The Dead Coats: Embracing the Madness

I met up with the The Dead Coats in the house shared by three of the band’s members. They set me up via video chat across a weed-strewn table in Lauren Warner’s bedroom, lovingly referred to as “The Shag Palace.” There is something paradoxically intimate about video chat interviews. I’m (virtually) in the band’s house at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night. Everyone's in their sweatpants, half drunk on Stella, and rambling off into ironic bits and inside jokes with each other. Our guards are down as we sip on whiskey in the comfort of our respective homes and connect through a screen.

But that could just be par for the course; the Dead Coats are not a naturally guarded band. Their low-fi, anger-fueled psych punk doesn’t go for that staple of political angst (that sometimes comes across as trite in other groups). They’re firmly grounded in the realities of being young and making due. 

Front-woman, and Baltimore transplant, Warner’s (@lorminthegoddess) lyrics are an invitation into her personal life. Her insecurities and frustrations are belted out in a vocal-chord-obliterating wail that expresses as much pain as it does venom. At first you might think her vulnerability would clash with the thick, driving, Dead Kennedys bass of local Austinite, Joe Osteen (@a_texas_bassman_dream) (not the preacher, he clarified), the early Nirvana, sometimes-meets-Metallica shredding from Joshua Jones (@lil_guitary_jones), and the head-shattering drums from newbie, Faith Lee (@___faithlee) (who we, unfortunately couldn’t get a hold of for this interview). But, the band has melted together over their three years and two studio albums and found a perfect synthesis. They want to give you a hug, but will headbutt your ass if you break the five second rule.

Jake: Is that a gimp suit you have hanging on the wall there?

Lauren: What, this? (points camera)

Jake: No not that one, but I’m surprised there’s more than one outfit hanging on your wall that could be mistaken for a gimp suit.

Lauren: Oh that, nah that’s a skeleton costume I’ve worn for some of our halloween shows. It’s kind of the vibe I’m going for. Dead and alive.

Josh: For our last show, before our hiatus, we pulled her up on stage in a body bag.

Lauren: Yeah, I came out of it in a doctor’s uniform. The guys were dressed like nurses. I guess that was when it was still in good taste to joke about the plague.

Jake: Speaking of, what have your guys’ days consisted of during the quarantine? 

Joe: I’ve already embraced the madness, so now everyday I like to get a stuffed animal, buckle it into the back seat of my car, not go anywhere, just sit up front and recite all the lines to Driving Ms. Daisy.

Jake: You a big fan of the film?

Joe: Not at all.

Josh: Well, I work at the HEB on Riverside, but I’m not working for the rest of the week, for reasons I am not legally at liberty to reveal. I will say that if you look online, you can find a list of every HEB with a confirmed case of coronavirus among the staff. I don’t have it, or anything, but let’s just say the two things are related.

Jake: Well, let’s get into the band. When you guys had the idea for the Dead Coats, did you have any particular influences you were trying to emulate at first, or has it always been an exploration of your own sound?

Joe: We definitely had people we were inspired by from the beginning, but one of our hard-and-fast rules was that we were not gonna cover songs. So “emulation?” Probably not, we didn’t want to jump into anyone else’s music, more-so trying to make our own music based on a whole bunch of people floating around in our heads. I guess, Butthole Surfers, Meat Puppets, Nirvana all that kind of shit.

Josh: The soundtrack to Shrek 1.

Jake: Not a fan of 2?

Josh: No. My lifelong goal has always been to play in a Smashmouth cover band, probably at birthday parties or maybe a Six-Flags on a regular Tuesday gig, y’know?

Lauren: Our whole thing has always been about being ourselves. We could have stuck with just playing the same genre the whole time and been successful doing it that way, but instead we asked ourselves questions like, “Well, we haven’t tried playing it in this sort of genre, maybe we could make this one funk, who cares?”

