The Lürxx | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: Hey, welcome back everybody. This is Matt Connorton Unleashed and we are live from the studios of w m n H ninety five point three FM and Glorious Manchester, New Hampshire and of course streaming it Matt connorton dot com slash Live and we have joining us via WhatsApp. Hopefully it's working. It was a little glitchy. That's why it took so long to get him on. I think, and I don't know if I'm saying this right, so he can correct me if I'm not Chovy?

0:22 Speaker 2: Is that you? Yeah, that's correct.

0:24 Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to the show man. Hey. Sorry, by the way, thank you, thank you, thank you for being patient with us. Took a WhatsApp of course, we're doing this via WhatsApp, and it crashed on me a couple of times. I had to reopen it, but we finally we finally got you on the line. So you know. Oh yeah, technology will fail us at times. Am I saying your name correctly? Chavy?

0:43 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's Chovy. That's it's a cattle and name.

0:46 Speaker 1: Gotcha? Gotcha? Okay x A v I for those wondering. So that's why I wasn't sure when I. When I first looked at it, I thought maybe it was zav like Xavier, but but so I love And by the way, because it took a while to get WhatsApp resolved, we actually played a few of your tracks. Uh, yeah, yeah, we did. We opened with the new single of course, we Got It All, which I love, and we played a Man of the Golden Words, and then you know, we'll play another one of course at the end of our conversation. But uh, I really like what you guys are doing.

1:19 Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you so much.

1:21 Speaker 1: Absolutely so, can you tell us about the lyrics because the Lurks is and am I pronouncing that correctly? The Lurks?

1:27 Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, you're you're tempt pronouncing all of that.

1:30 Speaker 1: Excellent, So tell us about the band because you guys have a very it's very positive you and you have you seem to have a very specific mission and you know, in terms of the issues that you're concerned about. You know, it's very it's very conscious, uh what you're doing your music, But tell us about it.

1:49 Speaker 2: It is. I'm here with Sonny as well, by the way, so oh wonderful, you're gonna help me out. Yeah, So so we we always say that. Well, we describe our music as a nature warrior uh glamplung, grunge, whatever, and the nature warrior bit. That's that's really what we're passionate about. Like you said, it's very we're we're really all about connection, like connection between people and nature and just kind of helping people to connect to their to their wild selves and uh, and to the nature around them and just kind of like I think the last song you were playing was Mustang, Yeah, I heard that correctly, and uh, and which is told from the point of view of a horse, so in order to kind of foster that empathy between people and the humans and other beings.

2:39 Speaker 2: So that's that's really our main message is one of of just positive connection because we think that the world is so messed up at the moment, and and we just think that connection like community between people but also between people and the natural world and all beings, that's just like the answer to so many of the problems that we have. And we just hope that with our music we can just inspire people to think along that route.

3:05 Speaker 1: No, I love it is that something that's always been important to you.

3:10 Speaker 2: Yeah, But I think we kind of we kind of wisened up to it just how important it is. Because when we started out back in the mid nineties with Black Lerks, which is basically the first incarnation of the Lyrics, we were like eighteen years old, like living on the streets of Hollywood, and we were much much less aware, I think, of all of the stuff. But then one of our very first songs that we ever did with the Lyrics was called the Age of Fish, and it was an ode to evolution and basically about how we're all equal because we all come out of like that first fish that crawled out of the water, and all life on land evolved from that.

3:48 Speaker 2: So it was basically an anti species this kind of thing without us knowing that it was, but it was always there at the core of us, and we've always loved nature and.

3:58 Speaker 3: Yeah, and that song was already on our very first demo that we recorded back then in nineteen ninety six.

4:04 Speaker 2: So I think that is.

4:05 Speaker 3: Completely right that that was always super important to us. But when we now really started making music again like the center of our lives, we also really decided to take that nature message into the center of the message of a band.

4:23 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, I really like that, and I think, you know, I always say, whenever you can take a message that's important to you, something that you think that the world needs to hear, and you can if you put it to music that's also very catchy and very infectious, and you know, if you've got a song that has a great hook or something, that's really the best way to kind of transmit that message. It works with music, it works with comedy. You know, it works with other things too. Anytime that you can kind of do something that appeals to someone creatively, they're obviously going to be more open to what it is that you're trying to impart to them.

