Introducing The Nude Party: An Interview with Patton Magee
By Ella Bernard
I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Patton Magee, frontman of The Nude Party, to chat about what life looks like 11 years, three (soon to be four… or five) albums, and several features in Netflix shows later. Now, if you're unfamiliar with The Nude Party, that’s something you’re gonna want to change. The band hails from North Carolina, with each of their 7 constituents packing a punch to create a sound that is part cowboy blues, part indie rock, yet entirely their own.
It's an extremely powerful thing to have a sound that is reminiscent of so many greats, The Rolling Stones meets The Velvet Underground, The Surfaris, The Doors, and a little CCR. Yet, from the get go of each of their tracks, you just get this feeling and can say “hey, that’s the Nude Party.” The Nude Party stopped me in my tracks and pulled me in right from my first encounter with their second studio album Midnight Manor (a no skip album by the way). It is unfortunately so rare in this time to find something that immediately encapsulates your full attention like Midnight Manor does. This is largely a testament to the band’s cohesion, something that only come with time, and time is something that The Nude Party has had plenty of: 11 years since forming in college.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity
Hearing Aid (Ella Bernard): You guys have been a band for what, ten years now?
Patton Magee: Yeah. Eleven, I think.
HA: Oh wow. I'm sure there's been total ups, downs, spikes, plateaus, growing together as a band. In your success, what's changed the most over the years for you guys? Changed for better, maybe for the worse haha, I don't know.
PM: I mean, everything's changed. You know? I'd say overall, I can gratefully report that, I think everybody's just gotten better. Better at playing music, better at collaborating, better at being teammates. Yeah, everything's changed, except for the fact that we're all still together.
HA: Awesome… Awesome.
PM: We never traded anybody out. Nobody ever quit.
HA: You can feel the collaboration in your music. I think it really shines through. You guys just celebrated four years of Midnight Manor.
These guys have been playing together for years, and if that isn’t evident enough in their music, you should see them play live. Seeing that collaboration live just has this mesmerizing effect that makes them even better, you can feel the love in how each member effortlessly works off of another, with Shaun Couture on guitar, Alec Castillo on bass, Don Merrill on keys, Connor Mikita on Drums, Catfish Delorme on pedal steel, of course, Patton Magee on lead vocals and guitar, and Austin Brose whos percussion ties the whole band up with a bow, providing an essential later of their signature sound:
HA: If you had to describe the sound, the style of The Nude Party in unconventional terms, what would you describe that style as?
PM: It's like, uh, Rocky Road ice cream.
HA: Rocky Road ice cream?
PM: Yeah, Rocky Road Ice Cream.
HA: I love that. Why?
PM: It’s good stuff. It's got these big chunks, a bunch of good big chunks in it.
And it is in fact the big chunks that makes The Nude Party so great. Each member, each instrument equally revered. It's hearing each member come through in their music, while blending seamlessly, creating that very collaborative sound that is just so delicious.
The Nude Party has been towing the line of getting big, but not too big for quite some time now. Several collaborations with the Netflix TV series Outer Banks have definitely garnered them some fans. The series has featured ‘Things Fall Apart’ from Midnight Manor and ‘Sold Out of Love’ from The Nude Party Rides On, amongst others. The new fourth season of Outer Banks digs deeper still into their surf rock-iest self titled album, featuring ‘Wild Coyote.’ Magee speaks to how this has influenced their audience:
HA: Yesterday [October 10th], the recent season of Outer Banks came out and I know you guys have had some songs featured in Outer Banks in the past and have some this season. Can you tell me a little bit about what that has done for the band [and] what that experience has been like collaborating with [Netflix]?
PM: The creator, the main writer of the show, Josh Pate, is from North Carolina, and he DM'd me on Instagram one day. Basically just said, “Hey, my name's Josh Pate, I'm the creator of the TV show Outer Banks. What's up? Can you talk?” And I completely thought that it was one of those, like, “Hi, it's Michael Jackson, I'm back from the dead, and I need 20 dollars” scams. But, then I actually did get to talking to him, and it was a real guy. Became friends with his family, they brought us out to a film festival [his wife runs] in Sun Valley, Idaho. And yeah, they put a bunch of our music in the show, which is sick. I was at the premiere a couple nights ago, in Charleston. I DJ'd the red carpet walk which was fun. I's just been great and that show is cool because I was watching the first episode of the new season at the premiere the other night and I keep hearing bands I know, you know? I'm like, “Oh, that's The Mystery Lights, that's Ron Gala, and that's Natural Child.” So cool.
HA: The music they have featured is awesome, you guys are in great company.
PM: They do such good music placement. And it's a lot of stuff out of the scene that we're in, which makes me really happy.
HA: Do you find it brings in new fans from being featured in Outer Banks?
PM: In the last season we had a few, and one song jumped up a lot because of it. ‘Sold Out Of Love’ did really well because of it, but then again we had a few songs in the last season but that's the only one that got a big bump. So I feel like it depends a lot on placement, like what the scene is and how heavy of a needle drop it is. It's funny how it depends on how it works in the scene, in terms of how much people have an emotional connection to it, I think. And then they go listen to it on Spotify.
Despite attending Hollywood premieres by night and rocking out on stage in front of screaming fans at festivals like Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo, it's not always a glamorous life at the level of success so far achieved by The Nude Party. So I asked what a day in the life looks like for Patton Magee:
PM: Well, Probably about the same as any other bartender or waiter…not too different. I'm still bartending, still working random gigs. I worked a job last week where my job was to stand in Central Park at a music festival holding a sign that said, please don't run. While it rained for 11 hours straight. And two hours in, they came up to me and said, “Hey, you're not allowed to use an umbrella here.”
HA: Damn.
PM: So, still working. Still hunting the golden goose, that's for sure.
HA: You’re definitely leading a bit of a double life, going to Outer Banks premiere nights only to be soaked out in the rain by the weekend.
PM: Yup, exactly. That sums it up.
‘Chevrolet Van’ and ‘Ride On’ both exhibit beautifully the recurring theme in their music of continually choosing the life of a musician despite it not being the easiest path and being faced with exterior pressure. Anyone pursuing a career in the arts knows there's always gonna be a nagging voice telling you to go get a real job. The Nude Party knows they’ve got something special going on, and we’re very lucky they’ve chosen the path they did.
I was lucky to see them live over the summer, and the energy they brought to the stage was absolutely magnetic. These guys are such genuinely nice dudes. They stuck around after the show to talk to whoever was hanging around, and in a conversation with percussionist “Broce,” he let it slip that they had not one but two albums “ready to go,” which to be fair he told me not to tell anyone, but Patton later confirmed on record. One album is a live album titled The Nude Party at Sam’s Town Point which is available for preorder on vinyl now. I cannot wait to see what else they’ve been cooking in their own studio, where they’ve self produced their albums starting with Rides On:
PM: We're entering a new era.
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The band’s instagram has teased a single to be released on November 6th.
And If you’ve been wondering this whole time why they’re called The Nude Party, there have been several stories told, from shows played at college frat parties totally in the nude to “demons in a Ouija board.” It remains a question to be answered another day.