Don't you dare say classic rock is extinct! Because in this interview with THE L.A. MAYBE I prove you wrong! As mentioned in the review of the album, lead singer Alvi Robinson was one of the four singers who auditioned to succeed Brian Johnson in AC/DC in 2016. So you can imagine how incredibly genuine and passionate his voice must be. But the positions of the other five instrumental members are not undercut. The twin guitar attack is revived and good times are created by rousing guitar solos. Underpinning keyboard parts and pounding drums leave no time to rest. On the 26th of March the newest album "Dirty Damn Tricks" was released. I talked to the guitarist and songwriter Dallas Dwight about the making of this album. Why it is so important for THE L.A. Maybe to keep classic rock alive and what they will talk about in their upcoming podcast, that and much more you can find out here in the interview with the successors of classic rock!
Sarah-Jane: When did the band get started and how did you get together?
Dallas Dwight: The L.A. Maybe has been around for a little while. We have the name since 2016. We have had pieces of some of the songs that ended up on the record since summer 2016. But we didn’t really consider ourselves having started until we get our lead singer Alvi. That’s when we kinda get everything started and that was last summer. Very recently, we’re about 8 months old at this point. We began, me and the drummer Ryan, we were in a Journey tribute band together. So we met each other there. We decided the tribute thing makes fun, but we wanted to write our own music. We broke up to do that. We decided, once we got Alvi last summer, we’re going all in.
Sarah-Jane: How did you become aware of your singer Alvi?
Dallas Dwight: We knew we wanted someone that could kinda sing like Axl Rose or Bryan Johnson, those kinda high pitch. We found him, ‘cause his day job right now is at least singing for a Guns 'N' Roses tribute band “Nightrain”. So we’re looking around at different Guns 'N' Roses tribute bands. Maybe there’s an Axl that’s kinda our age and he’s kinda our age. So we scheduled a date to jam with him and immediately hit it off. We found him online, I started talking to him. Musically everything clicked and within four days of meeting, he was in the studio and we recorded the tracks for this album. It happened really quickly. I learned that when you have the right group of guys everything becomes easy. That’s a big piece of advice that I have for other bands coming up.
Sarah-Jane: What were the changes when your singer joined the band?
Dallas Dwight: When the pandemic hit that’s when we decided to regroup everything we were doing. We parted away of our old singer and we got our keyboard player Josh during the pandemic as well. And then of course we got Alvi. Everything changed during the pandemic, because we decided let’s stop doing the variety band, it was decided for us to stop doing gigs. It fell in the place by the end. ‘Cause we started recording in probably July and Alvi officially started in august, it ended up working out. We have a podcast coming up in the next month. In the first ten episodes we are going to break down every track. We can isolate vocals, guitars and tell the stories behind every song. Tell the stories like “behind the scene” and stuff that happened in the studio.
Sarah-Jane: Do you have a name for the podcast?
Dallas Dwight: The podcast is gonna be called “You’re new favourite band”. The other thing we are gonna be highlighting are new rock bands like us. That we think people should be listening to and supporting. Because there are so many out there. So it’s all about music discovery and people discover new rock bands that they would like, us included hopefully. It’s all about the new wave of classic rock. There is a lot of bands coming up now that have that classic rock sound. It’s the next generation of rock music. The podcast is created around the idea of helping create the new wave of classic rock and get it more into the mainstream.
Sarah-Jane: How do you distribute the workload between the six of you since you are independent?
Dallas Dwight: We all have jobs. We all gave ourselves jobs to help each other. And we do have help in teams helping us with publicity, management, and booking. We have different teams of handling certain aspects of our career for us. But we don’t have a label. So instead, I think what is happening more and more nowadays is what we see as an independent label where you kinda have à la carte label. You are your own label but you hire someone for publicity, marketing, booking. Where traditional big major labels gonna have that all under one roof, you get to hire these independent firms and create your own label from that.
