DIRTY ROOKS "SUGAR MAMA" DEBUTS 02/14/10

The Dirty Rooks is a band of many faces, sometimes as many as 13 [!], and this Valentine's Day (02/14/10) they'll be showcasing their sophomore effort found in the form of "Sugar Mama".

This album is a giant leap forward from their 2007 self titled debut - adding a horn section, backup vocals, honky tonk keys and another guitarist in the form of Mike Bailey.

Chicago Music Project had the pleasure of meeting these guys when they were still calling themselves a "booze rock band", offering grimy guitars, rough bass, hard lined drums and a huge voice found in lead singer, Dan Stalilonis.

And now here we find them with their second album - we had a chance to catch up with the Rooks' front man, Grant Gholson, to ask a few questions:

CMP: How does this album differ from the first?

GRANT: There's a big difference. We worked with a engineer (Andy Matzdorf of Giant Squid Audio) who knows our kind of music. We did a good job capturing the experience of seeing our big band live. And I think that's something that was a priority for us this time around. The scope of some of the songs, Larry's Blues and So It Seems in particular, is orders of magnitude huger than anything we did on the last album. It's never a good thing when bands go epic for epic's sake, but I feel comfortable that we served the songs well. And is ambition really all that bad if the energy and sincerity is there? Nah.

What kind of maturation has occurred since the Dirty Rooks' first self titled debut? As a band? As musicians individually? As a collective sound?

First of all, we're much better musicans, and we've a much greater appreciation for playing together, listening to one another, learning each other's musical tendencies, etc. Mike (Bailey) is with us now, too, and he's a bit of a guitar virtuoso, so that adds another element to it that we didn't have before. Second, we've got some dynamite backing folks playing with us, just great GREAT musicians (and good friends too). And they meshed really well with the new material.

I also think we've enlarged the musical territory we're covering--the blues-rock component has--and will--remain sort of our core. But we've also branched out to do some soul numbers on this album and, in sort of the other direction, a few country-influenced tunes. And we feel comfortable doing that.

What do the Dirty Rooks hope to gain from this experience and second album?

Fame, fortune, babes, etc. In our ideal future, we'll get huge, and then one of us will die of an overdose, another will take solace in religion, and the rest will live out rather bitter lives wondering how it all went wrong. Actually, we just hope people like it, want to play it, and want to come to our shows. We're extremely happy with this album, and we hope other people are too.

CMPtv On Stage: The Dirty Rooks "Tell Me Something" from Chicago Music Project on Vimeo.