She & The Detectives is a brand-new band of students brought together in a rock class last year. The band plays its fourth show ever Sunday at Local 506. Staff writer Kelly Cook talked to the guys about its experiences so far.
DIVERSIONS: At your first gig at He’s Not Here, you mentioned that you had only been together for a week. How did the group get together so quickly?
JEFF HYMES: It all started in Rock Lab.
CAMERON COOK: Yeah, I would say Rock Lab. Spring 2012.
JH: There was this class at UNC called Rock Lab, and Dr. Brackett taught a class, just like a jazz class, except it was for rock musicians. All of us were in that class and that’s how we met. We kind of developed a mutual respect for each other and in early fall we started to discuss playing together.
CC: We all really just came together, it was kind of Carson’s idea, and he brought us together with the idea of playing and then suddenly the He’s Not Here gig came up and we through a couple tunes together.
DIVE: Do you have a lot of your own material yet?
JH: We’re in the process of writing our own material. Carson had a bunch of songs that he already wrote that he brought to the table.
DIVE: Do you have plans for an album soon?
JH: We actually started tracking for the album last week. Carson is the co-director of Vinyl Records on campus, so that’s very convenient too. He has access to a full-fledged recording studio and he has the skills to do the engineering for it, so we’ve started tracking drums for our first album.
CC: Right now it’s just a single, one of Carson’s songs in the works. It’ll be cool to have our own original out.
DIVE: How many shows have you played total?
JH: We played one more Battle of the Bands at He’s Not Here about two weeks after the first one.
CC: We also played a house party Friday night.
CARSON MCKEE: It was a fun little gig.
CC: So only three so far.
DIVE: How has the reception been so far?
CC: I think they dig us. I think people are excited. We have kind of a different style in terms of how we approach playing. We try to arrange the songs a little bit more so there’s this tightness, or, you know, arranged aspect to our music that people aren’t used to hearing.
JH: All of us have some degree of academic background in music so that really helps, like having the skills that establishes a language we can use.
CM: We definitely try to operate, ideally, as a band. It’s not just one guy who wrote some songs. You’re in a band because you want to interact with people who have different talents and can bring something different to what you’re doing. That’s sort of the whole point and that’s what we try to do.
DIVE: Is playing with the band something you look forward to everyday?
CC: I definitely look forward to it. There have been days where it’s like a really long Thursday, but then I’m like it’s band practice time, let’s go! It’s definitely a really refreshing thing to play with these really talented musicians.
diversions@dailytarheel.com
To get the day's news and headlines in your inbox each morning, sign up for our email newsletters.
