Zack Weedon is a very busy man.
When the amiable bassist isn’t rocking out with Danny Kroha’s Readies and local legends the Dirtbombs, he’s playing with his brothers (Corey and Casey) and school buddies (Jason Eggert, B.J. Horn and Todd McNulty) in Lee Marvin Computer Arm. Combining all that’s good about noisy punk rock and old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll, LMCA bring the noise.
Friday, they will plug and turn it up for the crowd of the Belmont in Hamtramck. Metromix grabbed Zack by the Computer Arm and interrogated him about what we can expect, and how come there’s nobody in the band called Lee Marvin.
How and when did the band form?
The short answer is that we were all friends. I’ve known my brothers all my life and the other guys since junior high. We wanted to form a band that was both fun and serious. We wanted to have a good time… but we feel that we can be serious and angry too.
Why the name?
Lee Marvin Computer Arm is an idea that my brother and I came up with. My brother felt that if your band is good enough, it doesn’t matter what name you have. I said, “Like Computer Arm?” and he said, “Like Lee Marvin Computer Arm.”
It just stuck. It was just such an incredibly strange name, but we also like the idea of the cyborg-action hero. That’s a good mascot for our band.
Describe the band’s sound.
People ask us that all of the time but I think it’s just rock ‘n’ roll. People always want to describe it other ways but it’s just rock ‘n’ roll. Nothing more, nothing less.
Do you think you fit in with the Detroit rock ‘n’ roll scene?
That’s a good question: I don’t know what the Detroit rock ‘n’ roll scene is now. If it’s like the Muggs, the Cobras and those kinds of bands, then I don’t think so. We’ve played with the Paybacks before but I don’t even think the Paybacks are together anymore.
It’s all rock ‘n’ roll, but the quick answer is no. Our group is really into noisy rock ‘n’ roll, so we like playing with the Terrible Twos and bands like that. We fit more with those bands because we play a weird fusion of new and old rock ‘n’ roll.
Do you have any special plans for the Belmont show this weekend?
We’re going to play two new songs, one that we already played at the Blowout. Apart from that, I don’t know. We bring it every time. That’s not new, that’s why people come to see us – to see if we’re going to yell at each other on stage.
Do you have any recorded output?
We have one EP that’s out on an old label that’s not around anymore but we still have copies of it. We have another record on Cass Records, which is [the drummer from the Dirtbombs] Ben Blackwell’s label. We have a new record which will hopefully be out in late April.
What are your plans for the next 12 months?
We’re going to record again with Derrick from Awesome Color. We’ll tour hopefully in August, and that should take us through the year.
