Hold on to your hats people of Melbourne because White Devil Detroit are about to blow the bloody doors off Stay Gold in Brunswick this coming weekend, as they hit the stage and give fans a little taster of what is to come from their hotly-anticipated EP ‘Stay Calm, It’s Only Napalm’. With the EP release date still unannounced, this Friday (19th July) sees WDD joined by Sydney’s Black Heart Breakers, The Spitting Swallows & Crooked Thieves for a night of wild rock n’ roll of hedonistic proportions with the headliners unleashing their new look, five-piece line-up for the first time ever with a new addition in the form of rhythm guitarist Banjo Paterson. The Rockpit managed to put the brakes on super-charged front man Jake Blatchly long enough to ask him how they got together, who’s voice we can hear at the start of their debut single ‘Cummin’ Down’ and just what to expect at a White Devil Detroit show.
Sean: Hey Jake, great to talk to you.
Jake: Hey Sean, how you doing? I’ve been really looking forward to talking to you guys because I’ve read The Rockpit for a long time.
Sean: Firstly, a huge thanks for letting us play ‘Cummin’ Down’ on The Heaven & Hell Show this month – what a great track.
Jake: No man, thank you for playing it. It was great when we found out it was going to get played on the show and it looks like we are amongst some great company there so we were very stoked.
Sean: Let’s start with ‘Cummin’ Down’ because it really is a rippa of a rock track. You guys must be so happy with the reception that song has received?
Jake: We are really stoked with how it’s turned out to be honest. I wasn’t expecting such a great reaction… we actually sat on that single for about a year before we put it out. The funny thing is we wrote ‘Cummin’ Down’ before we’d played any shows… our drummer Jayden (Varner) is a typical Aussie bloke – he’s like John Bonham crossed with a Bunnings snag [laughs]… he parties so hard he’d make Tommy Lee blush [laughs] – he was like “Can we write some songs about getting in fights & going out drinking?” I was like, ‘Yeah, sure”. So, he wrote the first three lines of the first verse and I wrote out the rest. Interestingly, that voice that you hear at the start, the one on the tape recording that says,”Err, what can you tell me about the band White Devil Detroit?” That’s actually a real police officer from a real police interview.
After we played our first show ever, this guy came up harassing me & my girlfriend and asking if I was a fag because I was wearing make-up… he then went to try and assault us with a motorcycle helmet so I blocked it and punched him really hard – the bar staff came out and saw it was self-defence. The venue manager called me a up a few days later to tell me they had to give the CCTV footage over to the police but he said not to worry as we were in the right. ‘Cummin’ Down’ is actually about getting in a fight & getting arrested – a few months later the police catch up with me and said I had to go to the station for an interview. I got legal advice which was don’t give them anything… just give them a “no comment” interview and remember there is no such thing as “off the record”. So, I go in for the interview and they slide over this manila folder with photos of the band and screen shots from our Facebook page and saying “That’s obviously you on stage!” I’m like, “No Comment!” So the third verse is “Playing twenty questions I don’t say nothing, I don’t say shit I keep on bluffing.” The very first question they asked was “What can you tell me about White Devil Detroit?” and when we were recording the single I asked the producer if he could rip off the audio for the police CD. He did and that became the sample that we used on the song so it’s from the original police tape. It’s quite surreal that it’s a real cop
Sean: [laughs] Just make sure that police officer doesn’t try to claim royalties off it…
Jake: [laughs] No but I would love it if he heard the Rockpit podcast or the single and heard his own voice on there… that would be fuckin’ hilarious. He can come out on stage with us and introduce us at Stay Gold on Friday night if he likes.
Sean: That leads us nicely on to Friday night in Brunswick and hearing great things about Stay Gold, one of Melbourne’s newer venues. Big night for you guys and you’ll be joined by Sydney based Black Heart Breakers, The Spitting Swallows & Crooked Thieves (Tickets via Eventbrite). You must be so eager to get back out there to play…
Jake: This will be our second show of the 2019 after the single launch earlier in February and this will be our first show with a new line-up, so instead of four of us there are now five.
Sean: Yes, so you’re now joined by Banjo Paterson on rhythm guitar. What can you tell us about what he brings to the band?
Jake: He’s a really good friend of all of ours and we were actually good friends even before the band. I have even collaborated with Banjo in the past – we do paintings together and collages and shit like that so we have already worked together in a creative sphere so having him in the band is like a breath of fresh air. He’s an amazing songwriter & caters to all of our needs and he speaks his mind, has his own flavour and is just a really cool dude. I can’t sing his praises high enough.
