The Nude Party’s latest album, Rides On, released on March 10 of this year. It’s the band’s third album, and the band have been busily touring in support of the album; in fact, they’ll be touring in Europe for most of June.

On April 16, The Nude Party played a show at the Turf Club in St. Paul, and the next day, they visited The Current studio to play four songs from the album. Afterwards, the band’s Patton Magee and Shaun Couture sat down with The Current’s Bill DeVille to chat about The Nude Party’s more than a decade of friendship and music-making; what it was like recording the album during a time when the band members were struck with COVID; and how they all got those awesome, embroidered denim suits.

Watch and listen to the entire session above, and read a transcript below.

Interview Transcript

Bill DeVille: Hey, I'm Bill DeVille and I'm here with Patton Magee and Shaun Couture of The Nude Party. Nice to see you, fellas.

Patton Magee: Thanks for having us, Bill.

Bill DeVille: Yeah. So you've been a band for like 11 years now. How did you guys all make it through the pandemic as a band? That really surprised me that a band of seven people could survive a pandemic, and, you know, without being able to play gigs, or hardly any. So how did you guys do it? What was the key? 

Patton Magee: I feel like we don't really know what else to do. We were stumped, too. Just working other jobs, you know? I was bartending at a brewery, Shaun was, like, delivering beers for the same brewery. And just kind of picked up side jobs and kept playing and playing until things kind of thawed out. And then by then, we had new songs written, we were ready to record and hit the road.

Bill DeVille: Yeah. And you have a brand-new album, it's your, is it your third album now, Rides On?

Patton Magee: Yeah, it's the third official album.

Bill DeVille: Yeah. How did you do things differently this time out?

Patton Magee: We did it at home.

Shaun Couture: Yeah, we have... Our friend Oakley owns a studio, and we share the space with him up in the Catskills. And it's all our own gear. And we helped build it. And we recorded there for the first time for this record.

Patton Magee: And we produced it ourselves.

Shaun Couture: Produced it ourselves.

Patton Magee: And just kind of like, owned the space. Booked — we brought an engineer up, my friend Matthew Horner from like Southern Florida. He actually has not really like engineered a record before, but we had, he has like a lot of cool gear, and we just like have always had like a really good vibe. And, and he's like, recorded himself a lot. So he just came up, set up as engineer, brought all his gear and we just spent, did like two two-week sessions in the winter. There was one point where all of us — well, Shaun left for a little bit to do a solo gig down in the city and the rest of us stayed and recorded. And when he got back, he was like, "Someone I was with had COVID." And next thing, Shaun had COVID, so then half the band had COVID during the session. So half of us kept going, and the other half were home sick, but then we all got COVID, so then we all went back in the studio, so we were like, "Since we all have COVID, we can all just keep keep recording and spend Christmas together," and it was actually kind of fun. We celebrated Christmas together. We all had COVID and had a Christmas party. Yeah, and our other friends were like, "Can I come?" We were like, "Do you have COVID?" And they're like, "No." It was like, you can't come.

Shaun Couture: Yeah, it was kind of an exclusive COVID party.

Bill DeVille: So what's it like, you guys were all living together essentially for several years, weren't you?

Patton Magee: Yeah, like six? Seven?

Shaun Couture: Yeah, about, well, if you count the Boone years...

Patton Magee: We lived together for, like, 10 years!

Shaun Couture: Yeah, because we started the band in Boone, North Carolina.

Bill DeVille: And that's where you're all from, right? And you went to college there in Boone.

Shaun Couture: We went to college there.

Patton Magee: None of us are like from from. Austin's from the Appalachians, but we all went to school there.

Shaun Couture: Yeah. We started the band there, and we lived together for five years there in Boone. And then we moved to the Catskills and lived together for three years. Right?

Patton Magee: Yeah. Yeah, we've been incredibly close proximity with each other for a very long time.

Bill DeVille: I guess you probably know each other's, you know, which buttons not to press and all in how to get along? 