4:59 Speaker 2: Exactly. I think that whole like that, the whole positive energy that it brings is something because I mean the I'm a I'm an environmental scientist, so my day job is that I educate people about you know, climate change and uh and and everything. And I always find that it's so powerful to just talk about things in a positive way, kind of pointing out to people the beauty that's around us and how much there is to save, rather than being all doom and gloom and saying, well, I mean, obviously things are are quite quite doom and gloomy in many ways, But it doesn't mean that you should sit back and just kind of like lock yourself at home just watching Netflix all day and and you know, not not participate anymore.

5:45 Speaker 2: So I think that that positivity and it's something we get after our gigs. Like people literally they come up to us after our gigs and they they say, like, you know, can I hug you? You've just brought so much positivity to to my evening. And I think, you know, when when you get that, you know you're doing something right, because that's what. Yeah. I think we're also all about, like really giving people that positive energy so that they have the strength to keep going.

6:11 Speaker 1: Mm hmm. That's wonderful. Absolutely. Now I'm curious about the history of the band because the Lurks started quite some time ago and then there was there was something like a two decade hiatus, is that correct? So I'm really interested in this.

6:26 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So we basically we got to know each other when we were like twelve thirteen years old, and we started making music together and then we were indifferent. We had a punk band that released a little vinyl single back in ninety four, I think, like an independent label, and so we kind of had this idea of, Okay, we can actually make this like our thing, Like we've got a single release. Now we're just sixteen years old. We already got it like a single out, and we decided to just really go for it, and we did music full time for a few years, and we went to Hollywood and did the whole so Sunset Sunset Serve thing like ten years too late, so there was the Sunset serp was very not very much not happening at the time, but there was really cool underground like punk glampunk scene there, which which was cool.

7:15 Speaker 2: So we did that and we kind of took it as far as we as we could at the time we had we kind of went. We were at this cusp that I think many bands at some point find themselves on where there was some interest. We had management, we had interest from a big record label, Sony Records, and we had this offer for like one of these horrible development contracts where they're going to tie you up, give you no creative control over anything, and just basically trying to make a quick book. Yeah, and we turned that down, and that's kind of that was the end, the beginning of the end for Black Lerks because we just basically after turning that offer down, we kind of looked around at our options for being an independent band.

7:58 Speaker 2: And that was back in nine eight, so just before like the big Internet explosion happened, and the only the only way that we saw back then that we could make it as an independent band was basically hit the road, you know, be on the road two hundred eighty days a year and just kind of that's that's like what we saw independent bands around us do. And at that point, we had we had just we had a cat. We didn't want to have that road life. We just said, that's that's just not We wanted to write songs and be creative, but we didn't want to live in a van, and that it was just not what we were looking for, and we thought there's no other way, so it's it's all or nothing.

8:36 Speaker 2: And that's when the hiatus started because we're basically like, okay, if we if we can't do that, we don't want to be like hobby musicians who you know sometimes get out their acoustic guitars. And it just didn't sit right. So that's where we said, like and I think it was ninety nine or two thousand when there was some other there was some other happening. We actually had planned our tour through Europe. Uh, and then our drummer got badly beaten and had to have like a metal plate put in his skull and couldn't play the drums anymore for a while.

9:07 Speaker 2: And uh, and then I was really sick and I lost my voice and it was basically like then we had to cancel this entire tournament we had organized self organized, and uh. And at that point we were just like, yeah, right, screw it, We're done with this.

9:20 Speaker 1: Yeah.

9:20 Speaker 2: And then yeah, then we did other stuff. But I think when you're an artist, deep down inside you you can do other stuff. And we did other creative things as well. We always did our own thing. But but when when we kind of returned back to music a couple of years ago, now, it just completely took over our lives. It was insane. Wow, Like we we started writing songs again and and it was just like yeah, I know, it's like bam bam bang and then and and it's like whoa, whoa, wait a second, like what's happening?

