The Classy Chassys

Review – The Classy Chassys
June 18, 2015 Jenna Melanson

By: Jenna Melanson

EP – Rebel Heart
Download Link – https://theclassychassys.bandcamp.com/
Release Date – February 28, 2015
Genre – Rock/ Rockabilly

Saskatoon, SK based rock band, The Classy Chassys is made up of Matt Joyal (Guitar/ Lead Vocals), Dan Neumeier (Bass/ Vocals), Luke Saretsky (Drums/ Vocals) and Kenny Martelli (Sax/Vocals).

The band released an EP entitled “Rebel Heart” which features three full length tracks. They joined forces with Danny Craig from Default to produce this EP. The tracks are all full of energy, and you will find yourself singing along to at least one of them. The second track, “Rebel Heart” is my favourite on the EP, I can’t help but sing along to this track.

The EP ends with, “Ain’t No Thang” which embodies a pure rockabilly sound that will have your toes tapping and finger snapping along. I would like to see The Classy Chassys release a full length album, because this just wasn’t enough.

Rating: 3.5/5 - Canadian Beats

Some of the earliest, most successful musicians of the modern era - Elvis, Johnny Cash and others - are behind rockabilly. It's a twangy, raucous genre that I like to call "countrified punk" and it's one done by Saskatoon, Saskatchewan's The Classy Chassys. Matt Joyal (vocals/guitar), Dan Neumeier (upright bass/vocals), Luke Saretsky (drums/vocals) and Kenny Martelli (saxophone/vocals) released the Rebel Heart EP in February, and are currently touring Western Canada with Geoff Smith of alt-country act Gunner & Smith. Produced by Default drummer Danny Craig, Rebel Heart is a three-song blast of - excuse how 1957 this sounds (although maybe that works here?) - good time rock 'n' roll.

Starting things off is a song that appeared on the band's 2013 debut Ain't No Thang, "With Class". It's fast and features some great riffin' on the low strings and a dueling guitar/sax solo. Next is the title track, which is an ideal one for a singalong as it has simple enough strumming/chord progression and a tempo made for jamming. Finally, "Ain't No Thang" (which actually isn't on the aforementioned album of the same name) closes the EP out, and it probably has the most distinctly blues tone on it. It's fast like "With Class", and I really dig the bridge in-between the solos: it has a good drum roll and picking. The song ends with some power chords, and boom - thus ends the album.

Rebel Heart is quick: three songs, 8 1/2 minutes total. Couple that with the tempo, and a listen really flies by. It's a good one though, and one thing that totally stands out to me about this group is the vocals: Matt Joyal is almost a dead-ringer for Colin MacDonald of The Trews. I mean that as a compliment, as MacDonald is an excellent vocalist and so is Joyal - it's a style that manages to be raw and almost pretty at the same time. The Classy Chassys are also working are their next full-length, and have Danny Craig producing again. Much like ska, rockabilly's a genre that's almost hard not to enjoy: its whole package just can't really bum you out, even if the subject matter is darker. It cannot bum. - The Perfect Scene

By Skye Anderson

CALGARY — Pump-up rockabilly mixed with high-octane punk would aptly describe Saskatoon’s The Classy Chassys. Influences like Flogging Molly, Rancid, and AC/DC put the rip in their delivery, an evolution of playing together for eight years.

“We started out back in high school in a rock band, so that’s kind of where we come from first. We fell in love with rockabilly and it kind of all came together,” Neumeier says.

The band also dabbled with a bit of swing and jazzier tunes early on and it felt natural to pull in some snarly, old-school, raunchy brass by adding saxophonist Kenny Martelli. Matt Joyal leads on guitar and vocals with his raspy, wavering vibrato. Luke Saretsky’s built-for-speed drumming hammers out the rhythm along with Dan Neumeier on upright bass, who also writes most of the lyrics. The Chassys are punk, rockabilly and sweaty rock ‘n’ roll all fused together.

“The sound we have now, it’s definitely taken a while to get there. The four of us have been going strong since the start,” Neumeier says.

Last August they recorded the three-song EP, Rebel Heart, with Danny Craig of Default in Vancouver. Craig also recorded Saskatchewan’s hard-rockin’ One Bad Son, a band the Chassys have shared the stage with numerous times.

The title track, “Rebel Heart” with its runaway, uptempo R&B groove reveals the band’s versatility breaking new ground for the Chassys. “The other two tracks showcase our real rockabilly influence and we definitely wanted to have something else on there that showed that’s not just what we do,” Neumeier says.

