FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Quailbones Welcome You to Town With Some Aggressive Hospitality

Listen to a scuzzy and fuzzy track from the Murray, Kentucky band's upcoming debut album.

Image: Shawn Price

Quailbones are a five-piece garage pop band from Murray, a small college town in Western Kentucky. While you’d hardly call Murray a thriving music centre, it has a healthy and supportive scene that in recent times has seen bands such as Useless Eaters, Shoppers, Glow God, Whatever Brains, Parquet Courts, and Lumpy and the Dumpers pass by for a show.

Quailbones are often the local band supporting the out-of-towners.

Advertisement

“Aggressive Hospitality” taken from their debut album, to be released in November, melds punchy uptempo hooks with post-punk-inspired density backed by vocalist Corbet Hall's shouty delivery. While it's difficult to make out exactly what Hall is singing it could well be, "Welcome to Murray. The cold beer is over there. Make yourself at home but fuck with us and we will drive you with out of town in a minute."

Recorded throughout 2014 in Paducah, Kentucky at Loud and Clear by Shelby Preklas, the album will be released through [Karmic Swamp](http://www.karmicswamp.org/ i) in November.

Have a listen to the track and read a chat we had with Corbett.

Noisey: What is it like being a townie in a small western Kentucky college town?
Corbet Hall: Murray is entirely off the radar for most but to assume it's an uneventful little hole without much culture or substance would be incorrect. There's more going on in western Kentucky than ever before. A mindset we adopted while growing up here is if something matters to you then it's your responsibility to make it happen or seek it out if it's not there for you. As far as growing up as townies in a small college town, it's a double world for sure. Where those worlds meet is what makes this place so interesting and absurd and a lot of folks here thrive on that absurdity. You meet a quite a few people who move to the area, oftentimes for school, thinking Murray is going to be nothing more than a stepping-stone for them along the way, then they find the weird little nooks and crannies and the people hiding in them that really make this place breathe and they'll end up sticking around a lot longer than they thought they would.

Advertisement

Unfortunately Kentucky is often poorly misrepresented in the media.
There is a lot of ignorance and closed-mindedness still alive in Kentucky and the south in general. As long as the media focuses primarily on that instead of our many positive qualities, the rest of the world will only have part of the picture and we will remain misrepresented. It's much easier for the media to cover stories that continue to embrace specific stereotypes for Kentucky and make news out of what shouldn't be given any attention at all than it is for them to break an established cliché and take their time to shine light on the people who are attempting to do good for humanity and move us forward.

Does Tater-Tot Mansion still exist?
Unfortunately it closed down at the end of 2013. Our drummer Jordan and I lived there for several years with various roommates before we had to vacate. It served as a practice space and DIY venue.

How important was it in bringing bands through town?
Incredibly important. It allowed space for shows and provided additional housing for the musicians coming through on tour. Our friend Matthew Parker, played a crucial role in helping us make shows happen there. The first show we hosted at Tater-Tot with an out of town band was with Diet Cokeheads. That lit a fuse for all of us. He also helped bring a relatively unknown Parquet Courts to town. These bands play in Murray was great because, we're fans of what they do and it also allowed us to gain input from an outsider's perspective. Seeing positive reactions to what we had going on from bands that came from developed, thriving scenes was a great push. Fortunately we've been able to continue putting shows together and bringing interesting bands through the area by using other DIY spaces, such as Dale's Youth Corner, and the local record shop, Terrapin Station.

Catch Quailbones Oct 31 at Murray's 8th annual Scream-O-Rama.