“There’s something that felt special about it for sure in the sense that me and Zack met when I was singing on my porch, and he was riding by my house on his bicycle and just stopped in his tracks,” he says via phone from his New Orleans home, where he had just passed a physical exam in preparation for a lengthy summer tour that brings the Revivalists to Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica on Sunday, Aug. 6. “There have also been other things that make it seem like the universe was whispering in my ear.”
When the band formed in New Orleans back in 2007, the city was still struggling to recover in the wake of Katrina, but Shaw says that meant that artists with limited income could matriculate into town.
“The city was still kind of fucked up, for lack of a better word,” he says. “There’s always an incredible music scene in New Orleans, and that was a time when people came together and rallied around the music. That’s just what we do here. Katrina was devastating, but it put the spotlight back on New Orleans and the things that were happening. Not a lot of people thought, ‘I’m going to go live in that place that’s 20 feet below sea level and just flooded.’ For somebody like me, who was working construction, I could get a job, and I knew the scene was incredible. It felt like a great place to start a career, and I got really lucky in that sense.”
Early on, the band hit the road and toured steadily in the attempt to make a name for itself outside of the Crescent City. Those days were tough.
“We started touring in 2010 nationally, and we were just going to places where we were all from,” says Shaw. “We did ‘transplant tours’. We would go to Ohio and New York and Connecticut and Virginia. We would sleep on our friends’ couches.”
The band would breakthrough with 2015’s Men Amongst Mountains, which featured the infectious single “Wish I Knew You,” a song that shows off Shaw’s supple, soulful voice. The band has recorded and steadily ever since, though the pandemic threw a wrench into the operation. The group used the downtime to write songs for its latest album, Pour It Out into the Night.
“For me, when the pandemic hit, I had a bit of a creative explosion,” says Shaw. “We were able to get off the road, and I could just sit with my thoughts. Anytime you can hug the cactus, as they say, it’s a good thing. We got off the road and had a creative explosion and a lot of the songs started budding up. We had thoughts about what if we couldn’t continue as a touring band. Some of the songs needed to be anthems for hope. They also reflected a new perspective about not taking anything for granted and living in the moment and finding the spirit of now right here and right now. That was central to a lot of the songs. The album is very cathartic.”
The title track, a song that commences with shimmering guitars and soft vocals as it takes on a psychedelic rock vibe, came about during the height of the pandemic. Shaw would wake up in the middle of the night with terrible anxiety. The only way he could feel good was to go into his studio and start singing.
“That line just popped out,” he says of the tune’s refrain. “While I was doing that, I realized I was ‘pouring it out into the night.’”
The group recruited Grammy-winning producer Rich Costey (Muse, Foster the People, Death Cab for Cutie) to handle production duties, and he brings a true immediacy to the tunes.
“We were looking at producers and what we wanted the album to sound like, and [Costey] has produced some of our favorite artists,” says Shaw. “He’s a killer engineer. We talked to a few different people, and we felt like he got us. He understood that we didn’t want someone coming in and imprinting his sound on us. We wanted someone to come in and understand who we are and make it all sound good — mix it well, make it real, keep it raw. That’s what he did, and that’s what we did.”
The group recorded in Vermont in the dead of winter, and Shaw says he found the frigid weather to be inspiring.
“To many people would sound terrible, but it was this really enchanting walk to the studio through the woods for like a mile,” Shaw says. “It was incredible — nature was a big part of the process and being in that vibe was very calming. When you are connected to that kind of thing, it feels important and just really good.”
As much as many of the album’s songs feature the kind of invigorating pop/soul/rock mix for which the band is known, “Down in the Dirt” comes off as a rather dark and somber ballad that’s like something Johnny Cash might’ve sung.
“I have to give all the credit to Zack on that one,” says Shaw. “He pretty much penned that one. I think I had one word in there. I can’t take any credit. It’s one of the best songs he’s ever written. It’s a really, really special song. As soon as he showed it to us, we knew it. It’s interesting because it brings out a different texture in my voice because of the key that’s in. A lot of times we’ll change the key to fit where I naturally sing, which is higher. It needed that storyteller vibe, so we kept it low. I think that was a good decision. Some people are like, ‘Who’s the singer on this song?’ It’s me, baby. The lyrics are very real and autobiographical. It’s also cool because my father was an excavator. He was digging in the dirt everyday. I come from that. The whole song really resonates with me.”
For the summer tour, Shaw says the setlists will vary, but the energy will be high, as always.
“We’re playing a lot of the new album and peppering in songs from the past,” he says. “Sometimes, the set will be bust-out heavy and sometimes, it’ll be mostly new ones. Sometimes, we’ll throw some covers in there and might even cover a song by the band that we’re playing with. We want to keep people on their toes.”
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This article appears in Jun 14-27, 2023.
