Interview: The Damn Quails are flying high, playing Stillwater and OKC shows this weekend
A version of this story appears in Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
The Damn Quails flying high
The Norman-based duo of Bryon White and Gabriel Marshall have been getting national and even international attention on the Americana and red dirt music scenes since releasing their debut album in October.
After just over two years of flocking together, The Damn Quails are really taking off.
Since the start of 2012, the Norman-based duo of singer/songwriter/guitarists Bryon White and Gabriel Marshall have watched their debut album, “Down the Hatch,” ascend into the top 20 on the Americana Airplay chart, while their bouncy single “Fool’s Gold” debuted at No. 35 on the Texas Music Chart.
“The momentum is working in our favor right now, so we’re getting ready to hopefully take over the world. That’s kind of the plan,” White said with a laugh during a recent interview. “That was our initial, like, goal to at least to take over the world with something. Hopefully, we can do it with country-Americana-red dirt-ish music.”
Before they take their musical quest for world domination to Texas, Minnesota, Illinois and several other states over the next couple of months, the Quails are roosting closer to home with shows at Friday at Eskimo Joe’s in Stillwater and Saturday as openers for Cody Canada & The Departed at the Wormy Dog Saloon in Bricktown.
Plus, they intend to keep their regular acoustic dates at 10 p.m. Mondays at The Deli in Norman and 8 p.m. Wednesdays at Libby’s Cafe in Goldsby going for as long as they can manage, even as their burgeoning tour schedule takes them further afield.
“Those weekly song-swapping shows, those are what’s gotten us where we are. We really enjoy doing ‘em. If there’s any such thing as a practice with The Damn Quails, it’s Monday night at The Deli. We like those types of shows: They keep us honest and grounded … and they give us a chance to run through some stuff. And then we can take it out on the road once it’s molded and kicked around and played through. I think it really helps the touring show that we can continue to do those,” Marshall said.
Musical chemistry
Longtime devotees of Okemah’s Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, Marshall, 30, and White, 29, have known each other for about 10 years and have been making music separately for even longer.
“We’re both huge fans of Woody Guthrie and Ellis Paul and Don Conoscenti and all those guys. The Red Dirt Rangers and Tom Skinner. We’ve been hanging out with Skinner for years, hanging out in a parking lot in Okemah playing music,” White said. “We both started out in punk bands in high school, which is weird. We messed around with rock ‘n’ roll, but then we started hanging out with those guys down at WoodyFest.
“I know for me the first time I saw Ellis Paul at the Blue Door was the first time I actually saw one guy with one guitar command a room that you could hear a pin drop in, and … I was down with that and really got into folk music. And started going through (Bob) Dylan and Neil (Young) and all the greats and (Warren) Zevon. And you just work your way into the weirdness up to Tom Waits.”
They came together as a duo about two and half years ago when a slot opened up at Libby’s weekly four-man song swap and White stepped into it. Marshall was already on the slate, and they soon discovered they were exceptional musical matches.
“I can’t explain it hardly any better than everybody else can. We were kind of as surprised as everyone else when we first got together and it kind of clicked so good. I don’t know. We have a weird natural chemistry, vocally especially,” White said. “Brother-sister harmony has some kind of a magic to it that you can always tell. We’re not related, but it’s that same kind of deal.”
White also started joining Marshall at his regular Monday night stands at The Deli, and they morphed into a duo. Marshall said the intriguing name The Damn Quails was inspired by a covey of stuffed Christmas tree ornaments that they were always knocking to the floor when they came home late from their acoustic song swaps.
Label launch
They recorded live albums at Libby’s and The Deli and gained a champion in businessman Chance Sparkman, who approached red dirt singer/songwriter/producer Mike McClure with a proposal to start a record label and sign The Damn Quails as their first artist. Both McClure and Sparkman grew up in Tecumseh and have known each other for years, and McClure said he was persuaded by Sparkman’s dedication to putting the necessary money into not just making records but also promoting them.
“I asked Tom Skinner, ‘If you were gonna start a record label, who would you sign out of Oklahoma?’ And he said, ‘The Damn Quails,’ and I kind of took that as a sign,” said McClure, who started 598 Recordings with Sparkman.
So, the Quails flew the coop to McClure’s ancient farmhouse near Ada, where he keeps chickens and records in a basement studio dubbed “the Boohatch.”
“From an artistic standpoint, it was the easiest thing I’ve ever got to do because the dude is really creatively and artistically minded,” White said. “We tracked everything out in his basement … which it’s like Jurassic Park with chickens instead of dinosaurs. We just kind of played with the birds and then we’d go in and work a little bit. There wasn’t any point where he was just anything but supportive.”
Soon after “Down the Hatch” was released in October, the band started earning positive buzz from national outlets like Country Weekly, AOL’s The Boot and Roughstock.com. They’ve even gained some international attention.
“We’ve gotten stuff from Australia, France. Norway really likes us for some reason; I think it’s because Knudson looks Norwegian,” White said with a laugh, referring to the Quails’ fiddle/mandolin player Jon Knudson.
While Marshall and White are the heart and soul of the Quails — they share lead guitar and vocal duties and separately pen all the songs — they’ve amassed quite a covey of talented local musicians and typically bring a seven-piece band to the stage.
They may have a publicist and record label these days, but the Quails plan to keep their music-making loose and free. They don’t rehearse, they don’t adhere to a set playlist, and their band lineup rotates based on who can make it on a particular night.
“Bob Childers told me one time that he never rehearsed because you lose the X factor. And that kind of always stuck with me. I’ve kind of always believed the same thing, when you sit down and you make somebody play a certain part or a song gets too rigid, it loses some of the magic to it,” Marshall said.
“I think that some bands get too caught up in trying to be too perfect and they … play the same set night after night. And “We just like to have fun, and we think that the easiest way to do that is just get up onstage with our friends and jam.”
IN CONCERT
The Damn Quails
When: 10:30 p.m. Friday.
Where: Eskimo Joe’s, 501 W Elm, Stillwater.
Information: (405) 372-8896 or www.eskimojoes.com.
Cody Canada & The Departed and The Damn Quails
When: 9 p.m. Saturday. Doors open at 6 p.m.
Where: Wormy Dog Saloon, 311 E Sheridan.
Information: 601-6276 or www.wormydog.com.
-BAM
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[...] Interview: The Damn Quails are flying high, playing Stillwater and OKC shows … … the Norman-based duo of singer/songwriter/guitarists Bryon White and Gabriel Marshall have watched their debut album, “Down the Hatch,” ascend into the top 20 on the Americana Airplay chart, while their bouncy single “Fool's Gold” debuted at No. … Read more on NewsOK.com (blog) [...]