Let’s Dance: We Catch Up With The High Plains Drifters

Following on from the release of their single and music video, ‘Until We Dance‘, we catch up with The High Plains Drifters.

What draws you to the genres of electro-pop and New Wave? Have you always enjoyed these genres of music? 

I think it’s probably that most of us in the band (well, at least the guys) came of age, both musically and as borderline adults, in the 1980s, when these genres permeated the airwaves nationally as well as the dance floors of New York City. I guess we absorbed these sounds and influences into our respective musical DNA. All of us are fans of a diverse array of musical genres (that happens as one ages), but there was something really special about the New Wave, which I suppose is why that sound is still widely heard. 

How do you go about balancing a retro and contemporary sound in your music? What helps you achieve a blended sound? 

That’s a tough balance to strike. It probably helps that, when most of us were cutting our teeth musically, the sounds that people now call “retro” were, to us, contemporary! All the musicians in the band (note that I am just the lyricist and lead singer – I don’t play an instrument) have an encyclopedic knowledge of most musical genres that have been popular since the early 1960s. That’s especially true of guitarists John Macom and Mike Docampo. So, over the decades, you build a toolkit of sounds and vibes that you can call on when the need arises. The bigger challenge for us is figuring out what we can do to blend in contemporary elements. On that front, we rely heavily on our producer Greg Cohen and our drummer (also our engineer) Kyle Cassel, as they are (relatively speaking) the “kids” in HPD. 

There’s a sense of playfulness, longing, and hope in ‘Until We Dance’. Does the narrative of ‘Until We Dance’ resonate with you?

Yeah, the narrative is one I’m very familiar with, as I spent many late-night hours in clubs in the ’80s trying to woo women on a dance floor, whenever possible. There is a much lower chance of saying something stupid or embarrassing to a gal, which will stick with her, when she can barely hear you over the din of the loudspeakers. And yes, the dance floor is all about playfulness, longing, and hope. I could not have put that better myself. 

But the tune isn’t based on an actual encounter between me and a specific woman. Rather, I woke up one morning, while visiting a buddy’s beach house in the Winter of 2021, with just the framework of the chorus playing in my head: “and then you dance… one step closer to me”, and then 2 steps and 3 steps closer, etc. I don’t know where it came from. I sang it immediately into my iPhone and waited for inspiration to strike again. It took a while – the first lines and melody of the first verse hit me as my family and I were about to fly home from a vacation in Antigua in June 2021. 

There’s a strong sense of visual storytelling in your videos. Why is this important to you as a band?

I want our listeners, when possible, to visualize themselves in the place, or the situation, or the experience in which we find our singer-narrator. So, to make that happen, I try to write lyrics that have a narrative arc. In a well-crafted High Plains Drifters song, there’s a story being told and it progresses from verse to verse. I don’t always succeed in doing so, but (if I may compliment myself) I think I pulled it off in ‘Until We Dance’ as well as in our previous single, last Fall’s ‘Summer Girl (Redux)’.

The video incorporates elements of humor and lightheartedness – why did you choose to include these elements in the video?

So much of those elements comes from the creative mind of the video director/producer, Lars Skaland out of Norway.  We’ve worked with him for years on quite a number of our videos, and Lars has been able to transform simple treatments into fantastic magical realities.  I think that’s one of the things we’ve liked most working with Lars – his ability to weave a suspension of reality enlaced with a bit of magical wonder into concepts that are quite simple – like a woman who wants to go out and dance but keeps losing her shoe, or a college student with a side-job as a dominatrix, or a man seeing the mirage of his past come out of the ocean waters. 

What emotions are you hoping to stir in your audience with this song? Do you hope the song sparks romantic encounters or spontaneous dancing?

A good romantic encounter will spontaneously spark itself, don’t you think? Too much thinking and planning about a hoped-for romance usually dooms it from the outset. Just my opinion. 

I wanted ‘Until We Dance’ to be an optimistic tale: “boy gets girl”, as compared to many HPD songs where it’s “girl breaks guy’s heart”. Magical things happen on a dance floor. Two people can bond and realize chemistry sometimes without hardly speaking. 

What’s something about The High Plains Drifters that listeners might not realize at first?

Every guy in the band is as handsome as Brad Pitt. That’s why we never appear in our cover art or our videos. Nobody would believe it. 

Also, the band was founded in NYC over a Tex-Mex meal. To this day, after recording at Greg’s Upper West Side studio, we head to a Tex-Mex joint and continue the tradition. But we go late at night, to avoid all the gals who love Brad Pitt look-alikes. 

How does ‘Until We Dance’ represent your future musical aspirations? Do you plan to explore similar themes in the future?

The song represents the band’s desire to continue mining the New Wave sounds we loved in our youth. I am not sure, however, that this song’s theme is one we’d return to. To me, it seems inevitable that we’ll still write and release songs about breakups and heartbreak – after all, most romantic relationships, like most marriages, end in disaster – right? When I think about what’s in our pipeline of future singles, we’ll be exploring a few more disasters, but we’ll also visit, ever-so-gingerly, some themes that have been at the top of the news over the last 5-10 years. We cross that minefield in HPD’s inimitable way – by being playful and lighthearted. 

Get up and dance with the music video for ‘Until We Dance’ below, and find out more about The High Plains Drifters and their music online on their official website, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.