The Classy Chassys share the stage with Geoff Smith and the High Strung Downers at the Palomino Friday, June 12. - BeatRoute Magazine

These guys do rockabilly their own way

THE CLASSY CHASSYS
Friday 31
Amigos

“There’s no way around it,” says Dan Neumeier, the upright bass player for The Classy Chassys. “We’re a rockabilly band.”

Neumeier cites The Stray Cats as one of their biggest influences, but The Classy Chassys also look beyond the songs of their swinging ‘80s counterparts for inspiration. They’re fans of punk, classic rock and even some old school country, which always mixes well with rockabilly. “People hear rockabilly and they expect to hear Elvis or Johnny Cash all night,” he says. “With us you might hear a bit, but not all night.”

The Classy Chassys have been on the local scene for a few years, and they’ve done some recording here and there in the past, but it’s only now that they’re releasing their first full length album, Ain’t No Thang. Taking their time withgetting serious about recording meant that by the time they sat down to hit the round red button, they had a wealth of songs that spanned years of writing — giving the album a nicely diverse feel.

“We never wanted to lose the older songs which we liked so much — [we] always wanted them to get their chance on a proper release,” says Neumeier. “This helped the album round out, I think, while retaining the Chassy sound and still covering lots of genres. It could also mean that perhaps our next album will sound completely different.”

Just like the old-school rock ‘n’ roll records Ain’t No Thang echoes, the album was recorded mostly live off the floor, in three sessions with Jordan Smith at Avenue Recording Co.

“[We recorded] with minimal overdubs because we feel that’s how rockabilly needs to be recorded,” says Neumeier. “There hasn’t been a second where we aren’t keeping in mind the spirit of the song, the feeling, and the soul of the performance. The songs on this album worked because of the four of us playing in the same room together.”

Hearing the album, you can imagine the scene — because it comes across in the sound: Neumeier shuckin’ and pluckin’ the neck of the upright bass, Matt Joyal howling and digging into his guitar, Luke Saretsky driving a steady rat-a-tat-tat on the drums like Sgt. Rock, and Kenny Martelli’s sax, mewling like a horny alley cat. It’s the classic sound with hints of other cool junk thrown in, but it’s also not trying to pretend it’s something it’s not.

“Most rockabilly bands say they’re bringing rockabilly into the new age,” says Neumeier, “and in my opinion lots of them aren’t. It’s a very hard game to play, and a very hard style of music to do correctly, technically speaking. If you’re going for a ‘50s sound that’s great. For The Classy Chassys however, we’ve reached a point where we’re sure we’re a rockabilly band, but we’re just doing what we do — the songs are gonna come out however they come out.”

You can catch The Chassys and grab a copy of the album at the release party on May 31st at Amigos. Two reasons to see this show: 1) it’s a high-energy, “good time Charlie” genre of music, which is always a fucking party, but even more so with these guys; 2) as Neumeier pointed out, it’s also a genre of music that is stripped pretty bare, and if you don’t have the skills, you’re ousted pretty quickly as a poser.

“A Chassys show is a very real show with no place to hide,” he says. “There’s four guys standing in front of you giving it all they’ve got for two-plus hours. [We] just want to have a good time and want everyone to have a good time with us. There’s usually a Jack Daniels bottle being poured courtesy of our sax player. Our sweat-soaked clothes at the end of our shows are proof that we’re giving it our all. If we aren’t that exhausted after a show, then maybe we didn’t do it right.” - Planet S Magazine

BY JOHN STRUGNELL
Earlier this week I caught Dan Neumeier, bassist of the Saskatoon based Rockabilly band The Classy Chassys on the phone before they packed up to leave on their western Canadian tour to promote newly dropped EP Rebel Heart. With Jasper being their first stop at the Whistle Stop Pub, their excitement is riding high to make some noise this side of the prairies. Rebel Heart is an early taste of what is to come working with producer Danny Craig of Canadian rock band Default fame. Here is some of our conversation.


When I read your band’s biography it mentions having influence from sources like rock, jazz, and rockabilly. When I listened to your EP, it really is exactly like that. I hear rock and roll, rockabilly, swing and big band sounds. What direction does that come from, for such a unique sound?

Well, when we started the band we really had the stray cats in mind and like you said big band and swings things in mind, and then our minds gravitated back to the rock and roll, hard rock sound. Incorporating things like AC/DC and punky stuff like Flogging Molly and Rancid.

