Ten years ago, on October 30th, 2015, Charleston-based duo Little Stranger released the album that started it all, Buddha the Beast. Since then, their career has blossomed, and they’ve developed a dedicated fanbase all over the country.
As they prepare for their homecoming bash, Night of the Living Stranger with Bumpin Uglies, Jarv, and Damn Skippy at The Refinery this Saturday, November 1st, John and Kevin Shields of Little Stranger took the time to reflect on the past decade with Chris Gardner of Extra Chill.
Forming Little Stranger: Buddha the Beast
“John and I teamed up to just experiment, goof around, have some fun and make some music,” Kevin explains. “By the end of the process we realized that we were sitting on a gold mine of great tracks and friendship.”
Kevin was still living in Philadelphia at the time, but John soon convinced him to move to Charleston and do it for real. Kevin did just that, and the rest is history.
In addition to the new 10th anniversary remaster of Buddha the Beast, John and Kevin also just spent two weeks in the mountains of West Virginia working on their next album.
Writing the New Album in West Virginia
“We’ve been going 100 miles an hour all year, and we needed to work on the new record,” John says. We decided at the beginning of the year to take that time to get away from everything, be isolated and do some writing.”
“It was a great place to be free,” Kevin chimes in, “ride ATVs, build fires, get scared by hunters and flamethrowers.”
While they had some material written before they arrived, they mostly wrote new music fueled by the creative spirit of the remote location.
“We did come with a few song ideas in mind but didn’t really work on those ones,” John says. “We wanted to start from scratch up there with some stuff. That took a little bit to get in the flow, but I feel like we struck some gold out there.”
Stay tuned for more about the new album, the follow-up to 2024’s Sat Around Trippin, as it comes together. The duo continues to experiment and try new things, while staying true to the friendship at the root of the collaboration.
John Shields Re-Records Dad’s Music
Aside from Little Stranger’s growth and evolution, John Shields has been working on a special side project of songs originally written by his dad, also John Shields, affectionately referred to as “Papa John.”
“My dad was a songwriter, he was in a band in Philly back in the late 70s, early 80s called Metro,” John says. “I’m trying to make it a goal this year to have an EP of his songs re-recorded.”
John re-recorded the songs at Coast Records in Charleston with Matt Zutell, Aaron Utterback, and Ross Bogan. Then, they took his father’s vocals from an old recording, and used them in the new recording.
“I’m trying to bring them to life in a way that they didn’t have the recording capabilities back then,” he explains. “So everything was recorded on a TASCAM 4-track cassette. But we re-recorded one of the songs and I was able to, with AI and all its insanity, pull his vocals from the original recording and put them over the new recording and it sounds incredible. So I’m very excited about that.”
Get Tickets to Little Stranger at The Refinery here.
Jarv on “Red Rover”
One of Little Stranger’s most popular songs is “Red Rover,” a party anthem with quirky space themes, featuring Jarv.
“Little Stranger hit me up, praise god, and wanted me to do some rapping and I said hell yeah, dude,” Jarv explains. “It took a little while because I’m an idiot and missed the email and Kev had to circle back a couple times for me.”
Both Jarv and the fans are glad that he eventually caught the email and made it on the track.
Margaritas and Van Damn Skippy
During this conversation, Damn Skippy was making margaritas with limes from his key lime tree, and he took some time to tell Gardner about his new van, “Van Damn Skippy.”
“It’s already got almost 5,000 miles on that bitch,” he says. “She’s doing good out there, you know. Jarv just went to Florida and back in it. You could pretty much do anything in that van. Man, 15 passenger, The four of us could go. You could put 11 women in it right now.”
And with that, the boys were out the door and in the van, off on another adventure.