9:53 Speaker 2: And now we're basically dedicating just as much time and effort to it. As we did back then, with the with the small difference that we're also doing our day jobs and we're not we don't have to actually live off the music, which is nice because we don't have to compromise anything we do. We can just do exactly what we believe in. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, that's that's what happened.

10:16 Speaker 1: Well, it's wonderful, you know, and and and to see that, you know, to see it start to take off that way and people are really interested in what you're doing. I mean, that's that's obviously quite validating. But you don't have, as you said, you don't have the stress of having to depend on that to make a living, because it's much much harder than people realize.

10:34 Speaker 3: You know.

10:34 Speaker 1: It's funny when you when you talk about the Sunset Strip and all that, it's like, you know, back in those days, people had this idea that you sign a record deal and then you're you're being uh, you know, you're you're hanging out at the Playboy mansion and uh dating supermodels and you're suddenly filthy rich and you're living in you know, you're driving around in a Lamborghini and everything, and it's, uh, it's not how it works. It's really was never that simple.

10:56 Speaker 2: Yeah, and we were we were really, we were really I think that we did the Suncestor thing because we saw that happen. So we saw the we saw the dark side of these development contracts because there were these bands on the strip at the time that some of them actually got the record deal and and you know, we were like whatever eighteen nineteen, and it was always like, Wow, they're going to be like they're going to be big now, like Cold Chamber, They're going to be big, right, And then you know, they got they got all this money from the record company to get tattooed and peers and like represent and then it was one album, maybe one little hit single, and then they were just completely dropped because I mean all the labels did was and I don't know if they still do this, I really don't know what that type of the industry is like now.

11:42 Speaker 2: But I mean they just they were just throwing at the wall to see what sticks, and they didn't care about the bands or about their artistic development or any of that. It was it was very and seeing that I think was one of the reasons why we turned it down when it was offered to us. I think had we not seen that before with other bands, you would have probably been like, yeah, well Sony Records, let's sign our lives away.

12:06 Speaker 1: Totally right, exactly exactly. Well that brings me to another question. So in twenty twenty five, you guys, is this correct? Am I reading this right? You pulled your music from Spotify out of protest? Is that right? We did?

12:20 Speaker 2: Yeah? Oh yeah, we did.

12:22 Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me about that.

12:23 Speaker 2: Yeah. It was basically around the time when when it was in when the big news was that the Spotify CEO had invested all this money into military drone technology, and we just thought, well, we're pacifists, where we're all about like love and understanding, and the military drones about as far from from what we want than anything could be. Yeah, And it was basically that was the last job. I mean, we were already know no fans of Spotify, but when we came back, I mean with gen xers, so we came back into this digital world and we're like, right, how do you do indie music now?

12:58 Speaker 2: So in the beginning, we just did it all. We just uploaded our music to Spotify, and you know, we heard about that they're ripping artists off and they're not really paying fair raids. And then they started pushing AI music and all that stuff, and then that military drone thing was just like right, no, actually we have no interest in that, so we did pull it. There's there's one song still on Spotify that's called why We're Not on Spotify, So that's like our by message. So if you want to check that out, the lyrics on Spotify.

13:29 Speaker 2: One song why We're Not on Spotify. It's just the demo. We didn't really bother to produce the lot, but yeah.

13:35 Speaker 1: That's brilliant.

13:37 Speaker 2: I think we it just goes again. We we've we kind of became a bit disillusioned with this whole striving for streams and likes and then a numbers, which is why we actually now go back to doing radio and podcasts and really just end playing live a lot and just building this real community, because you know, when you're doing like radio, for example, you know like talking to someone like you who clearly like we all have a passion for music and for music discovery and for you know, connecting with other people who have that passion.

14:12 Speaker 2: And I just feel like if you're just chasing streams and likes, you kind of lose that. The whole point is to make a connection. Yeah, that's why we we kind of we still got our Instagram and we but we use it. We try to use it in a way that we're not trying to get like fifty k follows on there, but we're trying to really know the people who follow us and kind of like have personal conversations with them and use it as a tool to build community rather than chase numbers.

