Blending
horror, humor, and heavy riffs, The Quick & Easy Boys unleash their wildest
side yet on SCARY THINGS. We caught up with them to talk demons,
flamethrowers, and creative chaos.
1. Your
new album SCARY THINGS leans into horror themes and darker vibes. What inspired
you to go in that direction creatively?
At the time I was listening to a lot of darker, heavier music. Sleep, Black
Sabbath, Candlemass, Venom, Vektor, Iron Maiden… when we were in the studio we
initially planned on just recording about 12 other songs in a funkier/r&b
kind of style, and when we finished those we still had half a day in the studio
so Jimmy and I ate some mushrooms and drank some tequila and were like “let’s
try some weird heavy shit” and we just made up the songs on the spot and then
added vocals at a later date.
2. The video for “DEMONS” is wild—chainsaws, flamethrowers, dancers, and
all! How did that concept come together, and what was it like working with Jon
Meyer again?
The video came together very fast. We had released the SCARY THINGS EP a few
months ago, and had recently got a grant to make a video so it was like “ok
let’s do one of the new songs!” I really wanted to do a video for DEMONS and I
knew we had access to a flame thrower, so that was the catalyst. How can we
make a video around the flame thrower? Then I was like well if we have a flame
thrower we need dancing girls too lol, let’s go full overboard. Then we brought
in Jon who really turned the silly concept into an awesome video with storyline
and amazing shots. Jon is a total pro and we’ve worked together for like 10
years so we knew we wanted to team up again. He works so fast - we shot in one
day for like 10 hrs and then h was finished editing a week or two later.
3. There’s a strong satirical undertone to the idea of “corrupting
impressionable youth through rock and roll.” Is this a commentary on how music
is still viewed by parts of society?
I think it was more like let’s take this exhausted trope of dudes seriously
making scary tough music and have some fun with it. You can see there is humor
in the video - we aren’t trying to be some super hard tough band, we are big
sweethearts who wanted to make an excessive rock and roll video with humor and
also legit cinematography and twisted stuff.
4. You describe yourselves as “too weird to fit in since 2004.” How has
embracing your genre-fluid identity helped or challenged you as a band over the
years?
While we’ve always embraced doing whatever we wanted musically, I think we’ve
really leaned into it this past decade or so. Like all our albums have a wide
range of styles cuz that’s what we’ve always done, but recently for whatever
reason I don’t feel as much a need to try to do anything. But coming up, and
even still, I think we’ve been kept at an arms length in some scenes cuz we
aren’t cool enough or hip or we’re too funky or not funky enough. It’s always
something.
5. You’ve incorporated metal into SCARY THINGS while already blending rock,
funk, disco, country, and jazz. What’s your approach to keeping that blend
organic rather than chaotic?
I think it’s both organic and chaotic at the same time, by design. Organic
because it’s been this way since day one - just doing whatever we want. We
started the band playing funk and dressing like cowboys. Then it’s just evolved
from there. But we do like having the ability to be completely jarring. “And
now for something completely different…” it’s kinda fun being off-putting.
6. Portland has a reputation for weirdness, creativity, and genre-bending
art. How has the city shaped your sound and attitude as a band?
What’s interesting to me is that we started the band in Eugene, OR while in
college, and the ethos of the band never changed. And we spent soooo much time
touring for the first 16 years that PDX wasn’t really an influence on the band.
We had a solid fan base but we were never there to immerse our selves fully in
the music scene, save for The Goodfoot and Laurelthirst, two amazing venues
that gave us the freedom to grow and cultivate our sound over the years. So
shoutout Goodfoot and Laurelthirst, but other than that we never were really
accepted into any of the scenes that existed. We weren’t cool enough lol.
7. Tell us more about the characters behind the instruments—Sean, Jimmy, and
Tyrone. How does each member's musical background contribute to the Quick &
Easy Boys' sound?
So myself (Sean) and Jimmy have been in the band since day one, it’s essentially our project. We write the songs, sing the stuff, record all the andditional production overdubs, produce the albums, all the stuff. At this point I think Jimmy and I are pretty similar in what we draw from but when the band started I always saw Jimmy as the jazz musician rock and roll guy and myself as the high energy punk rock guy. We all liked different styles but that was kinda the vibe when it started. Tyrone joined in 2016 and he has been a blessing to work with. Amazing.
8. With such a varied catalog, do you find your fans coming from all
different musical backgrounds? What kind of crowd usually shows up at your
shows?
Our crowd is def people who like to dance and have a good time. We kinda found
ourselves in the jam band scene cuz we improvise a lot and really groove, but
at the same time we aren’t typically jammy enough for a lot of that crowd.
9. You’ve worked with Jon Meyer multiple times. What makes that
collaboration work so well, and how has your visual storytelling evolved over
the years?
Jon is a total pro and is so good and fast at what he does. We’ve done videos that are just music performance videos, and we did one for a song HEY HEY HEY that kinda blew up at the time that had a little bit of story line, but this one was a step beyond what we’ve done before. Jon also has done really amazing videos for other bands as well, highly recommend checking his work.
10. What was the most chaotic or hilarious moment on the set of the “DEMONS”
video shoot? Chainsaws and fire can’t possibly go as planned all the time,
right?
Haha great question, we def were expecting the worst on all the chainsaw and flame thrower stuff but nobody got hurt! Except for Dave who got cut in half lol. Honestly the most surpising thing to me was that it all worked out - it was very scaled down production with myself and our manager Stan doing most of the producing while Jon was shooting. But the shot of the dog eating the dead body was totally random… the dog belongs to Ben (who owns the property/flame thrower) and the dog just came over while filming and started eating the corpse lol cuz it was like ketchup and chocolate syrup and sausages. Made for a great moment.
11. The album focuses on “things that go bump in the night.” Any real-life
spooky experiences or stories among the band members that influenced the
writing?
Nothing cool like that as far as influencing the writing. We just wanted to fully lean into the scary theme of lyrics. It all started with our friend Jeff Sechs, on a group text thread, and he sent us silly joking lyrics to a metal song and I was like “Jeff that is amazing, I know you were just being silly but I want to use that in a song.” Then a few months later I was like let’s try those lyrics over the rhythm tracks for DEMONS and then we just chased the idea as far as we could.
12. What’s next for The Quick & Easy Boys after SCARY THINGS? More
videos, a tour, or perhaps diving into another unexpected genre?
We are always playing shows somewhere, so that will continue as usual. We have about 12 tracks for an R&B album we neeed to add vocals to, so that is probably the next project we will work on. But at the same time if something else strikes our fancy will def chase that muse and see where it goes. Just keep doing the damn thing for another 20 years lol.
The Quick & Easy Boys (@thequickandeasyboys) • Instagram photos and videos
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