Smells Like Rio Spirit

 

Power up your DVD players.

Even though Rio Bravo is named after the 1957 Howard Hawks film¹, I’m going to ask you to dial up Stand By Me. Skip to the campfire scene, where four boys stay up into the night talking about the kind of stuff that doesn’t matter after you find out about girls. Where they talk about Goofy, cherry pez, the barf-o-rama. That’s what it’s like hanging out with the boys of Rio Bravo—weirdly comfortable and deep in a reflective surfaces sort of way.

The band sprang Minerva-like from the musically cleft heads of four Wilmingtonian friends nearly formed in February. There’s Micah, the dreamy single vocalist who’s all spiraling metaphors; Bryan, the guitarist Raphael to the rest of their musical ninja turtles; Ed, who’s chummy and the bassist and sees songs in colors; and Christian who speaks with the surgical percussion of his drums.

Plus they told me they wished they smelled like bonfire.

rtm// I just want to tell you before we start the interview that you don’t suck. You actually sound good. In a professional sort of way.

RIO BRAVO²: Uh, thanks.

rtm// That is supposed to be complimentary.

RIO BRAVO: No, we appreciate it.

rtm// You describe your music as progressive rock. Where do you think you fit in that lineup?

RIO BRAVO: We just had to put down a type of music on our MySpace. That’s just what we chose.

rtm// So you don’t put yourself on the same spectrum as bands like Yes or Coheed & Cambria? Those are traditional prog rock bands.

RIO BRAVO: Not really. Not that there’s anything wrong with that sort of music.

rtm// All right, so, how would you describe your music?

RIO BRAVO: We don’t really want to put it in a genre, but if we had to classify—

rtm// And you do.

RIO BRAVO: —indie art rock with pop sensibilities.

rtm// Who do you want to sound like?

RIO BRAVO: Ourselves.

rtm// Right, but, I guess, who were you listening to when you recorded a majority of your songs?

RIO BRAVO: Mutemath, Killers, MGMT, Crystal Castles, Paramore. We’ve been told that we sound like Kings of Leon, Radiohead, Vampire Weekend.

rtm// Yeah, I think you have this soaring quality instrumentalism and mournful vocals as Cold War Kids.

MICAH: I saw them when I was living in New York. They were great.

rtm// I’m probably not supposed to say that in the interview. With all this Indie sound would you guys have a problem with radio play?

RIO BRAVO: No.

rtm// Your cred could survive that?

RIO BRAVO: The last thing we want is to end up as the local band. As much as we like Wilmington, it’s just not where we want to end up playing every weekend. We’ve played shows in New York and we’re going to work with [producer] Phil Wyckham who’s worked with Sugarland.

rtm// You’ve worked with some big names?

RIO BRAVO: We played a gig with the Ataris. We were at the Planet Extreme Teen Center in West Virginia. And the sign in front of the center said “6^th Graders” welcome. This was in the outskirts of one of those towns you can barely call a town. And the Ataris were playing there the same night. They were nice guys, but kind of washed up.

rtm// How does Rio Bravo write a song?

RIO BRAVO: We all contribute. One of us will have an idea we bring in and we’ll work on it together. But usually Micah will come in with lyrics, but from there on it’s a collaborative effort.

MICAH: It’s like a finger that grows a hand.

rtm// Which songs are most popular?

RIO BRAVO: People tell us that they like each song differently and in different amounts. For different, reasons obviously. It’s like story-telling, structuring a story. In the process of structuring that story you’re going to choose song elements that just appeal to different people on a core level.

CHRISTIAN: It’s interesting, because we have this song “Hollow Eyes,” it’s one of our oldest songs, and I’m not sick of it but we’ve played it a lot and it’s crazy how so many people really relate to that song.

rtm// That’s actually the song I became most attached to. It has the most plays on your MySpace.

CHRISTIAN: See (laughs).

rtm// What should your public have to look forward to?

RIO BRAVO: We’re touring late September through February. Up and down the East Coast.

rtm// One of the big ideas behind Red Thought is synaesthetic journalism³, so, as a group of up-and-coming rockers, ideally what should your sweat smell like?

RIO BRAVO: Clean? Is that a good answer?

BRYAN: No! I want to smell like a big beach bon fire. Make sure you put that in there.

1) A fact that’s both cool and nebulous. Cool because it’s a band named after a canonical auteur’s (to the Andrew Sarris crowd) film, which is intertextual and gives the band a sort of insider aura. Nebulous because traditionally bands have names and Rio Bravo chose theirs haphazardly, i.e. “That was a pretty good movie.”

 

2) Rio Bravo does not simultaneously answer like some hive-mind but speaks democratically, agreeing to their answers like any emotionally healthy group.

 

3) I pretended I was blind for this interview, dear readers, just so I could read the Braille of the band members’ skin.