J Mascis Moonlights With Witch

02/19/09 3:17pm

by Dan "The Mouth" Lovranski (CHARTattack)

Although Witch bandmates J Mascis and Dave Sweetapple have known each other for many years, their friendship isn't quite as legendary as the press releases make it out to be.

"If you look up the Witch bio online, it's always prefaced with 'longtime friends,'" says Sweetapple with a laugh.

"When I first moved to Boston in '91, I started working for a management company working with a band that J had produced the first two records for: Buffalo Tom.

"We got to know each other, but he was living in New York then. Around 2001, we both got fed up with living in the city, and I moved to Vermont about the same time that J had moved from New York City back to where he grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts."

The two men often ran into each other at shows in the small, close-knit music community that is Deerfield Valley, Vt.

"It's a weird little scene that is a bunch of small towns that all feel like one," says the bass-playing Sweetapple. "Witch will do a show and you'll see certain people.

"Yet if there's a noise show, you'll see all the same people at that show. Stuff that is supposed to be intellectual or whatever, it doesn't really matter. There's no boundaries. It's such a small scene where all the different styles of music are represented."

But all wasn't well within this community. Both Sweetapple and Mascis noticed a tendency towards kids not truly rocking out like they should.

"The singer in Witch, Kyle [Thomas], was in this other band called Feathers, which was kind of like Fairport Convention with eight kids doing stuff with guitars and lutes and singing in high-pitched voices," explains Sweetapple.

"J and I used to go to these shows and go, 'What the fuck is wrong with people this age? God, when I was this age, I was just looking to get out in the pit somewhere and thrash. These kids are not rocking.'

"We just said, 'Why don't we form another band and do something?'

"I mentioned it to Kyle and Asa [Irons, guitarist], who were both in Feathers. They said, 'Fuck man, we'll do it.'"

Witch were born, and they've taken up their challenge with gusto — first on 2006's self-titled debut and then on last year's Paralyzed. They combine stoner rock sludge with some good old, tried and true punk attitude and intensity. Witch sound great if you're high, but they're not going to leave you staring at the insides of your eyelids.

Mascis has returned to playing his first instrument, drums, with Witch.

"He's pretty much done everything he can do with a guitar in Dinosaur Jr.", says Sweetapple. "It didn't make much sense for him to go in that direction.

"Besides that, the guy is nuts. He's got 10 drum kits in his house and looking for a reason to play them."

As Witch prepare to head off on a tour that begins in Toronto on Friday, Sweetapple remembers his time living in Canada's easternmost province in his formative years.

"I was born in New York, but my parents were from Newfoundland, and when I was eight years old, we moved back there. I saw my first concert at the St. John's Memorial Stadium. It was April Wine, and it totally fucking rocked."

Sweetapple's love of Canadian rock has also inspired him to help form another project that involves Mascis, Pink Mountaintops' Keith Parry and Black Mountain's Stephen McBean and Jeremy Schmidt.

"We're going to do Canadian rock songs from '69 to '78, hopefully sometime between now and August," says an enthusiastic Sweetapple. "It was all inspired by bands like Moxy, April Wine, BTO and 'Roxy Roller' by Sweeney Todd.

"I just love that song, and if you mention it down here, nobody knows it. In fact, somebody said to me we should call the band Roxy Rollers, but I said, 'How about Moxy Roller?'"

Let's just hope they can make up for Big Sugar's abysmal cover of BTO's "Let It Ride."

Here are Witch's dates:

Feb. 20 Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern w/Earthless
Feb. 21 Montreal, ON @ Les Saints w/Earthless
Feb. 22 Providence, RI @ AS220 w/Earthless
Feb. 23 Boston, MA @ T.T. The Bear's Place w/Earthless
Feb. 24 Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda's w/Earthless
Feb. 25 Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall Of Williamsburg w/Earthless
Feb. 26 Washington, DC @ DC9 w/Earthless
Feb. 27 Asbury Park, NJ @ Asbury Lanes w/Earthless
Feb. 28 Baltimore, MD @ Ottobar w/Earthless
March 13 Edmonton, AB @ New City