Supagroup
New Orleans, Louisiana, United States | INDIE
Music
Press
“These boys are the first band I’ve had open for me since Guns N’ Roses to get a standing ovation every night. It takes charisma to make it in rock and roll, and these kids have it in spades.” -- Alice Cooper (From Westwood One Syndicated Radio)
“New Orleans SUPAGROUP may just be Bon Scott era AC/DC reincarnated. It’s pure joy for fans of big chords and Marshall-stack-powered, devil-horn-worthy RAWK!” -- Billboard
“Hard rock is fun again!”. -- Rolling Stone
“SUPAGROUP proudly picks up Bon Scott’s bar tab and adds a toast of vintage Aerosmith spiked with Guns N’ Roses… SUPAGROUP is bringing the rock, and it’s a molten meteor of old-school power chords and barroom bravado.” -- Metal Edge
“Finally, here is some real rawk!”
-- Penthouse
“Their latest album has the goods to inspire air guitarists: it’s catchy, crunchy – a godsend. -- New York Daily News
“New Orleans’ SUPAGROUP lays waste to clubs as if they were coliseums.” -- Austin Chronicle
“SUPAGROUP put on the best live show I’ve ever seen.” -- Detroit Metro Times
“… a classic rock-n-roll orgy in the AC/DC, Aerosmith, Van Halen, Led Zep mold. Dirty, doofus fun, done well. -- Knight-Ridder Syndicate
“The ravaging riffage of AC/DC, the restless bop of the Ramones and the bluesy groove of the Stones – all rendered with a bit of a wink and one helluva chug.” -- L.A. Weekly
“AC/DC is only the tip of the iceberg, there are elements of the whiskey-bent and hell-bound fury of The Supersuckers and the sweaty enthusiasm of MC5 in the mix.
-- Flagpole
"Their heady punch is equal parts Van Halen bombast and Buzzcocks levity."
-- Minneapolis City Pages
“A SUPAGROUP show is the nearest thing to seeing AC/DC in a club nowadays.” -- Minneapolis Star Tribune
“10 pounds of rock stuffed into a 5-pound sack that overflows with awesome.” -- Gambit Weekly
“… an amorous tribute to everything guys like Angus Young, Chuck Berry and Eddie Van Halen stood for – smokin’ riffs, screaming solos, and the hell-bent fury of the best classic rock.” -- Guitar One
“SUPAGROUP is what you would call ‘kicking your ass’ right now.” -- Las Vegas Mercury
“If you don’t believe that SUPAGROUP made one of the greatest party records ever, you can lick my balls”
-- Aquarian Weekly
"To see SUPAGROUP play live is to feel everything that was ever good
about real rock and roll course through your body." -- Audio Galaxy
“Singer Chris Lee is the frontman all the trendier rock bands lack.”
-- Austin American Statesman
“The sound could be called trashy, but the way SUPAGROUP works itself into a fervor and plays with conviction, it comes off as somehow religious.” -- Pitch Weekly
“It’s not like SUPAGROUP are trying to be rock heroes or anything. It just happens.” -- The Houston Press
“SUPAGROUP re-converted me to the cause of rock n’ roll and all it’s life-changing glory.” -- Austin Chronicle
- various (national, regional and local)
Discography
albums:
Supagroup - Supagroup
Supagroup - Rules
Supagroup - Fire For Hire
singles w/ radio airplay:
What's Your Problem?
Balls
Bastard
Jailbait
Photos
Bio
Supagroup - Fire For Hire
“New Orleans is like the Old West. There is this lawlessness that you really can’t find anywhere else in the country. It is one of the few places left where you can still get away with anything!” SUPAGROUP vocalist Chris Lee speaks fondly of the place he calls home as he drives his car through the streets, streaking past the seemingly war-torn landscape. Perhaps it is this New Orleans way that made the boys of SUPAGROUP the rock and roll outlaws that they have become, but more likely it is the chaos that has marked the last few years of their lives.
