A Night In The Box puts new shine on an old sound

A Night In The Box plays a blend of American genres—rock, blues, folk, bluegrass, country—with ferocious energy. The band perfected the balance on its most recent record, last year’s Write A Letter, which brought violinist Kailyn Spencer into the mix to emphasize the old-school aspect of the group's White Stripes-esque blues-rock attack. But it's the live show where A Night In The Box really swings, with guitarist Clayton Hagen and multi-instrumentalist Travis Hetman, who share lead vocals, working the crowd up like carnival barkers. In advance of the band's headlining gig at Lee's Liquor Lounge Aug. 14, The A.V. Club spoke to Hagen about his band’s Zeppelin-meets-Carter Family sound.

The A.V. Club: You’ve known each other since high school. How has that affected how you play together?

Clayton Hagen: It’s interesting, because we haven’t all been with each other for all these years. For about four or five years after we graduated high school, we kind of were all doing our own thing. I think Travis was still playing music, but for the most part, we all sort of met again after we’d gone out and seen the world. We brought our experiences to the table, and it really did just fall in our laps. One day we were playing shows without a band name, and the next month we had played a dozen shows.

AVC: Did you set out to cross-pollinate these Americana genres, or is it just the tastes that you all have?

CH: I think it is a case of doing a lot of things before we realized we were doing them. We had the urge to write music, and Travis had just gotten his hands on his dad’s old banjo … I think that actually influenced the music we started listening to. But we grew up listening to Michael Jackson, and I grew up listening to Led Zeppelin. Kailyn listened to a lot of folk music when she was growing up, but also Captain Beefheart and Devo, and all this stuff. And Alex [Dalton, drummer] grew up listening to reggae and U.S. Bombs, and a lot of punk rock. And Travis used to be in a punk band. [But] for the last three years, our influences have been: Travis listens to a lot of Tom Waits, Blind Willie McTell, Flatt & Scruggs, the Stanley Brothers. And I really am trying to immerse myself in old folk and bluegrass.

AVC: What do you like about the old music?

CH: What I love most is that you can take away all the amplification from it, and still play with the same energy, the same effect, regardless of whether it’s a full venue or a street corner. I don’t think that would be possible with certain other forms of music. It feels like we’ve had a very American path. Our influences have been extremely American—"Americana," but a new Americana, for us. Some of us grew up listening to reggae, some of us grew up listening to this or that. It does all come through in the music, especially because we all listen to the Beatles, and we always want to play old Johnny Cash songs. But then Travis played hard, fast punk rock for years, and he’ll never shake that energy. It always lends this quality that mutates the music. Then it bleeds into us.

AVC: You've been playing more big festivals lately, including recent performances at Deep Blues and 10,000 Lakes. You already have an exuberant, energetic sound, but do you have to exaggerate that for bigger crowds?

CH: To tell you the truth, the only difference between a festival show [and a venue show] is that Travis scopes out the stage and tries to figure out what we can climb on. Because of Travis’ influence over us, energy-wise, we always play every show as over-the-top as we can. [Although] we also have another incarnation [that plays] little dinner spots sometimes—we play pretty mellow music all night long, and keep it toned way down. We’re pretty good at tailoring our sound to the venue. We have quiet songs that will never get played at Lee’s Liquor Lounge or 7th Street, and songs that we could never play at Café Maude, or somewhere that’s a bunch of people sitting and eating lunch. … [Our live show is] essentially, a participatory music. We like to have everybody sing with us. We play as many songs as we can for people to sing along, and we've got a lot of clapping and dancing songs. People gotta be ready to dance. We’re honored to be able to play to any new crowd. Any new chance we’ve got, ever, to play to a new group of people, it feels like we’re just constantly taking off on a roller coaster. And we feed off of it. It just gets crazy and a lot of fun.