14:40 Speaker 1: Right. And I think it's great too that you are on band Camp because I'm a big you know, supporter of band Camp. What a lot of people don't know. What a lot of people don't realize about band camp too, is if you if you purchase and download music from band Camp, you're getting a better quality file then you are, say if you're just streaming it on YouTube or even Spotify. With band Camp, you get the best possible quality file that you can and and you know, and it matters, especially if you're listening with high quality headphones and everything.

15:07 Speaker 1: You want to really hear everything exactly the way that it's meant to be heard. So I'm a big, big fan of band Camp.

15:14 Speaker 2: Yeah, they're awesome. Our new recket that's coming out soon is also going to be on band camp, and there's also there's a new platform. I don't know if you've heard about Subvert.

15:25 Speaker 1: I have not. I have not.

15:27 Speaker 2: No, it's it was actually it's a it's really brand new. They just started being open to the public and we're part of like their founding that they had a bunch of artists that got behind them before they officially opened it up. And it's basically the ideas that it's musician owned and it's like it's it's also very much based around communities. So if you google subvert, it should come up, and there the ideas that you get actually all of the proceeds from your from your sales. And I don't quite know how the back end of it were because I'm I'm I'm an illiterate with these kind of things.

16:03 Speaker 2: But it's a really it's a really cool platform. It's easy to upload, you can down it's basically like band Camp, but it's really owned by the musicians that that are on there. So I think it's it's some kind of like a community thing.

16:18 Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know.

16:20 Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're on there, we're on band camp, and then what we also do is that through our website, you can also just download our music for directly for our website as well, in high quality. So we're just trying to make it as accessible as possible, right because I really we believe that that's one of the great booms nowadays with the Internet, is that you can actually make your music accessible also to people who just cannot afford to buy music. So our music is always is free basically. I mean, we love it when people pay for it because we think, you know, it's it's valuable and if people can pay for it, that's awesome.

16:58 Speaker 2: But it's the same with our merch at concerts. It's all our merch is pay if you can and otherwise, you know, we just have an honesty box and we the good thing is we don't need anyone to man our merch table,

17:12 Speaker 2: right and honestly.

17:14 Speaker 3: We we always say pay what you can, pay if you can, steal if you must.

17:19 Speaker 2: Right. But the cool thing is, ever since we started doing that, we're earning more with merch sales than ever before. Like it's so cool because yeah, again it's it's just about like people are good. I like I trust in people, Like most people are are good people. I think and like, you know, they might get corrupted by bye, by the way the world is sometimes, but I think you got to trust in people. And yeah, I I really love that about the Internet. That kind of made it possible to share your art uh with everyone and uh and then people can can go and support you if they if they wish, like in a monetary way.

17:59 Speaker 2: But the more important thing is really to get it out there and yes, spread that positive energy absolutely.

18:06 Speaker 1: So the new album, what's the album called.

18:09 Speaker 2: It's called Exile from Mainstream, Okay, Oh, I like that. I like that because Exile Exile on main Street was one of our favorite albums growing up and we always yeah, and we we always wanted to have a setup like they did because they recorded it at Keith Richard's house in southern France in their home studio, and that was always our dream. And now with thanks to digital technology, we have this home studio where we recorded it at home and we thought, like, yeah, and it's super It's like not mainstream.

18:42 Speaker 2: It's very kind of seventies rock almost, like if it's like hard rock, stoner rock, a little bit up punk. Men of Golden Words is on there, and we got it all is on there, and there's a lot of songs about about nature and just kind of it's kind of chill. It's kind of like a mixture of I don't know, like like Mother Love Bone and Pearl Jam and the Chili Peppers, and it's it's kind of it's a very gen X album in a way because that's who we are.

19:13 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so that should be.

19:17 Speaker 2: We're doing the final, final, final mixes, Like we're at that stage where every mix is called final Mix one and then final Mixed ten, and so we're at that stage of mixing, so it should be. It should be done pretty soon. Where we just sent it over to our friend who actually that Mustang song that you played earlier that was from our last EPA and all of that was mixed and mastered by our friend James Michael, who was the lead singer in six Am.

