OTIS: ‘Rock ‘n’ roll was built on recklessness and individuality’

Glasgow, Kentucky swampy blues rock band OTIS have released a new single ‘I’m Wicked’, a punchy, groove-laden track that has never made wickedness sound so good.

The band comprises Boone Frogett (vocals and guitar), John Seeley (bass), Alex Wells (guitar) and Dale Myers (drums). Of their band name, Frogett said: ‘There was a band called Otis in the 1970s in Louisville, Kentucky, which is about an hour and a half north of where we’re from, and they never quite caught on. Greg Martin from The Kentucky Headhunters saw the band when he was a teenager and thought it was a cool band name, so when we started looking for a band name, he suggested it, and we thought: “All right, let’s go with it!”‘

‘I’m Wicked’ draws on their 60’s and 70’s influences, with big soulful vocals from Frogett and the kind of stompy guitars that make you want to get up, grab your own and play along. It turns out to have a brilliant provenance: ‘It’s a funny story! Lyrically, it came from Alex telling us about a funeral he was at. Families were there, all talking to the preacher as they filed out, and when he met Alex, he just stood back saying: “Son, I can’t shake your hand, you’ve got the evil in you.” At practice, he was telling us about it. It’s an insane situation but it’s something that happens every day. When something like that happens, you always look in the mirror at yourself and think: “What did I do to make that happen?” Alex is such a nice, kind guy, which is why I really thought it was funny that it happened to him of all people because he’s such a good person.’

‘My grandfather was an old-time bluegrass fiddler’

That moment became the genesis for the song and got the ball rolling, lyrically: ‘When something happens to us, instead of looking in the mirror and saying “It’s me, I’m the problem”, we look at all these other things, such as spirituality and background, family, or even disease. The music’s really fun, we had a blast writing and recording the song.’

As the track kicks off: “I got a scar on my neck and an old black heart. My mother said I was born in the dark. Raised up good but I turned out bad. Oh, I’m Wicked. Mmm, I’m Wicked.” 

While it would be easy to categorise the band’s sound as southern rock, their musical palette is clearly much broader. They stay connected to their homegrown roots having been around traditional instruments from a young age, with the piano, fiddle and guitar instilling in them an appreciation of country-rock, bluegrass and folk music. Brought up on ‘deep-diving vinyl collections’, including albums such as B.B. King’s Blues is King, The Kentucky Headhunters’ Soul album and The Fabulous Thunderbirds’ What’s The Word?, they all come from families who are ‘really musically-inclined’, according to Frogett: ‘My grandfather was an old-time bluegrass fiddler. Our drummer, Dale’s dad builds guitars. Alex, the guitar player in the band, his uncle is in a band called Rufus Huff that’s really good. It’s a blues rock side project of The Kentucky Headhunters, it’s really cool. John, our bass player’s family taught him how to play piano and sing harmonies with old gospel standards.’

‘There’s a Bobby Rush vibe but we spiced it up with more rock n’ roll changes’

When it comes to songwriting, typically the four of them get in a room and just start jamming: ‘I’ll start messing with the melody and the lyrics and then we all write it together on the floor and we figure it all out later,’ Frogett said. ‘It was a challenging song for us because it’s so groove-oriented. We had to get that groove right to get the song down. The riff we’re playing is relatively simple, so it’s about the emotion you put behind it. It’s more of a traditional blues style than our last one, sure there’s a Bobby Rush (an American blues musician) but we spiced it up with more rock n’ roll changes and we spent a lot of time trying to get it right. In the studio, it was pretty much all live on the floor, there were no click tracks or anything like that. It was one of those songs that we’d work on it for a while and we kept circling back to it thinking “This song has something, let’s keep working on it.” I’ll often get a melody and an idea of where it’s going, then we’ll all talk about it and say: “Hey, what are we trying to say here? And what’s the most effective way to say this?” At that point, it becomes more of a group effort.”

I say that ‘I’m Wicked’ is the kind of rare song that would work anywhere in a set, as an opener or closer or anywhere in between to get the crowd dancing and he agrees: ‘It’s funny you should mention that because the two shows we got this weekend is the first time we were ever going to play it live. We wanted to wait ’til it was released before we started playing it, so that’s something I’ve been thinking about. I think we might either open with it or maybe put it halfway through. Sometimes you need to get a couple of songs under your belt during the show to really drive it home!’

