Look in to the windows of Vaporized Oxford on Jackson Avenue late at night and you’ll see quite the motley crew huddled around a TV playing Super Smash Bros.
This reads like a meme, but video game meetings at the vape shop, owned by band member Tanner Scaggs, seem to be a ritual before every Holy Ghost Electric Show band practice.
The Holy Ghost Electric Show, a moniker for singer Cody Rogers’s main project, has created quite a stir in North Mississippi.
Rogers, a native of Corinth, began playing music at an early age in nearby cities. His brother Jake also began to play with him, busking on the street and playing small local shows. From doing that and meeting friends like Austin Wheeler, Connor Wroten and Will Shirley at small house shows, the band began to manifest itself into what it is today.
Holy Ghost consists of lead singer Cody Rogers, Jake Rogers (guitar/banjo), Will Shirley (lead guitar), Connor Wroten (bass), Austin Wheeler (drums), Dylan Van Zile (keys) and Tanner Scaggs (horns).
With all of these instrumentalists, a plethora of different vibes and sounds flow from the stage.
According to music magazine No Depression, “Finding a comparison might take you all week. They convey a sound that is equal parts New Orleans street fair, Mississippi blues-infused, hill–stomp party-rock, a bit of Woody Guthrie meets folk-noise-pop, with plenty of sad.”
The band is preparing to play its first show of 2016 tonight at Proud Larry’s with all-new music from the album they just completed.
The album is powerful, with soulful ballads and quiet reveries spread throughout. The imagery of the rural South is quite vivid within its lyrics, with lines like, “I don’t care if God is white or black as long as he gives me a Marlboro pack.”
“It was real surreal [recording this album],” Rogers said. “We recorded in Water Valley with Bronson Tew, who’s produced some phenomenal records. Leo “Bud’ Welch, Jimbo Mathus, Water Liars, you know, all our friends and people that we like, they’ve cut records there. And Bronson approaches it with a very fun attitude, very loving attitude, very respectful attitude… If you spend a lot of time in the music industry, you realize that a lot of sound engineers have sour grapes. But he keeps a lighthearted energy and gets excited about the songs and makes sure that work gets done.”
Holy Ghost spent Jan. 1-16 recording in Water Valley at Dial Back Sound with the help of Simone Felice of the band The Felice Brothers.
Rogers and the rest of the band worked with Felice one year earlier in Woodstock, New York on their EP.
According to Rogers, everything went according to plan this time around.
“We recorded everything live; we cut my voice live, drums, everything live. We cut it in the room and [Bronson and Simone] were keeping us pumped up, and it was very relaxed,” Rogers said. “There were no butterflies with it, no bad moments really.”
“It was a weird combination because Simone has only been in Mississippi, like, a few times, and that was back years ago with The Felice Brothers when they were on tour. So he’s never worked in Mississippi, he only knew me, and we only worked together for 6 days a year ago. He’d never been to the studio before, didn’t know nothing about it. So there really was nothing for him to go on except taking me for my word,” he said.
Apparently, his word was enough.
The album has spine-chilling gospel moments that Rogers compares to Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky.” The combination of powerful vocals accompanied by an organ creates a sense of being rooted in the South for a Sunday church service.
Although there are many new promises for 2016, Rogers said 2015 was a hard year for the band. They struggled to release their EP under their label and dealt with “sketchy companies.” However, this created a lot of time for the band to think about what they were doing.
“We took a step back after a month on the road and figured out what it meant for each member to do their part. We redesigned the whole band from the ground up, and I feel like it shows.”
Rogers said he hopes this new, redesigned album will be able to connect with their audience here in Oxford and around the state.
“I feel like one of our strengths is our connections at shows,” Rogers said. “We’re wild, we’re goofy, but we’re lovable. And it’s real. And I hope that young people in Mississippi will be able to connect and be able to see the picture we were trying to paint with this album when it comes out.”
Holy Ghost will share the stage at Proud Larry’s tonight with Greater Pyrenees, another local band out of Water Valley.