Patton Magee: I think there's like a period, especially when you're like a younger, when you're a younger man and less, have a little less wisdom to you, there's like a period where you know where everyone's buttons are and you push them when you get upset because they push yours and there's like a back-and-forth button pushing. But to me, like, you know, gratefully, because I don't think this happens in every relationship, but for us, it feels like we've now like mapped out all of each other's buttons and don't push them.

Bill DeVille: Sure.

Patton Magee: Which is a great thing! It's just better. I kind of, honestly, I feel like, I feel like the band is like at the — I don't want to say "peak" — but it's just like, it's the best that we've ever been playing, it's the best our relationships have ever been. And it's like 10 years in, like. 

Bill DeVille: And it's your best album, I think.

Patton Magee: I feel like it's our best album.

Shaun Couture: Thank you.

Patton Magee: All in all, I just feel like, very much like, on an upward trajectory.

Bill DeVille: Now, when you guys met in college, I read someplace that a lot of you didn't play instruments. How do you figure out who's gonna play what?

Patton Magee: You did!

Shaun Couture: Well, yeah, I played, I've been playing in bands since I was pretty young. And... but when we got to get, we kind of knew we were going to live together first. And then we decided that we wanted to be in a band. And I mean, it was kind of pretty natural; like, Alec [Castillo] wanted to play bass, Connor [Mikita] wanted to play drums, Patton played guitar.

Patton Magee: But I mostly just wanted to write songs. 

Shaun Couture: Yeah.

Patton Magee: And sing. But when I, when I went to high school in Utah, and then like moved to North Carolina for college, I didn't know anybody at all; I met all these guys at school. I didn't know anyone in the whole state. But my only mentality going to college was I just want to... I kept watching that Doors documentary, When You're Strange, the one narrated by Johnny Depp, and I just was like, in my mind, I was like, you know, "You just go there, you'll be around people, and you'll just like, you'll start a band." And that's, I couldn't sing it all, but I I knew I just wanted to sing and write songs and be in a band.

Bill DeVille: So you've opened for artists like Jack White and the Arctic Monkeys. I saw you with with Orville Peck last summer at First Avenue. And you've done a lot of different gigs. What's the most memorable show you played in your 11 years as as The Nude Party?

Shaun Couture: My most memorable, and I was talking to someone about this last night, was when we played Bonnaroo.

Patton Magee: Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing.

Shaun Couture: We played— so we played Bonnaroo. And the Superjam went on before us.

Patton Magee: They closed with "Wagon Wheel!" 

Shaun Couture: Yeah, Old Crow Medicine Show walks out, they play "Wagon Wheel" whilst I'm backstage pacing, sweating. Like, like, "How are we going to follow 'Wagon Wheel' in Tennessee?" Right? But, but the crowd loved us. And you know, Bonnaroo's like, it's a very good vibe and everyone is having a good time. And it was, they like, they just were very receptive. And I just remember walking offstage after that just literally like shaking. It was, it was amazing.

Patton Magee: And like, I think it was summer 2013 or 2014. Like, it was like we didn't hardly, we like got to know each other a lot because we went to Bonnaroo together as volunteers. We couldn't, we couldn't afford tickets, so we just went as volunteers and did like, all of our volunteer shifts, and like camped out. And that was like how I definitely got like closer to you and Shaun in the first place. And I remember specifically...

Shaun Couture: I am Shaun.

Patton Magee: Or "you and Don," I meant to say! But just like, being there and like watching Jack White on the mainstage, all of us just standing there, just kind of like frying like, just like amazed, like, totally in awe. And we had, we were like just starting the band. We didn't really have anything going yet. We were just kind of starting to play together. And just to kind of like to go from like that place of just like in a sea of people looking up at Jack White and being like, "This is insane." He did like four encores. And then a few years later, to be like, playing at Bonnaroo, like on the stage, was kind of unbelievable. And then like opening for Jack White was like, honestly kind of emotional.

Bill DeVille: I can I can imagine. It must be pretty cool to know that Jack kind of likes your music.

Patton Magee: Yeah. Yeah, I think he does.

