Intro by King Musa
“Yo, what it is? You know what it is? It's your Man, King Musa! Welcome to First Impression Nacogdoches, the podcast that's showcasing the vibrant local businesses, unique brands, and hidden gems right here in our local town. We're here to help students, parents, and visitors discover what truly makes Nacogdoches special. And I'm your host Musa. Today, we're going to be digging into another local favorite that you need to truly know about. We have a very special guest who's truly making a real impact in our local scene. We're excited to learn more about the Piney Rats with Maxwell, Brian, Justin, and John Lacy. Stay tuned for that as we ask them a little bit more about themselves, introducing the Piney Rats!”
Getting to Know The Piney Rats
King Musa: “Alright. Sorry for all the formalities, guys. To break the ice, I have to know, as musicians, what would you say is your favorite headphone brand? Like Beats, AirPods?”
Maxwell Sizemore: “I’m going to go with mine just simply because it's the one I use the most, comfortable with them: the Evo 4 series. They're not wireless, but mine came with my interface for recording.”
John Lacy: “Sennheiser. Probably the brand Sennheiser for mixing and stuff. Other than that, I use actually real cheap headphones at work in other places because I feel like it doesn't matter to me so much.”
Justin Oakley: “Mine's sort of like John, I just use whatever off-brand thing I have that's noise-canceling. It works for me.”
Brian Strokes: “Yeah, I'm in the same vein as Justin and John there. I have no idea. I don't have any special equipment or anything. The headphones that I listen to music with at work are some the previous employee left behind.”
Can y'all introduce yourself and what y'all do here in Nacogdoches?
MS: “I'm Maxwell Sizemore. I work at a local corporate office here. I'm one of the guitarists and the vocalist.”
JL: “I am John and I am the drummer. I do other music stuff in town, and also love my family and to play in the band.”
JO: “I'm Justin. I play Irish tenor banjo, mandolin, and guitar for the Piney Rats. I’m kind of the multi-instrumentalist. And also a local oddities artist. My partner and I have a business called Ladybones Baubles, so you'll find us around here vending at local events.”
BS: “My name's Brian. I play bass. I'm a local here. Me and my fiancée live here. And, yeah, I play bass in the band.”
Background and Musical Passions
Where are y'all from? Are y'all from the Piney Woods? Siblings and all of that.
MS: “I was born in Bridgeport, but I don't claim that at all. I was here before I was a year old in Garrison. I grew up in Garrison. So I'm from here and I'll probably die here. And I love this city.”
BS: “I'm from the Fort Worth area, actually from Burleson, but most people don't know it, so I just say Fort Worth. None that I want to talk about.”
JL: “I'm from Houston, but I've been here for like eight years and my kids go to school here, so I'm a local. They go to Woden.”
JO: “I'm from Lufkin. I've got four siblings, I think. Yeah, there's five of us. I only talk to one of them.”
Are y'all from different backgrounds? You mentioned the Celtic inspiration. Tell me about the passion in music. Who got y'all into it? Was it family members? Or was it more of just, hey, I went out by myself and music found me?
BS: “For me, I was pretty sheltered as a kid. My dad was a musician and he played bass and guitar. The bass that I play today is one that I inherited from him. He kind of taught me to play a little bit. I've just been playing bass for like 15 years, but not really doing anything with it until Max hit me up one day. My bass guitarist inspiration is Freeman from Rancid.”
JO: “I was kind of lucky to have come from a musical family, especially my mom's side. My great-grandfather played banjo; his whole family were like Appalachian musicians, bluegrass kind of stuff. I was lucky to have a dad who was almost like an amateur musicologist, so I got exposed to all kinds of music growing up: reggae, punk rock, Delta Blues, you name it. But I've always had a love for Celtic and British folk music. That was pretty foundational, and that's kind of how I got involved with this band of miscreants here.”
