge devotee of the giants of guitar, like Michael Schenker, Randy Rhoades, David Gilmore, Tony Iommi and Yngwie Malmsteen.”

Clark landed his first deal in 1992 with the band Naked Sun, a progressive metal act. But the musicians were dropped as “grunge took hold,” he says.

After that, he spent the rest of the ’90s touring the world with Japanese new age musician Kitaro, who was signed to Geffen Records.

“I was playing, essentially, instrumental Pink Floyd-style, orchestral rock music with no singers,” he says.

Around 1999, his friend and Kitaro fan Marty Friedman recommended him to Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

If there are concerts this fall, Clark will celebrate 20 years with the West Coast team of Trans-Siberian Orchestra. He’s especially fond of the Valley.

“We love that area,” he says. “I’ve previously worked with some guitar builders based out of Phoenix and (Peoria’s) Atomic Guitar Works. They’re great. We love that town. I can’t wait to get back there.

“I love playing with TSO, and the fans are the best. The band is really tight knit. Al Pitrelli, Jane Mangini and I have all been in the West Coast-touring band for about 20 years.”

For now, he’s spending a “fortune” on cameras and home recording gear through the pandemic and posting content on his socials @angusclarkGTR.

“Since the lockdown hit, we’ve becoming self-producing broadcasters,” he says with a laugh.

“Burn”

featuring Angus Clark, Bobby Sisk, Greg Smith, Jason Hartless, Marine Lacoste and Brian Buzard. youtube.com/ watch?v=CbjMdDVWTZ8

F I N D

a PHAVORITE!