Photos by Greg Wong
Allston Pudding: How are you guys feeling after performing today?
Nate Perry: I feel fantastic. It was a lot of work going into it, and just to see it go well, and to see the crowd reaction, yeah, I feel incredible.
Connor Milligan: Yeah, that was incredible. Coming from having attended this festival for however many years in the past, it’s incredible to be on the other side of it. It was a dream come true, really.
Mike Chandler: I’m buzzing. Man, my adrenaline’s pumping, and I’m also really relieved. This has kind of been our Super Bowl, and we’ve just been working real hard towards it this whole time, and now we’re gonna kick back, enjoy ourselves. have some drinks…
AP: When did you guys know that you were performing at Boston Calling?
NP: We were hearing things in email chains, we knew things were happening in the background.
CM: It was right around the time of the Boston Music Awards, and we had been nominated for ‘New Act of the Year”.
AP: The BMAs are like an unofficial sourcing opportunity for Boston Calling.
CM: Seems like that.
MC: It came about early in the mid-fall, I want to say we started talking about it because of Michael Marotta at Knyvet. We basically just had the conversation where he really believed in us and said, “I think you guys would be great for Boston calling, you know, no promises, but I’ll talk to who I can talk to and see if I can make it happen.” By December we got the “Ok”.
AP: There’s a bit of backstory on your website as far as how you guys met and came together as a band. But could you give a little bit more of a glimpse into that process of how you found everyone?
NP: Yeah, so after I got into the army in January 2018, I moved back home. I was looking to get involved in music and bands. I started a band, got fired from it, started another band, and that one just fell apart. But then I got real frustrated one day, and I went on Craigslist, of all places, and looked.
CM: I have to add that using Craigslist in the year 2018, 2020, whatever era. That’s wild.
MC: I was unaware of that. [laughs] But okay.
NP: It’s good that he and I were both unaware, because I went on and I saw Mike had made a post needing a lead singer, which he had posted like 12 hours before. I was like, “all right, do you know how to write songs? …Yeah, man.” But I’d never written a song before. But that night, I actually ended up writing “another day”.
MC: I’ll give you a TL;DR answer: So basically I was running another band that was winding down, and I was looking for new people to play with. Nate was coming back from the army at that time, also looking for new people to play with. We linked up at that time, basically just hit it off and built it from the ground up.
NP: We really locked in as Nate Perry & Ragged Company when we got Connor here.
CM: I was coming off of a couple of different bands that I had played with in college, and then COVID happened. Those bands broke up, and Mike reached out to me on Instagram. Or was it like that? It was like: Tinder for bands.
MC:I found you on Tinder for bands, yeah. And when I reached out to you on Instagram, I sniped you from another band that I knew that had just broken up.
AP: That works.
CM: It was great. Yeah. I mean, I was poached.
Ollie Nash: Me too. I’m the keyboardist, I was the last one to join. I made a post on the Boston Musicians Network page and Mike Chandler reached out to me. Just asked me to interview/jam and audition. That was basically it. That was my first post trying to join a band. I was, like, a closeted musician, just kind of playing piano every morning. I’m like, when am I gonna do this? And then I finally got the cojones to reach out, make some posts and then it just sort of happened really quickly.
NP: I remember your audition too. I think we we’re playing Maria, and as soon as we got into it, you were like, “oh, I can sing back up too!” I was like, okay, yeah. So that was a pretty easy choice.
AP: I was curious from your time in the military, has anything translated to help you tour or work as a musician?
NP: Yeah, I think so. I was in the Army infantry, and basically what you learn from that is just how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. I mean, there’s always stressors. I don’t have to explain, but like, getting on stage is scary, and so is getting in a helicopter with the door open, you know?
AP: Wild comparison.
MC: From a perspective of noticing it, I would say, it really helps him sort of understand the importance of drilling and repetition. Knowing how to lock in and saying, I’m not good at this, so let’s do this.
AP: What’s your favorite song to perform?
NP: I think “tonight” just won that for me. Yeah, that’s fun, man. It’s not released yet, but it will be out soon.
CM: I would say “Maria”, just because I remember when I first joined the band, they were like, “Oh, we’ve kind of been sitting on this song for a while”, and I was like, why?? Why wasn’t that what you led with? It’s still, to me, my favorite song to play.
MC: I really like our new single, “Count on you” a lot. I really, really like playing “all I need”, it’s kind of a sleeper in our set. It’s one of the fewer streamed songs that we have, but it’s one of the more high energy ones. Got a really cool, different drum beat to it. And I just have a great guitar solo that I think is a lot of fun to play.
ON: My favorite song is probably “preacher”. It’s so energetic. It’s just a classic blues riff. It brings such amazing energy. I can always feel the energy reverberating through me whenever we start to play it. And I can start to let loose a little bit more on that song.
AP: What would a Ragged or Rag Fest or Nate Perry Fest look like? What would you guys bring to a festival if you could?
CM: It would be us, podcasting about obscure history topics. Anytime, Nate and I are together for a period beyond two hours, somehow World War One comes up. We both studied history in college, so it’s like, something.
NP: We’ll get there. Reliably.
AP: I’ve heard a couple people have echoed wanting to learn something at a festival. So you might have an avenue there.
NP: After my set, I’ll do a full lecture.
ON: In between songs, we just have a history fact, and that’s our schtick.
AP: What’s next for you guys, I guess, what’s up for the rest of the summer, the rest of the year?
NP: We’re done recording our new EP that’s gonna come out soon, and then we just got a whole mess of shows coming up that we’re really excited about.
MC: We got some notable ones. New England Americana fest next month. We’re at the cut up in Gloucester in September. That’s gonna be a really cool one. We got some other stuff, but those are the ones we’re really excited about. It.
CM: In Beverly! Lobster Fest is also going to be really fun!
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