‘If you think about the blues influences we have, none of those guys took lessons or were trained, that’s what made them so unique’

Other songs, like ‘Last Fool in the Line’ (2024) lean into their soul roots, with its big vintage-sounding intro, thanks to the layered up guitars: ‘We wrote that one when we were really digging into soul music and listening to all the Motown and Atlantic stuff and music recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio (Artists such as Aretha Franklin, Etta James, The Rolling Stones and George Michael all recorded at the Alabama studio.) Those songs were all written really well, so I think that’s how we got that intro. In that era of music, it was all about radio – if you got somebody in that first 10, 15 seconds, then you got them, they’d keep on listening. That’s the mindset we had when we wrote and recorded it and it’s a really fun song to play. No matter what kind of crowd it is, people always groove to that song.’ The “last fool in the line” is a reference to people being down on their luck: ‘People are always telling stories about bad luck, we picked up on that. It could easily, on any given day, be any one of us.’

Frogett got into music as a kid by watching his grandfather and father play together: ‘They were playing shows every weekend and always we would watch them play. It was a natural progression, I thought: “If I’m going to go hang out, I might as well learn how to play (laughs).” My dad plays the guitar. I never really took any formal lessons but if I was having trouble with something, he would show me how to do it and go back to watching Gunsmoke (an American Western TV show in the 50’s) or whatever (laughs). He would help me just enough to let me figure it out on my own, which is a great way to do it.’

I say that it sounds like an innovative way to learn. ‘I think it’s also the hardest way to learn because you have to come up with your own way of doing things,’ he said. ‘It may not necessarily be right or wrong from a theory standpoint but it makes you sound more unique. If you think about the blues influences we have, none of those guys took lessons or were trained, that’s what made them so unique – that’s how they got all the different open tunings because they didn’t have a tuner and they didn’t know what the guitar was supposed to be tuned to, so they just tuned it to what sounded good to them. They just played it and they thought it sounded really cool. They kept it in because it doesn’t matter if you know the name of the chord or not, it matters about how it fits in with the rest of it and how it sounds to you making that song. There’s only so many chords you can make but there are so many different ways to make them.’

He cites blues legend B.B. King as being “The man, I’m a B.B King nut!”, not just as a guitarist but also as a singer: ‘He was one of the first singers I heard. I thought: “Wow, I would love to be able to do that.” The Allman Brothers is a big one for us because that’s how we discovered a lot of this blues stuff. If you look at their first self-titled album (1969), a lot of it was blues covers. We’d look at the track listings and say: “Oh, that’s Sonny Boy Williamson, that’s T-Bone Walker”, which gave us some homework. We would go back and listen to the originals. I’ve got to mention ZZ Top. Billy’s been a big supporter of us throughout our careers, he’s the best. I’ve never really met anybody quite like him. He’s a walking encyclopaedia of music and anything about old school Vegas or Hollywood, he knows about it! Last time we hung out with him, he was shopping for a car for Hot Wheels at Walmart! Dusty Hill from the original ZZ Top, he played with Freddie King, so they got to be around Freddie King quite a bit. He’s always telling stories about Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. Billy is a really inspirational person.’

‘That’s the cool thing about rock music – you can build something off one little hook and then you’re off to the races!’

I tell him that one of my favourite YouTube clips of all time is the one where B.B. King breaks a guitar string on stage and carries on singing as he restrings the guitar that he is still holding without really looking at it and he laughs: ‘Oh, that’s an amazing clip! His hearing has to be so good, you know, to be able to do that.’

‘Chasing The Sun’ on their second album Eyes of the Sun (2017) has the kind of slow and soulful guitar intro you could imagine B.B. King himself playing: ‘We dug into Crosby, Stills and Nash, Neil Young and all that great stuff for that one. It started from the guitar intro actually. That’s the cool thing about rock music – you can build something off one little hook and then you’re off to the races! But everybody has to listen to each other. The song is about somebody trying to find their way, there’s a mentor guiding them through it. You know, as young people do, you step in a mud hole every now and then but you figure it out along the way.’