JL: “I really just love all different kinds of music and have since I heard any of it. I even like bad music just to listen to it and analyze it in a weird way. When I was a kid, I was more into hardcore. When I saw Max post something about needing a drummer, I was just like, ‘Oh, the only kind of band that I would join would be a punk band.’ I get to be more myself and let loose. So that's kind of my reason for being here with these homies.”
MS: “When I was a kid, my dad got me into rock and roll, showing me Van Halen and Def Leppard. I would go on to get heavily into MTV Insomnia Hours, where all the hard rock was, Marilyn Manson and things like that, that I was into in the '90s. My dad taught me to play guitar, and I went on to finish teaching myself. I did study at Angelina College; Delta Blues is my only traditional training, other than classical. I went on Flogging Molly's Salty Dog Cruise in 2022. And when I got off that cruise, I contacted Brian, and I was like, ‘Hey, man, I'm inspired. I want to start a Celtic punk band in East Texas.’ And so here we are.”
The Piney Rats: Formation and Overcoming Challenges
What is a Piney Rat? And Maxwell, what made you want to put the band together?
MS: “To explain Piney Rat, I got to explain who we were before. We didn't have a name at first. I don't like robots and androids, so I said, ‘What if we named ourselves Kill Sophia?’ But most people don't care about robots, and if people looked us up on Facebook, they'd get flagged for putting in the word 'kill.' So we had to find a new name. We're all Nacogdoches rats now. I was up till four in the morning trying to think of a new name. I wanted to incorporate 'rats' because that's a big thing around here, a 'Nac rat.' But I wanted it to be less specific than Nac, so I tried to broaden it to the Piney Woods area: Piney Rats. Honestly, it just looked better as one word, so I pushed it together. Now we got Piney Rats who are going to be famous in the Piney Woods!”
MS: “The Flogging Molly Cruise just changed how I saw my musicianship and what I wanted out of it. There was just something special about that environment. You're on a boat, so you're sitting there looking at Dave King and them, and they can't escape you! You could talk to them and really interact with all the other bands. It's like a festival on the water. I came back, and it just changed what I saw the potential of music could be. I knew Brian from local shows; he would come to our shows and skank to our punk song. I knew he played bass guitar, so I called him. He's the most punkest punk in Nacogdoches. I was like, ‘Hey, man, I want to start a Celtic punk band.’ We talked about it, went over it, and we started fishing for members.”
How did y'all overcome these challenges of not only saying, yeah, these are the members we want to be together, to how y'all keeping the peace? Like, there can't be too many chiefs. There got to be some Indians.
MS: “The four of us know each other from performing in different bands around town. We all go to shows and are highly involved. So we knew that everybody's really peaceful, not a jerk. That was a major thing we were looking for: people that aren't throwing out a bunch of red flags, who we can get along with, because you never know if we book a weekend, we're going to stay together for 48 hours. We don't want to be at each other's throats. So that's the first thing you're looking for, obviously, looking for talent and also people that fit musically with what we're going for.”
BS: “As far as the 'too many cooks' thing, Max started the band. It's his project that we've all adopted. He's the frontman, but it's very much a democracy, and that's why it works. When we make decisions, it's something that's talked about. He's never railroaded an idea. I'm really lucky to get that on my first band because most people go through a lot of pending trash.”
JO: “These two guys pretty well covered it. We all get along really well. We're all friends, and we're all really devoted to making this work. We like working together. The collaboration part's the fun part. Everybody has good ideas. Everybody has their own unique talents. Everybody knows how to put their own original spin on things, and that's what makes us.”
JL: “I feel like I'm not as left-field as he is. He said he needed a drummer, and I'm just such a good, polite little drummer. I work well with others. I grew up playing in a church a lot, so I'm super mindful of other musicians. And I'm pretty easygoing. So I'm just down for whatever these guys want to do. I really don't have any ties to Celtic anything, but I was like, ‘Man, whatever y'all are doing, I'll learn it.’ There hasn't been any clashes because everybody's pretty easygoing. And like I said, I'm such a good, polite little drummer that I'm not interrupting people when they tune.”
