CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Derek Wycoff as the bassist of Naked Gods. Wycoff is the band’s drummer. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for the error.
When it comes to music, the Appalachian Mountains are known for their folk and bluegrass traditions. But then there’s Boone outfit Naked Gods, whose catchy rock tunes are nothing of the sort.
This weekend, the band will tour around North Carolina, hitting Boone, Charlotte and Raleigh with fellow North Carolinians Some Army and Schooner. Diversions Editor Allison Hussey talked with drummer Derek Wycoff about the band’s beginnings and the new songs it has in the works.
Diversions: You guys have kind of been around for a few years now, but how did Naked Gods come together?
Derek Wycoff: Well, we all live in Boone, we all live in the same town. A few of us grew up in a smaller town than Boone, and it kind of just slowly started to migrate to Boone. We all ended up meeting here and having similar interest in music, and we just started playing together.
It was sort of like bands before this having the same members, and then those bands kind of falling apart and then reforming. We were all just friends to begin with, and it just sort of grew out of that.
Dive: Where did the name Naked Gods come from?
DW: There’s no real place of origin for it. It was just sort of like a working name that we had had when we were kind of a more acoustic-type band. We wrote more rootsier sort of music that sounds a lot different from what we’re doing now.
But it was just something that our singer, Seth (Sullivan), had come up with, and it just kind of stuck. It has no real significance.
Dive: What do you have planned after this mini North Carolina tour?
DW: Well, we’re going to be doing some recording. Our record, No Jams, came out October of last year, so we’ve just been playing shows around the state and doing a few little mini tours. We’ve got, like, four or five songs in the works, and hopefully some we’re going to be playing this weekend.
We’re going to try and record those and have something out by spring, hopefully.
Dive: Are you thinking more of an EP, or are you shooting for a full-length?
DW: I think we’re going to shoot for a full-length record. We had talked about doing an EP just to kind of get our bearings and try out some new songs, but the songwriting process is going a lot quicker than we thought, which is a really cool thing, and a really good thing and kind of rare within our band.
It’s going a lot quicker than we thought, so we wanted to just kind of push ourselves to go ahead and make another record, I think.
Dive: How are these songs different?
DW: I think that they explore some of the same territory. The songs currently that we’re working on are sort of more louder and dynamic songs in the vein of some of the stuff on No Jams.
But there’s also a few things that we’ve demoed that are a little bit quieter and might just be album songs, like, stuff we don’t really play live. So I’d say there’s a good sort of array of different songs — song structures and song types that are similar to No Jams but that explore little tangents that that record introduced.
To get the day's news and headlines in your inbox each morning, sign up for our email newsletters.
