The Rising: Too Many Daves

A few words of advice: Never enter an Iron Man competition with this band.

So you think you can party like a rock star. Well, you must not be familiar with Florida party punks Too Many Daves.

“We formed in ‘04, have gotten together about six times now. Wrote three records. Thirteen songs recorded, mixed and released. Played shows in multiple cities. All this in the course of about six weeks combined. Prob ate about 130 pizzas, drank about 500 cans of beer, smoked ourselves stupid - also within said timeframe.”

That’s pretty much the band in a nutshell, in the words of frontman Dave Disorder as told to IndiePit. Oh wait, one more thing:

“On this last venture, we added the beverage Joose to the mix,” he noted. Said “beverage” has an alcohol content of 9.9. percent. “They actually take song submissions endorsing the beverage on their Web site, but we automatically disqualify ourselves because we swear and talk about getting fucked up.”

Yes, they do indeed. You’d be hard-pressed to find a Too Many Daves song that isn’t about getting drunk, getting high or getting drunk and high. But that’s pretty much the game plan the band has always had - which is to say, tearing the game plan to shreds and then taking a drunken piss on those shreds. In that sense, Too Many Daves are something of an anti-band.

“The band was put together for the purpose of it imploding,” said Dave Disorder, who is also the head of ADD Records (we’ll have an “Inside the Label” profile on the label in the near future). “We have dudes from all over the map who are named Dave and also happen to be insane in some way. This was never supposed to work. Somehow it has?”

Apparently so. Because the bacchanal brigade has a new split 7-inch with Dude Jams coming out later this month and plans to play San Diego’s North Park Awesome Fast, taking place September 4-7.

But it’s still fair to say Too Many Daves don’t take themselves seriously, right?

“Well, that’s sort of a yes and no,” Dave Disorder stipulated. “We don’t want to write a shit song, but we’re not here to impress anybody. We’re just going to do it as long as it’s fun. We’re totally not serious, but we don’t want to sound like a bunch of jackasses.”

For the 7-inch, Too Many Daves followed the same time-tested, well-honed recording strategy that they’ve been using since they started.

“Our guitar player, Davey Quinn, lives in San Diego, so we fly him in for the week. The first day or so, we’ll party. Then we usually practice and write songs for about a day or two, go over everything for one day, then we’ll play a show. After that, we’ll finally record - we usually have a week.”

And then the record comes out. Easier than opening a can of beer.

As for the shows, you can only imagine the backlog of hilarious horror stories they have to share. Breaking their feet onstage, getting kicked out of the venues they’re playing, fights with security - it’s all par for the course, as far as the Daves are concerned.

“Our shows are either great or terribly, tragically great,” Dave Disorder said.

Even the first Too Many Daves show was one for the books.

“The very first time we played, I set up a preshow for the Fest here in Tampa. We were going to play really, really early, but one of our guys runs a bike shop and couldn’t get out till 9. We got to play last, around 4:30 in the morning, and I think there was like 15 peple left or so. We were so tired and wasted that when we finished playing, our guitar player started playing songs. Songs we didn’t write.”

Until now, Too Many Daves’ notoriously three-shits-to-the-wind shows have been something only Floridians have been able to enjoy. But with the band heading to California for Awesome Fast (they’ll be playing September 4 at 4 p.m.), is it possible that the Daves might be ready to take it to the next level?

Don’t count on it. Not as long as having fun is the modus operandi, which it very much is. As Dave Disorder said, the band would even turn down the opportunity to tour with a bigger act, if they weren’t allowed to keep up their normal practices.

“If we were going to have fun, we’d do it. But you don’t want to go on tour with a bunch of people you’re not going to have any fun with. What’s the point?”

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Get your fill of Too Many Daves on their IndiePit profile.

And don’t miss these previous installments of “The Rising”:

Mountanaka

The Hero and the Victor