Sarah-Jane: What would you say is so extra special about your band in contrast to Guns 'N' Roses or AC/DC?
Dallas Dwight: Our job is to carry the torch forward, as we started to see them retired. Guns N Roses is on the younger side of the “old” bands – so I think we have them around for quite some time. AC/DC they’re probably nearing their last or second last tour. They’re getting up in years. But sonically, our job is to take our inspirations, pile them together in our music and present our music. And I think what we get is a classically influence sound, like classic rock. But with modern production, modern polish and some modern song writing techniques. We like to stack our vocals and guitars. You didn’t see that as much on those band you mentioned. Guns N Roses and AC/DC did very raw recordings. A lot of times you hear only two guitars. There are parts of our songs where you are hearing seven or eight guitars at once. And you hearing keyboards, synths and 30 backing vocals. It just get really thick. And that is definitely a modern technique that you hear. We love to take those techniques and bring them to what we are doing. We also like to write a really hooky chorus that you can walk away singing. And that’s not to say those bands didn’t, because obviously they did. But our chorus is almost a little more pop – songs like “Oh Sugar”. I think it’s just the fusion of old and new that makes us mostly who we are.
Sarah-Jane: I really love your guitar sound! You don’t only focus one thing like vocals. You also focus on the instruments!
Dallas Dwight: I appreciate that. That’s what Drizzle and I do. We worked really hard to bring back the twin guitar attack. Many bands have only one guitarist, even if there’s multiple in the studio. We wanted to take this on the next level, where we never really playing the exact same thing. We always playing different. ‘Cause to us it was like “well if there is two of us, why would we do the same thing? One of us could play that and one of us could do some more interesting to add another layer of what’s going on. A lot of time I do the heavier, chunky chord stuff and the solos, and Drizzle does all the extra layers on the top. We have fallen into a really good twin guitar attack and we’ve a few people who complimented us on that. And that is something we are really proud of. The fact we constantly made the decision to try to do this and people are starting to notice.
Sarah-Jane: You being compared to bands like AC/DC and Guns 'N' Roses, because your sound seems similar. Aren’t you afraid that people might think the sound is boring, because it’s so similar to this bands all the time?
Dallas Dwight: We definitely hear some of that. First of all if anyone is comparing us to the biggest bands of all the time, that’s pretty cool to me. I gladly take that. As far as ripping them off, I don’t think what’s happing. It’s pretty clear if you listen to more than one or two songs on the album. But Alvi auditioned for ac dc, so he’s already tied in that camp. That’s something that hangs over our head. We chose to lead with “Mr. Danger” which is the most ac dc sounding song on the record. We definitely got a lot of these “oh these guys are so AC/DC”. And when we released “Sucker Punch” right after, we didn’t hear that once, everything fell silent. When the full album is coming out I think it’s totally gone. Cause there is obviously enough on that album that you can’t say “Oh these guys just sound like AC/DC or Guns ‘N’ Roses”. You might have a song that sounds more like one or a song that sound another. They all have their own elements. But at this point it’s 2021. There has been a lot of rock bands before, so you gonna hear some comparisons. But we also try to bring up our own thing to the table, mentioning the modern techniques.
Sarah-Jane: I’ve read you created the album artwork, is that true?
Dallas Dwight: Yes, I do all of our artworks, logos, t-shirts designs. I also did two lyric videos that are coming up soon. And all this comes from the DIY mind-set. I also handle all our website design. I just grew up doing graphic designs. The main reason I learned was because I realised it’d cost money that I didn’t have to hire someone to do the job that I could figure out how to do. I also realised that when I pay someone to do it, I was almost never satisfied. And that happened with this album cover. I thought I’d be nice to hire someone to do the logo and artwork. So we paid for it and everything we got back, we hated it. We scrapped all the logos that came in and I made the one that we now have.
Sarah-Jane: After such a long time of staying at home how was your first live performance? How was the atmosphere for the fans and yourself?
