It Happened Again’ The Outlaw Orchestra Drop New Single and share video.

28th August 2020 0 By Jon Deaux

The Outlaw Orchestra – those fun-loving, 4-piece powerhouse purveyors of Heavy Grass – are delighted to release their new single and video ‘It Happened Again’: a cracking track from their varied and vibrant 10-track album ‘Pantomime Villains’.

The Outlaw Orchestra is a UK, Southern Country Rock-influenced, 4-piece powerhouse combo of talent that’s not just crossing genres boundaries: critics say this band is redefining them. The outfit brings together David Roux (guitars/lead vocals); Ryan Smith (drums/percussion/vocals); Pete Briley (banjo/lap steel/vocals); and Alex Barter (double bass/vocals).

The song is stamped good and proper with The Outlaw Orchestra’s hallmarks: humour, irreverence and musicianship –

The track will draw you into this country rock story, whose roots – the band happily admit – lie in band members Dave Roux and Pete Briely’s utter inability to drive past a music shop without just taking a quick look inside… Just one shuftie. I can handle it.

Tragedy, comedy, true life confession? Who can say? Best to listen to this upbeat, fun track celebrating compulsive instrument purchasing and make up your own mind! A fair few folk may well recognise themselves and their friends in this song (which is naturally rich in The Outlaw Orchestra’s Heavy Grass sound and music skills: played on quality, coveted instruments they – ahem – just happened to have to hand).

The band explain the song’s roots like this: “Dave had double parked outside a music shop to ‘just grab some strings’. Five minutes later, he returned with an £800 acoustic guitar and a set of strings. He explained to his missus “It… it just happened!”

“Pete texted Dave to explain that on a direct route from Maidstone to Poole he took an accidental 40-mile detour to a music store to ‘just look’ at an eighteen hundred pound lap steel guitar. Minutes later Dave received a text: “It’s happened… again”.

“Finally a musician pal of theirs – Buzzy James, who lives in Long Beach, California – told the boys that he had saved all his back tax he owed to his accountant. He drove to deliver it, but en route passed a music store… Half an hour later he’d magically turned that tax money into a new Les Paul Guitar. It doesn’t matter if its guitars, cars, motor bikes or shoes: it’s an addiction and it happens again and again!”

The video was woven together from studio footage, creatively assembled by Pete (when not out hunting, ogling or acquiring instrument-plunder). Starting with great guitar licks, and the cheeky fortune cookie wisdom caption card – “Steal a man’s wallet and he’ll be poor for a week. Teach him music and how to buy instruments and he’ll be poor for the rest of his life,” the video shows us The Outlaw Orchestra a-hustling and bustling round the studio practising their craft, con gusto.

Alex Barter’s fabled double-bass topped with an alligator skull gets a lingering, way cool top-down shot, along with other instruments and kit beloved of The Outlaw Orchestra.

It’s a catchy, fun track, given extra buzz by Pete’s creative, colourful video. And it’s a case in point of Planet Rock’s opinion of the band: “the foursome’s high-energy music is so joyous and imbued with humour that it’s enough to put a grin on even the dourest cynic’s chops.”

Check out ‘It Happened Again’ – the latest serving of The Outlaw Orchestra’s Heavy Grass goodness; also, its parent album ‘Pantomime Villains’, rightly labelled by Metal Planet Music as “one of the essential feelgood albums of 2020,” and hailed as “a serious contender for album of the year,” by HRH Magazine. “Excellent, Highly recommended,” agreed Powerplay Magazine, awarding the album 9/10.

“Somehow, from somewhere, The Outlaw Orchestra have outshone the opposition,” was Rushonrock’s opinion , “David Roux and his merry men have reinvented the wheel. They’ve rewritten the rock and roll rulebook.” FATEA Magazine is of the same mind: “It is clear that The Outlaw Orchestra are on a mission to re-write the rules of defining music genres, and for this they are to be applauded fully. The future looks bright for them. Pantomime Villains? Oh no they’re not. They’re for real and they mean it.”

MNPR Magazine hit the nail on the head: “To create a body of work as stylistically diverse as ‘Pantomime Villains’ takes talent and to make is look as it if it was seemingly thrown together over a few beers, is pure genius.”

“Get this album,” as Fireworks Magazine advise, “and see [the band] live because you miss them at your peril!”

Sound advice!

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