Meet The Skells

Beach bands are some of the best bands in this blog’s humble opinion, so it’s no surprise we called up Rockaway Beach’s The Skells. Fresh off their latest release Dinosaur Village, this crew offers equal parts indie and nostalgic surf rock. 

Below, these boys teach us a new word, discuss potential blimp travel, and finally give rats their moment to shine.

Would You Rather…

Would you rather shrink five times your actual size, or grow one hundred times your actual size? What would you do?

We would rather grow 100 times our actual size. Standing at 600 ft tall we would continue to play live shows and have the world construct us the largest instruments on earth.  We would also do a rendition of Shakespeare in the park where people watched from buildings. Also we would walk across the country. And we would help people dig holes and carry things.

Some Questions With The Skells

If you could cover the score of any film which would it be? Why?

Without any doubt we would cover the score to Titanic. The reason we would choose titanic is because of a special day we had when we first started playing music together. It was to our surprise that writing songs together was not as easy as we thought it would be. As we stood with our instruments plugged in and our amps buzzing, completely confused on where a song would come from, we decided to turn on the TV and silently watch Titanic for inspiration. What spawned from the decision was over 2 hours of improvised music and the birth of one of our songs called, Titanic. Also cause young Leo.

What is a word that does not get used enough?

Flumpool.

What brought about the recent heavy surf rock influence in your latest EP "Dinosaur Village"?

Surf Rock is where it all started for us. The four of us have very different taste in music and the go around of heavy surf rock became our common ground. It was so agreeable for us and came very natural. Also, the surf rock we play isn't very original.  We aim only to play homage to the genre and we all enjoyed how that allowed for more playing and less writing.

What would you do if you owned a blimp?

We would tour in it. And every full moon we would hover over the white house and howl at the moon  like wolves on load speakers. And when someone was sad we would pick them up and drive them around. And if someone got in trouble we would let them hide with us.

What has been your best interaction with a fan of your music?

Recently we played a show at Hart Bar in Brooklyn with Psycho Pat. Before we played we saw a girl who was there alone with her camera. She was stoic and beautiful and stood completely in her own skin. We all noticed her and the set we played got crazy at the end. Jake ended up playing the guitar and a kid from another band was playing drums and Graham was singing and making up lyrics as he went. Graham ended up sticking the mic up Jakes ass and Jake was rolling around on the floor with the guitar. The stoic girl, later known to us as Nicole, told us she had come to the show to see us play and asked to take our picture. It might have been the first time a complete stranger said they came just to see us. She is now our best friend <3

What was your first live performance like?

So wack. We played the same set twice and had every technological difficulty imaginable.

If you could give one animal species (besides people) the ability to fly which would it be? Why?

Rats. And we would want them to fly very low so when you walked through Manhattan you had to bob and weave through them. Rats because they are the overlooked NY natives.

If you were a spy what would be your code name?

Rico Rico, Tiny Boss, Jamie, Graham the destroyer.

What are practices generally like? Are there any habits or rituals?

Very loose. Maybe too loose. We always play a solid hour minimum of continuous music. Theres never too much talking and rarely ever an argument. We just play music.

What would be the worst song to have for a ringtone?

Learning to Fly by Tom Petty.