Hailing from Fairfax, Virgina, Welbilt’s music may be defined as plethora of colorful hyphenated musical genres such as alternative power-pop, anthemic-rock, etc…but no matter how you choose classify the band, one word will ring true for anyone who experiences their sound….addictive. So what exactly is it about these guys that leave us always wanting more? It could be front man Nate Ihara’s powerful vocals, reminiscent of Switchfoot’s Jon Foreman, which make their often very simple lyrics sound very profound and emotional.

And all that I want
Is your taste on my lips, on my hands
Cause I need you like oxygen

Or maybe it’s the Bill, Buddy and Matt’s ability to draw packed crowds at Ned Divine's, and other venues in and around Northern Virginia, with their rocking rhythms and wide range of covers that turn each show into an all-night affair. The band has accumulated quite a fan base with shows practically every other night somewhere in the DC area to satisfy their cravings. With no label under their belt...yet, Welbilt won’t sell out remaining loyal to their roots despite invitations to play alongside bands such as Nickelback, Default, Outkast, POD, Soul Asylum, Something Corporate, and other national acts performing at last year’s Sundance Film Festival in Salt Lake City, working with a big name record producer and hearing their tracks on both a WB television drama and even a video game.

We caught them last Thursday at Clarendon Grill where they dominated the bar, offering a few new surprises that we hadn’t seen at previous shows. While opening with tracks off their two LPs and full length 2003 critically acclaimed album, A Beautiful Mess, (e.g “Anthem”, “Everything's Alright”), they played a significantly longer set including covers such as Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” and The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.” In one of the highlights of the night, bassist Matt Waller stepped up to the mic and impressed us with his vocal talent. The band will hopefully take advantage of this more often in future shows and albums. DC101 predicted good things for the band back in 2002, and DCist expects even greater things to come very soon.

Check out our interview with the band after the jump.

Visit Them At: www.myspace.com/welbilt

See Them Next:
Thursday, July 27th @ Nottingham's Tavern in Columbia, MD, 10pm
OR
Saturday, July 29th @ Continental in Arlington, VA, 8pm

Buy Their Album: At CD Baby

Questions For Welbilt:

DC101 has given you guys a lot of local music love from the beginning, stating that you are “the most promising independent band in the region” after only releasing your first EP. That being said, in all honesty, what is your opinion of DC local radio, and do you think they’ve played a significant role in getting you where you are today?

We owe a lot of our progress to DC radio, honestly. They, meaning Greg Roche and all of his producers on the local lix shows, have been very supportive of us. And we have tried to return the favor as much as possible. At a certain point every band has to tackle the radio challenge, and we've been luck to have some inside help from the beginning. As far as formats are concerned, we all know that DC101 is corporate rock radio, so it's just part of the puzzle. But it can be a very large one if you have their support. We've tried to make sure that that has been the case for us. And it's definetly helped us maintain our momentum.

One of your mellower tracks, “All I Ever Tasted” was featured on an episode of the WB series “Summerland” back in 2004, and “Everything’s Alright” has been immortalized in a video game. Can we expect any more of these types of appearances in the near future?

Yes you can. We have a couple of companies that work our music to licensing outlets, and we normally expect about one or two major placements a year. We do have some stuff in the works, but, uh...you didn't hear it from me...

I’m sure you get this question all the time, but as one of the more popular unsigned bands in the area, do you see Welbilt signing with a major label anytime soon?

Hopefully. Our journey so far has been an interesting one. We've kind of done things backwards, which has been strange. We dealt with a couple of labels REALLY early on. When things didn't pan out it put us in a different pattern. We've spent the last two years touring and building our base outside of DC. And it's just about time for us to start going back to the labels and looking for the next step. We've been happy to do it on our own so far, though. It's been a necessary part of the process, really. Getting the touring thing down, making things happen on our own. It's made us a much stronger beast. So i think we're in a better state to handle what the industry throws at us at this point.

What was your experience like performing at the Sundance Film Festival last year?

Man, that was fantastic. Except for the fact that we all got about 20 minutes of airplane sleep over 3 days, it was great. They flew us out, put us up in a great condo. We played with Juliette and the Licks, (Juliette being Juliette Lewis, of course) and they were great. You expect someone of her stature to be a jerk, but she was cool. Totally down to earth. The sponsors were really accomodating, which isn't always the case with these industry-type things. They took care of us, which was pretty necessary considering that we were all basically zombies at that point. I could barely feed myself...although, that's typical, really.

How did you get involved working with producer Andrew “Mudrock” Murdock (Godsmack, Avenged Sevenfold, Powerman 5000, Alice Cooper) on your first full length album, A Beautiful Mess?

When we first got together we won a big national contest that put us in LA recording with Mudrock for Virgin Records. Things didn't pan out with the label, but Mudrock loved working for us, and wanted to continue to help us out. Actually, we owe a lot to Mud. He's been great to us. When we got ready to turn that demo into a full length he bent over backwards to work us into his schedule, at our request. He's a great guy.

What was your inspiration behind tracks “Only" and "December?"

Uh, well, I can't really speak on record for Nate, who writes the lyrics...but I'll just say that he pulls a lot of his material directly from his own life. These two tunes are somewhat autobigraphical. And being that the lyrics are somewhat self explanatory, I'll let you fill in any blanks on your own.

Are there any plans for an upcoming full length follow-up to A Beautiful Mess?

Yes, we're writing in that direction right now. We have about 30 tunes which we'll eventually pare down to about 15. And we're working on funding right now...being totally independent comes with it's challenges in that area, but we're looking to start recording this fall...

It seems like you guys are almost always playing somewhere in northern Virginia on any given night. Have you thought about scheduling more metro accessible gigs in DC? What’s your favorite venue?

Well we've played a lot of the smaller venues in DC, our favorite probably being DC9. But we've spent so much of our time focusing outside of the DC area these last two years, that we never seem to work a schedule out within the city limits. It's always in our plan, but those shows have gotten bumped to do, for instance, Philly or New York. Plus, we pull people out in Virginia really easily, from Arlington to, well, wherever...but it's hard to get those people to come across the river. And you're alomost never going to find someone in the city coming out...so we've stuck to what works. We normally do a 9:30 Club show about once a year. Those have been really successful. And we're planning on doing one of those this fall.

What are a few of your favorite locals acts? How about mainstream artists that you’ve had the opportunity to share the stage with?

Hmm...there are a lot...I think the DC/Virginia scene is full of great potential...We love Crash Boom Bang, Adelyn, The Echoes, jeez, i could go on and on. And those are just the bands that we've shared the stage with.

Finally, what’s your opinion of the DC music scene?

Well, in our experience, there seems to be a big black line that has been drawn right down the river...which kind of sucks. Things are starting to integrate a little more, which is awesome. A lot of the DC bands are starting to reach out of the city, which is good for the scene out in Virginia. But if you take all of the acts and throw them together, i think the scene is amazing. A lot of very talented and capable acts play this area every night. And there are a good number of very conscientious club owners and industry types here now that are helping to develop the scene into something that we've all always wanted it to be. It's pretty exciting.

Photo from Purevolume.com/Welbilt