Sean: So what have you guys got in store for everyone on Friday?
Jake: Apart from our new line-up we have plenty of new music. The first song we’ve written with Banjo is called ‘Chaosmos’ so we’ll be debuting that. ‘Family Dogma’ is like a staple of our live set for a long time so we’ll be playing that and ‘The Freak End’ which is a nice little ditty which is about partying & rock n’ roll & goth girls… and we’ll be playing ‘Guillotine’ which is just a fan favourite and probably my favourite too – I think it’s the best song we’ve written so far. It’s going to be the next single for sure.
Sean: For those of our readers further afield and too far away to get to the gig, tell us a little about White Devil Detroit. How long have you been together?
Jake: We’ve been together about three years now. I met Kyle (Turgoose) our lead guitarist in Brisbane, we were playing in separate bands and his old band opened for my old band… I saw him play and I was like, “What the fuuuuck!” I went up to his lead singer and said, “Dude, where the fuck did you find that guy. He fuckin’ shreds man.” I didn’t realise that Kyle was standing behind me while I was saying all these compliments and he was like, “Thanks man.” We started chatting and we agreed to start writing some music together then after talking more we realised we were both moving to Melbourne at the same time, with our girlfriends. That when we decided to just start a whole new band together. I trawled through the catacombs of Facebook adding different musicians and found Dave (Knight) our bass player that way and I’d always had Jayden on Facebook for like forever so I asked them to come jam in the band and that we were going to be like AC/DC meets Guns n Roses meets Alice in Chains… all Jayden said was, “Is there any chance of some Skid Row?” We all love Skid Row so it was like a match made in heaven.
Certainly our live shows are where it’s at… You will not see another live act like us. I guarantee that especially in this country. The last show we had TVs on stage playing old occult movies like Kenneth Anger movies like ‘Lucifer Rising’ and stuff like that. We had incense burning. I wore a gold jump suit and I free style rap between song – we don’t do rap songs let me make that perfectly clear [laughs]. There is a different energy to White Devil Detroit – its Goth, its punk, its glam, its heavy metal, its fucking everything… it’s all encompassing. The show before that we hired a dwarf and he came on stage and just smashed us all with cream pies [laughs]. We like it to be fun, different, exciting, entertaining, dangerous, scary, and sexy, just fucking everything… it’s a melting pot. We are musicalchemical & visualchemical… Alchemy – the union of opposites. We combine grunge with glam, hip hop with rock, its positive & negative, its male & female, its pure alchemy.
Sean: Well, sadly being in Perth, Friday is too close for me to get over to see this gig but I urge people to get some tickets for a night of metal & madness.
Jake: That’s where Ragdoll are from hey?
Sean: They are indeed.
Jake: My friend Byron Moore, who hosts ‘The Beautiful Car Crash’ podcast over here… he froths for Ragdoll so they must be pretty damn good because he’s got good taste.
Sean: Well he’s someone I hope to catch up with next time I’m over that way. I’m interested to throw my final questions at you to hear your answers. If you could invite three musical guests, dead or alive, to join you at a restaurant for a couple of hours, who would you ask?
Jake: Hmmm, the music world. That a really good question. Dee Snider straight away – I’d love to sit and eat dinner with Dee Snider for sure. I’d have to say Genesis P-Orridge and… hmmm, Mick Jagger.
Sean: Interesting three. What was the last album you listened to?
Jake: ‘Come Out and Play’ by Twisted Sister. I got all my vinyl moved down here from Brisbane. Before that I listened to ‘The Church of Rock n Roll’ by Foxy Shazam which is another great album.
Sean: Finally Jake, choosing from every song ever recorded, what song would you wanted to be credited with writing?
Jake: Ah, ‘Gimme Shelter’ by The Rolling Stones or ‘Walk All Over You’ by AC/DC.
Sean: Two new ones to my playlist there mate.
Jake: Those are two songs that I will never pass up listening to. I’ll froth those two tunes until the end of time.
Sean: Thank you so much for chatting to us here at The Rockpit. We wish you and the rest of the band all the best for Friday night down at Stay Gold in Brunswick and look forward to listening to the EP when it’s released. Hope to catch up for a cold beer at one of your gigs later in the year.
Jake: I’d love that mate. Thank you so much. Cheers.
