When they aren’t hiding “on a barge in international waters,” the goofy and fun Luddy Mussy reside in Somerville, MA. Their music video, “Not My Kinda Party,” is a nice depiction of their colorful personality; it features two of them running through Boston to gather up the group to perform at a party with animal masks, wigs, and overall absurdity. From giving their songs wacky titles like “Moonlit Boonies” or “Grinnin’ Mona Lisa’s” to explaining the difference between their cow-punk phase and their future-twang phase, Luddy Mussy is bound to make you smile.
Last June, the band spent a day filming and documenting Porch Fest, Somerville’s outdoor community music festival. (Soon, you’ll be able to see the footage on Somerville Community Access TV.) Read our exclusive interview with the folks from Luddy Mussy, and make sure to check them out at the Lizard Lounge every Tuesday this September. Just one warning: If you listen to their song “Ashmont Train,” it’ll be stuck in your head every time you hop on that train.
Nitesh: Tell me about yourself.
Luddy Mussy: We’re ballistic! I’d say we’re a group of buddies — great, best, fun times, no-bullshit buddies who live/sing/create/hang together and have something happening that we enjoy enough.
Nitesh: Without using genre names, how would you describe your music?
Luddy Mussy: We are future twang! Mad twang! Mad futuristic! I’d say we’re, err… Well, shoot… Future twang is apt, it seems.
Nitesh: You’ve jokingly described yourselves as being part of a “cow-punk” genre, a pretty awesome genre name. What made you blossom from cow punk to future twang?
Luddy Mussy: The change in sound probably comes from the music we’ve been getting into lately… Daft Punk, LCD Soundsystem, and Tame Impala, to name a few. (We don’t sound like those bands, they are just cool.) Also, Matt started writing more on his old keyboard so that he could play at night without waking up his roommates. Changing the instrument shook things up. Future twang is a combination of these modern sounds and styles we’re learning to love, combined with Fin’s grimy style of slide guitar. We’ve gotten some great feedback about the new stuff, so we’re pretty pumped to finish up/release the album we’ve been working on!
Nitesh: What are some of your influences?
Luddy Mussy: The following in no particular order: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Human Giant, Chappelle Show, MGMT. We really enjoyed that Poe play that’s at the Paramount right now, Radiohead, Mac Demarco, Ry Cooder, Blind Willie Johnson, Bob’s Burgers, etc…
Nitesh: What’s your favorite song you’ve recorded?
Luddy Mussy: ‘Jig.’ Cuz it’s ballistic! We all have different favorites, but Cait also likes ‘Jig,’ so it’s a tie for first. We’ve recorded and mixed a bunch of our public tracks ourselves — ‘Jig’ is one of them. We have zero training in recording or mixing, so we have no business doing it, but we did anyway, because what the fuck, right? It came out to our liking, and we had a blast learning about the intricacies of recording, and about why we’d pay people in the future…
Nitesh: Is there a story behind your band name?
Luddy Mussy: Chumbawumba was taken.
Nitesh: How have you found the Boston music scene?
Luddy Mussy: The Boston music scene, ahhh, yes! We have met and played with many musical acts that inspire us. We do consider the Boston music scene to be awesome! There isn’t a night during the week that you can’t find three different artists that’ll knock your socks off. A little while ago a bunch of us went to see our girl Ali McGuirk play at Atwoods Tavern in Cambridge and then walked up the road to catch DJ VidKid (Jordan Staiger) spin at the Lily Pad. The music is out there! We just need to figure out how to convince people its cooler than Netflix. David Byrne wrote a book a couple years back called “How Music Works,” and he outlined what clubs could do to build a great local music scene. We love imagining Boston clubs adopting something like that. Live music responds to happy, drunken audiences! Or at least we do.
Nitesh: What’s your favorite venue to perform at and why?
Luddy Mussy: Toad! Good beer and it’s free.
Nitesh: I’m a huge fan of your music video for “Not My Kinda Party.” Can you tell me about the process of shooting it and how you came up with the idea?
Luddy Mussy: The whole video was shot in 16 hours — it was a whirlwind. One time Cait fell asleep and dreamt the opening scene. She woke up and told her boyfriend about it and he wrote the whole damn thing — we all got drunk and added fun bits here and there. The videographer for DJ Tiesto shot the piece for us. He’s a friend of a friend — obviously an incredibly talented dude who hooked us up. We mostly paid him in Vietnamese cigarettes, which were accidentally delivered to our apartment. Looking forward to doing more with him.
Nitesh: Tell me about the greatest night you’ve had in Boston.
Luddy Mussy: We’ve been here having ridiculous adventures for a few years now. There was one time with lobsters in a cooler on a roof-deck in the Back Bay. There was one time in Somerville with whiskey and drugs off a car hood that resulted in us dancing against a broom singing random songs for the moment in tandem. We can’t choose, we’re sorry!