Strung Like a Horse

There is a pervasive — and decidedly unfair — impression held by a lot of people that an artist is only as good as the distance he must travel to take the stage.

Every year, Riverbend shines a light on great local artists to show people just exactly how wrong that assumption is.

This year, one of the most compelling arguments that "local" is not a synonym for "bad" is Strung Like a Horse, an incendiary punkgrass quintet consisting of lead singer Clay Masselle and his band of crazy misfits.

You might recognize them from such slick, self-produced music videos as "Byrd Dog" and "Gypsy Jane," the latter of which stars fireworks and an emotionally distraught man-horse.

Oh, yeah, and they're also the zany chaps who led a massive throng of hundreds in a parade down Market Street last summer for a music video release party at Rhythm & Brews. The party followed a headlining performance at Nightfall, in which they earned the right to perform

by trouncing dozens of other artists in a fierce battle of the bands.

Considering the energy with which they thrash their bluegrass instruments, I think Strung easily could have held an audience on a bigger stage, but in the concrete cave-like environ of the Tennessee Valley Federal Credit Union amphitheater, they're simply going to explode. Considering how their trademark energy is likely to amplify and build on itself, I fully expect this performance to win converts, locals and out-of-towners, to their banner. As their band motto states: If it ain't Strung, it's dung.

I couldn't agree more. - Pulse

There is a pervasive — and decidedly unfair — impression held by a lot of people that an artist is only as good as the distance he must travel to take the stage.

Every year, Riverbend shines a light on great local artists to show people just exactly how wrong that assumption is.

This year, one of the most compelling arguments that "local" is not a synonym for "bad" is Strung Like a Horse, an incendiary punkgrass quintet consisting of lead singer Clay Masselle and his band of crazy misfits.

You might recognize them from such slick, self-produced music videos as "Byrd Dog" and "Gypsy Jane," the latter of which stars fireworks and an emotionally distraught man-horse.

Oh, yeah, and they're also the zany chaps who led a massive throng of hundreds in a parade down Market Street last summer for a music video release party at Rhythm & Brews. The party followed a headlining performance at Nightfall, in which they earned the right to perform

by trouncing dozens of other artists in a fierce battle of the bands.

Considering the energy with which they thrash their bluegrass instruments, I think Strung easily could have held an audience on a bigger stage, but in the concrete cave-like environ of the Tennessee Valley Federal Credit Union amphitheater, they're simply going to explode. Considering how their trademark energy is likely to amplify and build on itself, I fully expect this performance to win converts, locals and out-of-towners, to their banner. As their band motto states: If it ain't Strung, it's dung.

I couldn't agree more. - Pulse

The Saturday night debut of "GLAD," a mini-horror/music video by Chattanooga’s Strung Like a Horse, was special for several reasons.
For starters, people dressed up like zombies, werewolves and vampires and had a party at The Honest Pint.
As if that wasn’t enough, the night was also the official debut, of sorts, for a new independent film company called Mammal Factory. The company includes SLAH band member Clay Maselle and his business partner, Tomás Donoso.
What was supposed to be a three-minute video about a zombie bluegrass band eventually turned into a much larger project. The final video spans more than seven minutes and features a cast of zombie-fied Chattanoogans battling in a post-apocalyptic world.
Think "Mad Max" meets David Lynch, and you’ll have a good idea of what Maselle and Donoso were going for.
"It’s hard to get people to sit down and just listen to music these days," Maselle said. "You have to have something to keep people’s attention, and so we created the video."
Saturday night marked the first time Maselle had seen the film in a large crowd.
"As a performer, I’ve always gotten in front of people and performed," he said. "There’s always that feedback. This is the first time I’ve put so much into the project and can just sit back and watch. It’s completely different."
The inspiration for the featured song in the film also has dark origins.
Two years ago, Maselle and local musician T.J. Greever were attacked in the parking lot of JJ’s Bohemia. Maselle said he wrote "GLAD" just a few days after the incident.
"I was beat up really bad," he said. "I got kicked in the head, and I just wrote the song about the experience. I struggle to write songs, and that came to me real fast."
The cast included a bevy of local talent, including Bexy Ribeiro, Lacy Jo, Ivan Garcia and others.
When asked which zombie was his favorite, Maselle was quick to respond.
"Beejay Bilbrey," he said. "He plays several roles: the zombie who shoots himself in the face at the bar, the decapitated zombie. He was also there with us the entire time as a grip. He was great." - Nooga.com

