Interview: New York City Ska Phenoms Mephiskapheles Aim to Energize Askew
Ever since their start in New York City during the early ’90s, Mephiskapheles have consistently stood out from the counterparts in the ska realm. This is due to their use of satanic themes in a non-serious sense while embracing satire and allegory in their lyrics. They also have a contagious sound that makes this approach very accessible to listeners. On June 16th, folks around Providence will be able to experience this for themselves when the band takes the stage at Askew on 150 Chestnut Street. Local reggae act The Sunshine Melodies and Colorado reggae punks Last Reel Hero are going to be opening up the evening starting at 7pm.
I had a talk ahead of the show with frontman Andre A. Worrell and trombonist Greg Robinson about Mephiskapheles’ approach to music, what they each were doing before joining up with the band and a new album that’s in the works.
As the band’s name suggests, the music of Mephiskapheles incorporates playfully satanic lyrics, so what initially inspired this? Was it some of the themes that are intertwined with heavy metal music, and you wanted to put it towards ska, or was it something else?
Andre A. Worrell: There was definitely some of that for sure, it’s something that we’ve always had an interest in and it’s just a great topic. It’s something that put us in a separate category, I guess. We like metal, rock & roll and that stuff, so for us it made sense.
Greg Robinson: I want to add that when I joined the band six months in, the concept was already formed and what I got out of it was that it was a satirical device inspired by metal and the “Satanic Panic” of the late ’80s. We mainly use it as a literary device to be critical of things from a different angle. It allows us to use allegory and stuff in a way that other bands can’t necessarily do.
AAW: Or they shy away from it.
GR: Yeah. It’s a creative jumping off point essentially.
Do you feel that the satire and allegory you just mentioned correlates well with the upbeat nature of ska music even though you’re using these satanic themes?
GR: I’ll stop you right there because the upbeat nature of ska music is a modern thing. If you listen to The Skatalites, more than half their songs are in a minor key and most are mid-tempo. The modern sound really comes out of The Toasters largely and the two-tone movement while being known for this kind of peppy music. Certainly, we’re among the peppiest of them all. If you’ve heard us live, we play very fast and we’re a high-energy band, so I don’t think it clashes with that at all.
It’s two separate aspects of the same thing.
Ok, that makes sense. You mentioned earlier Greg how you joined up with the band six months into their existence and that was during the same year for the both of you in 1991. What were you guys doing with music before that time? Were you doing similar stuff with other bands beforehand or were you doing something completely different musically?
AAW: I wasn’t doing anything with music, just with art mostly. I got invited down to a rehearsal, we all really clicked and that was it.
GR: On my end I was classically trained as a trombone player in Cleveland where I grew up. I came to New York for college, I got involved with a jazz band and I eventually got turned onto Mephiskapheles. Our bassist Mike Bitz joined later from the same jazz band connection, but before that, I started freelancing downtown and played in a ska band called City Beat for a little while, so that was my intro to the scene. I had a garage rock band that I was in as well.
Sounds like you were doing a lot of different stuff.
Yeah, I’ve been a musician since I was young. I was actually recently at my mother’s house, and I found the first ever written notice of me ever playing rock & roll, which was when I was in sixth grade. I had a group and we played two nights at a PTA benefit. (laughs) I found the write-up and I don’t remember what we played, but it was two nights.
That’s awesome. You have this show coming up at Askew on Sunday, so what are your thoughts on coming back to Providence?
GR: We’ve been coming to Providence since the beginning, since the Church House Inn and Club Babyhead days. We’re a little sporadic in when we go where and a lot of that is because of the logistics of our other dates. We tend to stay within a closer radius to New York than we used to, so you’d think we’d play a place like Providence more and we play as often as we can.
AAW: Yeah, we used to play a lot of different places in the Northeast a lot, but it’s just a different time now. We want to play wherever and whenever with whoever.
GR: We are available for the right price.
AAW: We don’t shy away or stay away because of we don’t like a certain place.
GR: Not at all, especially with Providence because that city has always been good to us.
I totally get that with the logistics of gas prices and everything being more expensive. It’s effecting a lot of touring bands.
GR: Hotels are triple what they used to be, tolls have gone up and there are more tolls than before. It’s really a struggle to do it at this level, you have to try to level up every chance you get.
AAW: A lot of places have also closed. There are a lot of clubs that are not around anymore.
GR: That’s absolutely true and it’s particularly the case in the middle of the country where it used to be a snap to do four weeks and go across the country while playing a lot of Midwestern and Western states. Now it’s a lot more difficult to make that happen.
I’ve heard about that. It’s been a few years since Mephiskapheles put out a studio album, so are there any plans later this year to do another record?
GR: We’re doing that now, actually. We have a new album that’s almost fully recorded, and we just worked on it again in the studio the other day. We went down to Muscle Shoals, Alabama to the Sound Studio there and it was a happenstance kind of thing where were on tour with a band, they ended up dropping off and we lost some gigs. We happened to be in the area, so we called them up and we went in to knock out a bunch of songs.
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