Coming here: Desir Decir, Oct. 6 at The Lightbulb Club

Desir Decir / Courtesy photo

New Jersey’s Desir Decir is playing Fayetteville for the first time Tuesday night, but drummer Mitch Cady has been here before. Many times. With three other bands.

Originally from Nebraska, Mitch played Northwest Arkansas regularly for several years with excellent ska band The Heat Machine and punkers Bandit Sound. This past March he came through George’s Majestic Lounge behind the drum kit for Killing Horse Records recording artists The Everymen as part of their U.S. tour.

Desir Decir sees Mitch reunited with frontman John Feuerbach, also formerly of The Heat Machine and Bandit Sound. Their 2014 EP “Mechanics” is high energy affair that is distinctive while also somehow being reminiscent of other big names from the Garden State such as The Gaslight Anthem, The Bouncing Souls, and even Bruce Springsteen. There must be something in the water up there.

The band is currently on a short US tour in anticipation of the October 23 release of their second EP “Even the Earnest Learn”. They are performing at the Lightbulb Club on Tuseday, Oct. 6. Locals Friday, Maybe Saturday and The Inner Party round out the bill. The cover is $5, doors open at 9 p.m., and the show starts at 10 p.m.

Mitch was nice enough to answer some questions via e-mail about the band and his previous visits to Fayetteville.

First off, please explain your band name for the folks that only speak English.
We get this one all the time. The first word is French and the second is Spanish. It translates to “Desire to say.” We pronounce it “dis-ear dis-ear,” which is technically a bastardized version of both words to make it sound cooler.


Who: Desir Decir / Friday, Maybe Saturday / The Inner Party
When: 10 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015
Where: The Lightbulb Club, 19 N. Block Ave.
More: $5, Doors open at 9 p.m.

You and Johnny have been in at least three bands together. Why can’t you quit each other?
I love John’s songwriting and we work well together. We’ve been playing together for close to 10 years now, so we can complement each other musically and practically know what the other is going to do before they do it when we’re jamming on parts. We’ve got similar taste in everything from music to whiskey and are good friends as well as roommates and coworkers.

If we were going to get sick of each other, I think it would have happened already. At this point it’s kind of a symbiotic relationship where I take care of a lot of the logistical things and John does a ton of the creative stuff, although sometimes we overlap.

You’ve played Fayetteville with a few different bands now. What’s it like for you playing here? How does it compare to some of the other places you roll through on tour?
Fayetteville has been one of our favorite towns to play in the country for a long time now. We’ve made a point to come through as often as possible with every band we’ve toured with and that’s mainly because of the friends we’ve made in town.

As a college town, there’s more of a turnover in people who go out to see live shows, but we have always had good shows playing with (The Inner Party) and Friday, Maybe Saturday. We’ve made a lot of friends there and in the four years after John and I moved to Jersey, I thought about flying in to visit quite often, but never had the money. I got to visit while sitting in for The Everymen this spring and we’re all stoked to finally make it for the first time with Desir.

Are there any particularly good bands that you’ve come across during your time on the road that you feel like deserve more exposure than they’re currently receiving?
Yes, too many to mention them all, unfortunately. One of my personal favorite bands right now is one out of Birmingham, AL called Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires. They’re on Sub Pop and they tour a ton, so it’s not like they aren’t getting any attention, but their music and their live shows are amazing. They’re this really cool blend of southern rock, soul, and punk rock and they absolutely shred on their instruments. On top of that, they’re socially conscious and have thoughtful lyrics. I love a good party band that really jams and can make me dance, but if they’re also making me think, that’s the best of all worlds in my opinion.

You’re touring to promote your second release. Tell us all about that.
It’s a 6-song CD EP we recorded in Jersey City this May called Even the Earnest Learn. It comes out October 23rd on Killing Horse Records. We’re really stoked about the way it turned out and we’ve been playing most of the songs from it on this tour.

We were hoping to have it for sale as kind of a bonus for anyone who comes out to these shows, but haven’t had it for any of the dates yet on this tour. It should be arriving at Killing Horse Records HQ any minute now and we hope to have it in hand before Fayetteville. (UPDATE – THEY WILL HAVE IT AT THE SHOW – DM)

When you’re not actually playing shows, what have you been doing to occupy your time on tour?
For the first few days, we did a lot of driving, so we didn’t have much time to do anything but that and play shows, but in the van we listen to a lot of music and just chat back and forth. Now that we’ve gotten into some shorter drives, we like to get out and explore cities and towns that we haven’t been to before. We check out a lot of music stores as well as record shops. We’re always on the lookout for good local eats too. Highlights so far have been the Chicago Music Exchange and Roots Music in Lincoln for music stores. We and some killer pot pie pizza at Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinders and some great seitan Pittsburgh “steak” sandwiches at Spak Brothers in Pittsburgh. If you haven’t heard, the Pittsburgh steak sandwich is superior to the Philly version – French fries, coleslaw, provolone, tomato, and mayo on the sandwich. This place also threw in hot peppers and a fried egg.

You relocated from Nebraska to New Jersey. Why did you do that? What’s it like being in a band in Jersey vs. being in a band in Nebraska?
John and I toured to NYC with The Heat Machine back in 2009 and 2010. I had never thought I’d want to live there, or even in a city that big until the second trip. We had a day off in Manhattan and walked all over the lower half of it. By the end of the day, I was in love with the city and decided I wanted to live there at some point. It didn’t look like Heat Machine was going to tour much more after that and Bandit Sound was coming to a temporary halt too, so John and I decided to move to NYC. Turns out Jersey City was much more affordable and had kind of a mid-size city feel to it, very similar to Lincoln’s downtown. There’s a ton of great music and art happening there too, so it felt like a good place to settle in.

Being a Jersey band vs a Nebraska or Midwestern band is similar in a lot of ways. A ton of bands get overlooked for being from the Midwest and it can give the feeling of being a little brother or little sister to your peers who are more successful. Jersey vs. New York is like a heightened version of that where it makes us feel like underdogs. There’s a big stigma in New York about Jersey and it gets little respect, though when I actually talk people into visiting, they usually like it. There’s a strong sense of community in both places, which I think arises from that us vs. them feeling.

In the rest of the country, we get a lot of the typical Jersey accent impressions and Soprano style talk. It’s pretty fun to bust into the accent, even though for the most part I speak like a Nebraskan.

Do you have any particular goals you’re trying to accomplish with DD?
Global takeover, tour with Tom Petty, and to make Metallica open for us.

Mainly we want to make good music and to eventually make doing what we love into a full time thing.