Joe: We try to take every genre and those influences as, like, the Tony Saseries or Old Bay Seasoning that we flavor our own stuff with. Like, you can still say “Oh, this is a Dead Coats song, but it’s funky this time, or this one’s got some Motley Cru!” It’s just about how we cook it each time.

Lauren: I think it’s because we get bored so easily. I don’t want to scream the whole set. I love mixing it up, having a mellow one in the middle there where I’m actually, y’know singing singing.

Jake: Moving on to the scene. On the song “Nice,” Lauren, you talk about being a front-woman, and how it’s hard to get taken seriously by, of all people, the guy’s working the venue. Do you think that’s more or less of an issue in the punk scene than in others?

Lauren: I can’t say if the punk scene, specifically, is better or worse, but it’s true as a woman in any genre. We’ve all had experiences. You show up to a show, you’re carrying gear, you’re with everyone else and you get stopped by the door guy, asking, “Hey, you have to pay to get in.” And it’s like “I’m in the band, dude. That’s me on the poster for the show.” That’s what I’m talking about on “Nice.” But the scene is full of people who want to give spots to men and male-dominated bands. I do some booking, and I try to always book bands with female members, at least, but when I see how other people do it, it’s almost always an entire card of all-guy bands, or a female band opening for men.

Jake: What Austin venue do you guys miss playing the most?

Josh: Mohawk (@mohawkaustin).

Lauren: Yeah I think Mohawk is probably my favorite.

Joe: And Kick Butt Coffee (@kickbuttcoffee). The sound is always great there, and we’ve played there so much, now. It feels like home.

Lauren: They’ll let us do whatever we want there, too, which is just a great feeling. That’s where I got to come out of the body bag.

Josh: On a semi-related note, I asked everyone in that crowd of like 150 people to raise their hand if they had health insurance, you know, just like bantering. I think I saw four hands.

Jake: That’s depressing.

Josh: You’re telling me.

Jake: Speaking of the virus, how has being separated from the performing world affected you, creatively? Are you finding any new frustrations to let out through your music?

Joe: Can I just say, It’s been weird since some of us work, some don't, and everyone’s sleep schedule is fucked. I feel like the only interactions I have with people are at the ass-end of night like this. And I live with four people.

Lauren: I’ve taken the time to focus on details I generally like to avoid. Managerial shit. Planning out an album release, a music video, when we want to tour, so I’ve taken on more of that role recently. But I’ve also found more time to practice guitar, myself, which is great because I’m actually writing more of my own songs. Usually Joe or Josh will come in to practice with a riff and we’ll just sort of work it out until it’s a full song and we all have our part, but I feel like we’ve all been sort of taking a step back from that recently. 

Joe: For The Dead Coats, in the past it’s always been, if you’re gonna bring something to the table, bring something heavy. Bring something that punches you in the face and tells your mother her son’s a loser.

Josh: Yeah, like I love the blues and sometimes I would bring in a blues riff I’d been working on and pretty much everyone would say, “Nah.” But this is the time when we can all take our guitars off separately and come up with more of whatever we want.

Lauren: Yeah, and, like, the stuff I make individually on my acoustic wouldn’t fit with this band. But everything we do on our own makes the band stronger.

Jake: And what are The Dead Coats going to sound like, coming out of this?

Lauren: It’ll still be us, but maybe with a new spin. I’ve been experimenting with some classic metal, some more funk.

Joe: This is a second fresh start for us. First time was with the new drummer, Faith, and now coming out of all of this. It’s just a new opportunity to keep changing. 

Lauren: We’re about to record a music video for our new single “HeadSpent.” We have a whole new album we’re trying to get recorded. We had a tour planned for August, but we’re pushing that back. I mean, really, none of us are looking at this as anything more than a bump in the road.

Joe: We can’t be stopped. We’re like the thing you threw away that keeps crawling back. 

Check out The Dead Coats on bandcamp and Instagram (@thedeadcoats). Watch video of The Dead Coats live at Kick Butt Coffee on New Year's Eve 2019 and check out their 2017 music video, “Callus.”

Written by Jake Webber for concept animals.