Next up, will be some new songs, likely in the form of an album, according to Frogett: ‘We’ve got a stockpile of songs held back and, of course, we’re working on getting a full length release out there because everybody’s pushing us to. Writing songs is one of the easiest things for us, we’ve already got two songs recorded, they’re both really cool, fun songs with one a lot more funk influenced than any of the other songs and we have a special guest on it (He asks me not to say who.). One is about a chance meeting where you’re trying to figure each other out and say what you need to say but not say too much, kinda like how we don’t want to give away too much on the album just yet as we’ll get hounded by folks even more to get it out – it’s ready when it’s ready!’

Frogett says that he and his band mates are all “album nerds”: ‘We’re looking forward to getting all these songs out there because once you hear them all together, they tell the story. I think, ultimately, all albums have a theme, consciously or subconsciously, because it’s really a snapshot of where a band or artist is in their life and/or career. For us, the theme is embracing your roots, being yourself, and creating positive energy for others in the process. Rock ‘n’ roll music was built on recklessness and individuality but over time it has become one of the most predictable genres – we hope to play a part in seeing future bands regain the spirit of the art form. We don’t really think about things in terms of singles because with all the great records we grew up listening to, we always wanted to listen to the whole thing. For example, Marty Stewart and the Fabulous Superlatives had this album called Way Out West, which is a great concept album, you got to check it out. It’s a little more on the country-side. Think Flying Burrito Brothers and The Byrds and that type of thing. We love listening to whole albums because if you listen to 12 songs, you think: “Oh, this band can do this but they can also go here”, as opposed to if you listen to a three minute single and think “That’s what they can do”.’

Recently, Frogett has been listening to a country album by 60’s singer Charlie Pride: ‘We listen to a lot of old honky tonk music and truck driving music out on the road (laughs), so I’ve been listening to that some. And, of course, Bobby Rush, we love Bobby Rush! He’s got an album called Rawer Than Raw that’s really been influential on us as a band.’ I ask him whether they ever cover that kind of thing and he shakes his head: ‘We know we can’t play it authentically enough to pull it off, so we say: “Let’s just stay in our lane over here!”‘

‘The town that we’re from – Glasgow, like in Scotland, but we screw up the pronunciation! – is famous for The Kentucky Headhunters’

He describes his local Kentucky music scene as ‘more varied than you would think’: ‘Kentucky is famous for bluegrass music. Bill Monroe (an American mandolinist, singer, and songwriter) was born here, that’s where the whole bluegrass thing took off from. There’s also newgrass like Sam Bush and Newgrass Revival, where they were mixing elements of jazz music with bluegrass. The town that we’re from – Glasgow, like in Scotland, but we screw up the pronunciation! – is famous for The Kentucky Headhunters, which was a big time country rock band in the 80’s. We came over and played the real Glasgow, which was very cool – gotta do both! There’s a guy we really like here called Rod Davis, he’s a country honky tonk guy. If I was going to go out tonight, I would go see him. There’s a lot of blues and rock ‘n’ roll in our state, too.’

If he could go out drinking with anyone, he is quick to pick his hero, B.B. King: ‘I’d have to go with BB King because he’s been such a big influence and I would love to have met him and picked his brain on what he listened to and his old stories,’ he said. ‘You know, his famous guitar, ‘Lucille’, got the name Lucille after the club caught on fire and he had to escape with it, so I’d have to ask him about that! (King was playing at a dance hall in Arkansas when two men fighting over a woman named Lucille knocked over a burning kerosene heater, causing a fire. King rushed back into the burning building to save his Gibson guitar, naming it to remind himself never to do anything so reckless again.) His drummer, T.C. Coleman, I’ve got to know him a bit. He was playing for a country artist that The Headhunters were touring with named Jamie Johnson. I got to meet him through them because they all know that I’m a blues king nut (laughs), so that was a cool experience. This is an equally funny but cool story! We played a show last summer in Asheville, North Carolina, with Hippies & Cowboys and PYLETRIBE, a band that features Rock & Roll Hall of Fame drummer Artimus Pyle, who is known for playing with Lynyrd Skynyrd. As our set went on, we noticed that Artimus was watching us, at first from way back in the audience and then from the front of the stage and we looked at each other thinking: “This is a cool moment”. By the end of our set, I looked behind me and he was onstage with us with his arms around our drummer Dale and the crowd loved it! It really moved us that he watched our set but despite being a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, he showed us what a down to earth and fun guy he is. Those are the rare moments on the road that every band lives for.’

(Top photo from left to right: John, Alex, Boone and Dale.)

(Photo credit: MM Photography)