BOBAFLEX INTERVIEW WITH SHAUN MCCOY 5/21/16 Hartford, CT By: Nina McCarthy, Music Journalist [email protected]
A special thank you to my friend Heidi Marion for sitting in on the interview and to Nathan Jones, Tour Manager for his amazing hospitality and Doug Weber at new Ocean Media for making it possible.
BRR: You’ve probably had this question a million times, but you and Marty have ancestors back to the famous Hatfield/McCoy feud. Can you enlighten us a little bit on that?
Shaun: Our family comes from the Tug River. They migrated from that area, and that’s where it all kind of took place. As far as a family tree, I have a hard time because we are just told and we go to the family reunions but our great grandfather did not have a social security number and he was shot and killed when he was 21 for stealing a horse in the mountains. He wasn’t a guy that had a lot of paperwork. So, we just go on our great aunts and uncles and who they say our other members are. But our little branch of McCoy's went from the Tug after the feud and died down and moved onto a little section of Lincoln County, West Virginia. That’s where our McCoys are from, which is only about two hours from where it all took place. We kind of migrated just a little bit North in West Virginia, but we’re still there.
BRR: I read something about that when you go back now, the Hatfields just kill you with drinking?
Shaun: We actually meet the Hatfields all over the road and they just try to kill us with bourbon now.
BRR: Is it true the band name was inspired by Star Wars?
Shaun: Yes, Boba Fett. I’m a big fan. We tried to think of a more serious name 1012 years ago. Had known we’d be doing it still...it was kind of a thing for the weekend and it snowballed.
BRR: And here you are! You guys were owned by a bank for a year due to label and management battles during which you wrote Hell in My Heart. How has now being independent been more beneficial?
Shaun: You’re not perceived as being as big because a label is paying for things, but you make more money, have more control and that means a lot as far as song writing. We don’t have people butting their heads in or the label paying this guy to mix it for $70,000 or something stupid like that. We actually did have an investor on Charlatan’s Web, which worked out pretty good. We competed on the radio with our single “Glider Dead Batman” which went pretty well with the majors. With this album we kind of thought we’d take a break from investors and saying we’d kind of looking at that option again the next EP or EP after that because it worked out really well. We were the bosses but we had immediate cash flow to conquer the record with one of his. Cool.
BRR: You wrote 17 songs during that time that the bank owned you?
Shaun: Yes Hell In My Heart... 17, but we couldn’t release them until we could figure out all the issues. It is cool to have an album that long. I’d like to do 3 more in my lifetime but it worked out we couldn’t release them so we kept recording songs.
BRR: Nice. If you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice what would it be?
Shaun: Stay in college and still be in the band. I’m only like 40 hours short of Advertising. Don’t take your first record deal, which I can’t say why due to legal reasons. The second one was a good deal.
BRR: Which one was the second label?
Shaun: TVT, but they went bankrupt and that’s how we got owned by a bank. And I’d probably say finish school while you are rehearsing because I probably have less than a year or maybe a year.
Heidi: Can I ask what you took in school?
Shaun: Advertising and English minor. I probably would have switched to an English major and Advertising minor.
Heidi: Would that be to help you with the music business?
Shaun: Yeah, it has helped a bit as far as branding and marketing. But man, things have changed so much since the 90’s as far as the internet goes that it’s a totally a different ballgame. It’s tough to figure out as a band how to create sales and where to spend your advertising dollars and marketing hours. There’s something new always happening. The industry too lost 100 million. From Charlatan’s Web to this album, in that 2 year time from 20142015, Spotify and streaming has become so popular that Amazon and iTunes have straight downloads now for 99 cents and they have taken a backseat. So, the whole industry has lost 100 million since 2014 in downloads because everyone is streaming now and you get pennies on the dollar for streaming. It’s crazy. We’ll get 60,000 plays in a day and it’s a fraction of what our iTunes stuff makes. It’s the way it’s going with these streamings. It’s so hard to predict what’s going to be next.
BRR: I still buy the physical CDs because I like to listen in my car.
Shaun: There are some things I do buy on iTunes, full albums and stuff. When you stream it, I guess there is some funky way you can stream it, save it to your phone and you have it for awhile, I think. But with my iTunes account, when I buy Waylon Jennings Greatest Hits, that is forever on my iTunes account. I own it. That way I can be in the desert on tour and have a party with no wifi and it doesn’t matter because I have all 300 songs to chose from, so that’s why I like it better.
BRR: I went on your fan page and asked the fans to come up with questions they wanted to know the answers to and I picked the top 3. Michelle Lewis said she heard Marty referred to as “The Minister” and she wanted to know if he is ordained.
Shaun: No, he is not. Just when he gets inebriated, he likes to preach. He likes to tell you what you’re doing wrong with your life and where you’re going wrong and how bad you were. We say, he’s getting on the podium guys; he’s righting wrongs.
BRR: That’s funny! Bobby Hankel wanted to know, if you weren’t playing music, what would you be doing?
Shaun: If I didn’t have a daughter, I fantasize about robbing a bank, probably about every other day. It’s pretty heavy on my mind. But having a child, I think “you’ll just get caught.
BRR: It’s ok. My fantasy is to rob an armoured truck.