Unique Sound and Music Creation
What makes y'all unique? We keep talking about this Celtic sound and everything else like that. I want to go into what is the music creation like? What was your first song, first performance, kind of take me through the first?
MS: “We have a song called 'Tab Me Out,' aka the Jameson song, which was inspired from the cruise where I drank way too much Jameson. That was probably our first. While we were in the writing process, I had already rolled that song out at open mics, so it gave a prelude to what we were going to be about. A lot of the local musicians, like Chris Edwards and Tommy Simpson, loved it. They'd be out in the crowd singing it with me, and I could hear them from the stage. So I knew right away that I had a banger on my hands. It moved quickly over about six months. Chris Edwards was actually who we debuted with. He released an album, and we played our first show with him last year. Our first show was December at Old Tyler Road with him. But yeah, we debuted last June, I want to say, when Chris Edwards released his album and his single. That's where we started.”
JL: “None of us are from Ireland or anything like that, but these two specifically have some Scottish/Irish ancestry. We're making punk music, but we're wanting to make a very specific genre of punk music because it has a completely different feel than traditional punk bands like Rancid. Because he went on that Flogging Molly tour, which he already loved Flogging Molly, he came back and he was like, ‘This is what I've been wanting to make. Now I'm going to put forth the steps to actually make it.’ And he called me. What makes this unique is there are other punk bands that have come and gone around in this general area. We're trying to lean into a Celtic sound and kind of taking something from other genres as well. There's not a lot of punk bands out there, especially around here, where there's a banjo player. That does catch people's ear.”
The Piney Rats & Their Audience
For Visitors:
- Nacogdoches has probably the best music scene within at least an hour, if not more. It's a solid scene.
- The art scene as a whole in Nacogdoches is very good and supportive of each other, no matter what type of artist you are. There's a certain level of community about it that's not very common.
For Students:
- There's culture here! My motto is: seek out and create the culture. You can be what you're trying to find instead of just being one of them. You could be one of us.
- Having frequent shows here in town at Maxx's E.L. House and Bistro (shout out to Rob!) and other places, people from out of town can see that things are happening here that they might think only happen in Houston and Dallas.
- Piney Rats is a part of that. It's something that students can see where it's like, 'Oh, there's music here.'
For Parents:
- In terms of the Piney Rats, it's definitely a lot of culture, with Celtic influences and East Texas punk. We're more of a punk band with Celtic influences than necessarily a Celtic band.
- Our songs have a positive message for the most part.
- In our local scene, everybody's really polite and looks out for each other.
- Maxx's is a restaurant, and we play in what's called the back room, which is welcome to anybody, including those 16 or 18. I've only ever seen, I don't even think I've ever seen a fight in Maxx's. Everybody's very supportive and kind. It's not a dive bar.
Upcoming Performances & How to Stay Connected
The Piney Rats' Schedule & Connect with The Piney Rats:
- We've decided to take the next few weeks or possibly a month off from booking anything to go into the studio and do some recording. We're trying to get at least a single or two out by the end of the summer or mid-summer.
- Right now, we're playing mostly out of town, but we'll be back. We're contemplating an October 4th date in Nacogdoches, but it's not confirmed yet.
- We're likely to host something here in Lufkin in the next coming weeks, but again, not confirmed.
- You can see us around at other people's shows all the time.
- Social Media - You can find us, The Piney Rats, on Facebook or Instagram.
Shout-Outs:
- The Dead Chachis
- Cool Brick
- Beaumont Waffle House (where we made a super fan and got paper hats, which is our Facebook cover photo!)
Outro by King Musa
“Alright, man, fellas, thank y'all so much. A big shout out to Maxwell, Brian, Justin, and John, and The Piney Rats for taking the time out to share some of your insight today and letting everyone know how great Nacogdoches is. Remember, our town is full of incredible local businesses, hidden gems, and First Impression Nacogdoches is the podcast to help you find them all. Subscribe, connect with us on social media, and join our community. Until next time, this is King Musa signing off, remember, go explore Nacogdoches. Thank you.”
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