by Jim Testa
“The Parlor Mob is a rock band founded
in New Jersey in 2004. The band consists of singer Mark
Melicia, guitarists David Rosen and Paul Ritchie, drummer
Sam Bey, and bassist Anthony Chick.” – Wikipedia.org
That pretty much sums it up, except to add that Chick
recently replaced original bassist Nick Villapiano, and
the band is about to drop its second album, “Dogs,”
on Roadrunner Records. In anticipation of the album release
and upcoming homecoming show at the Stone Pony, we spoke
to lead singer Mark Melicia, who phoned in from the road.
We started by asking why a band that’s been around
since 2004 is only releasing its second album in 2011.
“Well, that’s not entirely accurate,”
he explained. “We self-released a record in 2005
when we were still kids just hanging around the Red Bank
scene. (The band was briefly known as What About Frank).
There were only a few copies and nobody really got to
hear it, but technically that was our first record. But
as far as everything else goes, I think the big thing
is just that we were so young when we started, we really
didn’t know what we were doing. We went through
a lot of things with different managers, different labels.
People promised things that didn’t necessarily happen.
Then we signed to Capitol Records just at the time they
were folding the label into Virgin, and there was all
kinds of politics involved with that, and nothing ever
happened. Then we signed to Roadrunner. We just wanted
to be a band, and getting involved with all the professional
aspects of it really proved to be a huge time drain. Now
that we’re older and more in control of our careers,
we’re trying to get to the point where we can navigate
through all that stuff and do what we want to do. Like
with Roadrunner. With that first album cycle, we pretty
much had to listen to everything they said. But now we
have a much better idea of how we want to tour and who
we want to play in front of, and what bands we’re
willing to open for. The record label always has its own
agenda, but at this point, we’ve done all the things
they’ve suggested and wanted us to do. And if we
feel differently, we can just say, look, we did that the
first time and it didn’t work, so now we want to
do it this way… and they have to listen to us.”
The Parlor Mob’s first album for Roadrunner, “And
You Were A Crow,” was released in 2008, and the
band toured extensively behind it for the next several
years. The band’s basic formula of crunchy hard
rock, head banging rhythms, and Melicia’s straightforward
vocals found a very receptive audience in places that
had overdosed on the affectations of synth-driven indie
rock.
“We would go to a place like Paris or Glasgow and
people would be very excited to see us,” Melicia
said. “We were something very different over there.
Then we’d come back home and we’d be just
another American rock band on the road and it was harder.
I mean, you hear that all the time from bands, that you
get treated much better in Europe and the audiences are
more into it. But for us, it was true.”
Seven years ago, when the band started performing, Parlor
Mob was a bit of an anomaly, a sweaty old-fashioned, unabashedly
loud rock ‘n’ roll band steeped in the tropes
of classic rock, framed against an indie rock scene that
was being fragmented into dozens of sub-genres by the
Internet and the rise of the blogosphere. “You’re
always fighting against expectations and what’s
popular at the moment when you’re out there in front
of people,” he said. “But it does seem like
the pendulum may be swinging back the other way. Everything
comes in cycles and that does play a role in how a band
like us goes over. “
“We’ve really never liked being categorized
anyway,” he continued. “We’re a rock
and roll band. That means we can do whatever we want.
It’s more expansive and more challenging that putting
yourself into some little niche that limits what you can
play or what influences you can draw from.”
The new album “Dogs” certainly lives up to
that billing, although listeners may be surprised at how
cleanly the mixes separate Melicia’s voice from
the dual guitars and thrashing drums. For a band that’s
often compared to sturm-und-drang of classic Led Zeppelin,
the new album has a lot of subtlety and dynamics. “I
am really happy with how this record came out,”
Melicia said. “We really wanted it to sound very
professional and radio ready, and yet still get the guitar
tones we wanted and a lot of energy.
“ The important thing is that we’re still
having fun, and the fact that there are people willing
to put us out on the road and let us play in front of
our fans is a blessing,” he added. “It’s
trying to combine the professional and the creative aspects
of it that can be challenging. In a way, we feel like
this record is still the beginning of what we’re
going to do as a band. As long as we can go out on stage
and people come to see us, we’re really happy and
we feel very fortunate to be doing what we get to do.”
The band returns from tour on Friday, October 14 with
a show at Asbury Parks’ famous Stone Pony. “Everybody
in the band except me lives in either Asbury Park or Ocean
Grove, so it really is our hometown,” Melicia said.
“And it’s been great the last few years watching
the music scene there evolve. It’s really become
a social hub, and there are all these young people there
now creating a culture. It’s not just a place where
you go to a show and then leave and go home. There’s
this whole generation of us who hang out and socialize
and play in each other’s bands, and it’s a
really cool thing.”
“When we were just kids and starting to hang out
and go to bars and stuff, we had this great scene in Red
Bank, and what we saw was that the town became so successful
and gentrified that you couldn’t hang out there
anymore,” Melicia recalled. “I hope that doesn’t
happen in Asbury Park but we’ll see. So far the
bad economy has actually been the best thing that’s
happened to the music scene there.”
Melicia noted that during Parlor Mob’s downtime,
several members have created side projects that take advantage
of the abundance of talent at the Jersey shore. Parlor
Mob guitarist Dave Rosen and drummer Sam Bey have a blues
band called the Black Jesuses, and Melicia sometimes gets
on stage with his friends in Sikamoor Rooney. “I
really love going to see the Black Jesuses,” Melicia
said. “For me, it’s just like going to a show,
all my friends are there and I get to hear great music,
only I don’t have to do anything except sit back
and enjoy it. Everyone’s creative in the band, and
everyone’s free to do whatever they want when we
have the time off. But then when we’re Parlor Mob,
everybody is totally focused on that.”
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