Dallas Dwight: It was good. We had plenty rehearsals. The biggest thing with the live performance that we wanted to do, was not just regurgitate our songs on the stage. We wanted put on a show to extend certain things, change certain things entirely, add things that aren’t there. We had a blast creating all of that and even a more blast performing. It was cool to see that everything worked. For an example during “piece of mind” the song just self ends. Live we keep it going for a while. Drizzle and I have this epically long two harmonizing guitar solo and that got a huge reaction. We also have a part where we play music from star wars. If you heard the album and come and see us, you don’t feel like you just saw the album live. We wanted make it more an experience. Right when you think the song is gonna end, we keep going
Sarah-Jane: I’ve read you had the idea for “She’s Reckless” last year. How did you get the idea for the song?
Dallas Dwight: No, that was probably 2017. I remember I wrote most of the lyrics. I had the riff for a little while and we had the instrumental for a while. I remember it all came in sections and it took a while. I had the demo riff and we worked with that. Then we needed the verse, chorus and bridge. The end solo where it speeds up that’s the rhythm section underneath that solo it’s taken from a demo I wrote back in 2013. I took the chorus from that song and sped it way up, that’s the end solo for she’s reckless. So I pieced it together. And lyrics, I heard a lot of songs called reckless but I haven’t heard any called she’s reckless. So when I came with that, all came up with this chaotic lady in your life. She shakes everything up and is bad news but you can’t stop yourself anyway. Once I had the idea the rest of it came up pretty quickly.
Sarah-Jane: “Sweet” is a really catchy song and stands out, because of the blues-rock influence. Can you tell me a little bit about the song?
Dallas Dwight: The first riff I had, I was just playing around with that blues progression and tried to figure out how to make it a little bit different. We had a hard time with the bridge, because we knew where we wanted to go, we knew we wanted the big backing vocals. The first line “don’t you close your eyes” that was originally the chorus. Then we ended up changing all around. When you look back on it, it’s kinda confusing.
Sarah-Jane: “When I’m Gone?” has the character of a hymn. I can see the crowd with lighters and sway to the music. Was that the intention?
Dallas Dwight: Yeah kind of. It’s written for my friend who killed himself in 2015. It’s all about the emotion. We had some come up after the show saying the cried, because it was so emotional. That made me so happy, because crying, if that’s the emotion you have, its fine, but the point is to pull out emotion out of you and to be able to relate to that. We had a ton of fun recording the gospel choir at the end of the song. We had a full gospel choir come in and they did a phenomenal job. We sing it eleven times and when I got back home I dropped it on my computer, put all the 11 tracks together and it sounded perfect. All 11 together sounded perfect. They were six singers and we actually recorded that at Drizzles house. I’ve always wanted to work with a gospel choir. I knew, they would bring that flavour and flair the part needed.
Sarah-Jane: Adam Levine from Maroon 5 said and I quote: “Rock music is nowhere, really. I don’t know where it is. If it’s around, no one’s invited me to the party. All of the innovation and the incredible things happening in music are in hip-hop.”. You as a rock band, what’s your view on this comment? What would you say to him? You have a Spotify playlist which is named “Don’t you dare say rock is dead”.
Dallas Dwight: I would say he is probably paying attention to different stuff. That speaks more to the fact that there is so much stuff now. And algorithm exists too. Once Spotify realises that you’re clicking a couple hip-hop things, all you see is hip-hop. So unless you’re actively seeking out things or you know what you are looking for, how do you know to search for a band that you would love but you never heard of. That’s another thing we want to work on. Getting these bands more out there like Dirty Honey, Greta Van Fleet, Small Town Titans, us. Because people love this music, they’re just not able to find them so easily anymore.
Dallas Dwight: Thank you for having me. This has been a blast.
Sarah-Jane: Thank you for taking the time and for such a nice and interesting talk!
