And now for a Tiny Desert Concert — that’s when local bands come into the KJZZ studios to play a couple songs for us and talk a bit about the music.
Today we hear The Blood Feud Family Singers. Self-described as up-tempo but down-hearted, the heart and soul of the band is its poetic lyrics that pluck at your emotions, and the bluesy-folk tunes take a walk down the dusty road of love and heartbreak.
Daryl Scherrer is the poet who pens the tragic lyrics and lends his soulful voice to the songs, and his music has been nominated as one of the 10 best love songs ever written by a Phoenix musician (by the Phoenix New Times).
The Show spoke with Scherrer, and he started by talking about whether he’s found that his songwriting process has evolved since he’s been doing it for about two decades.
You can watch The Blood Feud Family Singers' performance in KJZZ's studios below, and check out their band page on Facebook.
Full conversation
DARYL SHERRER: I think it wasn't until about 10 years or something into it that I really had a handle on what I was that I had to say and what kind of songs I wanted to do.
MARK BRODIE: What do you think helped you do that?
SHERRER: Just writing a lot of bad songs.
BRODIE: You had to do it, to get better at it.
SHERRER: Yeah, I had hit it a couple of times prior to that where, and there's a few tunes from that that I still play, but there were, like, happy accidents. It wasn't, it wasn't until much later that I had a handle on it.
BRODIE: So what do you do differently now than before, when you're writing, as you call it, bad music?
SHERRER: Well, well, I mean, honestly, now what I do is, I'm, I'm working on writing a novel. I haven't been writing too many songs lately, but, um, most of my songs have primarily been about lust and or revenge.
And there's only so many, there's only so many ways to say those things, you know like, it got to where I'd sit down and just think, ‘Well, how am I going, hw am I going to handle lust or revenge this time?’ And you know, you don't want to be there. You want to come back at it fresh.
BRODIE: Have you found that your songwriting background is helping you write your novel?
SHERRER: In a way. Yeah, there's a way in which I find myself sometimes kind of approaching the whole thing like I'm writing a song in spirit where, “OK, in this scene, I have to get this to happen”. And, you know, it kind of has the same feel as well. “I've got four lines, and I've got to make A and C rhyme, and then B and D rhyme.” And sometimes it has that same kind of architectural feel.
BRODIE: Do you find yourself like, maybe subconsciously rhyming the lines in your book?
SHERRER: Yeah. Or alliterating them. Yeah. And then other times, like, you know, what my, another writer buddy of mine, calls the cheesecake parts, you know, like the really sort of poetic and juicy passages or phrases that you kind of wish the whole book could be but it just can't, or else nothing would happen. Some of the cheesecake parts feel a lot like writing songs.
BRODIE: So can you play a song for us?
SHERRER: Sure. This one is called “Doors of the Dead.”
[MUSIC]
BRODIE: So I've got to ask you about a description that I read that I think comes from you guys about your music, and I'm quoting here. “Up tempo, down hearted, poetic philosophic, country fried hostility for sentimental haters. Is that your words?
SHERRER: I did that.
BRODIE: What on earth do you mean by that?
SHERRER: Well, I was, I don't, I mean …
BRODIE: There’s a lot in there.
SHERRER: Yeah, right. I wanted to, kind of, I mean, obviously the sort of rhetorical trope of all these sort of hyphenated pairs, is meant to be a little comical, but I did. I was sincerely trying to triangulate what it is we actually are up to in my, at least in my imagining as a band. So I wanted to get across that we're gloomy, but, you know, not slow and morbid that we tend to have or morbid, but not slow, so that, because most of what I write tends to have a certain amount of energy in the tempo.
I grew up listening to punk rock, so I get really impatient with too many slow songs. And what I say up tempo, down, yeah. You know, all our songs are kind of, we're kind of, well, I mean, I was going to say known, but was rather presumptuous. Those who do know us know that we're fairly negative in our lyrical content. Is something a return of the repressed about it, I suppose.
BRODIE: Can you play us one more song?
SHERRER: Sure, this one is called “100 Times” and it's on our album “No Moon.”
This performance was filmed at KJZZ's youth media center, SPOT 127.
If you’re in a band or know of one you’d like to hear on air, send us a note at [email protected].
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