Yeah, you can hear that. One song starts out very rock driven, then that rhythm hits and it takes a very different swing, heading in a different direction. It’s very fun. So tell me about the band name, the Classy Chassys. Is it a vehicle reference?

Well when we started the band we were looking for something that just had that 50’s flair to it. We started looking for slang terms and that one really stuck out for us. We thought it was pretty sweet.

Urbandictionary.com defines “chassy” as a fit body.

(With a chuckle) Yeah it sure does! People spell it wrong all the time, but it’s all good. Its supposed to be with an “I” but we do the “y”.


Do you find that being on tour in the full swing of things with the band helps to produce creativity?

Yeah! When you take a few days and you get in to travelling it hasn’t really sunk in yet but when you’re at it day after day your head gets into a different mindset kind of, and it’s totally inspirational. Especially for me, with writing words.

How is it going working with [producer] Danny Craig?

Well the coolest part is he dropped us a line on twitter one day, after hearing our music while working with another Saskatoon band One Bad Son. Working with him, we gelled pretty good. He didn’t come in like “oh we’re gonna change this.” He likes what we do and he was really good from a song writing sense. When we’re working on songs he can say “we should probably chop this here, or maybe this will work better” he definitely didn’t come in and start changing things around.

So you’ll be back in the studio with him in November?

Yeah, we actually got a $10,000 grant from Rawlco Radio just in the winter, and we’ve got to use it within the year and we definitely want to get some more songs down anyway, so it’ll work out perfectly.

How many dates do you have on this tour?

We’ve got 12 or 13. We play Moosejaw on Saturday and then off to Jasper for Tuesday. Then we head west to Vancouver and play pretty much nine or 10 shows in a row.

That sounds busy. Especially with your high energy sound. How is that transition from working full time to touring, having to put on shows every day?

Well it changes when you put on an actual show, but we’re practicing and jamming so much and even just doing two shows in a row last weekend is a good way to get into it because it is tiring, it’s a lot of work playing show after show every day.

I’m looking forward to the show very much, I’ll let you get to packing.

This will be a show not to miss.


Roots-rock act Geoff Smith opens for hard rockabilly group The Classy Chassys at the Whistle Stop Pub on June 2. - The Jasper Local

Saskatoon rockabilly artists the Classy Chassys release their new album Ain't no Thang on Friday at Amigos. A distinctive look (high hair, black leather), energetic sound (rock, punk, blues and jazz) and memorable live show make the hard-working band stand out like a hot rod at a church picnic. The guys are particularly excited about their new album, saying it finally showcases what they're capable of. Upright bass player Dan Neumeier fills in the details in less time than it takes to spin a 45.

Roll call: Matt Joyal (vocals/guitar), Kenny Martelli (saxophone/vocals), Luke Saretsky (drums/vocals) and Dan Neumeier (upright bass/vocals).

Back in Black: The guys have been friends and band-mates since high school, but what they first played was classic rock like AC/DC.

That Sound: Rockabilly (noun), "a fusion of black music and country music that was popular in the 1950s; sometimes described as blues with a country beat." - the Free Online Dictionary. "Once we found the Stray Cats doing this stuff in the '80s, we were hooked," says Neumeier.

Ageism: "People see us play and they go 'how old are you guys?'"

The look: Leather, pompadour hair. And everyone stands when they play - even the drummer. "That's a rockabilly thing. We were, like, we should give it a try." Now that's classy.

Thick strings: Neumeier used to play electric bass guitar before the rockabilly thing. The standup bass (don't ask what it cost!) is a pain to transport and maintain, but it was surprisingly easy to switch from electric, he says. "I was so focused, it didn't slow me down at all."

Musicianship: Rockabilly is easy to like but if you don't have the chops, you're all wet. "We say it all the time. It's a simple style of music but hard to play it right."

Take them home: The band's new album, Ain't No Thang (recorded at Avenue Sound in Saskatoon) is the record they've always wanted to make. "This one has the sound we wanted. It's crisp and tight. They're exactly what we wanted from the songs."

Prepare to duck: The live show "starts off like a punch in the face and doesn't stop."
© Copyright (c) The StarPhoenix


- The Star Phoenix

The Classy Chassys play Friday at the TowneHouse, cover is $7. For more, go to https://theclassychassys.bandcamp.com/, https://twitter.com/classychassys or https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Classy-Chassys/. The Saskatoon-based hard rockabilly band includes guitarist/singer Matt Joyal, upright bassist Dan Neumeier, saxophonist Kenny Martelli, and drummer Luke Saretsky.