SUPAGROUP’s gun-slingers have developed special skill-sets… Bass-thumper Leif Robinson Swift is perhaps the only man in the world who can wear a t-shirt bearing his own likeness, without a trace of irony, and get away with it. Michael Brueggen (drums) is the band-leader in conspicuous alcohol consumption while never missing a beat. The brothers Lee (Chris and Benji) deftly hold down vocals and guitar, respectively, and are grand champions of the ready joke and the rock & roll high-kick (surely a gene passed on from second cousin and martial arts legend, Bruce Lee).
“These last couple of years have been pretty nuts for us,” recollects Chris, the Bon-Scott-channeling frontman whose rip-and-tear vocals blaze atop his younger brother’s blistering hot guitar leads. Make no mistake, their new release “Fire For Hire” has been aptly named. But the road to rock and roll salvation isn’t without its potholes, and SUPAGROUP have dodged their share over the past few years.
“We were on the road promoting our last record, which had just come out, when Hurricane Katrina hit,” continues Lee. “We raced home to New Orleans, got our families, girlfriends and dogs and escaped, then we couldn’t go home for eight weeks. Benji wrote ‘Promised Land’ during that period.”
In the weeks that followed, as the people of New Orleans began their slow and, according to Chris, virtually endless road to recovery, SUPAGROUP was wondering what to do next. Their homes were in need of repair, they’d lost friends, their beloved city looked like a shell of its vibrant self and they were still displaced, staying with various friends and relatives. Then the phone rang.
“It was Alice Cooper, who we’d toured with the year before. He asked us if we were okay, and when he found out we were, he asked us if we wanted to go back out on tour with him” recalls Chris. Problem is, the band had scattered to dry land, and their gear and equipment was still in New Orleans. While the rest of the band set their sights on meeting in Florida to start the tour, Benji made his way back to their hometown, circumventing military police, local authorities and flooded streets with a fake press pass to load the band’s van with the gear from their Lower Garden District studio.
“While I was loading out the gear about 10 national guardsmen rolled up with hummers and M-16s. I had to convince them I wasn’t looting!” says Benji. He got what he needed, turned around, drove out to join his bandmates for the tour and they began writing the songs that would become “Fire For Hire” their third album for L.A. based Foodchain Records.
Following the run with Alice Cooper, the band got a call from an overseas promoter wanting to bring them over for their first headlining tour of Spain. It went so well that they have since returned twice. When that tour ended, they were asked to join the Backyard Babies Spring tour of Europe. The boys from New Orleans made such an impression on both tours that they performed live on numerous TV shows and developed a rabid following abroad.
In a matter of months SUPAGROUP went from down and out to riding high, writing songs on the road, and garnering a whole new legion of Supa-groupies with their bombastic live shows, huge riffs, undeniable sibling chemistry and anthemic, catchy choruses. “It was a really crazy and interesting time, for both good and bad, and I think a lot of that came out on the record,” Chris recalls.
“Fire For Hire” is as unapologetic as anything in SUPAGROUP’s history. From the racing opener “What’s Your Problem Now?” to the thunder-struck bottom end of the title track “Fire for Hire” and the pummeling fevered pitch of the closing “Roll In Smokin’,” the album boasts 12 blistering tracks of SUPAGROUP’s trademark brand of bluesy, ballsy rock and roll revivalism.
The raucous and adrenaline-pumped “Lonely At The Bottom” and the super charged “Born In Exile” make this album positively flammable. Add to that the hot topic of politically motivated rebellion in “Bow Down” and the bonfire of SUPAGROUP is alight.
The album’s single, “Jailbait”, a “touching” narrative in the tradition of Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash is one of two SUPAGROUP songs performed by the band on-screen in the upcoming Element Films / MGM movie “COLLEGE”. The movie, shot in New Orleans, stars Drake Bell and opens in theaters nationwide on Labor Day Weekend
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