Dave-O (Night Court)
SPB" You just released your third record in the last four years. How do you know when it’s “time” to record and release a new full-length?
Dave-O: Well, technically $HIT MACHINE is our fourth album in four years - although Nervous Birds One and Too are being re-released as one LP next year so I guess that sorta makes us both right!
As for the question of timing, it really comes down to everybody's favourite subject: logistics!! When Jiffy and I started bandying around the idea of Night Court, we knew we wanted to write cool little songs but we also wanted to write A LOT of cool little songs. Being prolific was always sorta part of the plan, so we usually have a decent stockpile of demos at any one time. Then it comes down to finding the time to learn and record them between tours.
So, for example, we just released $HIT MACHINE and are touring the west coast Nov.-Dec. When that's done, we're gonna learn as many new songs as we can before we tour back down to Astoria, Oregon in February to record another batch of songs with Mike Vasquez (produced/engineered Toys That Kill, Gaslight Anthem, The Dumpies, etc. This will actually be our first time working with a “real” producer/engineer). The amount of songs we manage to record will dictate what kind of release(s) we'll end up doing (we actually have two leftover songs from the $HIT MACHINE sessions and one from the Frater Set session that are currently being mixed by Jeff Burke (Marked Men, Radioactivity) but we’re still figuring out what to do with them…so it goes when you have a lot of songs! Anyhoo, subsequent $HIT MACHINE tours will keep us pretty busy for most of 2025 (along with previously mentioned NB1+2 re-release) and releases take a while to put together, so taking advantage of whatever “downtime” we can scrounge together for writing and recording allows us to always have something coming down the pipe.
