The Southern Belles, a band out of Richmond, VA, was one of four bands that won this years Rockn’ to Lockn’ competition. The four bands that won the competition, which was only open to Virginia bands, were awarded with time slots to perform on the main stage at the Lockn’ Festival this past September. Adrian Ciucci, the guitarist for The Southern Belles, took some time to talk to L4LM writer Sarah Bourque about the amazing experience the band had this past summer. The Southern Belles also consists of Tommy Booker on keys, Raphael Katchinoff on drums, and Andrew Couper on bass.
Read on to see what Ciucci had to say about the experience:
L4LM: The Southern Belles has been around since 2010 and you’re based out of Richmond. Tell us about the history of this band.
Adrian Ciucci: The first official time we played together was in 2010 for a friends Halloween/engagement party, that we didn’t even know was an engagement party. From that line-up, I’m the only person that’s still in the band. We had probably two original songs, and a few Beatles songs, and played for an hour. There was a moment in time when I was living in Montana, and Tommy Booker was living in New York, and we were realizing that other career paths were not very satisfying.
We called each other and discussed that we’ve known each other since we were kids and we’ve been talking about this for decades. In 2011, I moved back and Tommy moved back within a week of each other and played a Sunday night at The Camel. It was not a strong night but it was the first official gig of the Southern Belles back in Richmond. It was November 30, 2011. We are going to have our four year get together party at the end of next month. We try to do some arrangement of acknowledgment that we survived another year, every year. Not a show, just dinner, hang out, just a celebration.
L4LM: Here you are four years later and have found yourselves playing Lockn’! You won the Rockn’ to Lockn’ contest, which is put on by Lockn’ festival. Take us through that experience.
AC: They started doing that competition last year, so we thought we had submitted for it last year. They had the date scheduled and we didn’t assume anything but we at least thought we had a chance to compete. The way it worked out is, we finally contacted them when we heard they were moving some dates around. We had been blocking off this date if it came our way, we had to be available to do it, and so we contacted them. They had never heard of us, had no submission and had gone another way. We were all a little heartbroken that we had our hopes up that it would be an option, but they didn’t even know we existed. In the end, our friends band played, People’s Blues of Richmond. They’re all good buddies of ours [author’s note – PBR won the Rockn’ to Lockn’ competition last year and played at Lockn’ 2014]. I went to Lockn’ anyway, and saw that set. It worked out great.
This year, I was unloading some gear out of my car at my house and a fellow driving down the street rolled down his window and asked, “Do you play in a band?” My response, “Yes, I’m with the Southern Belles.” His response, “I’m Jerry Stone. I run Flat 5 Productions and we run this thing called Rockn’ to Lockn’. You guys should submit for it.” I told him the whole story and he felt real bad, and he said that we should submit again this year and he would tell us the date to submit by so we would have the opportunity this year. Once we got on the showcase, it was just an unreal, really good show. A lot of good music, but I knew we were going to get it once I saw the crowd. It was one of the more electric experiences of my performance career for a thirty minute set. The crowd was louder than the band. I had to cover my ears. They were screaming so loud, it was hurting my head. We found out that night and it was just very surreal. Then it was six weeks of waiting to actually be able to play Lockn’. Once we got there, we were all a little star struck, running into Robert Plant, and Jimmy Herring and the who’s who list of people that we grew up listening to suddenly walking around backstage with us. We played on the same stage that Robert Plant did.
L4LM: What was your biggest take away from Lockn’ after you played that festival? That’s probably one of the biggest gigs you guys have played.
AC: There were a couple of take aways. The easy one is you work with your band, you practice, you work with your material, you rehearse and then, no matter what you can do in the studio or in the basement, it’s a totally different animal trying to execute that confidently and appropriately live. Performing is a whole different bag of tricks compared to being able to play an instrument. You try to put yourself in opportunities to succeed and some of those opportunities are very stressful, such as playing the stage at Lockn’. There’s always a minute in your head of, ‘Am I going to fuck this up? Can I actually do this?’ To live through an experience like that and come out having relatively executed it successfully like we wanted to, that’s a notch of acknowledgment. We are capable of doing that. If we’re lucky and we play a thousand stages of that size, it will never feel like it did that day. I will never be as terrified again as I was that day. It’s a little bit of weathering of the nerves. You feel more confident in your ability to do other things, really anything, after not choking in an opportunity like that.
In my head also, we have been at this for four years. We’ve never signed a contract with a management company or a label. We’ve been a totally self-contained unit. We book our own shows. We plan our own routes. We make our own connections. We hire people to work with us from the Richmond circle, with managing the band and everything from marketing to design to booking to road managing. My point is that this model is not really how things work in the music business that I see. I think that’s something special that makes the band what it is. We are completely in charge of our own destiny and we are trying to do this all in-house to keep total control, creatively, of the package. When you’re at a situation like Lockn’, your brain wanders and you never know what kind of offers we may get after that kind of exposure. All of us are curious to see if opportunity would literally knock or call.
