MANCHESTER, NH – The jam scene in New England has been a vibrant one for the past few decades, and it manages to bring a cool vibe regardless of the setting. This type of psychedelic and funky music can be exhibited in an open outdoor setting as part of a festival somewhere, or at a more intimate venue, but the atmosphere is usually the same. There’s a lot of smiling faces with a lot of dancing along with the possibility of visual art being shown on the premises. On March 21 at The Shaskeen in Manchester, The Hot Chocheys are planning on bringing this type of experience. The show starts at 9 p.m. with the eight-piece instrumental funk collective Pocket Drop also being on the bill.
I had a talk with drummer and percussionist Ben Chappell about how The Hot Chocheys started out, The Shaskeen being a home base, and plans for making a studio record in the near future.
Rob Duguay: First off, tell me the origin story behind The Hot Chocheys. How did you guys go about starting this band?
Ben Chappell: We actually all went to high school together, so we’re all longtime best friends. We each played in different bands while taking music classes together, all that good stuff, so we all go way back. We’ve kind of kept it going while getting more serious with it over the last few years, so we’ve had a long-term chemistry that goes back a while.
RD: When it came to initially crafting the band’s sound with a funky, groovy, jam band approach, how did that come about? What did you guys consider to be your influences?
BC: We’ve been really focusing on trying to thread the needle between funk and prog rock. For our influences, the biggest ones I’d say are Primus and Tool meets Red Hot Chili Peppers with some jam and improvisational stuff. We also try to work in some trancey electronic elements. We’re friends with and influenced by the band Lespecial, we love those guys and they’re really good to us. They’re our homies and we love what they do with working in the heavier elements into a jam-rock kind of sound, so those are some big influences as well. We’re trying to do our own thing with it while bringing in some heavy and danceable grooves with those kinds of electronic and rock elements.
We also grew up being huge Blink-182 fans, so we’ve also worked in some punk, but just the silliness with banter on stage and whatever we can do to make the show fun and a good time for everybody.
RD: Speaking of what you do on stage, you guys put out a couple live records last year with the most recent one being a performance at Bernie’s Beach Bar in Hampton Beach. When it comes to doing a live record, do you plan these out, or is it done in a more spontaneous fashion?
BC: I try to keep it under the radar, so I try to handle most of the recording, engineering and mixing myself. I’ll usually just bring my laptop to every show while trying to connect with the sound guys to see what they have for a mic setup and everything. If it seems like it could capture a good sound, then I’ll just plug my computer in to record the multitrack and then I’ll play around with it after the fact to see if there’s anything usable. That’s what we did at Bernie’s and we also did a show at The Stone Church up in Newmarket with this band called The Wedding Smashers, so I just put that one up on YouTube. Usually, I’ll just record it as an archive for posterity to see what we can get, and if it seems like we have some good takes, we’ll mix it and master it, run it by the rest of the band, and if we all like it, then we’ll release it.
RD: Very cool. What are your thoughts on the upcoming show The Hot Chocheys have going on at The Shaskeen?
BC: We love The Shaskeen and we’ve been playing there for years. We’re good friends with Jiggy from JigsMusic who books a lot of those shows, so The Shaskeen has been a home base for us. We love the room and it’s always a great crowd with a great vibe. We’re really excited and it’s going to be a cool mix of sounds. A lot of our fan base is around the Manchester area, so we always get a pretty good draw and a pretty good crowd in that room. It’s going to be an epic night.
RD: It definitely sounds like it. Looking towards later in the year, are there any plans for The Hot Chocheys to do a studio record, or are there any other plans to do more live records?
BC: We’ve actually been talking about it very recently, and we have a few songs that seem like they’re ready to get studio tracked. We’re definitely going to continue making live records, it seems like the people who follow us like to check them out either on YouTube or on the streaming services. We are thinking of trying to get a studio EP done, especially with some of our newer songs that seem like they can translate well to a studio release, so we’re currently in the planning phase.