Meet the band: The Dukes

Members: Lucas Frazier, guitar, vocals; Luke Darling, guitar, vocals; Dave Reid drums; Randy Procter, bass
Hometown: Cincinnati
Latest project: New album "The Shot Heard ‘Round the World"
Sounds like: rock with heavy influences of the late 60s and early 70s
Web: www.myspace.com/thedukesthedukes, where "The Shot…" is streaming until Friday

Lucas Frazier knew he hated Luke Darling before they even met—Darling was dating Frazier’s ex-girlfriend at the time. But within two years of their first meeting, the two moved in together and started a band.

“As soon as he walks in the door, he sees my posters on my wall, and he’s like, ‘Oh, hey, you like The White Stripes.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, dude, they’re my favorite band.’ And he’s like, ‘Me too.’ From that moment on we were best friends.”

The instant friendship of the band’s two founding members extended to the band as a whole. All the members of the band connected instantly, Frazier says, and that innate understanding underlies the band’s sense of spirit and identity in both their playing and songwriting. Within a month of playing together, the band made their debut on Halloween, playing at an old slaughterhouse. A month later they put out their first album. And now year and a half later they’re releasing their second album with a show at Northside Tavern on Friday.

Writing songs can be a slow and arduous process for a lot of people, but that doesn’t seem to be the case for The Dukes. How do you do it? Do you decide, I want to write a song, and bam! a few hours later have one?
There’s sort of two answers to that question. Me, personally, as a songwriter, I don’t sit down and say, "Alright, I’m going to write a song." It always stems from a feeling. It just comes to you all of a sudden and if I don’t sit down right then and do it, it will be lost forever.

Usually what happens is that I, or Luke, will come up with a whole song or just a riff and bring it to the rest of the band, and say, "Here’s what I got." And everybody will just add their own part. It always happens that everyone seems to know what everyone else wants to hear and it just works.

What do you do when you’re struck by inspiration, but you don’t have your guitar handy?
I get out my iPhone and I get the Voice Memos app up and then I sing it or hum it, whatever it is. Like if I have a guitar riff idea, I get the iPhone out, the Voice Memos up and go, "Na neer neer na neer neer" right into the speakers, so I can have it later on. Technology is useful.

Despite technology, do you ever write songs and forget them?
I would say that I’ve probably forgotten and lost more songs and ideas than I have written. There are quite a few songs that I’ve written—I don’t know probably at least a couple hundred songs that I’ve written, and there’s probably at least another hundred ideas that never turned into anything.

You dropped out of college, because you "needed to rock." How did it hit you that rock was your mission.
Towards the end of my second year, I just started falling into this really, this dark depressing place. I didn’t feel like there was anything for me that I was really passionate about there that I could really dedicate my life too. Then like one day when I was at my lowest point, I just skipped all my classes and I pulled out the guitar. I wrote like six songs that day and I just sat there all day. And that’s when I realized, like this is what I need to do because it was such a release to just write songs. The only way for me to not, like, go insane is to create music.

That’s really where The Dukes are sort of special, I think. Our music is like "Yeah, we’re a rock’n roll band and sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll is really cool!" But when it comes down to it, like what we’re really trying to do is remind people that the heart and soul of music really is in connecting with the audience on a higher level than "Let’s get drunk and forget our problems.” I mean, we still like having fun, but, I don’t know. We try to make it more meaningful than just rocking out.

In addition to releasing an album with The Dukes, you’re also working on some solo stuff. Could you to tell me a little about both?
Well, my solo album, it started like, "OK, I have all these songs, I just want to record them and give them to my friends who like my songs." And then, as I sat down to record them, as I looked at the list of songs, it sort of turned into a concept album. At this point it’s almost done.

What about The Dukes?
We haven’t played since February 4th since we’re trying to make sure that the album release show is nice and packed and that we’ve taken plenty of time to build the hype. But honestly, right now we have enough songs that if we went into a studio, we could probably crank out at least three albums, right now.

I think we are probably going to go back into the studio and record our next album in late summer or early fall. We’ve already got all the songs for it. If we had the money we would do it right now. We’re not signed or anything, so we have to save up and play shows.

And also before we record the album, we’re going to start—starting in March actually, is our first out-of-town date—so we’re going to start trying to expand into the general area around Ohio. You know, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and maybe as far south as Nashville. That way, once we record our next album, we hope to do an actual full-scale tour and will have somewhat of a following in all of these areas.

Where did you guys record the album and who did you work with?
A friend of ours named Ryan Stacy had a reel to reel, which we really wanted to record on to have that old-school rock ‘n roll sound. You know, the sound of tape. He did it for free actually and we recorded it at multiple places in Cincinnati. We recorded in a big, bold, hollowed out, abandoned church. We recorded in one of our friend's houses and we recorded in a bathroom in Ryan’s place. And then he mixed it, and Dave Davis with The All Night Party and Ultrasuede mastered it for us.

What are you most excited about this album?
It’s our first foray into truly trying to make our presence outside of Cincinnati and so the album is sort of like the spark that we hope will draw interest from all people, like, "Oh rock ‘n roll is still alive, and here is some rock ‘n roll that is different from anything that I’ve heard before." … Are people still going to be able to find the heart and soul in the music we play or are they too far gone with, you know, what they listen to on the radio. I guess, I’m just truly excited to try to start changing the world.