19:48 Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I'm I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan by the way. Yeah I love six Am And yeah, James is great.

19:56 Speaker 2: Yeah, James is awesome. He's we became friends with him a wi ago and and he just when he retired, he basically took on that EP as a retirement project. He just did that for us and we we did it. Yeah, Like we sent him the tracks and he mixed them and we worked on it together. And he's still a mixing gurus. Every time we have a question, we're like, we're just messaging him on what step, Like, James, can you have to listen to that? What what do we do here?

20:22 Speaker 1: That's awesome?

20:23 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's really amazing working with him because yeah, he's a super He's just a great guy and amazing to have someone like that.

20:32 Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Oh, by the way, so are you guys twins?

20:37 Speaker 2: A sort of I would say, yeah, we're twins. We're twins, like apart from that, we don't have the same parents. Oh okay, we self identified, We self IDENTI.

20:51 Speaker 1: Okay, because I saw something online about you guys being twins, and I was like, oh, it's.

20:57 Speaker 3: Been it's been happening to us for so many years. Said every time people get to know us, they're like, are you twins? So?

21:04 Speaker 1: So why why is that?

21:06 Speaker 3: Like?

21:06 Speaker 1: What what is the dynamic there that that makes people think that?

21:11 Speaker 2: I think it's we've just we just found each other in a in a like it was one of these soul made kind of things. When we met, we instantly just knew that there was a connection there that that we just that we wouldn't have with anyone else. And I think that's it's like it's a connection like with a twin. From what we've heard from from twins that we've talked to, it's like you just you just know, we just we just know, we always know what we're thinking. We we just we we're so connected on this deep level, which is not Yeah, it's just it's just very different from other friends or from just like a partner.

21:51 Speaker 2: It's it's a way, it's it's a weird it's a weird thing. It's just like a it's a soul made thing.

21:57 Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I sort of get that. I I played in a band many years ago called My Life Crisis, and I was in this I was in the band with this guy Dave Dave Blaize, and and he was kind of like like, I mean, nobody, nobody ever thought we were twins, but he was kind of like my musical soulmate in that, you know, if we would write songs together or record together, like it was there was like this intuitive thing that I've never quite had with anyone else that I had with Dave. That made it made it very easy to work with him.

22:27 Speaker 1: Yeah.

22:28 Speaker 2: Yeah, I think intuitive is a great word. It's just like you don't you don't have to talk about stuff. It's just it's just there. It's just a connection that's just there. Yeah, And it seems to spill out because people always ask us like are you are you siblings? Are you twins? It was always uh. And then we took it up and our moms can't tell our voices a part on the phone.

22:49 Speaker 1: Oh interesting, Oh mother doesn't know. Oh that's funny, that's great, that's great. Oh and one other thing to tell me about the name the Lurks. Where does the name come from?

23:06 Speaker 2: Well, that's that's the longest story tell it. Yeah, So we used to when we were when we were like sixteen seventeen, in our in our most messed up time, we had this. We had this friend who was a very very spaced out, weird guy, and he had this way of just staring off into space and saying normal words, but saying them over and over again in this way just that like turned the word hilarious. Like he would just say a random word and it was just the most hilarious thing, and especially if you were stoned, it was especially hilarious.

23:45 Speaker 2: And he was from Austria, tell you was a German speaking guy, and he had this and they had this hilarious Austrian accent. And so one of the words he would say was the word lush, and lush is that's how he would say. It is the German word for the animal newt. So we we really love that. We we love we love the we love Newts, and we we love the way he said that word. And then we kind of made up a made up plural of it, like if it's if you pronounce lure like the way it spelled l u r c h, so it's kind of like lurk, and then you put an es in, it will be lurks.

24:29 Speaker 2: It will be several luis and u. And then we we added the umloud and the double X because we weren't Chiniky six and Modley crue and needed to be and that and that's it, and that's why we have a Newt as our band logo. And we didn't at the time realize how immensely fitting that would turn out to be, because I mean, Newts are amphibians so they kind of live in the water and on land, and we have this whole thing with water and all life coming out of the water. So the Newt is a is a great masket animal for us.

