Don’t let appearances deceive you. Despite their well-behaved looks and angelic faces, rising French rockers Dynamite Shakers have pretty well assimilated seven decades of rock-n-roll into their own sound. But what is most striking, is the effortless mastery with which they revive the frenzy of a definitively undying garage rock era — with a series of perfect covers of The Sonics, The Fleshtones, Flamin Groovies, and now with their own explosive compositions on their latest release 'Live Session (At the CBGB Sion Club)', distributed via iMusician.
We've been rinsing their music since discovering the videos for their songs 'The Bell Behind the Door' and 'Blow My Mind', and recently had the opportunity to catch up with the band on the heels of the release of their 'Live Sessions' album to learn about their creative process, musical inspirations, and what being independent means to them:
Can you tell us a little about yourselves and how Dynamite Shakers got started?
Dynamite Shakers is a garage rock band from St-Hilaire-de-Riez, France (on the west coast). The band started in 2019 with Elouan (the singer), François (the drummer), and another bassist. In 2020, Calvin (guitar player) joined the band then Lila-Rose came to replace the first bassist. From 2019 to 2020, we used to play rock and roll and rockabilly covers but at the end of 2020, when Lila-Rose joined the band, we decided to go for a garage-rock repertoire.
During winter 2020, we published on social media some covers of our favorite garage-rock bands (Dogs, Flamin' Groovies, The Fleshtones, The Sonics), and people really liked it. It gave us visibility.
In 2021, we embarked on a summer tour in our region that gave us a lot of visibility as well. Then we started to compose our original songs and play them live. We had a lot of amazing concerts during Winter 2021 as we started to get out of our region to play in big cities, especially in Paris (twice) as the opening act for The Bobby Lees and The Fleshtones (one of our biggest inspirations).
Can you tell us about your inspirations and the process of creating your latest 'Live Session' album?
We listen to a lot of music when we are together, mainly garage-rock, rock n' roll, and punk artists. Our biggest inspiration is The Fleshtones, an American garage-rock band of the '80s, that started at CBGBs in New York City. We had the opportunity to meet them several times this year and we became friends, they took us under their wings.
But we have lots of other inspirations as we also listen a lot to artists from the 77's punk rock movement like The Damned and The Gun Club. And of course, we listen to lots of 60's garage-rock artists like The Stendalls or The Sonics.
Flamin’ Groovies are one of our biggest inspirations too. We originally did this Live Session to publish it on social media and we didn't plan to publish it on streaming platforms. But people really liked it and we received a lot of requests to release it on all the streaming platforms.
What music was floating in your everyday life when you composed it?
We were listening a lot to a recent punk band called Amyl and the Sniffers, we really like their albums “Amyl and the Sniffers” and “Big Attraction" & "Giddy Up”. We were listening a lot to the Viagra Boys too and their album “Street Worms”.
When it comes to social media, do you have an established strategy for promoting your new music?
We don’t especially have a strategy for promoting our music. We’ve never done this before so it will be our first time posting our music on streaming platforms. However, we plan to inform our followers on Instagram and Facebook by publishing creative stories and the like.
What does it mean to you to be independent in music?
We didn’t really have the choice to be independent for this “Live Session” album. We are a young band and we just started to be recognized a little in the music industry. For the moment, we are focusing on composing originals to record a real EP. But maybe being independent in music takes the stress caused by deadlines out. Maybe we are a bit more free to compose what we really like.
What are you working on right now and what are your musical aspirations for 2022?
We have lots of recording projects coming up in 2022 as we are planning to work on our first EP with new originals. We also have some good shows planned for 2022, you’ll be informed soon ;)
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