Winter 2008

Houston, Texas

This bio is written as ONE. Three friends: Mighty Orq, Westside Johnny, and Matt Johnson make up the band, The Mighty Orq. There will be no quotes used in this bio. These are their thoughts on their new record, eking out a living as a musician, and life in general at this time.

We’ve played a lot of gigs in the past four and a half years; we’re closing in on one thousand. We’ve released three records (Orq’s solo record “Prayer Book,” the live “Ghost Train,” and the first true band record, “Milk Money”). We’ve toured Europe twice. Jess (Jessica Will, first bass player) left the band. Westside joined the band. Lots of laughs. Some sadness. People were born and others died. Such is life.

“TO THE BONE”

Financed with the help of family, friends, and the selling of personal belongings; including guitars, drums, and many of Westside’s childhood Japanese toys. The album was recorded in five sixteen-hour long sessions in February 2007. The “To The Bone” sessions took place at Showplace Studios in Dover, New Jersey. Mr. Ben Elliott, the owner of Showplace, recorded, engineered, and mixed the album. Ben is a super cool guy that is a great mixture of the old and new schools of recording. He has a wall of outboard gear that is virtually priceless that he uses to get a lot of his signature “wacky” guitar sounds (listen to “Blue Eyes” on the record). But at the same time, he’s recording using the latest version of Pro-Tools on a Mac. His patch bay looks like a giant plate of multi-colored spaghetti. Some additional recording was done with our friend Bryan Jones at Matchbox Studios in Austin, TX. Bryan is a killer engineer with a great ear for songs.

Here are our thoughts on “To The Bone”, track by track:

1) “Falling Down”—The tried and true “tale of excess” song. Probably our most Arc Angels(seminal Austin, TX band comprised of Doyle Bramhall II, Charlie Sexton, Tommy Shannon, and Chris Layton) sounding song. Great set opener. First song we recorded for the album.

2) “Different This Time”—Tight bridge, just wish we could’ve had some “Klezmer”type guitar over it. Time & money didn’t allow for it.

3) “Rainy Day”—Poppy. First of two “pretty” songs on the album. Matt’s feeble attempt to pay tribute to the man, Ringo Starr.

4) “HO”—It’s slang people. It stands for whore. We can be literal here. We hope to have a hip-hop artist from Houston or Louisiana to remix this song. It would be the perfect Gulf Coast club anthem. Yes, there was a Jenni. Yes, she did spell it with an I. Yes, her Dad was in prison and her Mom was out of work. Ask us about Suzy & Sally’s stories when you see us. However, we think you could substitute just about anyone’s (male or female) name in the song.

5) “Set Me Free”--Starts with the chorus lick. Deals with the feeling you get after hanging with anyone you really care about. Nothing to think about for awhile is a good thing.

6) “Hangin’ On”—Riff, riff, riff. Hi-hat opens in the right spot for the groove to breathe a bit. Political ramblings from The Mighty Orq? Yes. Don’t tell us who we should/shouldn’t like or what we should/shouldn’t do. Someone’s there to help you out though.

7) “If You Will”—The title comes from something Hadden Sayers (longtime Texas troubadour songwriter and Matt’s former boss) used to say. Big guitar. The 16th notes on the bass really drive the song. This is a staple of the live show; we never know where this song is going to go.

8) “Blue Eyes”--Number two in the “Pretty Song on To The Bone” series. All guitars make the sounds on the album, no keyboards. Ben has a killer guitar pedal collection and we used a bunch of them on this song. Written for a lady in Orq’s life. Yes, she does have blue eyes.

9) “4+1”--It was almost called “Wild Side”, but we didn’t want any of Motley Crue’s lawyers coming down on us (regarding the song “Wild Side” from the Crue’s 1987 album “Girls, Girls, Girls”). We had done a show with a band from New Orleans called Supagroup, and they kind of inspired us to write this song. We were going for heavy, and this is it. To us, it’s a bit like something ZZ Top would do. ZZ is in our blood. No digital editing was done on the bridge in the middle of the song. That tight stop & start was live in the studio.

10) “The Good Love”—Almost didn’t make the album. Later it was going to be a hidden track. We finally decided to just include it. The “bluesiest”song on the album. A true “metaphor” song. This song gets taken pretty far “out” when we play it live. Slide guitar over a heavy groove. Respect to Zeppelin on the turnaround.

11) “Scars”—Good closer for an album. Deals with the death of Matt’s son Abraham in June of 2005. Double time section at the end signifies the birth of Matt’s daughter, Pearl Johnson. Happy times. More slide guitar. Louisiana “flavored” groove. Think if Sonny Landreth (Lafayette, LAslide-guitar genius) had been from Houston, he may have written a song that sounded like this.

We are not your typical “band for a night”. We bring a sonic experience to the venue. Whether that venue is under the stairs at a bar on 6th Street in Austin, or in front of a thousand people in a concert hall. We are just as happy and comfortable taking our music “out” to a crowd of hippies for four hours as we are playing a tight thirty minute opening slot. The attitude is still the same, even if the notes we play and how we play them is different. New set lists are written every night before the gig. We play so many shows that if we played the same set from night to night, it would get real old, real fast; for us and for our audience. We’ve all had to do that in other bands we’ve been in, and were sick of it. That’s where playing weekly gigs comes in handy, it really teaches you to keep it fresh from week to week. We’ve even had fans end up getting jobs at the bars we do our weekly gigs at, just so they could get paid to see us every week. That’s pretty cool.

Since our set and songs change from night to night, we’ve started to have more and more people recording the live shows. We encourage the taping done at our shows. All we ask is that it is done with respect to us, the other audience members, and the venue. We also ask that we get a copy of it the next time we’re through town. Tapers are some of the biggest music fans in the world. We would be stupid to not let them record.

That’s where we’re at right now. We have worked extremely hard to get to this point and have no plans of stopping anytime soon. This is what we do and who we are. We’re going to gas up the van, drive to the gig, play our asses off, and do it again the next day. We will also put out records that attempt to say something, not just thrown together crap so you have something to sell at your shows. This process takes time and money; two things that we don’t have a lot of yet. However, if you’re still reading this, you may have a copy of our new record sitting next to you. So either load, place, or insert it in your favorite listening device and turn it up LOUD! We hope ya dig it.

To The Bone,

Orq, Westside, & Matt

“THE MIGHTY ORQ”
February 2008