Months before they performed at the 2012 Hangout Music Fest by winning the national Hang Loose Band Competition, The Revivalists made a return visit to Pensacola, Florida.

Celebrating the release of their latest album “City of Sound”, Vinyl Music Hall was the location for the New Orleans’ based band’s CD release party.

While on the road and fighting illness, Revivalists frontman, David Shaw took a few minutes for a phone interview to catch up on the new album and the year ahead for the Pensacola News Journal’s “Music Matters” column.

Here is a link to that article where Shaw talks about the new album and the Pensacola fan who demands that he “Take it off!” at every show. The entire interview follows below.

*** David Shaw Interview ***

DS: Getting over a really bad flu. We all kind of got it. So yeah, I’ve been better health wise. We all seem to be hanging in there. We’re heading to Austin for South by Southwest.

MS: You’ve got the new CD, SXSW and the Jazz & Heritage Festival around the corners, how do you keep it all together?

DS: (laughs) Try to not eat a ton of gas station food, which I regularly do. Try to just eat as healthy as you can. Some do better than others on that one for sure. We’ve kind of gotten used to it, honestly. When you stop moving, you grow old and we haven’t really stopped moving for three years. Kind of stay young in that respect. We’re seasoned road dogs, I guess you could say. That’s what we do, stay on the road. Keep rolling.

MS: What does the new CD City of Sound mean for you and the band? What does it mean for you as an artist?

DS: It was our third. We enlisted producer Ben Ellman (saxophonist for Galactic and producer of Trombone Shorty) to produce the album. That was an awesome thing. We solidified a great friendship with their band and with Ben as well. He was great in the studio. Kind of a mentor as well as a producer to us. It was good, man. It was really good. We really tried to capture a lot of the live energy as well as utilize the stuff in the studio that you can’t do live. So I think we got a pretty good mix of that.

MS: Any chance for like a full length live album.

DS: For sure. We actually already put one out two years ago. You can get it off of our Reverbnation site and bandcamp.com/revivalists.

MS: With the CD release party next week at Vinyl Music Hall, What are some of your best memories of Pensacola, Florida?

DS: Some of the best memories of Pensacola. I think basically, probably for all of us is going to be playing at Bamboo Willies. That was an amazing year. We played their once a month. One of the best things was for me in between sets, sometimes we’d play a day set on a Sunday…we’d do it a couple of times, not very often…in between sets you could just go and run into the ocean. Cool off, you know it’s a hundred degrees up on that stage when the lights go on. That was awesome that was really cool. The people in there, the people in Pensacola have really took us in, it’s great. It was amazing.

MS: Last question. Is there anything you want to add or let the Pensacola fans know about next week and the CD release party or whatever you want us to know.

DS: I just wanted to add basically, that we’re very happy to be coming back. The last show, you could just feel it. Like an electric energy. You couldn’t beat it. It was amazing. And we’re definitely going to bring the same kind of fire that we brought last time. And always expect the unexpected. We’re going to be playing some new stuff. We’re always constantly writing songs. We got enough material now for probably another two albums already. We’re going to be-maybe we’ll have a new cover-I don’t know. We’ll see.

MS: When do you find time to rehearse the new stuff and incorporate it into the show?

DS: Sometimes it happens in soundcheck. We’ll play a little bit and we’ll get a new song out of that. We definitely have to find time these days. We have to make time to rehearse, that’s for sure. I’m always writing songs on my own. Andrew our drummer is always writing songs on his own. Jack’s always writing songs on his own. Everybody’s always writing stuff. When we make time, we bring it all together.

– Michael L. Smith

Link to an additional photo gallery by the PNJ crew