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Hailing from the Black Forest in Germany, The Alligator Wine play vintage rock… but without using any guitars. The duo of Rob Vitacca on vocals, Hammond organ, Moog synthesizer and percussion, and drummer Thomas Teufel are counting down the days until they release their stunning debut album ‘Demons Of The Mind’. Rob broke the monotony of lockdown by picking up the phone and answering some questions fired at him.
Releasing your debut album is a momentous occasion, but sadly you can’t go out and celebrate with a launch party!
Yeah it’s fucked up, but we are in the same situation as every other band. We are still rehearsing, shooting videos, and recording stuff, so yeah, we’re just trying to keep things going. As a musician, you have to move forward, especially in our position. As you said, we are releasing our debut album and the biggest mistake for us would be if we started to take things easy now. Weird times!
For sure, but Germany is seen to be one of the leading countries in dealing with this pandemic?
I don’t know actually. For us, as a band, we live behind God’s back in the countryside, so it’s weird even without corona! Normally, you don’t meet that many people on the streets anyway! Our rehearsal room, for instance, is in a large shed where tractors are usually kept. So yeah, we are behind God’s back. So, I can’t really say if Germany is dealing with it best. In the cities, for me it’s spooky. I talk to friends living in Berlin, and they tell me that the streets are empty.
Onto the album… ‘The Demon Mind’ is almost upon us. Two of the tracks originally appeared on an EP early last year, are the rest brand new?
Yes, I have to say though that it’s a long story! As we started on the idea of the album, we demoed five songs, just to see how it would work. Then, our producer, Kristian Kohle, who I’ve known from former bands, called me one day and said, “Hey man, I’ve found this old demo of yours with no guitars at all. Do you want to come over and just track another EP, but with more balls?”. So I said yes, and then he asked if I had any more songs, so we met up and tried some things. I had some of them from years back and when we tried them, they worked in such a set-up without guitars.
How long have you known Thomas?
We’ve known each other for quite a long time. We both played in various bands, and we met each other here and there. We would speak about our projects, then one day he said, “Hey Rob, I have this crazy idea. Do you want to come to my place and I’ll show you what I’ve built?”. So I asked what he had built, and he said, “Well, I’ve built this wooden thing and I’ve just put in a Hammond organ and a Moog synthesizer, and a shitload of pedals. You have to check this out man, it’s totally crazy!” So I went over, and the rest is history!
The variety on the album is incredible, and it’s an album to hold up to people that say a rock band must have guitars..
Yeah, we’re just two freaks! We like to experiment a lot with music, all these effects pedals, other crazy shit. I like organs, I like synthesizers. I do like guitars, but the thing is, we soon came to the point where it was clear that if we tried something with guitars, it wouldn’t be new. There’s so many guitar bands, it’s all been done before, so we said to ourselves, “What if we try and skip guitars, and try it with a Hammond and a Moog synthesizer, and other effects, then let’s see what happens.” This was a big motivation for us, just to try and find the right way, where can we go with this band. We are just two guys that have known each other for years, live in the same village, we jam and have fun, and see what happens. And this is what happened. It was not an exact plan, like: start a band, start touring, it was a case of how can we produce rock ‘n’ roll music without guitars.
I get the impression that there would have been a lot of improvisation in the studio when the album was being recorded?
We experimented a lot more on the EP because it was not clear then where the trip was going! But, first of all, we needed good songs. It’s easy to plug your Hammond through thousands of pedals and put it on tape, but you need a good song behind it to make it fucking roll. And so this was the main thing we concentrated on with the album. We needed good songs, so we spent most of the time getting the songs on point. We had the sounds in our heads, so we just focussed on good songs. We said, “Okay… we need good songs, we need deep songs, we need catchy songs.”. So, we got them ready and sent them over to Kristian, he checked them out and then he said, “Come to the studio, and we’ll make a record.”. I didn’t expect that. I thought that he’d say we needed to add this and that, but he just said, “Hey man, let’s do it!”.
So he felt that the songs were ready as they were? Excellent! ‘10 Million Slaves’ is immense. The sound on it is incredible..
Thank you, we tried to keep this one really raw and live, and this was the song with the most experimental parts on it. Kristian… just go and play… we take it as it comes, this is a great live song, by the way! The people love it. They can dance and freak out! Every time that we play it live, we play it different.
Then you mix it up with the thumping disco licks on ‘The Flying Carousel’.
I like those synthesizer danceable beats. I’m a big fan of bands like Queens Of The Stone Age and The Dead Weather, because it’s still danceable, in a way. They make you feel good, and this is the vibe that I really love, I don’t think about it like I’m writing a disco song in the end, it’s just what makes me feel good at that moment, and this is what came out.
Then you follow up the disco grooves with a darker, brooding vibe on ‘Lorane’.
For us, it’s really important to keep an art thing going on, so when we meet in our rehearsal room, it’s like a snapshot of what we are feeling. It could be that at that time when you meet you are feeling depressed, so this is why the album goes up and down. Maybe if I had been listening to too much Radiohead at home, then I’d be depressed at rehearsal, or I would write a depressed song, which is exactly what happened! There’s not really a concept behind it. Other bands, for instance, say a funk band, releases their debut album, and they only sound like a funk band, then you can be sure that their next two albums will still sound like a funk band. But in our case, I think that it’s pretty damn cool that you cannot say what we sound like, and that’s what we love. In the end, this is art. Also, if we play these songs live, then they’ll be different. I don’t want to sound like all these bands that use backing tracks live and all that shit. It’s raw fucking rock ‘n’ roll music – without guitars!
There have been a few singles and videos released from the album already. The most recent is ‘Mamae’. Where did that bass drum in the video come from? It’s insane!
(Laughs) There is a drum shop near to our place, and one day Thomas said, “If we ever shoot a video, then I saw the perfect bass drum for it, and I want to have it!”. So I asked him what was special about it, and then he showed me a picture of it, and I said, “What the fuck! This is fucking huge!”. So Thomas said that he knew the owner of the shop and he would give the bass drum to us to shoot the video, and that’s exactly what happened! We went in and said to him, “Hey man, we need this drum because it looks fucking awesome!”, and he just said, “Yeah, take it!”
Feast your eyes on the most insane bass drum in the video for ‘Mamae’ (above), and be sure to check out ‘Demons Of The Mind’ when it is released on Century Media on April 24th . It’s one wild ride.
Interview – Dave
