Dirty Little Rabbits Dream Big At Bowery Electric
EAST VILLAGE, MANHATTAN: “I feel like my whole life has been leading up to this,” exclaims Shawn “Clown” Crahan, best known for his work in the multi-platinum, Grammy award-winning metal band Slipknot. But it’s not Slipknot he’s talking about here; he’s ecstatic about rejoining his other musical endeavor, Dirty Little Rabbits. Though many would likely call the band a “side-project” due to Clown’s prominence with Slipknot, his enthusiasm regarding the project definitely says otherwise. “It’s important to this world right now. I can feel it,” he says.
Dirty Little Rabbits
Fronted by lead singer Stella Katsoudas (of Sister Soleil), the Rabbits’ sound mixes crushing mosh-worthy riffs with hauntingly pleasing theatrics and light airy melodies. Dirty Little Rabbits formed in ’07, with Clown on drums, and keyboardist Michael Pfaff, bassist Jeff Karnowski, and guitarist Ty Fyhrie rounding out the band. They released their second EP, Simon, last year on Brooklyn-based The End Records, which will also be putting out the band’s first full-length album this spring.
Before heading off for their European debut with Italian hard rock group Lacuna Coil, the Rabbits played one night at the East Village hotspot The Bowery Electric last month. The intimacy of the venue’s downstairs area allowed Katsoudas (a former New Yorker) and the rest of the group, to connect closely with fans amidst the high-energy antics on stage. At the same time, the audience up front didn’t miss out on the full sonic image to which normally only those elevated in the back would be treated.
For the Rabbits’ live sound, Crahan is all about analog gear, and has an elaborate vision he wants to give to his audience: “I’m gear head mainly in the analog world,” he shares. “If you watch the Zeppelin DVD How the West was Won, you’ll see like a Neumann (47, 67 or 87) out in front of the bass drum. No one’s doing that anymore. You’ll see like shitty mics in bass drums and cranking everybody to peak. I want to incorporate analog EQ, pre-amps, compression, etc. You know, bring out analog gear to make it fuller — make it more of an experience for the people.”
For the group’s recording projects, the story’s very similar. “We’re going for real music, real saturation and warmth — the way the machine grabs the two-inch and creates that friction,” says Crahan. “You can’t get that with newer technology currently.” In the studio, the band records everything to tape except guitar and vocals, which they record to Pro Tools. With the latter, Crahan wants the musician’s natural flow, so recording separate takes in digital is easier for him. Everything is then mixed down in analog, and finally brought back to Pro Tools for mastering.
But getting the sound you want isn’t always easy, and the Rabbits have had their fair share of challenges, particularly in recording Simon.
“So we recorded the newest record at a HUGE studio—big room, lots of ambiance,” Crahan describes. “And I brought back Black Dots — Remo heads with big black dots on them. I want to bring back Mitch Mitchell [Jimi Hendrix], you know? Ginger Baker [Cream]. I wanna bring back the old sound. Problem was, I used such big drumheads, and I was in such a big room that this beautiful music was just HUGE. I said, ‘We’re not huge. I might play big, and I might be a monster, but that doesn’t mean that this beautiful song needs to sound like it’s in an auditorium! So I got eight songs done. I went mad, you know? $20,000 later, I started all over again and had to re-record drums on a couple of songs because they were either too distorted or too big for the song, and there’s no taking that out. You can bring the ambiance down a little bit, but there’s no changing the fact that the room mics are huge.”
Additionally, Stella expressed her challenges of not being able to communicate with the band in a studio setting. “Well I think the thing that’s hard for this band in the studio is that we’re a live band, period,” she says. “You’ll see it in our performance. And just by the nature of a recording studio itself, everything’s in isolation, and it fucks with my head. Like for me as a vocalist, to be isolated from my band, who I’ve been rehearsing with for hours every single day, and suddenly I’m supposed to do the performance of my life isolated away? I needed to be able to see [them] clearly or else I would not sing a note. I get claustrophobic.”
Despite any difficulties in the studio, Dirty Little Rabbits will release a full-length album this May, and have ambitious goals as far as studio work going forward. “I would love to make two records a year,” says Clown, “And I believe that if I can develop my sound and capture what we are, I have a lot of time in my life to catch up on what I’ve been wanting to do my whole life, which is this music.” He plans to incorporate visual elements into Dirty Little Rabbits as well, such as film, Stella’s tap dancing talents, and even a pedal board that controls the stage lights. “It’ll be like an in-house Pink Floyd show,” says Stella.
Given the fact that this band is always writing, crafting new ideas, and moving forward with them, their dreams certainly may not be far out of reach. Crahan states, “I don’t have anymore time [to waste]. There’s a lot of deep shit we’re gonna do ’cause time’s running out.”
Check out Dirty Little Rabbits at http://www.myspace.com/dirtylittlerabbits and their label, The End Records, at http://www.theendrecords.com.