{"id":4255,"date":"2012-05-23T07:56:48","date_gmt":"2012-05-23T13:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=4255"},"modified":"2012-05-23T07:56:48","modified_gmt":"2012-05-23T13:56:48","slug":"hillbilly-highway-gettin-lucky-with-mayes-nowicki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2012\/05\/23\/hillbilly-highway-gettin-lucky-with-mayes-nowicki\/","title":{"rendered":"Hillbilly Highway – Gettin’ Lucky with Mayes & Nowicki"},"content":{"rendered":"

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by Sheldon Birnie<\/strong><\/p>\n

Romi Mayes<\/a> is a staple of the Winnipeg roots rockin’ scene. A guitar wielding, songwriting babe, Mayes has been touring for years as two-piece blues rock combo <\/em>with <\/em>powerhouse guitar-picker <\/em>Jay Nowicki of the Perpetrators.<\/a> The Mayes & Nowicki show have toured around the world and back again over the past few years, releasing the <\/em>Times Fades Away styled live album <\/em>Lucky Tonight last year. Personally, I’ve been in awe of Mayes songwriting and strong stage presence for years. This Friday, I’m pumped up to have my band<\/a> to open for Mayes & Nowicki at the Cavern. I caught up with Romi over the phone after the May Long Weekend to chat about the gig, a new music video, and what keeps her inspired while travelling the lengths of the Hillbilly Highway.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Stylus: You just got back from being on the road. You\u2019re out there pretty regularly. Can you talk about that? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Romi Mayes: <\/strong>Not as much as it seems, I just ramble on all the time about it. Last year we were really busy. We had our CD release here, and we were on the road a lot. This year we\u2019re not as busy, but we are consistently out for a week here, a week there. We just gotta keep doing stuff. But we\u2019re not away as we\u2019re home this year.<\/p>\n

Stylus: I noticed that this summer you\u2019ve got a lot of interesting gigs coming up, like the BBQ & Blues Festival. Can you talk a little about that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

RM:<\/strong> That\u2019ll be cool. What\u2019s happened not last year but the year before, a lot of the Manitoba music festivals booked us. So we were able to stay based around Manitoba for most of the summer, which was really cool. We used to be halfway across the country for one festival, and then we\u2019d have to drive across the other half for another. We do have the Calgary Blues Festival this year, which I think will be cool.<\/p>\n

Stylus: Ok, getting away from traveling, can you talk a little about your initial influences on songwriting?<\/strong><\/p>\n

RM: <\/strong>Well, I don\u2019t know. I guess I always wanted to play music, but I didn\u2019t really know. I would be listening to the radio all the time when I was young. I\u2019d just go to my room and listen to music. I didn\u2019t really find that to be strange or anything in particular. But my mom would always say, \u201cAll you do is listen to the radio!\u201d I\u2019d make all those mix tapes off the radio. And I\u2019d lip-sync off the radio to Joan Jett or whoever. [laughs]. But I didn\u2019t really realize\u00a0 the extent to how much I really wanted to do that. Then I guess a few decades ago I got my first taste of playing on stage, and I went home really moved. I had this room really blown away for a night, and I\u2019d never had that feeling before. I went home and I was like \u201cYeah, that\u2019s what I\u2019m going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stylus: Who are some folks that keep you inspired today? Or maybe not even folks, but what keeps you inspired to keep doing this?<\/strong><\/p>\n

RM:<\/strong> I guess I kind of have no choice at this point. It\u2019s what I do and I love it. There\u2019s really nothing I\u2019d rather be doing. Even on this tour, I turned to Jay Nowicki at one point, Jay Nowicki who plays music with me and with the Perps, and I said, \u201cOur job is so weird. This is our job!\u201d We were filming as we drove through Chicago, and we were like, \u201cLet\u2019s go get some food here.\u201d \u201cYeah, that\u2019d be great!\u201d \u201cWhat time do we have to be at our show? Not till that time? Great!\u201d You know? Then we crack a beer, we rock out for these people, meet these great people, maybe they buy our stuff. Then we go to sleep in a hotel. And that\u2019s our job. You know, it just seems like an addiction to that. I also just love music so much. Not surprisingly. And then I have people, so many people around me. Luckily I know all of them, but at one point I would never have guessed I would, and they\u2019re all over the map, that kick so much ass that it makes you want to be so much better and try so much harder to do that. It\u2019s inspiring. Even just something like the Black Keys. They came out on the mainstream more recently, but they\u2019ve been playing for years, making cool albums for years. They\u2019re in their 40s or whatever. That they can bring such a cool sound to the mainstream is really inspiring. You know, like \u201cMaybe there\u2019s a chance!\u201d Hahaha.<\/p>\n

Stylus: Those videos you mentioned, that\u2019s a pretty neat thing you\u2019ve been doing for about a year now. How did those come about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

RM: <\/strong>I think I was just really jealous of people who were doing stuff like that. I\u2019d always see like little snippets from the road. I thought it had to do with the fact that they Mac computers, and iPhones and stuff I didn\u2019t really know about. I thought that was something I didn\u2019t know about. Really shortly thereafter I realized that we could do it! I\u2019ve been having a lot of fun with it. Jay and I have a really, really fucking good time on the road. We\u2019re always laughing, we\u2019re such geeks, such nerds. Just laughing so much. We\u2019re always goofing around, so it was just a no-brainer to get some of this on film for the people who want to know what happens between shows. It became The Adventures of Mayes & Nowicki<\/a>. I\u2019m actually just putting together Episode 15 for our last travel. It definitely added an element to the road.<\/p>\n

Stylus: This Friday, you’re playing at the Cavern. You\u2019re filming a video? What\u2019s that all about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

RM:<\/strong> We\u2019re actually making our first video. Finally. It\u2019s taken me 20 years to decide to make a music video. I\u2019ve been so lazy about it!\u00a0 But it\u2019s finally time. We\u2019re making the video for our song \u201cLucky Tonight.\u201d<\/a> So, the whole idea is put together already as an outline, but some scenes have to be in bars. It actually won\u2019t be us on stage playing, it\u2019ll be more off-stage. Like between your band and my band, or maybe between sets if we do two sets, in between then. But it\u2019ll be just a scene we need to capture where Jay and this woman hook up and go home. So that\u2019s the scene we need to capture. But of course there\u2019s still the bar, and our friends, and cameos we want to make sure we get. And I think the director has these ideas of how to make it comical, to make it a real funny story. So that\u2019s going to be part of the night for us.<\/p>\n

Catch Romi Mayes & Jay Nowicki at the Cavern on Friday, though go early if you expect to get in. They’ll be filming the first of two bar scenes for their upcoming “Lucky Tonight” video. The second part will be filmed Saturday, June 2nd at the Times Change(d).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Sheldon Birnie Romi Mayes is a staple of the Winnipeg roots rockin’ scene. A guitar wielding, songwriting babe, Mayes has been touring for years as two-piece blues rock combo with powerhouse guitar-picker Jay Nowicki of the Perpetrators. The Mayes & Nowicki show have toured around the world and back again over the past few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[432,563,1066],"class_list":["post-4255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","tag-hillbilly-highway","tag-local","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}