“We’re not going to bother making our esthetic more palatable to the killjoys”: An interview with Barfly from The Saturday Knights
The Saturday Knights make party music. Yes, there’s rap. Yes, there’s also guitars. Yes, they genre-hop. Yes, it really is like the hype says—the Geto Boys meet the Beach Boys. But mostly what they do is make music that makes you want to drink, dance, hit on girls, and stay up too late. Above The Fold got to send some email questions over to the fantastically awesome Barfly from TSK and here’s what he had to say:
ABOVE THE FOLD – How long has the band been together and how did you get started?
SATURDAY KNIGHTS – We’ve been together for about 4 years I think. We started out originally as a vigilante group who patrolled the mean streets of Seatown by night but it wasn’t until we realized that we were three exceedingly handsome, charming, well dressed men who could dance and sing that we refocussed our group dynamic on music and left street justice in the capable hands of the citizenry. The world lost some really efficient and deadly peacekeepers when we decided to fulfill our destiny as a musical group, but we don’t get to choose our path. The cruel hand of fate has cursed us with talent and charisma and laid before us a fast track to long boring van rides and late nights blackouts in places with names like, “The Tiki Torch”, or “The Longbranch Saloon” or “The Parking Lot Next Door To T.G.I. Friday’s”
We do this so other people won’t have to. We’re here to help.
ATF – Any plans for a nationwide tour?
SK – We’ll do some touring for this album but we’re not going out right away.
ATF – Who would you tour with if you could?
SK – Cirque De Soleil, or maybe that dirty puppet show…or how about Transformers On Ice? Any of those would be cool.
ATF – Does the combo of hip hop and what most people would call “indie” or rock music make bookings difficult? Do people usually book you like a rap group or a rock band?
We haven’t encountered any problems getting booked and we don’t encounter much apprehension based on our genre crossing tendencies. Our music isn’t that difficult for people outside of the music business to get their heads around as it turns out. We’ve played with Death Cab For Cutie on one end of the spectrum but we just got booked with The Rza. We enjoy playing to all crowds and our bookings do reflect that.
ATF – How did you manage to get Jim Horn, who worked on Pet Sounds, to appear on your record?
SK – That’s a truly humbling thing to consider. My perspective on it is we were very fortunate and that’s about as far out as I can go on that one.
ATF – Speaking of guest stars…you’ve got quite the laundry list on the record–The Dap-Kings, The Muscle Shoals Horns, just to name a couple. Is there anyone you didn’t get that you’d love to work with in the future?
SK – I would love to work with the newly reunited Pharcyde. I’d love to work with Nicole Willis and The Soul Investigators and Lily Allen. I’d also love to work with the band Dios from Hawthorne, CA, Deerhoof, Scout Niblett, and Sam Coombs or Quasi. I love those artists’ work. I’d like to work with Casual from Hieroglyphics, El-P, Cool Kids. Man, I could go on all day.
ATF – How did you end up on Light in the Attic Records?
Hot hand in a dice game.
ATF – Because you tend to do sort of lighthearted cuts, do you run into the problem of people pigeonholing you more as a novelty act?
We’re totally resigned to the idea of some people dismissing us as a novelty. It’s not really happening a lot but it’s anticipated. There are always going to be cynical people. We’re not going to bother making our esthetic more palatable to the killjoys.
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The Saturday Knights’ Mingle, sure to be the party album of the summer, is out June 24 on Light in the Attic Records [the people who brought you Nicole Willis AND the Free Design Redesigned, so you know its quality!].
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Check out a track from the new album:









