With their first album out, and new material on the way, Heat Preacher is keepin’ on the forward momentum groove train despite the current pandemic. The band, which formed in Chapel Hill, released its first album this year — “Before We Expire.”
“There’s songs that some of us love and the others don’t like, that I still force my bandmates to play,” Nick Stroud — the lead guitarist and arranger, as well as producer of the songs — said with a laugh in a recent phone interview.
According to Stroud, his bandmate JD Rust is the primary songwriter who brings Stroud sketches of ideas, hooks and pieces of what will eventually become fully-fledged songs. Stroud will take that, work on it a bit, and then the other bandmates will come in and they’ll finish the song together.
“Before We Expire” is a collection of the first batch of songs Heat Preacher “really wrote together,” according to Stroud. Some of them came from Rust, some the band wrote as a group and one was written by Stroud alone.
“And so it’s kind of this mish-mosh of stylistic differences between song to song,” said Stroud. “I think the newer batch of songs [h]as a much better blend of all of our influences and how we play together.”
Stroud himself loves most of the songs on the album, although he still thinks Heat Preacher could re-record and put them back out if the band desired to.
Rob DiMauro, the drummer of Heat Preacher and occasional co-producer, considers himself to be the a founding member of the band and is overflowing with positivity for the album.
Saying that he’s “so proud of ‘Before We Expire’” in a phone interview, DiMauro has played in what he referred to as “a handful of bands” and recorded a few albums before this one. According to him, “Before We Expire” is a recording that “just stands above them all.”
This year has brought challenges for us all, not least of which for entertainment business types. Despite the celebration surrounding a new album being out, the pandemic has directly resulted in change for Heat Preacher.
In fact, Stroud thinks that for three quarters of the band, COVID-19 has affected their livelihoods. Like many other musicians, Stroud’s livelihood isn’t solely dependent upon sound creation. He has been a bar and music venue business owner for seven years. Before COVID hit, all of his businesses were, to use his words,“doing really well” until they were all forced to close – a state they’ve been in since March 17.
DiMauro, whose primary job is as a gigging musician, hasn’t been able to play shows since March, according to Stroud. Bandmates DiMauro and Hugh Swaso are actually in one of the most popular wedding/cover bands in the Triangle area – and before COVID, they were “playing out every other weekend or so.”
Uncertain times aside, the band is forward bound. Folks should keep their ears peeled for new material and another exciting prospect. When asked the next time he’d like to release an album by, Stroud said that the process behind recording “never goes as fast as you think.”
“Especially with COVID, deadlines are kind of a … time is collapsing on itself for musicians,” Stroud said. “The owner of Warrior Sound in Chapel Hill is building a brand new studio in Carrboro … he’s building, like, a super-pro from-scratch ground-up studio in Carrboro. So,when he’s finished with that, we’re going to book time with him. And, of course, things keep getting pushed back for him too so we’re hoping, beginning of next year optimistically.”
Writer and artist Miles Bates became infatuated with the arts at an early age. A former student of The Kubert School, a sequential art school in Dover, N.J., his entertainment loves include television, film, video games, books and comic books. Since having been introduced to Metallica in middle school, music has remained a key conversation starter and puzzle piece in his life. His joy is to expose others to all things art related, particularly music.
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