By Keith Walsh
By mixing classic influences with stellar songwriting and new sounds, The Warhawks out of New Jersey are saving rock and roll.
In an exclusive interview with the band, as they traveled in to a gig in their van out of Jersey into Delaware on Highway 95 South, they told me about their ambitions and inspirations.
The Warhawks’ new EP This Ain’t Art incorporates punk and classic rock elements in a mix of solid songwriting and inspired performances. It’s a band in which every one of the four members contributes songs, every one sings. Pat Bilodeau plays drums, his brother John plays guitar, cousin Matt Orlando plays guitar, and close friend Tom Lipski plays bass. The sound draws from classic rock from grunge and punk to the melodic approach of The Beatles and Oasis, and everything in between, while being its own thing. During our interview I asked them about their eclectic approach.
As guitarist and vocalist Matt Orlando told me: “The main focus that we’ve had, for the past five years specifically, since we put out our debut LP, Never Felt So Good, (there’s a) huge focus on the songwriting. not necessarily the genre. We’re fans of every single type of music, so as long as the song is there, it has cool structure, it has some memorable hooks and whatnot, then we go with it. And it doesn’t matter if sounds like Neil Young or Guided By Voices – we’re in.” The recent work of the band features classic rock influences, with heavy walls of guitars and a sound reminiscent of the 90s and 80s. I asked about their inspirations.
Drummer and vocalist Pat Bilodeau told me, “If we grew up in England I’m sure we’d write stuff that sounded more like The Beatles. We’re just living and writing what we’re living.” I asked if Springsteen was a big influence, having grown up in New Jersey. “I like Springsteen’s stuff, but we didn’t grow up listening (to it),” he told me. “Actually we’re more like Tom Petty or Elvis Costello or The Clash.” The British connection is good, as The Warhawks are heading to England for a couple weeks next month, and as they say, they are “huge fans of British bands.”
California Dreamin’
Pat Bilodeau affirmed my hunches about inspirations behind their songs. “We wrote the album about our families and friends and their experiences,” he says. “A lot of it is working for the weekend, and we have the Jersey Shore in the summer and Philadelphia is right across the way, so it’s you would work all week hard and get to Philadelphia and it was the explosion of youth and going out and having fun, and it was kind of trying to capture that in the songs.”
And indeed they do. The new EP This Ain’t Art features skillful songwriting and classic rock influences with poetic lyrics that celebrate life. The album cover and opening track “I Wanna Go To California,” came as a result of the band’s first trip to Los Angeles in late 2021.
As Pat explains: “We went to LA for the first time in September. The opening track of the record, it was written in lockdown, nobody was seeing anybody, we actually had a loss in the family, we lost a cousin that was like a brother to us….It was a numbness. It was so cold in the northeast, and I was like, ‘I really want to go to California and see what it’s like, see the sun set over the ocean’. I wrote that song before we went. It was like manifestation of destiny.”
Pat continues; “That was our first tour. We played in Silverlake. Then we played in Hollywood, The Mint. We’re trying to get out there this summer.”
Orlando explains how the cover art came to be for the EP. “When we were in L.A….we went to CVS. I wanted to get a regular (disposable camera), but they only had a waterproof one, cost like five bucks more and we got no money. We got to LA, and we got in the water, and JB (brother John Bilodeau) took the picture of Pat and myself riding the waves to the shore, and that ended up being the album cover to the EP. So thank God we got the waterproof version, because it ended up being something cool.”
It seems almost obligatory that rock and roll has an aggressive, workmanlike influence. And indeed, the Warhawks are tied to their blue collar backgrounds. “Our families are all blue collar workers, we got painters, and carpenters, all in our family , that’s what we come from,” Pat Bilodeau tells me. “ That’s what we did after school, we just started working with our cousin at the painting company, and eventually we started our own, this is kind of the Northeast in general, Philly, Jersey in particular, yeah that kind of naturally makes our way into the lyrics, cause we sing a lot about just life.” Turns out The Warhawks paid for their recordings by painting Gradwell Studios as well as the house of their producer.
As Pat says: “Me and Matt and JB (John Bilodeau) — and I’ve even seen Tom with a brush in his hand — we paint residential houses and stuff like that. So when they bought the building we actually painted the whole interior of it. In exchange for recording time. That’s how we recorded our first two records. In three years, everything we’ve recorded at Gradwell has been bartered for paint jobs. The first two, we painted the actual studio, and for This Ain’t Art, we painted our producer’s actual house.”
The Gear
Perhaps it’s no surprise that The Warhaw achieve their dynamic sound with classic gear. As John Bilodeau tells me: “I have a Fender Jazzmaster. We’re experimenting with heavy fuzz, and the guitar I had before wasn’t cutting it. I bought a cheap Jazzmaster and it actually captures the sound a lot more, I roll with that. We have combo amps, vox. Matt has a Fender amp an I have a Vox, AC30. It gives it more of a Kinks’ sound, more of a rougher sound. Everything has grit to it.”
Orlando says he has a Fender Hot Rod amp and some custom pedals. JB swears by Earthquaker Devices. “Earthquaker pedals are great. They hand build everything. They make every version of a pedal you like — they make it better.”As for guitars, Orlando says “I have a Fender, I just got a Strat. Also I have a guitar, one of my cousins actually had it build in the 70s, it has a vintage Stratocaster 70s neck and a Gibson body. It’s kind of like a Frankenstein. I do like Fender a lot. The first guitar I ever had as a kid was a Fender, so I definitely have a connection to Fender.“
Rock and Politics?
The end result of these influences—gear, blue collar upbringing, classic inspirations – is a return to rock and roll’s essence. “We’re trying to bring back what rock and roll should be, you know? says Orlando. “That’s what we’re trying to do man, we’re trying to bring it back to what it’s supposed to be. It is raw…we’re not necessarily taking a political stance. I know politics has always been involved but I feel like politics is something that’s chilling humans, let’s talk about something else, let’s talk about feelings, and emotions, and love, and life and death and sh#t. Let’s talk about the real ish.”
Orlando contines: “Also when it comes to rock and roll music, I know sometimes people make the argument ‘it’s been done, this isn’t the 70s anymore, guitar rock and what not,’ but I feel like for as long as time goes on, there’s always gonna be kids that wanna see a live rock and roll band. And if it goes away, you can listen to a record, and there’s nothing like showing up at a venue and it smells like cigarettes and booze and there’s people hanging out, and you get to see, feel the excitement when the band starts to walk on, like there’s always gonna be that in music.”
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