Interview: Alexei of The Company Corvette Touching Chickens Is Fun

The Company Corvette

Back in the good old days, kids who didn't want to have real jobs would form a band.

Often times they would come up with some ridiculous name, start playing covers, then move on into original tunes, and then before you knew it, they were snapped up and their interesting name was then replaced by something far more palatable.

What if in 2016, a band chose to keep their own name?

What if said band loved chickens, fast cars, and the wah wah pedal?

Most likely, we'd be talking about The Company Corvette, whose debut album drops on 8/5/16 on The Company Records. Alexei was good enough to hear me out and even answer my silly questions about chickens and names....

Glacially Musical: Thanks for taking some time for me today.

The Company Corvette: No problem.

GM: I really dug the grooviness of your record. Where did that sound come from?

TCC: Oh thanks, man! That’s just from what we like to listen to, and how we like to play, of course. 

We like all spectrums of heavy music and all sorts of rock and  pop music, but at the end of it all our hearts and souls are into this dark, heavy, sludgy type of rock’n’roll. I think we acknowledge all our influences - from the 70’s and 80’s metal and rock, to 90’s stoner/noise/sludge, to some of the more recent heavy/psych acts, etc. 

We don’t want to do this thing where you just sound like a retro 70’s band, or something.

GM: Tell us about your main influences. Who are there and how did you come across them?

TCC: A lot of it is obvious - Sabbath and stuff like that… 

We all were metal/punk kids growing up, but a bit later in life got into other sort of hard rock and rock’n’roll stuff. We’re kind of stuck in this war zone between Saint Vitus and Motorhead, sonically… maybe. 

Discovering The Melvins changed everything… The Jesus Lizard, even though we don’t sound like that at all. What we think we do might not be what it sounds like to everyone else, so who knows…. 

We love a killer riff and it is mostly about that!

GM: What does The Company Corvette mean anyway?

TCC: It’s a free car you’re given to ride, man! I think, haha. 

It sounded like a great band name when we were just a bunch of drunks jamming out years ago… and it still does! We may have gotten heavier and tighter sounding, but it is still our vessel for good times! It seems to confuse people a little, which is fun. 

We are not really “car people”, it could be a ship, you know?

GM: How did you guys get together as a group?

TCC: We were unemployed, and had a super convenient and cheap space to jam. 

Not easy to come by in this city. So we scrambled all the shitty, rusty gear we’d had laying around, and called it a ‘band’. 

We weren’t very ambitious, but we kept getting better at playing and kept buying better stuff… and we still keep doing that.

GM: I also have to ask about those chickens....I mean what's up with the chickens?

TCC: We live in fuckin’ West Philly, and people have chickens here! 

These ones hang out in Ross’ back yard, and they are super cool. It’s the same backyard that Stinking Lizaveta shot their III album cover, and they’re our favorite band so we thought it’d be funny. 

Also, touching live chickens is fun!

GM: Pick a track off the album and tell us what it's about and how you wrote it.

TCC: Devilwitch is about an actual person Ross (bass/vox) encountered at work. 

This crazy drugged out lady spewed out “I don’t need no doctor, I don’t need no bills…” at him, and something about some Devilwitch taking care of her and all that crazy shit… 

She had pill bottles everywhere, and cats and all that. So that became a song, and Drew Elliott turned it into a killer cover painting. 

It’s probably the most coherent/conceptual song we’d written at the time, and it’s a true story.

GM: What are the five most important albums of all time?

TCC:  I’ll go fucking crazy trying to do this, and you’ll never get this interview!!  

How about this, as far as what we do and why….  -  definitely something by Black Sabbath, something by ZZ Top, The Melvins, Cathedral’s first album, something by The Butthole Surfers, a Carcass album or two, and… Slayer.

GM: When you get done rocking out for the day, what do you to calm it down?

TCC: Beers, Bonghits, and Trailer Park Boys.