Photo Courtesy: Effective Immediately PR
Taylor Berrier: Tell me a little about where you guys are from.
Trent Langford: We come from Lubbock, Texas. We started there as a band in 2009 and most of our members were at school at Texas Tech around that time. Then we added a couple members from Brownwood and some other places around the state, but mostly around Lubbock.
Where did you get the name No Dry County from?
The story on that one is kind of bizarre. None of us are actually original members of the band so we all joined into it. They were a rock cover band in Lubbock that had started in about 2007 and they had named the band. None of us know where they got the name from since we weren’t involved in the naming process.
Some of the theories include how a bunch of people in Lubbock were putting up signs that read Vote Yes on Proposition 1, and somebody said there must have been signs that read “No Dry County” as well. It was named by our old guitarist, Javier, a Mexican nationalist, who was teaching at Tech at the time. But we never sat down and asked him.
I wouldn’t say you guys are country, but you guys are from Texas and there’s definitely some twang hidden in your music.
Absolutely. We grew up on country music so that’s kind of the foundation for our experience as musicians. Especially working musicians playing in Lubbock and growing up as a musician in Lubbock you really rely on your country roots. We play a lot of shows around town and when we get into more of our indy music, and more of our americana, blues and rock stuff that foundation still exists. We are proud of it, man. We are all big country music fans. Everything we do, you can see all of our influences from country to different types of harder rock and blues. I think it all bleeds through in some good ways. A lot of times, around the state, people say we don’t sound like country at all. When we play up north or on the east coast people think we are pure country. It’s a different response from people sometimes.
So it varies from region to region?
Different parts of Texas are less live country music, and we probably have more of a country look to us the further we get from Texas.
For some of the songs there’s a sense that I should be in a bar drinking myself to death, but the next song I’m on the dance floor. And then there are some songs where I’m back in my dorm room finding you mixed into a playlist with 3eb, Modest Mouse, or Foo Fighters… If you had to label it, what would you say is the genre of your new album The Night Before?
Labels suck, but their necessary. We’ve heard that we’re all different kinds: We’re the indy-rock-folk americana-blues-polka band from Lubbock. If we had to pick one, indy would be a little broad. So I guess we would fall under folk-rock or even just rock. People can get more specific with the subgenres, but we released the album as a rock album. We like rock n’ roll music, but we also like telling stories. That’s what we rely on with our country roots.
No Dry County used to cover 80’s rock songs.
We used to cover just about anything. U2 is one of my favorite bands of all time. Part of the reason I joined the band was because they were playing a lot of private parties, high school reunions, and weddings and were making pretty good money doing it. You know the high school crowd loved 80’s rock and we were doing because it was just a lot of fun. It was awesome.
You guys have shows all across Texas and over the course of the summer. Are there any shows in particular you are looking forward to?
Any time we get up to the Dallas/Fort Worth area we have a good time. We have a lot of family from there and we’ve been playing in that area for four or five years, so we’ve already built a good group of friends and family that we enjoy seeing when we’re there. And of course Austin and south Texas in the warmer months when you can get out on the river, but we haven’t been to Dallas in a while, so it’ll be good to get back.
So why music? Now that you’re officially taken and whatnot, wasn’t the whole point of music to impress the ladies?
Yeah, I’m getting married in June. I still have to close the deal so I need to keep crankin’ out the tunes. A music career wasn’t anything I planned on. I always played and enjoyed music ever since junior high and high school, but it wasn’t something I thought of doing as a job.
Brook is one of our biggest advocates and she’s been there since we got started in Lubbock. We’re both music lovers and I love how she’s always been in our corner.
Did you ever paint yourself as a lead singer for a band?
Absolutely not. I was going to play minor league baseball and thought maybe go on to coach somewhere. I was a jock in high school. But I moved back to Lubbock in 2008 and met up with some buddies from high school who were playing music and had a couple projects going. I told them I played the drums and they invited me over to jam with them one day. One thing lead to another and they ended up needing a lead singer. Next thing you know I’m playing some of my original songs around Lubbock, playing the Blue Light Live and it just became something that I loved to do. I got to meet up with a lot of great musicians and No Dry County has been a fun ride for all of the, going on seven years now. But I never set out to do all that. As long as we’re putting out good music and there are people wanting to listen to it, we’re going to keep doing it. There’s no date set to try something different.
Is there any chance in the future for No Dry County to put out some folk covers?
We don’t rule out anything. We have no set plans. We’re open ended, open thinking group of guys. We’re not opposed to doing pop covers or recording some of the old country standards that we grew up with. We want to do all kinds of different projects. We had a big break in between the last couple albums and we were talking about the idea of doing a blues EP. Nothing’s out of the realm of possibility, blues, folk, pop at some point. And definitely at the live shows.
You can see a full list of shows by No Dry County here. Be sure to check ‘em out while they’re in Dallas on May 22 at Adair’s Saloon.
Follow them on Facebook here.
Follow them on Twitter here.
