Tyler Norton (Lead Vocals, Guitar)
Jeremy Rezz (Guitar, Vocals)
Brian Eberts (Bass, Vocals)
Billy Eberts (Drums, Vocals)
Thank you — yeah, we borrowed the name from Scooby Doo. As you may know, at the end of most episodes the villain usually says, “And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for those meddling kids.” I always thought that was such a classic line. Plus, we’re a fun rock-n-roll band and we really wanted the name to reflect that.
Jeremy, Brian and I started playing together back in high school. Jeremy had played with Tyler previous to that in another project. We all went our separate ways in different bands and then said, “Hey, we all have the same influences and we’ve been friends for years, let’s put something together.” The rest is history, as they say.
We’re all fans of bands like KISS and Cheap Trick that put on as much of a visual show as they do musically. Throughout the 1990’s, it seemed like every band out there prided themselves in being the “anti-rock star.” Staring at their feet, no interaction whatsoever with the crowd. I’ve always said, if a band isn’t going to be entertaining live, the audience might as well sit home and listen to the album. We know especially today how tough it is for bands to get people out to shows when you’re competing with computers, YouTube, satellite tv, etc. We give people a reason to come out and see us.
I think so. Sometimes there really isn’t that much of a difference between genres, other than that one band may be playing Les Pauls through Marshall amps and the other band is playing with the keyboards more up-front.
That kind of goes back to the previous question. A lot of times people hear that a band is melodic and they automatically think that it’s going to be real light, limp-wristed stuff. We take melodies that probably could be used in a more pop-type atmosphere and put an AC/DC guitar tone to it and then you basically get The Meddling Kids sound.
We finally got it out this past November after going back and forth with some labels. We actually started recording it over a year ago, and then realized we had to remix it to get it up to our standards. We hooked up with a small indie label, Mister Cat Records, who put it out for us and basically let us be in control of things rather then having to answer to someone. I really love every song on it and think it turned out great. I’d say a few of the standout tracks would be “Let Her Go,” which is a straight-ahead rocker with a Cheap Trick/Ramones feel to it…“Goodbye” is another great tune that someone commented on to me by saying, “It has more hooks than a tackle box”… “It’s Over” is a crowd-participation favorite as well.
We’ve been very pleased. We’ve received a lot of really nice press and a lot of radio play, both on commercial radio stations as well as college and internet radio. We’ve been selling a lot of copies on cdbaby.com all over the world. It’s almost overwhelming when you see that people in Australia are buying the cd that we wrote in my basement!
That’s coming out on FastLane Records. They got in touch and asked if we wanted to be a part of it and we said sure. We had toyed with the idea of doing that song live anyway, so we figured, let’s go in the studio for a night and knock it out. As far as our version, we slightly changed the arrangement a little bit, beefed it up a little to give it a modern edge, but tried to keep the song intact so Springfield fans will dig it. Sort of like when Van Halen covered “You Really Got Me” by The Kinks. I guess it sort of sounds like Rick Springfield on steroids.
That’s a tough one, because all the bands we play with and the shows we do are cool in different ways. The Blues Traveler show we did this past summer was really a special show for the four of us. We did it acoustic which isn’t something we do that often. It was at a sold-out club that holds about 1,200 people, and there must have been 1,500 there! It was totally crazy — we stepped out on stage and the place went crazy. Playing with Warrant and KISS and Motley Crue was cool in the fact that those are bands that as kids we looked up to, and to share a stage with them and hang out and actually have them tell us that they loved the show is an awesome feeling.
This past weekend, we did a special show with Chip Z’Nuff from the legendary Chicago powerpop band Enuff Z’Nuff. Chip came into town for my wife’s birthday and we played a whole set of Enuff Z’Nuff with Chip on bass, which was awesome. The four of us are huge fans, to say the least, and that was a blast and really an honor.
Probably bands like KISS and Aerosmith, just for the fact that there’s a guaranteed sellout crowd every night! Butch Walker, who was in The Marvelous 3 and other bands, would be very cool too. (Butch give us a call!!)
We’d just like to thank everyone for their support, and you haven’t heard the last from us! We hope to see everyone out on the road soon. Feel free to stop by our MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/themeddlingkidsrock and drop us a line. Our official website is http://www.themeddlingkids.com and our cd can be purchased at http://www.cdbaby.com/meddlingkids.
We have some out-of-town shows in the works and we’re going to keep pushing the radio market and see what we can do. We have another album that is already written that we may start working on later in the year. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for checking us out. Happy New Year and we’ll see you soon!
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The Meddling Kids Official Website
The Meddling Kids on MySpace
