TOTAL ORDER ISSUE 104 - Page 82

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EDITORS CHOICE ASPHALT VALENTINE gets rid of the 7-year itch with “Twisted road”. down and dirty, sexy and bluesy unabashed rock at its finest! Based in Atlanta, GA Asphalt Valentine got its start in the early 2000’s. signing with Chavis Records now HighVolMusic and released their debut Strip Rock Roll in 2008. With renewed excitement and energy, the band returned to work on the recordings and resigned with HighVolMusic in 2019 before putting the final touches on a new album. ‘Twisted Road’ was recorded at Dirty Little Secret Studios in Atlanta, GA and its ready to be consumed in mass-quantity. While working on new music, they took a moment to talk with Total Order about the changes in the band before the release of “Twisted Road”. You guys have had lineup changes since your last release. Can you talk about that time and what happened? Photo Credit: Asphalt Valentine Social Media AV: Well, seven years span of time really wasn’t something that we had planned on, or really wanted to do. After the 2014 record, we went through some lineup changes. Our drummer Scotty, who had been in the band with us since we formed back in 2005, left. He laughs that we had to train a new drummer, get him up to speed. When you’re doing that, you have to get some shows on the books. You’re really practicing to learn all the material that you have. That takes up a lot of your time. And then we went through some guitar player changes. When you do that, it really kind of hin- ders you from moving forward, you know? We’re you concerned about new additions changing the sound of the band? AV: We have had so many lineup changes that the sound is going to naturally change. Over that time, Page 82 your influences change to what you’re into. So you start out in one direction, but over that time period, I was able to write a bunch of songs. We were able to pick from them. You can hear the natural progression. You take “Strip Rock” for instance, “Twisted Road” is nothing like that.  I guess there is no real direction, it’s just rock and roll. We just do what we do and it comes out a certain way. It’s just us being us. The songs grow into what they become. We’ve been together for so long, we know how each other plays. When I’m writing a song, I may not be going for something, but I hear something that I know Brett can execute, because I know his style. I can convey that and then Brett can totally take it from there. So you know, we let it happen naturally. When we try things that maybe the thought in my head didn’t work, we either scrap it or keep working on it. We’ve got boatloads of just ideas, terabytes, and terabytes. We’ve got stuff going all the way back. (Continued on next page) AV Facebook AV Instagram AV Site Buy AVMusic Photo Credits: Asphalt Valentine Social Media Page 57 83 Page