1. Describe your sound in seven words.

Powerful, energetic, original, rocking, fun, enticing, classy.

2. Please explain your band name.

We were looking for a real 50s name at the time and that was a slang term we found. Over the years its really come to mean what we are all about.

3. How did you guys come together as a group?

We all went to high school, but three of us were in a band during high school. Once we got into rockabilly, we formed this band and never looked back.

4. What's your most memorable stage moment?

Personally, my most memorable stage moment would be the first time playing the Ness Creek Festival in Saskatchewan, playing on the Main Stage outdoors to a couple thousand people just as the night sky was turning to black. Now that was quite a new sight to see.

5. What's the worst thing that's happened to you while performing?

I caught the flu once during a set and I knew it, ha ha, so as soon as we were done, I booked it outta there and was in bed for days, ha ha.

6. Name an influence that might surprise readers.

AC/DC. Just because everyone might assume the 50s is our biggest influence. Personally, they were my first big musical influence and they are always in my mind when I'm playing or creating.

7. For each member, what are your influences and how do they come together to create a cohesive whole?

I've know these guys long enough to know some of their influences, but it's more important to say that we all listen to a lot of the same music and a lot of different music. One man might bring a rock flavour another will bring a blues or swing flavour, another will bring a ska flavour. There's so much out there, and we are lucky enough to like a ton of music and have it at our hands in this day and age.

8. How do you use technology in your music?

I can barely use technology in the first place, ha ha.

9. How do songs come together for your band?

Lyrics are written mostly by Dan and passed along to Matt, who will start flushing out a tune. Once it's brought into the jam space, everyone is on board and it grows from there, and over time in live performances.

10. What do you hope to achieve in the next year?

We are going to record another EP this November with Danny Craig and Garth Richardson. We hope to generate one or two really strong singles for radio play, as well as lock down some really good supporting acts for touring and make as many new fans and play as many good shows as possible.

sud.editorial@sunmedia.ca - The Sudbury Star

At first glance, The Classy Chassys — with their pompadours and leather jackets — may seem like a band stuck in the past. Their image and sound are rockabilly. The influence of original rock n’ roll is everywhere, from the standup bass and saxophone to the suspenders and sideburns.

But the Saskatoon-based rockers say rockabilly is not just ’50s music anymore.

“It’s a very boring genre if you do it the wrong way,” says the band’s lead guitar player and vocalist Matt Joyal. “We could go out there every night and play the same three chords, the Blue Suede Shoes version. But we don’t.”

Instead, the Classy Chassys’ music is a blend of punk, ’50s and classic rock — somewhere between AC/DC, The Beatles and The Stray Cats. It’s danceable, loud and listenable — even if you don’t have a predilection for Elvis Presley.

“I think we are reaching out to people who don’t normally listen to rockabilly. Those are the people we want to win over,” Joyal says.

“I think deep down, everyone likes rockabilly, they just don’t listen to it. When they hear it they love it. It’s fun and they can go, ‘Yeah, I like that’.”

Joyal and his bandmates weren’t always huge fans of rockabilly. The genre — often referred to as the oldest form of rock n’ roll — was popular half a century before they were born. When they played together in high school, they were more into punk and classic ’70s rock.

“Even I don’t listen to a lot of it,” says standup bass player and vocalist Dan Neumeier. “Even though I love it, I listen to more AC/DC than rockabilly.”

The group became hooked on the genre when they heard Brian Setzer of the ’80s rockabilly revival band The Stray Cats. Setzer himself is credited with a huge revival of rockabilly that began thirty years ago and continues today.

Setzer believed that rockabilly was more than just ’50s music. His revival was predicated on reimagining the genre, making it modern. This is the philosophy that permeates the Classy Chassys’ thinking.

“It’s 2012, it’s not 1956 anymore. It’s a little different,” Neumeier says. “No one is going to do it like that again.”

The Classy Chassys have found success with their blend of old and new. They are planning their second cross-Canada tour and are recording their second album. Last month, they were featured on City TV’s Canada’s Got Talent. And even though they want to be more than a rockabilly band, they still love the music — and the hairstyles.

“You can’t play without the pompadour. That’s important,” laughs Joyal.
- Bridges