Bill DeVille: Yeah. And I saw you in the Blue Room in in Nashville, Jack's place there. And that was a super cool show during Americana Fest. And it's like I remember being, it was a super long day and you guys went on stage, it must have been one o'clock in the morning, maybe a little later. And it was just amazing. And I want to thank you for that.

Shaun Couture: Oh yeah?

Bill DeVille: Yeah.

Shaun Couture: Thanks for coming.

Bill DeVille: It was a great set. And another show I want to mention: It was New Year's Eve, right in the height of the pandemic, and you guys played at a little club in New York in Brooklyn, I believe it was. And it was it was live streamed.

Patton Magee: Yeah, we live streamed from The Sultan Room.

Bill DeVille: Yeah. And it was amazing, it was fun. It was, I mean a different, we couldn't really go out that year, it wasn't feeling very public. So you know, sat at home, pulled you up on the big screen on the TV and turned it up real loud, but that was a great, fun little New Year's Eve, I thought.

Patton Magee: Yeah, that was fun. That was cool. It was like the best we could do at the time.

Shaun Couture: Yeah, it was. Obviously, we were there alone with our two friends filming.

Bill DeVille: Yeah.

Shaun Couture: So we, but we all, you know, we got in our show clothes. And it was like...

Patton Magee: Yeah, we should have used a clap track or something so there was something... 

Shaun Couture: We like went into the green room, and we're like, "OK, guys, it's showtime." No one was there!

Patton Magee: Nervous. "What if no one comes?"

Bill DeVille: One thing I notice about your music, and I'm such a fan of all three of your albums, is I hear certain things like the Velvet Underground and The Rolling Stones, and well, Dr. John, too; in fact, you covered Dr. John on your new album. What is it about music that's from, you know, the latter part of the 60s through the middle part of the 70s that you guys, why you gravitate toward towards that a little bit musically?

Patton Magee: I don't feel like... it's not like, it's not like you have a reason for a feeling, you know, what I you mean? You have a, you just, like, have a feeling and a, and a reaction to something. And you know, you can add a reason on top of it, but it's just a natural thing, you know? Just like, if it just hits. It just hits.

Shaun Couture: Oh, sorry. I was just gonna say I, a big thing for me about music from that era is just the production of it, because a lot of it was done in one room live to tape. So they're kind of like little events, you know, like moments captured in time that are like, that, I don't know. It's just like something about capturing lightning in a bottle. And you can, you know, in a Doctor John song or like a Neil Young track, like, you can just feel that. Not to say that doesn't happen now.

Bill DeVille: Go ahead.  Yeah.

Patton Magee: Probably the players of that time were better.

Shaun Couture: Probably.

Patton Magee: Because they were just like, they had more than 10,000 hours. Like they were all so busy, like collaborating with each other, playing constantly, like, always like having like, after show jams and stuff. I think probably the players of that time where were all in all better.

Gallery: The Nude Party in The Current studio

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Bill DeVille: Tell me about the song "Rides On," the single, the first single from the recent album.

Patton Magee: Shaun had, Shaun had written like a chord pattern that was like, it was, it was like the one we ended up with, but it had like other parts to it, kind of like a number of pieces on it. And he sent it to me. And like, he had, he had mentioned he had some ideas sort of about Mexico. So I kind of had like that, I was like listening to what he sent me, the recording he sent me, and kind of thinking about, just like the word Mexico, and then we kind of like... I like, it's like, "Oh, I kind of got an idea, like kind of like chorus and stuff." And so then we like took the parts and we like, mishmashed them and like elongated certain things and like, kind of like, wrote it out. And yeah, it just, it just, that one just kind of came into place, like, kind of easily and it felt very much to me, and I think to all of us, just sort of like, kind of like an anthem for the for the album. For how we feel right now, you know, where we're at.

Bill DeVille: Are the characters in the song real?

Patton Magee: Um, yeah. Oddly enough. Yeah.

Bill DeVille: It seems like it's almost like a maybe sort of a sequel to the song "Chevy Van."

Patton Magee: It feels that way to me kind of too.

