At Work: The Nude Party
Over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, many bands have found unique ways to relocate to different remote areas in order to focus on their musical vision. Yet, The Nude Party were way ahead of the curve—they were already collectively living in a house in the Catskills when the concert industry went on pause. The band—Patton Magee, Shaun Couture, Connor Mikita, Austin Brose, Alec Castillo and Don Merrill—originally formed while the members were students at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C. Magee notes that their simple desire to be in a band was what brought them together.
“Our interest in starting and forming a band came before we actually possesed any kind of musicality,” he recalls. “It wasn’t like we jammed together to see whether or not we fit—none of us knew how to jam in the first place. We just all had this common inspiration and common want and desire to do this. And I think all our musicality formed to that group desire.”
Moving to the Catskills together was both a manifestation of that desire and an opportunity to solidify the members’ dedication to The Nude Party. “If you really want to have a full-force band, that everyone is an equal player in, you need a lot of commitment from everybody,” Magee says when discussing the Catskills house. “And you can’t have people that have real jobs or who have other commitments that preclude [them from thinking about the band]. So I think that what everybody has had at their core—from the beginning— is a massive amount of commitment to the band. And, now, we are almost like a cult or something.”
The band built on their 2018 self-titled debut for their most recent record Midnight Manor, which dropped in October of 2020. “I don’t think it’s just an improvement on the previous one,” Magee explains. “To me it’s sort of a deeper dive into who we are and what we’re doing. Emotionally, there’s more vulnerability in it. Dynamically and sonically, it reaches a little bit higher and a little bit lower. Everyone as a player has improved and gotten better at not only playing, but also listening.”
