Interview with The Southern Gothic: ‘For this new record, I really went back and delved into those formative influences’

Nashville-based hybrid rock/country/soul band The Southern Gothic has released their EP – Burnin’ Moonlight – today, a beautiful six-song journey through the life cycle of a relationship.

The band comprises frontman, pianist and guitarist, Connor Christian, Yannie Reynecke (guitar) and Shawn Thacker (drums). Their name references Christian’s love of gothic literature: ‘At uni, it was my favourite kind of literature,’ he said. ‘I loved books such as ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’ (by John Berendt).’

Christian describes Burnin’ Moonlight as being ‘a six song journey through the life cycle of a relationship from those first electric moments, to falling in love and the bitter end’: ‘The album’s a bit like M. Night Shyamalan movies,’ he laughed. ‘He put out ‘Unbreakable’ and ‘Split” and all of a sudden he puts out ‘Glass’ and you realise that it’s insane how they’re all connected. This record was a bit like that.’

The album comprises ‘Past Midnight’ – the only song that’s been released so far as a single – ‘Up On Your Love’, ‘Villain’, ‘Ain’t Gonna Lie’, ‘Classic’ and ‘Gravity’. Amazingly, although the songs tell interconnected stories, they weren’t intentionally written as such. ‘One day I was looking at songs I was considering for the EP – I’d written some of them for other people – and I realized that these ones would work as our story.’

‘Sometimes you have to be the villain in someone else’s story’

‘Villain’, my favourite track on the EP – and his, it turns out – was a last minute addition to the EP after he decided that the other song he’d earmarked for it didn’t really fit. ‘We recorded ‘Past Midnight’ last October and the other tracks in January. We recorded ‘Villain’ remotely.’ He describes the track, which is really about the end of a relationship, as being ‘where you see the end at the beginning’: ‘I was listening to Maren Morris’ ‘I Wish I Was’ on her first hit CD. There’s the line in it ‘I’m not the hero of the story’ about this guy who loves her and she wishes she loved him but she doesn’t love him that way. It got me thinking that sometimes you have to be the villain in someone else’s story. I’m reading the Harry Potter books to my children and it’s like with Snape – all the way through you think he’s the villain but in the end you realise that he isn’t.’

As the chorus goes: ‘Tried to be your hero, tried to be your Superman, girl, if I can’t love you maybe there’s someone else that can. If it takes me losing so you can end up winning, if you need someone to take the blame, girl, I’ll be your villain, girl, I’ll be your villain.’

Another track, ‘Ain’t Gonna Lie’, references the popular saying in the US, according to Christian: ‘It’s a really popular phrase with folk here,’ he laughed. ‘If they’re gonna give you some bad news like “I ain’t gonna lie, I got REAL drunk that night”. The idea of the song was ‘don’t ask me if I’m in love ‘cos I ain’t gonna lie’. After those electric minutes of chemistry, am I falling for this girl?’

As the song kicks off: ‘It might be early but I think it’s time to close out this tab, kiss goodnight and walk away while I still can, before I say something that I might regret. I’ve been telling myself, all night long, it’s way too soon, don’t come on too strong. Secrets and whiskey just don’t mix.’

We both joke that we can’t really remember what that’s like as we’ve both been married for so long – he’s been with his wife for 16 years. I tell him that what I particularly love about about the tracks on this EP is that they all hook you right from the start and he seems really pleased: ‘With songs, you can often tell in the first 20-30 seconds whether you’ll think they’re great or not. It’s probably the same with dating apps, ya know, where people just go ‘swipe, swipe, swipe’!,’ he laughed.

‘When you play the songs live, you know exactly where to sing the ‘yeah yeahs’’

The album was initially supposed to come out in May and Connor acknowledges the challenges of releasing an album during a pandemic: ‘The big difference this time is that this album wasn’t written out on the road. When you play the songs live, you know exactly where to sing the ‘yeah yeahs’. With this new record, that wasn’t the case, so when we first got into the studio, it was a bit of a learning curve. On this record, I went in with an iPhone worktape, and got to sit down with some really talented people and experiment, which was a new and really exciting experience for me in music making.’

The Southern Gothic’s first album, 90 Proof Lullabies, came out in 2008 and there has been a noticeable shift in their sound, which was more straight up country then. ‘That was our first record, so they were songs I’d been working on for a really long time,’ he said. ‘Actually, my very first record was for a hip hop band. Their singer was a mess, personally, so I did all the singing parts. It was a great experience doing tours with big acts like Incubus, No Doubt and 311 and playing for an engaged audience.’ The Southern Gothic has toured with artists such as ZZ Top, Big n Rich, Styx and Corey Smith.

And despite the pandemic, they’ve managed to stay creative: ‘We’ve been writing hard this year but writing via Zoom is miserable,’ he said. ‘We’ve got 7-8 new songs that are possibilities. We may do the next record over on your side! If we’d have to quarantine anyway, we could rent a studio out in the country somewhere. By May/June next year, we hope we can tour.’

‘For this new record, I really went back and delved into those formative influences’

Growing up, he listened to singers such as Michael Jackson – ‘I wanted to be Michael Jackson!’ – The Bangles, Elton John and Madonna. ‘For this new record, I really went back and delved into those formative influences, and that’s what fuelled the shift in musical tone on this new EP.’

Locally, he is a big fan of country band Brothers Osborne and soul/blues band LadyCouch. When I tell him I am interviewing LadyCouch the next day, he gets very excited: ‘Ooooh, she has such a big voice, I’m such a fan of theirs! I would love to do a collab with them. Their new tune (‘Good God’) is really cool. It’s so great to see more women of colour moving into Americana, a genre which can be traced back to people of colour, so it’s really nice to see them making inroads now.’

As a kid, Christian moved around a lot internationally, due to his dad’s job for the US Department of State, which took the family to countries such as Indonesia, Singapore and Belgium: ‘All the moving around provided me with a different perspective, including a different musical perspective. These travels come into play with my musical influences. When we moved back to the US when I was 12, I didn’t know who Guns ‘N’ Roses were, I’d been living in Seoul. I had my dad, who was a big music guy, blaring 50’s, 60’s rock and other oldies that shaped my perspective.’

Growing up in other places, you don’t realise how backwards things can be elsewhere, he said. ‘There were new boundaries in the US that I had to learn, it was a tough lesson. Abroad, my tribe was anyone who spoke English, once home in the states there were lots of little tribes that wanted to induct me, more often than not just because I looked like they did. It was quite a minefield I stepped into without realising. The American south in the 80’s was a very different place than where I’d been raised, mostly on or near US military bases and embassy compounds.’

If he could tour with anyone, he picks Elton John: ‘He’s still my fave but time is running out. I’m happy I got to see his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour. I’d have loved to play with The Band (a now disbanded American-Canadian rock band) or with Brothers Osborne. They’re very cool.’