When singer Kelvin Swaby and the rest of The Heavy set foot on stage and begin playing, there's a special sense of magic that comes from the band's sound and energetic style, a tightrope-walking juggernaut suspended between music's boundaries.
There's good reason for that as the band works like a blender of music styles, with a mix of pop, rock, reggae, funk, hip-hop breaks and soul. With two studio albums, "Great Vengeance and Furious Fire" and "The House that Dirt Built," the band channels a wide range of influences into a raw, passionate sound that both evokes ghosts of old and finds a fresh new balance in the blend of styles.
While their ascent from the small English town of Noid to fame didn't happen overnight, the hit song "How You Like Me Now" has done wonders in bringing wider attention. After performing the song on "Late Night with David Letterman" The Heavy was asked to play an encore. The song was quickly picked up by all forms of media starting with Nokia's Super Bowl commercial.
After tearing up the Summerfest stage this summer with that kind of fiery energy on a hot sticky night, the band returns to Milwaukee Sunday for a show at Turner Hall Ballroom, with special guest Wallpaper opening.
Channeling many influences
Swaby, the soulful and charismatic frontman, is joined by guitarist Dan Taylor, drummer Chris Ellul and bassist Spencer Page. There's no question that these four musicians are about getting a great -- meaning raw and emotional --performance of the songs even if there's some imperfections in it.
"When we make mistakes they're like happy mistakes," says Swaby. "If it has a vibe then it has a vibe. We really love music that's been recorded a lot of the time in one take. There are plenty of mistakes but it's about the vibe. If you capture that you're generally a winner."
The wide stockpile of influences that each band member brings to the table is a product of the era they grew up and the music surrounded environments they grew up in.
Swaby, one of eleven children, says he was born at the right time. It was a time when there had been an explosion of great rock and roll from the 1950s and '60s; blues, rock steady, ska, reggae (which started a few years before he was born) and all kinds of soul music was firing out strong outputs.
"There was so much amazing music coming out," Swaby recalls. "And all that was getting played at my house in different rooms and that influenced how I appreciate it. For me I never saw any genre because good music is good music, right? You can categorize it but good music is good music."
Likewise for Taylor, a longtime friend who Swaby met and formed the foundation for the band, his father was an avid blues and jazz fan and Beatles and rock-and-roll music was readily accessible to him.
When the two met up and swapped influences, it didn't take long for a new and exciting sonic creature to be created.
"We crossed paths on so many influences that it was pretty natural when we actually started writing stuff together," says Swaby. "We're like 'Why don't we take that beat, put that guitar riff with that and combine it with these horns and see what that sounds like.'
"It sounds ridiculous, but it's amazing. We just took three genres of music together and they sound great. From there it was our acceptance to blend in music than the musical styles."
Shortly after, they quickly found like-minded people to join that understood the scope the two wanted to achieve. From the beginning, the band has been about the performance and the majority of The Heavy's two albums were recorded in the two friends' houses, resulting in a dirty, raw sound. Swaby says that perfection is overrated as it's all about getting a performance.
"It's about understanding when something's right," says Swaby. "Now in popular music you have so many artists that are batting around a song until they believe it sounds perfect while it might have been good as soon as they recorded it and all it needed was a little mix. People tend to over-elaborate these days."
With a healthy dose of good chemistry between the members, getting the right vibe comes easily for the band.
"We really channel into each other," says Swaby. "We've been playing together for a long time that everyone knows by a phrase or a rise of an eyebrow what road we're going to be going down."
When it comes to making an album, the songs that make it up comes together like a movie soundtrack, but is far from scripted how each song comes together. In fact, their album "The House That Dirt Built" started off as being a Western.
Whatever style they do, they feel fortunate to have a label that supports them 100 percent.
"I got a call from Dan that Ninja wanted us to send more songs," says Swaby. "So we sent them the album and instantly they were like we have to sign this and they said 'We don't want you to change a thing about the recording, can we put it out as is?' That's when we realized we were with a good crew."
Like their uncountable influences, there are far too many processes how they go about writing the songs. The driving force is the vibe and sometimes it can start with Swaby and some melody or Taylor playing around in soundcheck or with Ellul coming up with the beat or it can also be a result of Swaby sampling a beat.
"(The song) "Oh No, Not You Again" came from Spencer playing this bass line over and over," said Swaby, as an example. "I wrote the lyrics to the song that evening and we went to rehearsal the next day and wrote 'Oh No, Not You Again.' So it can be that easy."
Success and the future
When "How You Like Me Now" made waves following the Kia commercial, Swaby says he was surprised but definitely knew it was a standout track.
"(When) you've been playing the song a year to a year-and-a-half and you get to know exactly how you want to play it," says Swaby. "We've been tearing up audiences for a little while now so it's great that we had the opportunity to display, whether it be on TV or even finished on the album, it seemed to be well-received. We always knew it was a good song and that people were going to like it, but not like it is now."
Swaby is quick to point out that the group has been playing and touring for many years so the rise in worldwide popularity is more a result of "people synchronizing our music to TV or for ads so it's been quick for people to recognize when they see or hear the song."
"There's a look upon people's faces sometimes when we go play and they go 'Oh, it's those guys who play this,'" says Swaby. "It's nice that people are able to put faces to the music now."
The band's latest EP, "How You Like Me Now" features that track and reworkings of some of selections from the past two albums. It also features contributions from the Dap Kings, who the band toured with earlier this year.
"We went on tour with them earlier this year and it was really cool," says Swaby. "So you build friendships. On those couple of tracks they enjoyed playing on "How You Like Me Now" and they did "Colleen" with us as well; they enjoyed that one as well just because of the hip hop feel of it."
Their work together sets the framework for collaborating again on The Heavy's next studio album.
"We have dozens and dozens of horn ideas. People talk about us sampling. There wasn't a sample on "The House That Dirt Built" and there won't be ones on the next one," says Swaby. "I'm looking forward to working with them because they will bring something else to the table because they are incredible musicians. We've seen them when we toured with them and played with them and it's just ridiculous."
Swaby adds that the new album will be sparser but it's going to be really tough. There will be the same raw and dirty philosophy but this time Swaby says there will be a lot of gospel influence.
"It's a progression," says Swaby. "From where I stood to what I was listening to on the bus last night it can only be a progression. It really can only be."
Whereas they made the first two albums mostly between Swaby and Taylor's houses (the last finished off in a studio in Bristol), the next one will be recorded at a new space as the band has a lot more equipment now.
"I'm really looking forward to that environment, it should really cool," says Swaby. "It's going to be a little different because it's Dan and his girlfriend and us working around time so it's going to be quite interesting. But it's always quite comfortable."
Following shows around the world, the band hopes to use their free time to get started putting together the album. Currently Swaby hopes to have the album finished by April or May and that they have all the songs and it's a matter of getting gear together and recording.
Swaby says he can't wait to tear up the stage in Milwaukee and says people should expect to get something unique.
"I remember when people would go to shows and it would be an experience," says Swaby. "There are so many artists out there that think just because you have the music you can stand behind the microphone. We can't do that with our influences. The live experience is something you'll only experience with us."