From floor-shaking shows at JJ’s Bohemia to imaginative music videos, popular Chattanooga band Strung Like A Horse goes all in on every endeavor. On Aug. 3 fans can expect the group’s biggest spectacle yet when the band headlines the Nightfall concert series, then leads a parade down Market Street to cap the night with an EP-release show at Rhythm & Brews.
“We’ve got a troupe of belly dancers and people eating fire,” explains lead singer and guitarist Clay Maselle excitedly. “Street performers TomFoolery and MaxZine will be riding six-foot-tall unicycles and juggling knives. We’ve lined up stilt walkers with bullhorns and marching drums. Plus, we bought 200 kazoos to pass out to the crowd. It’s going to be a full blown circus.”

City officials have agreed to close Market Street for the Strut Like A Horse parade and police officers will be directing traffic at the red lights.

Only a year ago, the band was pleased to secure a coveted opening slot on the Nightfall lineup. This year, Strung Like A Horse won the McKay’s Road to Nightfall competition and will headline, with support from Jordan Hallquist & The Outfit. Following Nightfall at Miller Plaza, the parade will march to Rhythm & Brews for the release party featuring guests Another Roadside Attraction.

With influences ranging from blues to bluegrass, it’s hard to pin down the sound that comes together when Maselle takes the stage with banjo player Ben Crawford, bassist BJ Hightower, Mark the Fiddler and percussionist/drummer Sloth.

“Everybody wants to know what kind of music we are playing, and it’s kind of hard to describe, except to say it’s Strung Like A Horse Music. It’s our music,” Maselle muses as he watches the rain from his front porch in North Chattanooga during a recent interview. “Some people have coined it ‘garage grass,’ which fits really well because it is bluegrass instruments, but we’re like a garage band because the sound is a little trashy and dirty. And other people say our music is like metal with bluegrass instrumentation.”

Maselle notes that the new EP’s title track, “Glad,” zooms into metal territory, clocking in at 185 beats per minute. It is Maselle’s favorite track on the project, recorded with producer Charles Allison at Spanner Sound studio. Allison also helmed the group’s full-length debut, Live at Lindsey Street, recorded inside the former church near MLK.

Elsewhere, the new five-song set includes fan favorites “Byrd Dog” and “Gypsy Jane.” The video for “Gypsy Jane” will get a big-screen premiere at the Aug. 3 Rhythm & Brews concert. New York based director Tomas Donoso, who worked on the “Byrd Dog” video, returned to Chattanooga for the 12-day shoot.

“For the ‘Gypsy Jane’ video, we put together a story board, including a twist at the end,” says Maselle. “We used lots of different locations and did the whole thing with one camera and two lights, which is really hard. Lacy Dickerson from Zanzibar studio does belly dancing in the video and plays a heartbreaker who leaves her fiancé to run off with my character. Then her fiancé transforms into a horse-man beast and chases us.”

Enthusiastic fan response inspires the band to keep the new music and videos coming.

“We have the absolute best fans on earth,” continues Maselle, adding that another video will be shot in September. “Our fans always show up, and anytime we want people to interact or be involved they are gung-ho about it. We love it. We’re putting out material as fast as we can make it because everybody has been accepting it so well. It started with the ‘Byrd Dog’ video, which scored 1,000 unique views in the first 24 hours. We were blown away, and from then on the response has been so good that it keeps us going. It keeps me motivated.”

Though Maselle is a longtime musician, Strung Like A Horse is his first band. He traded his mandolin for a guitar when the group formed about two years ago. Maselle and Crawford, the only other original member, bonded over a shared love of the band Split Lip Rayfield, which naturally turned out to be a major influence in their collaboration.

Originally formed with a focus on bluegrass and old-time music, the band’s sound has evolved significantly since the beginning.

“We decided to take a different angle because when I started writing songs everything came out darker than all that old country,” explains Maselle. “So we started turning toward punk rock sounding stuff. Ben developed his own banjo picking style—he does the three-finger style, but not traditional rolls—and it worked really well. Today, the songs come from all different places. BJ wrote ‘Gypsy Jane’ a while back, and we decided to put it on the new EP. And Ben is really good at coming up with banjo parts that we like and then we develop a song around that.”