I remember driving away from Lockn’ and thinking that it reaffirmed our ability to do this in-house and made me appreciate the model that we’re trying to use even more. It reaffirmed the model that we have been working on for four years. That was my biggest take away. Something is working because what an insane industry, what an insane business, and what an insane thing to decide you want to do with the rest of your life. It’s just kind of insanity. When we were younger and just starting, everyone’s family encouraged them to have a back-up plan, which most of us did not heed and really just went all in on this project. My justification to myself was that I might be a little insane. I like to think I would have the clarify or self awareness to notice if something wasn’t working. As we push harder, more doors seem to open and more opportunities seem to unveil themselves to us. The work is paying off, maybe not as quickly as you wanted when you were 16, but it is happening.
L4LM: The Airstream gig at Lockn’ must have been a lot of fun. First of all, those trailers were pretty rad. What was it like seeing your band being highlighted on a recent video installment of Relix’s Airstream Live at Lockn’?
AC: That was really cool for us. That happened Saturday, which was the day before our Lockn’ performance. We had our whole day lined out for us. That was what I thought was going to be an interview, and I had just done two right before. We walk over and were asked, “How many songs do you want to do?” We were like, “what the hell are you talking about?” We were told we were going to perform in the Relix trailer. I didn’t have a guitar. The D’Angelico guitar people were real nice and loaned us instruments. We went in there (the Relix Airstream trailer), and they were real nice. We had a great time. To be honest with you, it wasn’t what I was thinking about the most because I was thinking about the performance the next day. A month later, they hit us up and told us they were going to release the video. It got 12,000 views in a day. It got a big response. Relix are great people to be involved with, so that worked out great.
L4LM: Talk about your fall tour and what you have planned through the end of the year.
AC: Two years ago we were on the road basically all of November and December. That was when the weather was starting to get iffy. Last year we did a two week run in November, and then a two week run in December. This year, we are doing something similar to last year so it won’t be a full tour. We are heading over to Blacksburg, Virginia to do Halloween Fest. We’re doing a Led Zeppelin set, with Sam Reed from Jellowstone Records singing Robert Plant’s parts. That is exciting. After that, we come back home for First Friday for the first weekend of November here in Richmond. Then we are going back on the road. We’re going to hit Tennessee and western North Carolina. We’ll be off for maybe a week and a half and then we’re going to be close to home. We’re prepping for next year pretty hard right now. It’s been a blur of basically six months of pretty heavy touring so we’re going to breathe a little bit through the end of the year. We’re working on a lot of new material. We’re working on a lot of runs and tours that we hope to announce soon for 2016. It’s going to be a big year. This is a much needed time of being closer to home. We’ll still probably play 20 dates between now and the end of the year, but it won’t be as vigorous as our summer tour was.
L4LM: What do The Southern Belles have planned going into next year?
AC: We are talking to some bands that we’re very excited about talking to. I cannot confidently confirm some of these but we are looking at a supporting role for a tour of national acts. Hopefully that becomes a reality and we can announce that officially. We are talking to this great band called Backup Planet out of Nashville about doing a run together.
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We’re going to go down to New Orleans and a lot of the Gulf states. We are making plans to return to Colorado, hopefully in March. We came out with a record in July so we’re not ready to go full steam on another record yet, but the material is there. We have already been talking to our producer about getting in to the studio to start on the next record before the end of the 2016 calendar year. It was almost three years between the first record and the second record and the strides as a band between those two records were quite notable. We are a much better band today than we were three years ago. Hopefully I can say three years from now that we are a much better band than we are today. We’re writing faster and we’re writing better, so we’re not going to wait nearly as long before we go back because the material is there. Hopefully 2016 will certainly be another 120+ show year, hopefully the start of a new records and hopefully some of these tours will work out with bigger acts and that will get us into some bigger venues. Always a project. So many projects it’s just overwhelming. We have to plan real days off where we are not going to call each other. Even on our days off, it turns into a work day though.
L4LM: Is there anything else you would like to share with your fans out there?
AC: First and foremost, thank you. We are really lucky. We cultivated a really nice group of people in Richmond, where we’re from, that have really supported the band and gone above and beyond to show their support lots of times. No matter how good you get, no matter what kind of great song you can write, no matter how often you feel performing, if you’re playing to an empty room, it doesn’t do much good.
It’s weird when you start a project like this. You don’t start with confidence, you start with a desire. Then as you play and grow and build and find your identity, not only individually as musicians, but as a group, you find this identity as how we play and who we are then all of a sudden people in the immediate band circle start to invest themselves. They start to invest their time, their emotion. They talk about you and they stand up for you. Then all of a sudden, you’re not playing just for yourself anymore. You want to do well for everybody that stood up for you. As that group gets bigger, you put more pressure on yourself to do right by everybody that’s standing up for you out of town. As you build the audience, you take it personal, I do anyway, and we certainly do as a band, a personal pride and effort in trying to do well for them. That means putting on a good show. That means writing new, better, more exciting material and keeping surprise covers coming. I don’t ever want it to get stale. So, in short, thank you to the people that have stood up for us so far. I intend to work all the harder for you, to keep your interest growing in the band, because mine is also still growing. We are very much on the journey but I look at it as a big picture on a very long scale. The best is yet to come.
For more information on the Southern Belles, along with fall tour dates, please visit their website.
Words by Sarah Bourque. Follow her on Twitter.
All photos by Sam Shinault. Follow him on Instagram.