For southern rockers Those Darlins, touring isn’t always the paradise many might think it is, and four years on the road has shaken some of the band’s screws loose.
“It’s a weird way to live when you’re gone all the time,” said Jessi Darlin, singer for the band. “You have to live with a question mark and you don’t have any normal relationships because the only people you are constantly with are the people you’re on tour with.”
“Screws Get Loose,” the single off the band’s newest album of the same name, expresses the problems the members have faced in the past four years of being on the road.
Darlin added that growing up and touring makes for a forgiving relationship within the band, as if the members were really siblings. She said she doesn’t always have to apologize because “you just know that it’s all right.”
The group met at the Southern Girls Rock & Roll Camp and immediately connected. All the members, including male drummer Linwood Regensburg, one of the camp counselors, have southern roots, which is why those country undertones come out in their music.
“It just kind of comes out,” Darlin said. “You’re just surrounded by it in Nashville. I like simple chords and complex ideas said in the most simple ways.”
She added that music has allowed her to say things that happen in real, everyday life in a way that means more to people, which is what happened in the song “Be Your Bro.”
The song is about her experience with men on the road who were married and expected something from women in a rock group: “I just wanna run and play in the dirt with you; you just wanna stick it in.”
“Be Your Bro” highlights an experience that “millions of girls have experienced,” Darlin said.
Tim Peacock, director of Stuart’s Opera House and the Nelsonville Music Festival, said he tries to bring in new, original music because there are many bands that sound alike these days.
“They do their own thing,” Peacock said. “They put on an awesome live show … When you see someone perform live, they are either engaging or they’re not, and Those Darlins suck you into their performance.”
Those Darlins will play the Nelsonville Music Festival at 5:30 p.m. Friday on the main stage.
wh092010@ohiou.edu
