Mojave Lords are David Catching and his neighbour, Kevin ‘Bingo’ Richey (centre). Their debut album, ‘Unfuckwithable’, was recorded at Catching’s legendary Rancho de la Luna studios, which he founded with the late Fred Drake in 1993. The 10-track collection, which you can stream in full until the album’s release on February 23, also features guest appearances from Brian ‘Big Hands’ O’ Connor (Eagles of Death Metal, pictured above on the right), Barrett Martin (Screaming Trees), Chris Goss (Masters Of Reality), Joey Castillo (Queens Of The Stone Age) and Danny Frankel (Lou Reed).
We caught up with Catching for a track-by-track guide to their album.
**SWEET LITTLE DOWN & OUT **David Catching:_ _“I’m actually down in New Orleans at the moment for Mardi Gras, and we’re playing this song in the parade tomorrow night. It’s one of the Mojave Lords tunes we’re busting out. It was the first song we recorded for the album, and we laid it down real quick. [Masters Of Reality frontman] Chris Goss came to do some vocals on it, and we thought it’d be cool to start the album with his badass vocals. So that’s how this little bluesy number came about…”
HOT THROWAWAY “This song started out a long time ago. I’m constantly writing at Rancho. And I write with a drum machine, so I had a bunch of those guitars done already. The song just needed drums adding. I never really thought it would fit with Eagles of Death Metal or Earthlings?. And then Bingo heard it, and immediately we started writing those lyrics. We thought it’d be fun to write a song about being cool enough to be able to pick up hot female models and just throw them away, like they do to other unfortunate souls. That’s the riff on this one!”
ANYTIME ROCK “This was Mr Brian ‘Big Hands’ O’Connor coming over and saying, ‘Fuck you guys, let’s do this right and play something up tempo now.’ It’s his riff. And he actually played drums on that one as well. Bingo and I did contribute some of the song, though! The three of us wrote the lyrics together, and they’re basically just about having a good time. The cool thing about this album is nothing was hard. It was all very, very easy. We’d written, recorded and finished this song in about two hours. And I love it. It’s definitely one of my favourites to play live.”
**DANCEFLOOR SLAMMER **“We needed something to dance to. So we decided to jump on it and go deep with the psychedelic Funkadelic groove on this one. Funkadelic and Parliament have always been a huge influence on me as a songwriter. I think George Clinton is one of my favourite artists ever. He’s up there in the top three or four for me. He’s written so many amazing songs that move people. There’s songs that you listen to, and there’s songs that you move to. And George Clinton is the king of writing songs that you move to. So this is our homage to George Clinton.”
**SECOND SKIN **“This one is about your second skin being very thin. You have to guard yourself, man. Bingo wrote this one. He’s one of the most brilliant dudes around, man. Talk about surrounding yourself with good people. Bingo’s extremely intelligent and talented, and extremely humble as well. It you met him, at first you wouldn’t know how awesome he is. You’d just think he was a very cool guy. But then you delve in and you realise how much he has going on inside. This song is all him.”
Continues below…
KNUCKLES “This is another one where we said we need a bone-headed, slamming song on the record. And it’s also another really fun song to play live. I’m actually trying to work on being more of a Kanye West type of character that really doesn’t like anything, and is not cool at all. But somehow I just can’t get it down! I enjoy having fun too much. You should have a good time all the time, man. And Knuckles is about exactly that.”
**MICROWAVE BABY **“This is another one of Brian O’Connor’s badass licks. We recorded it the same night as Anytime Rock. And we all jumped on this one. I actually played bass and lead guitar, and Brian plays drums and rhythm guitar. And Bingo, Brian and I wrote the lyrics. So we all pitched in and played about. The words are about when you’re feeling something from the inside out. Like you’re microwaved by a hot lady, or something: getting burned from the inside by awesome feelings.”
**A WHOLE NEW WORLD **“We obviously had no idea Robin Williams was going to leave us so soon, so this song is a tribute to him. Sometimes you just have to go elsewhere to find yourself. This is about going to a whole new world to find happiness – another planet, another dimension, inside yourself, somewhere you haven’t been. I was such a huge fan of Robin Williams. I grew up in the 70s and Mork & Mindy was a huge TV show that everyone watched. And then I saw his comedy specials; they were frantic, kinetic and weird in a way that you hadn’t seen before. And then he became an awesome serious actor as well. And he kept doing comedy. The man had so much talent. He had more than we can even imagine. No one had any inclining that he would commit suicide. That just shows you how much he was hiding in that incredible mind of his.”
SAGE “Sage is really important in the desert. It grows everywhere, and it’s used to clean all the evil spirits out of your homes. This song is about cleaning all the evil, or just plain bad, or useless things in your life by saging yourself and trying to make a better self and surrounding for yourself. I can’t say enough about how good sage is. It smells great. It gets rid of all the badness. Sage rules!”
**UNFUCKWITHABLE **“This is the mantra for everything that not just this project, but everything that we do out here in the desert is based. You watch TV and there’s so much bad shit they’re trying to scare you with. But you can counteract all the weirdness by surrounding yourself with all the coolness that you can, and then you become Unfuckwithable. In the desert we’re surrounded by all of our awesome friends that we love to hang out with. And we respect what they do. We’re trying to bring that vibe to everyone else and let them know that, even though there’s bad stuff going on, there is good in the world, and you can make it happen yourself.”
Mojave Lords’ debut album Unfuckwithable will be released on February 23. Pre-orders are available here. Come back next week for an interview with David Catching.