Shaun: There you go. I’ve thought about this a lot. You can’t have any crew members because they always get caught because some idiot goes to the strip bar locally with 100 dollar bills and spends $5,000 in one night. They’re like, that’s the guy that robbed the bank.
BRR: And they’re marked bills.
Shaun: Yeah! I’ve been writing on the road a lot, trying to get back into writing. I was an English minor and I’ve try to do classic writing more and that’s rubbing in more lately. It’s nice to fantasize about that but in reality I’d like to be home with my daughter and I think about that all the time. It wouldn’t matter where I was doing it, if I could see her more.
Heidi: How old is she?
Shaun: Nine. I’m missing a piano recital she’s in this month. She’s doing a Star Wars duet with her teacher. Her mom will FaceTime it but I hate missing the recitals, man. I just FaceTimed her a little bit ago before you guys got here. Technology makes it a lot easier.
BRR: It’s true. When I interviewed Nonpoint, they said the same thing. I asked them how they kept in touch with their families while on the road and they said, “Lots of FaceTime!”
Shaun: That’s it. I will not curse technology for that.
BRR: Nope. The last question was from Ollie Corey. She said, “Considering the struggle that is now among musicians in the industry, what advice would you have for those wanting to start a band?”
Shaun: We always make a joke, “Don’t!” It’s hard for a band to get out and tour that’s independant. It’s almost impossible. They’ll give you money to take them out and it’s called a buyon. They do it with bigger bands. Smaller bands just want to get out on a club level and offer us money to get out. So, it’s that hard and live music, I don’t know, it’s becoming nothing more than a laptop and a lightshow. Some of the blame is the rock clubs because they just let any local band that is terrible onstage. So, a lot of those rock clubs don’t have an audience because their entertainment stinks. It’s a double edged sword as far what’s hurting it all. I would say get good at recording and get in with Pro Tools working on your laptop and home recording, first things first. Work on your song that way because technology is available that wasn’t available to me a long time ago for younger musicians. Learn to play your instrument properly and learn to record at home and I think that will be a big part of what you couldn’t do 20 years ago. You had to spend money to go to the big studio. I’d say, start now, learn your instruments, practice every afternoon, buy a laptop, get a garage band and start writing songs and learn how to deliver according to yourself. That’s all I've got for them. Other than that, it’s bleak and it’s ugly. If you like being lonely and penniless and you love music that much, then jump right in.
BRR: I work with mostly local musicians and most of them are broke, so they don’t even know how to progress from there because they don’t have the money to buy into these shows.
Shaun: I always fantasize about quitting the professional musician thing and having a regular job and just having a cool band and recording a few songs and make some tshirts and have fun with it, only playing 4 times a year. I’d put my own money into the light show, there’s no pressure, it’s not about the income. It would be cool one day maybe. Or, maybe I’ll be so sick of it all that I’ll never go to a bar again... most likely the latter.
BRR: That happens to me every once in awhile. I get burnt out and I need to take a break from going out. So, you’re on show 15 tonight of this tour with Ill Nino. How has the tour been going?
Shaun: Great! Six days a week is a rambler. We’re working our butts off. Our road manager may not make it to the end. He may just keel over. We’re used to two days off at least and one day off and 400 mile drive is too many in a row. It’s been good though. The fans have been responsive and everyone is treating us great. We need to get out there and make new fans. We can’t headline all the time.
BRR: Exactly. But, you have your own tour coming up in July?
Shaun: Yeah, we have headliners all in July and then we head to Sturgis and back. It will be our first time playing Sturgis. We’re looking forward to getting there and seeing a lot of bare breasts with liver spots on them. I’ve been reading Easy Rider since I was a kid and there are some not very attractive breasts out. We’re looking forward to playing there. It’s a big culture thing.
Heidi: Is Lita Ford playing there?
Shaun: I’m sure. I’m pretty sure Elvis is playing there.
BRR: That would be nice. Well, that’s all the questions I have.
Heidi: Can I just ask about the video for “A Spider In The Dark?”
Shaun: The song was about a story I’m writing. It’s the philosophy of a violent cult leader and he ended up breeching cannibalism. You can get it from the song if you listen to it closely. So we just wanted to have it real visceral, dark, and meat in the background. We got a free meat locker from a fan and froze our butts off. Marty was in a meat freezer, in a bathtub with fake blood with just his boxer shorts on. And we had the idea to use a fan to blow our hair and facial hair around. When they said, “Action” i was like “Ohhhhhh” and couldn’t wait for three minutes to be over. It was challenging. It got really cold.
BRR: Did you get to eat some meat after?
Shaun: Yeah. The guy there gave us free deer jerky, deer bologna, and we got free beef steaks and all that. They were really nice big cuts.
Heidi: Brontosaurus burgers.
Shaun: We didn’t rent it or anything. They were fans and they just happy to have us there. They just made sure the FDA wasn’t there when a bunch of greasy haired biker guys were in there recording. I think we broke the rules. I don’t think you’re allowed to do that, sweat around the meat.
BRR: Do you have anything you’d like to say to your fans?
Shaun: Keep buying stuff and keep paying attention to us. Don’t go away! I’m not ready to work at Lowe’s yet.