Singled Out: Voltagehawk's Modern Gasoline

Keavin Wiggins | 04-13-2020

Voltagehawk's Dan Fenton tells us about the band's latest single "Modern Gasoline", which comes from the Nashville rocker's self-titled debut album. Here is the story:

A few years back, Jarrad and I would get together and jam in his basement in East Nashville every Tuesday night, smoke a bit, have a few drinks, laugh a lot. One night I think I was still "feeling" the night before, and we we're jammin' in this really cool pocket, and I sang with some half cocked smirk; "I can't get clean when I'm dirty, I can't get dirty when I'm clean..." poking fun at a problem that I would have to face a few years down the road, but that's another story. We got into this Motorhead juxtaposition with the groovy pocket verse, and were on the right track. Then we were thinking about all the things we use to get us up, bring us down... I looked at it like a muscle car with some sort of weird modern gasoline; Something tough, but that ran on all the wrong stuff. The song was a tip of the hat to a party life style of yesteryear, while finding self awareness about one's own need for change. From a sonic stand point, there are a few psychological easter eggs: The line "I take a bump from my key" is followed shortly after a four on the floor like disco beat, referencing that studio 54 party era, before diving into a full blown punk beat, showing the equal juxtaposition of substance in sequential periods of time, on different sides of New York. Then a breakdown drop to represent that after party dip feeling. After Chase and Tyler joined up, months later, we ran the song through the 4 of us and it really came into focus, but it wasn't until we tracked it with Geoff Piller over at Electric Thunder Studios that it took on its space like quality and avant-garde trash compactor ending. It's a really special song to us, because it was the genesis of proving to ourselves that we could let all of our influences creep into to one song, and it was the first exercise in really getting that to work for us. It definitely opened our eyes to how we could bend and play with genres. And going in to record it really helped us find our sound in the studio, it's definitely a cool single to introduce yourself to the world with, lot's of energy, and a rippin' solo! Super fun to play live.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the album here