Things Aren’t So Bad for Bad Mothers

It wasn’t until February 11th 2017 that I came to know your band. My band Smittix, Sly Fox and the Hustlers, Mark Slavin and Bad Mothers did a show at The Hangar on the Hudson in Troy. I was hearing a lot of good things about you guys from people on the local scene and with the exception of the little bit I heard online I didn’t know much about Bad Mothers. Then you took the stage and I’ll always remember Matt Dalton (vocals/guitar) commanding the audience to come here, I’ve got something to tell ya; I’m paraphrasing, but it was very close to that and the crowd just instantly swarmed the stage. I was impressed and I’ve been a fan ever since. Today I am speaking with Bad Mothers front-man Matt Dalton about the good ol’ days (a few months ago when we had shows) and about the now and later.

RRX: How do you feel the band as a whole has evolved since our first encounter in 2017?

MD: We’re always continuing to refine our sound. It’s more like we’re continuing to explore the energy that we all feel for the band. In some ways we’ve stayed the same. We’re the same group of friends with the same drive and same energy. There’s a certain mood that we all sink into when we’re working on or playing Bad Mothers tunes and we’ve been continuing to explore what can come out of that space. Not to say nothing has changed. We’ve been writing new music and focusing on our plan for the rest of this year/next year.

RRX: So I am aware that some or all of you have attended St. Rose.

Photo By Bryan David Lasky

MD: Yeah that’s true, we all attended St. Rose for Music Industry. That’s actually where we all met, but the last of us graduated in 2017. I guess I can say we were lucky enough to graduate before all these closings due to the coronavirus happened. On that note I do want to take the opportunity to wish a very genuin congratulations to all of the 2020 graduates regardless of where you went or what you studied. My brother graduated this year so I’ve heard through him some of the woes experienced due to the less than traditional senior year. Nonetheless it is still a very real and very significant achievement and you all should be proud of yourselves so congratulations again, and good luck on the next chapter of your lives.

RRX: I have been a fan as I stated before and I have been spinning your music on my radio show often. Now obviously that is not the highlight of your musical career but what have been some of your biggest milestones thus far?

MD: You’re being too modest, but if I had to think of other highlights, I’d probably have to say opening for Quiet Riot at Alive at 5. We also have gone down to Summer NAMM in Nashville the last couple years for our partnership with Eventide which has led to some cool opportunities. Some of the showcases we got to play down there had us playing with people like Doug Wimbish, and Larry Mitchell which was really special for us. But honestly I feel like our biggest achievements are around the corner.

RRX: With the quarantine happening and all of our shows being cancelled what have you been doing to keep active in the virtual music scene?

MD: Yeah the quarantine hit us in a particularly frustrating way. We’ve been planning the recording of our next record for quite some time and finally had time booked in the studio for the end of March. As you can imagine that had to be cancelled which was a huge bummer, but I’m happy to say we’ve rescheduled and new tracks will be in production shortly. Outside of that we were lucky enough to have an entire unreleased live performance in our backlog that we’ve been gradually releasing over the course of the lock-down. And on top of that we filmed and tracked an additional full live performance during the lock-down, while following quarantine guidelines.

RRX: What was the last show you played and did you have to cancel many shows?

MD: The last show we played was the Almost Never Dead label launch party, which was awesome. It really was. To give a brief overview of Almost Never Dead; it’s a collective of talented local creatives who are using their knowledge of the industry and collaborative efforts and resources to lift up other artists who they believe in. We all have various skill sets and we’re all working together to help people who we believe in to grow and accomplish new things. The cool thing is it isn’t genre specific and neither was that show. We had rappers, hardcore punk, and indie rock bands all on the same bill and the crowd showed up for all of it. It really was a full venue of people there just to support the notion of supporting each other.

In regards to cancelled shows I guess we were lucky. We didn’t have too many shows booked because we’ve been prepping for the new record. Which again had to be cancelled and rescheduled. So although a pretty heavy cancellation, that was really our only one.

RRX: Recently I interviewed Brian Chiappinelli (B-Chaps) founder of Almost Never Dead (record label), he spoke highly of Bad Mothers. What have you done with the label so far and are there any future plans or is everything just trying to wait out the stay-at-home order?

Photo by William Fredette

MD: Yeah Brian Chiappinelli is the man. He’s the head honcho of Almost Never Dead and that dude works hard. We’re very lucky to have him as our drummer so naturally there’s some overlap there other than that fact that Almost Never Dead’s sole purpose is to help out other artists. In a way everything we do goes through Almost Never Dead. Our releases, our promotion, our behind the scenes work – it’s all Almost Never Dead. We’re always working in tandem with a variety of people on just about everything we do. And boy oh boy are there future plans. Yes, unfortunately they had to be put on an unforeseeable hold, but we’ve been planning for this release and what we’ll be doing with it and the band for quite a while now. The new record is coming and once it’s here we’ll finally be making some moves that we’ve been working towards for some time.

RRX: Lastly, what’s in the future for Bad Mothers?

MD: New music is on the horizon. A new music video is coming. A new full live performance video is on its way and will be available for your listening pleasure on May 30th so check out the Facebook, Spotify, etc.. Most importantly we can’t wait to see you all again in person when this is all over. Till then stay safe, and stay tuned.