Ones to Watch: RiverLeft

By Emily Hingle

RiverLeft is not okay with mediocrity. Having released their album Stranger Things and consistently playing shows around the city, the eclectic rock band is proving its worth one audience at a time. I visited with Blake Mogabgab (vocals, guitar), Kyle Cripps (keyboard, saxophone), Michael Saucier (bass), Jackson Purvis (drums), and Daniel Lorrain (lead guitar) to talk about their plans for finding fame.

Where Y'at: How did RiverLeft come together?

Blake: We formed in 2005. It was the three of us [Blake, Michael, and Jackson] in Oxford, Mississippi. We recorded up there at The Lip Studio, and just worked out of Oxford for a long time. Then I decided to move [to New Orleans] because I was from the area. We thought that we weren’t going to be playing music together. They called me up and said, “Hey, we’re moving down.” We’d been working on an album at the time, so it made sense. They moved down, and then we met [Kyle and Daniel] who are both UNO Masters students.

Wyat: Are you writing a new album right now?

Blake: That’s right. We’re still working out of Oxford. Our producer is Tom Queyja. He’s worked with Sweet Tea Studios in Oxford where a bunch of big bands have come out of or recorded there. And he’s basically been working with us on this album. We’ve done some recording in Oxford. We’ve done some recording at UNO, which we may do more. That’s a neat studio they have there. They have musicians there who allow us to record for free. I mean, why not? We’ve got a ways to go on it, but we hope to get it out by fall.

Wyat: What do you describe your sound as?

Blake: Well, when we were in Mississippi, it was always southern rock. But since we’ve gotten here, and we have two people studying jazz and playing in funk bands, it’s just inevitably become a New Orleans sound. Basically, we like to say acoustic rock. Although with this new album, it’s getting weirder. But really, the way we go about it is I’m typically the songwriter and I introduce the song and let it go. And just let everybody give their own take on it. We come from pretty diverse backgrounds of music, so it tends to be pretty eclectic. So far, on our last album, that’s what everyone said. There’s just a lot of different sounds on this album. I think that’s going to be true for the next one as well.

Jackson: If Dr. John took the Gin Blossoms on a back road and fucked ‘em real hard…that’s what it would sound like.

Daniel: It’s fun, man. Besides genres, it’s just fun music.

Kyle: I like to think of it as a way better southern version of the Dave Matthews Band…with the occasional metal jam.

Wyat: You’ve done some impressive things so far like performing on TV. How have y’all managed to get such great gigs?

Blake: When we moved to New Orleans, we had a few set goals, or at least I did, for the group. I certainly had some milestones that I wanted to reach. And all the things we learned from being on the road and playing out of Ole’ Miss kind of turned out true here. One thing we’ve learned is make friends with everyone. The other thing is to keep working toward those goals. When we started out, we were really patient about waiting for the gigs we knew we could play. We had an opportunity to play at Tipitina’s and we waited on all the lower gigs. I guess when you’re starting out in New Orleans, you go play a lot of those places. We wanted to wait for the bigger things; be patient, put our stuff out there and just convince people. So with Tipitina’s we were able to do that, just go there and show people what we could do. We could put on a professional act and bring in a crowd of people, and they had us back. I think being patient is one of the biggest things. It’s easy for a band who starts out in a new place to get really frustrated by not getting the things they want and not getting them right away because maybe you practice a lot and you say, “God, we have this and we’re good, but we just can’t reach out.”

Jackson: As a band, we don’t really settle for shows we know that we’re better than. After we played Tipitina’s, we don’t want to play anywhere else. It’s such an awesome venue.

You’ve played shows with bands that have different music than you do. What New Orleans acts would you like to play with in the future?

Blake: One of the bands I would go to is MyNameIsJohnMichael. John Michael has done a lot in his career in New Orleans. I even knew him when he was in high school and junior high playing around town. So it’s been neat to see him grow up.

Kyle: Galactic.

Michael: There’s this guy in the French Quarter who sounds just like Sam Cooke. I want him to come sing with us.

Daniel: I like Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes.

Wyat: It seems y’all have a strong connection to Tulane because you’ve been on their radio station quite a bit.

Blake: We just got selected to play Crawfest which is a big deal. That’s playing in front of a few thousand people. And to our target audience. We definitely have focused on playing towards college crowds and younger crowds. I guess starting at a university, you fall in love with that a little bit. And when we got out of New Orleans, we’ll focus on college towns and schools. That’s what we’re going to continue to do.

Kyle: Those shows are the most fun to do, I think, because they like the music. It translates well with that crowd.

Blake: Yeah, just put in a few drug references…

Wyat: Are you planning on doing a whole college circuit tour?

Blake: Basically, for the fall, we’ll be sticking with doing those shows for the football games. One of the things we’re going to do is travel with Ole’ Miss and pick up towns where we know we’re kind of traveling with our fans. But through lots of people we know around town that go to school either here or up there; we know people in southern towns. The goal is to just start booking in those areas. Now that we’re going to have a lot more time to do that with all of us graduating, we’re really going to start going in to those areas and making a little more of a statement.