Musicians of today are proving their loyalty to the decade, but a local band offers to ascend the fleeting peak of current radio craze and render sounds of timeless yet current rock and funk. Richie Dagger’s Crime — once a solo artist, now a six-member rhythm machine — is reviving the unmistakable sounds of funk, while effortlessly blending, with justice, organic pop to form a sound unique to the genre.
Richie Dagger’s Crime (RDC), an official band since their first show this past January, has been lighting up venues all over the city and is quickly gaining an enthusiastic fan base. RDC ignites the crowd and brings out that grooving pulse we forgot we had, buried under years of trends. The set band is comprised of lead vocalist Richie
Nelson and instrumentalists Eric Padget, Andrew Gospe, Chris Schuett, Chris Anderson, Eric Sanchez and Coreena Brown.
I spoke with Richie Nelson, the Chicago-born lead singer, at a downtown coffee shop about the man, the music and messages. As obvious as inference might lead, the band isn’t named after him, but an inspiration, a reference to one of the most unique punk bands out of Los Angeles: The Germs and its lead singer, Darby Crash.
RDC’s name comes from the admiration for Crash’s mysterious and sometimes sinner persona of spirit and raw sense of dedication to artistry and the unmistakable concept of legacy. Darby Crash set out to inspire a generation of artists and make a permanent impression on his followers, by performing an unprecedented amount of energetic and visceral shows. After all the rise and careful fabrication of his message and career, Crash committed suicide as a promise to himself to live to the highest level of self and abruptly edge the line to his legacy at the height of prime. It’s the decision and his strikingly unique ability to hold on to a promise.
Nelson describes this as the concept of being “not the hero.” He wants to “humanize something considered to be bad” and to reform and widen the acceptable breath given to our current confines of humanity, gumption and internal strength.
Nelson states that the vision for the band is to create an immersive experience for the audience, to traverse music from both geography and genre and to always “go with instinct,” while along the way challenge the mind.
Richie Dagger’s Crime is gearing up to close an eventful 2016 with an album release Nov. 10 and two EP’s, the first of which will be a synth-rock oriented collection of covers and the second an electronic piece of original material. You can catch them at the Michael Jackson Birthday Night, Aug. 17 at Neumos.