After Knott’s Halloween residency, The Haxans are back with new music and live gigs

Musicians Ashley Costello and Matt Montgomery bonded over a shared love of Huey Lewis and the News, ’80s-era Bugs Bunny and the macabre.

The pair, who met nearly a decade ago, knew they wanted to try writing music together, but at the time they were busy with other projects.

Montgomery was touring with rocker and horror film director Rob Zombie’s band, where he’s known as bassist Piggy D, and Costello was fronting her Anaheim-based rock band New Year’s Day.

But their creative chemistry was undeniable and when things finally slowed a few years later, they formed the Goth-pop band The Haxans. They carved out time to escape to the studio, or the lab as they refer to it, to bring their Frankenstein’s monster to life. Having a break from other musical endeavors this year, the group is on the road opening up for fellow Zombie player, guitarist John 5 and his band The Creatures. The jaunt stops at Garden Amp in Garden Grove April 22 and Brick By Brick in San Diego April 24.

“The weirdos find each other and they stick together,” Costello said during a recent Zoom interview. “You bond over these things that maybe once weren’t considered cool, but now are a little more accepted. At one point, living Halloween every day got you made fun of and liking horror movies got you called a ‘weirdo.’ So when you find those people, when you find your people, you stick with them.”

The Haxans released their debut album, “Party Monsters,” in 2017. Though they put out creepily fun music videos and a terrifying line of merchandise, they had scheduling conflicts that prevented them from touring. They played their first live gig in 2019 at the Viper Room in West Hollywood, just before the New Year and COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Montgomery and Costello had written so much for the first album that they already had their as-yet-unreleased second album in the can; they were preparing to tour in 2020 when the pandemic canceled in-person events. They took advantage of the time and went back into the studio to record more songs including a cover of David Bowie’s “Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps).” They also fleshed out an original song, “All the Roses,” a vengeful ballad inspired by the roses blooming around the studio in Pasadena.

“Pasadena is kind of a magical place,” Montgomery said. “‘All the Roses’ wrote itself in 15 minutes. I can’t take credit for that song because it fell out of the sky. It was educational in the sense that wow, this is something that can affect your process. Just walking around the neighborhood and seeing roses every day, blooming all of the time. It seeped into the blood and there it is.”

When Halloween events returned to in-person happenings in 2021, The Haxans were asked to be the resident band at Knott’s Berry Farm’s Scary Farm in Buena Park. They were part of the Carnival De Grotesque on The Calico Mine stage and played four 30-minute sets per evening for 15 days.

“We went from having only played one show to a residency at Knott’s … who does that?” Montgomery asked with a laugh. “We’re not a cover band, but we learned about 50 songs to get through those gigs. We played between 45-50 songs a night and that’s not even normal behavior for working tour bands, let alone two knuckleheads like us who had only played one show.”

For Costello, the residency was more personal. Growing up in Orange County, she’d spent her childhood at Knott’s Berry Farm. She’d attended Knott’s Halloween event every year and said she loved the horror-themed mazes and seeing her idol, Elvira Mistress of the Dark, perform her live variety show inside the Charles M. Schulz Theatre.

“It’s a coveted event in my heart, so I wanted to do it proud,” she said. “I had the extra weight and pressure of not embarrassing the thing I loved so much, but we did great and it was a lot of fun.”

That residency allowed the performers to shake the cobwebs off and prepare for the extensive amount of touring and horror convention appearances they are doing now. Though it took them a while to really get started, The Haxans are full steam ahead in 2022 and will release the sophomore record, “The Dead & Restless,” on Oct. 7.

“I always wanted to be in a band that didn’t have any rules put on it,” Montgomery said. “This has been so cool and unlike anything else I’ve ever done or even attempted to do. As close to it as I am, it’s a very strange project with a weird pulse of its own and it just can’t be killed.”

“It always just comes back,” Costello added. “It is like Frankenstein’s monster … ‘It’s alive!’ And here we go again.”

John 5 with The Haxans

When: 6 p.m. April 22

Where: Garden Amp, 12762 Main Street, Garden Grove

Tickets: $22.50 at Ticketweb.com

Also: 8 p.m. April 24 at Brick By Brick, 1130 Buenos Ave., San Diego. $22-$26 at Ticketweb.com.

from Signage https://ift.tt/LDgtu0a
via Irvine Sign Company