25:04 Speaker 2: But yeah, it was. It was simply it was a joke. It was just a druggy joke really with the name, and then it just stuck.

25:11 Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I like it.

25:12 Speaker 2: I like it over the years. Yeah. Yeah.

25:16 Speaker 1: Well the cool thing too, is with a name like that, you don't have to worry about finding out at some point in the future. Oh, somebody else already has the rights of this name. They're sending us letters. You know, you don't have to worry about it when you've got a really unique and interesting name like that.

25:29 Speaker 2: That's true. Yeah, it's always like it's it's in times now where people always want to google you. You just make to have to make sure they know how to spell it.

25:37 Speaker 1: But yeah, right, it's But.

25:41 Speaker 2: Actually it's funny because our current masket animal actually ended up being a pink money rather than the Newts, So we switch switched animal maskets now because we we did this video to Man of Golden Words, and it features a stop motion animation of this pink toy bunny, and then I have a I have a leather jack that has a big like a bunny on the back, a nature warrior bunny.

26:04 Speaker 1: Yeah.

26:05 Speaker 2: So so now we actually like, uh, a bit of a bunny. We've bit of a bunny band now that just kind of happened.

26:13 Speaker 1: That's awesome, very good, very good. So where's the best place to go online for people to keep up with everything that you guys are doing with everything all things the Lurks? Where should people go?

26:26 Speaker 2: Our website? So we're at www dot theminus lurks dot com. There's where there. All our music is on there. There's like a biography thing you can deep dive into our history. And then we're pretty active on Instagram at the lurks just in one word, okay the l u R double X.

26:48 Speaker 3: And of course we got a lot of beautiful music videos on YouTube.

26:51 Speaker 1: You do you do? I was checking them out? Yeah, absolutely absolutely. Do you guys do those yourselves? Is that di I y? Or do you have someone who works with on the videos? Works with you on the videos?

27:00 Speaker 2: That's all? They excellent.

27:02 Speaker 1: You guys are doing a great job with that. That's great, thank you. Yeah, not everyone can pull that off, So in a moment, we'll let you guys go in a moment and we'll we'll we'll wrap up. But I do want to play again. We played it earlier, but it is, of course the current single We got it all. What should we know about this track? Love this song?

27:21 Speaker 2: It's an ancient song. We wrote that song when we verse sixteen, Wow in our in our punk uh, we're our first punk band, and we've always loved it, and we never got around to recording it. And the only new part of that song is the middle bit with the compass of compassion. Follow the compass of compassion. We added that in, but it's basically always been as it is. It's a it's an anti capitalist, anti anti normative society song where it's basically saying, you know you ain't a true The confusion is better than compromise, Like, don't go compromising who you are.

28:01 Speaker 2: It's okay to be confused, It's okay to be like not a straightforward being. It's okay to you know, question things and change your mind, but don't try to compromise your ideals and your and your dreams just so you you fit in. Because people always want to kind of make you believe that everything has to be straightforward and if you deviate from that, you're somehow deficient. But we're saying that deficiency that's what makes you human. And yeah, so that's really the core. And then just follow your inner compass of love and empathy and compassion and connection and then you'll be all right.

28:38 Speaker 2: Then then you'll have it all.

28:39 Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh I love it. I love it very very positive and it's uh and it's a great song, and uh, I love what you guys are doing. We will definitely do this again in the future, especially it sounds like you have some new music coming up. So absolutely, let's stay in touch. We'll definitely have you back on guys. Thank you both so much. The lurks, we will uh, we'll talk to you soon, all right, take care, guys.

29:02 Speaker 2: Thank you for having us.

29:03 Speaker 1: Thank you, you got it, Bye bye bye. All right. The lyrics they are not twins, it turns out, but they but they are very close to it. And uh, yeah, I really enjoyed talking with them. I look forward to having them back. And as I said, they do have some new music coming up that they talked about, so we'll have an easy excuse to have them back in the very near future. But in the meantime, let's give this a spin. We did play it earlier, but this is the current single and I like this a lot. It's catchy.

29:29 Speaker 1: This is called we Got It All.