As for Maselle’s lyrics, he says songwriter John Hartford is his single biggest influence. - The Pulse News Weekly

From floor-shaking shows at JJ’s Bohemia to imaginative music videos, popular Chattanooga band Strung Like A Horse goes all in on every endeavor. On Aug. 3 fans can expect the group’s biggest spectacle yet when the band headlines the Nightfall concert series, then leads a parade down Market Street to cap the night with an EP-release show at Rhythm & Brews.
“We’ve got a troupe of belly dancers and people eating fire,” explains lead singer and guitarist Clay Maselle excitedly. “Street performers TomFoolery and MaxZine will be riding six-foot-tall unicycles and juggling knives. We’ve lined up stilt walkers with bullhorns and marching drums. Plus, we bought 200 kazoos to pass out to the crowd. It’s going to be a full blown circus.”

City officials have agreed to close Market Street for the Strut Like A Horse parade and police officers will be directing traffic at the red lights.

Only a year ago, the band was pleased to secure a coveted opening slot on the Nightfall lineup. This year, Strung Like A Horse won the McKay’s Road to Nightfall competition and will headline, with support from Jordan Hallquist & The Outfit. Following Nightfall at Miller Plaza, the parade will march to Rhythm & Brews for the release party featuring guests Another Roadside Attraction.

With influences ranging from blues to bluegrass, it’s hard to pin down the sound that comes together when Maselle takes the stage with banjo player Ben Crawford, bassist BJ Hightower, Mark the Fiddler and percussionist/drummer Sloth.

“Everybody wants to know what kind of music we are playing, and it’s kind of hard to describe, except to say it’s Strung Like A Horse Music. It’s our music,” Maselle muses as he watches the rain from his front porch in North Chattanooga during a recent interview. “Some people have coined it ‘garage grass,’ which fits really well because it is bluegrass instruments, but we’re like a garage band because the sound is a little trashy and dirty. And other people say our music is like metal with bluegrass instrumentation.”

Maselle notes that the new EP’s title track, “Glad,” zooms into metal territory, clocking in at 185 beats per minute. It is Maselle’s favorite track on the project, recorded with producer Charles Allison at Spanner Sound studio. Allison also helmed the group’s full-length debut, Live at Lindsey Street, recorded inside the former church near MLK.

Elsewhere, the new five-song set includes fan favorites “Byrd Dog” and “Gypsy Jane.” The video for “Gypsy Jane” will get a big-screen premiere at the Aug. 3 Rhythm & Brews concert. New York based director Tomas Donoso, who worked on the “Byrd Dog” video, returned to Chattanooga for the 12-day shoot.

“For the ‘Gypsy Jane’ video, we put together a story board, including a twist at the end,” says Maselle. “We used lots of different locations and did the whole thing with one camera and two lights, which is really hard. Lacy Dickerson from Zanzibar studio does belly dancing in the video and plays a heartbreaker who leaves her fiancé to run off with my character. Then her fiancé transforms into a horse-man beast and chases us.”

Enthusiastic fan response inspires the band to keep the new music and videos coming.

“We have the absolute best fans on earth,” continues Maselle, adding that another video will be shot in September. “Our fans always show up, and anytime we want people to interact or be involved they are gung-ho about it. We love it. We’re putting out material as fast as we can make it because everybody has been accepting it so well. It started with the ‘Byrd Dog’ video, which scored 1,000 unique views in the first 24 hours. We were blown away, and from then on the response has been so good that it keeps us going. It keeps me motivated.”

Though Maselle is a longtime musician, Strung Like A Horse is his first band. He traded his mandolin for a guitar when the group formed about two years ago. Maselle and Crawford, the only other original member, bonded over a shared love of the band Split Lip Rayfield, which naturally turned out to be a major influence in their collaboration.

Originally formed with a focus on bluegrass and old-time music, the band’s sound has evolved significantly since the beginning.

“We decided to take a different angle because when I started writing songs everything came out darker than all that old country,” explains Maselle. “So we started turning toward punk rock sounding stuff. Ben developed his own banjo picking style—he does the three-finger style, but not traditional rolls—and it worked really well. Today, the songs come from all different places. BJ wrote ‘Gypsy Jane’ a while back, and we decided to put it on the new EP. And Ben is really good at coming up with banjo parts that we like and then we develop a song around that.”

As for Maselle’s lyrics, he says songwriter John Hartford is his single biggest influence.

“Even though most of the songs seem to be dark and have death in t - The Pulse News Weekly