There comes a point in a band’s career when it’s time to hit the reset button. After several albums and years spent on the road, taking a step back and considering what’s working and what isn’t can often be a creative boon. For All Them Witches, their reset included bringing in a new member, returning to producing themselves and seeking a change of scenery for the recording of their latest album, this year’s ATW.
Released in September, ATW is the band’s fifth studio album and follows 2017’s Sleeping Through the War, a Dave Cobb-produced LP that brought a bevy of new members to All Them Witches’ already growing fan base. The new album, though, draws more heavily from the Nashville-bred band’s roots, eschewing the big, complex arrangements of Sleeping Through the War in favor of intimate songwriting and raw rock ’n’ roll.
“I think that most people would just wanna keep going bigger and bigger and see what they can pull out of that,” bassist-vocalist Charles Michael Parks Jr. tells the Scene, calling from his home in the mountains of North Carolina. “But I like going back and forth. It’s good for me to try different things. We haven’t figured out exactly what works 100 percent yet, but I don’t wanna get stuck in a mindset of, ‘Oh, we can only do this with big producers,’ or, ‘We can only go bigger from here. We have to spend more money.’ I don’t believe in that. So doing it ourselves was a better option. It makes it more intimate.”
Part of achieving a new level of intimacy included decamping to a remote cabin in Kingston Springs, Tenn., where the band hauled their recording gear and instruments to make what would become ATW without any influence from outside parties. Guitarist Ben McLeod helmed production, renting whatever gear the band — rounded out by drummer Robby Staebler and newcomer keyboardist-percussionist Jonathan Draper — needed to complete the setup. Spending several days making music and meals together gave the band a renewed sense of why they began playing together in the first place.
“We weren’t that far away [from home], but something about waking up in the morning, getting started by 9 or 10, going until early [the next] morning and just cooking food with your friends and not being able to leave — it’s like you actually went out to create something,” Parks says. “It’s not like being in Nashville, where you go and record half a song, and you come back a month later and finish it. We can’t do it like that. So going out to a remote place is ideal for me, for sure. And the fact that it wasn’t a studio was another plus, because I hate being in the studio.”
You can hear the influence of the band’s creative refocus all throughout ATW. On opening track “Fishbelly 86 Onions,” guitar, drums, keys and bass coalesce into one fat, greasy groove. “Diamond” slowly builds from muted power chords to an all-out guitar assault. The epic, 10-minute-plus “Harvest Feast” marries bluesy lyrics to a trippy, meandering psych melody.
While all of these tracks capably showcase the band’s chemistry and musicianship in recorded form, they truly come alive onstage. All Them Witches are a band that lives to perform live, so it was a long wait from recording in Kingston Springs to getting to take ATW out on the road.
“That’s the worst part of being a musician — the waiting,” Parks says. “I think a lot of people don’t realize that 90 percent of your time is waiting, whether it be waiting on a song to come out or waiting to go onstage or driving to a venue. It’s a whole lot of nothing. So finally getting to play the songs was great.”
All Them Witches will headline Exit/In Dec. 28-29. While only McLeod still calls Nashville home, it’s still a homecoming for the band members, who get to revisit a little of that early magic whenever they step onto a Nashville stage.
“Nashville shows are a little strange,” Parks says. “When you’re starting out, you play every bar that you can. We’ve probably played everywhere in Nashville that was around when we started out. Now it’s all different. It’s strange now, because you have to hype them up, you have to get radio play, you have to get a bigger venue and make it a big thing if you’re playing your hometown. You can’t just go play a small bar anymore. So I guess that’s why we don’t do it that much. It’s a reason to see all of your friends and have a good party.”