Bill DeVille: Yeah.

Patton Magee: Yeah.

Bill DeVille: So is it just a coincidence that it played out that way?

Patton Magee: Well, you know, it's, um...

Shaun Couture: It is kind of a coincidence that we were on the same wavelength as far as like, what the song might be about in a way. Like, you wrote the lyrics, and it just so happened to be in the same, in the same vein.

Patton Magee: You had mentioned something about Mexico, so I kind of had like that rattling. So I got the memo by the way about jean shirts and jackets.

Shaun Couture: Yeah...

Patton Magee: And like, I was like, I was like, I was like, with my ex-girlfriend, like, visited her — my ex-girlfriend at the time, or whatever, however you say that — but we were visiting her grandpa in Ohio and he was like, he was like, going through chemo, so he was like, super emotional; people who are going through chemo tend to be. And I was sitting with him in the kitchen, he was showing me all these old photographs, and he had this one of like him with this, like, matador, down in like, and he was like, I remember he said to me, and I thought it was a funny sentence, so I wrote down, he said, "If you ever find yourself down in Acapulco, look for the elephant cliffs. I've got a friend down there named Alfredo, he's a matador." And I was like, it was just such a funny sequence of words that I wrote it down and then kind of forgot about it until like maybe a year later, when when that song was coming out, that I kind of like, I was digging through some notes and like that came up and I was like [nods].

Shaun Couture: I see that.

Patton Magee: Yeah, you did. 

Shaun Couture: Looking good.

Bill DeVille: So how did you, did you adorn those yourselves? Your jean jackets?

Patton Magee: We designed them.

Shaun Couture: I have a friend up in the Catskills; her name's Lina, and she goes by Pumpkinseed Chainstitch; that's her Instagram, or her business. But she's the one who did all these for us, and we all, mine has a train on the back.

Bill DeVille: Lovely! With the album title.

Shaun Couture: Yeah, mine's not as fancy as the rest of them yet, but but yeah, they... We all came up with that concept of the jackets in the pants and then told her, and she did her own rendition of it.

 Bill DeVille: Yeah. Here's a, here's a question for you: Is the band a democracy?

Patton Magee: Yeah, I think it's, what it's become is like, like a democracy with like specialization, you know what I mean? Like, like I'll always right the setlists. but like Connor and Alec, like Alec [Castillo] and [Austin] Brose will always kind of do like social media stuff, and like Connor [Mikita] will always do like merch. So there's always like, like I got, you know, we get on this tour and I'm like hanging out after the show and seeing people's shirts and I'm like, "Oh, I've never seen that design," you know what I mean? Like, I think it's, it's gotten specialized in a way where everybody like, leans into their, leans into their expertise. And not everybody's, like, not everyone's hands need to be in every piece of everything.

Bill DeVille: Right. Well, it's been really nice to chat with you and I can't wait to see you again.

Patton Magee: Thanks for having us, Bill.

Bill DeVille: It's The Nude Party, and that's Patton Magee and Shaun Couture. Thanks so much for coming by, gents.

Patton Magee: Thanks for having us.

Shaun Couture: Thank you, Bill.

Bill DeVille: Our pleasure.

Video Segments

00:00:00 Hard Times (All Around)
00:03:51 Polly Anne
00:07:46 Sold out of Love
00:12:05 Ride On
00:17:01 Interview with host Bill DeVille

All songs from The Nude Party’s 2023 album, Rides On, available on New West Records.

Musicians

Patton Magee – vocals, guitar
Shaun Couture – vocals, guitar
Austin Brose – percussion
Alec Castillo – bass
Zachary “Don” Merrill – keyboards
Connor Mikita – drums
Jon “Catfish” Delorme – pedal steel, guitar

Credits

Guests – The Nude Party
Host – Bill DeVille
Producer – Derrick Stevens
Video Director – Eric Xu Romani
Camera Operators – Guillermo Bonilla, Eric Xu Romani
Audio – Evan Clark
Graphics – Natalia Toledo
Digital Producer – Luke Taylor

External Link

The Nude Party – official site