The Source Staff

A whole lotta knobs and a whole lotta dreads.By the time I wrap up my interview with Heavyweight Dub Champion's
Resurrector - my second in two and a half years - I'm a little worn
out. And a little curious, as well as a bit angry and slightly inspired.

I'm
not pissed off or inspired necessarily by Resurrector or his band or
its elaborately constructed new record, Rise of the Champion Nation,
but just generally overwhelmed by the sociology lesson I've just
absorbed and further curious about some simple things Resurrector has
told me about how the world works, including, but not limited to the
swine flu hysteria of 2009. Remember that? Roll back your Twitter log a
few weeks and you'll find it there in your friend's then supposedly
reasonable fears of collapsing in the streets along with the rest of
humanity.
As HDC's producer and ringleader, Resurrector (real
name: Grant Chambers) enjoys discussing the San Francisco collective,
which sounds something like hip-hop colliding with dub inside the eye
of an electronica hurricane, and its philosophy as much as it is music.
The overarching idea: "To lift the veil of perception." HDC is all
about conveying an ultimate message, and not in the way that Michael
Franti is trying to deliver a message. In fact, HDC's devotion to its
message makes Franti seem as trivial as Katy Perry and her penchant for
same-sex kissing.

We agree, that is pretty badass.The first thing anyone probably hears about Port Angeles, Washington's
The Lonely H is that they're a "classic rock band." This is a problem.
First off, the oldest member of the band is 22 years old and secondly,
the band plays its own songs, not classic rock - whatever in the hell
that means these days.

Mark Fredson, the band's shaggy haired front
man, is six-foot-seven, 20 years old and wears vintage jeans and cowboy
boots. He sports a voice that's as dynamic as Chris Robinson and as
sassy as the Hold Steady's Craig Finn - and those are just the
contemporary comparisons. There are probably plenty of other singers
from the annals of classic rock radio one could throw up against
Fredson, but we won't do that here.
That's because The Lonely H is not a classic rock band. And that's a statement Fredson can get onboard with.
"It
is confusing because classic rock, by definition, is old. It's from the
'70s or '60s. We're not a throwback band and we're not imitating those
bands," says Fredson, who later admits in the interview that he's a big
Eagles fan, something he becomes defensive about without any prodding.