Kathy Bates Motel Release 2nd Single 'Cool Your Heels'

Kathy Bates Motel lead by Joe Lonie (Supergroove) release their second single 'Cool Your Heels', a seductive pop song about attraction. It captures the brief moment when two people “click” before fate, self-doubt, narcissism and psychological baggage intervene.

The four-pieces sophomore single is packed with widescreen guitar-driven rock of very high quality. The song starts with a driving drum beat (Milan Borich) which continues throughout, enhancing the drama, tension and intensity of the song. Jol Mulholland supplies his signature sparkling guitar pop riffs and elegant analogue keyboards. Bassist Morgan Leary trades sweet yet sour vocal lines with guitarist Joe Lonie taking the day-to-day ellipses of modern romance and elevating them to a level of art.

“Lyrically, Cool Your Heels is about spells cast and broken; sparks flying and landing nowhere; falling in love and then ultimately just falling”. - Joe

Following on from 'Damaged Goods' which was released in March 2020, 'Cool Your Heels' is part of a concept album chronicling the details of the rise and fall of a relationship looked at from both sides with self-effacing humour and unflinching honesty.

Kathy Bates Motel today, have released a video for 'Cool Your Heels’, shot in one day at The Hollywood cinema in Avondale, the video is an homage to the iconic “dancing feet” title sequence from the classic 1980s movie Footloose. It features over forty sets of feet dancing in every kind of shoe imaginable, intercut with the foot-tapping of the band members as they perform the song and rock out. Quentin Tarantino would love it.

“For the KBM videos I’m taking a minimalist approach. I like to focus on one particular word or phrase from each song and make the video all about that. This time it was feet.” - Joe

A talented director of TV and music videos, Joe produced, directed and edited the video for 'Cool Your Heels'. It was shot by cinematographer Alex McDonald, who has worked with Joe on many videos in many different roles, including steadicam operator on 'Gather To The Chapel' by Liam Finn and D.O.P on 'Can’t do What I Wanna do' by Deja Voodoo.

Kathy Bates Motel have done things a bit backwards. They’ve never played a show, but they’ve recorded a full album of nine original songs and a cover of the Robert Palmer song 'Johnny and Mary'.

“The name, KATHY BATES MOTEL, is fairly evocative of our music. It's an out-of-the-way place you can go to that’s modest, affordable and comfortable, although you may be murdered in the shower or have your ankle broken with a sledgehammer. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, despite sometimes singing about grim aspects of life.” - Joe.

The original demos for the album were recorded in Joe’s kitchen over the winter months of 2018. The recordings were roughly mixed by Joe and pitched to engineer/producer Jol "musical maestro" Mulholland in The Oven at The Lab. That’s when Jol came on as producer. First choice for drums was Milan Borich of Pluto fame. The feeling was that the songs would be brought further to life by Milan’s smooth groove, sense of humour and songwriter’s sensibilities. With no time or option for rehearsal, Milan put down the drum tracks for all ten songs in a day and a half at the Lab just a week before Christmas 2018. With the drum tracks ready to go, Joe and Morgan returned to the oven with Jol to begin the task of replacing all of the guitars, bass, keyboards and glockenspiel previously recorded in Joe’s kitchen.

The first KBM song completed was the bittersweet ballad 'Damaged Goods', released in March 2020, the propulsive pop-rock track 'Cool Your Heels' followed in August. Kathy Bates Motel have just completed shooting the video for what will be their third single, ‘Where do you go?’ They are steadily chipping away at mixes for the album, and gearing up to resuming regular rehearsals pushed back by lockdown. There may be the possibility of live performances in the future.

As well as being a musician, Joe is an award-winning director and screenwriter. Some of his notable works include the Goodshirt “one shot” music videos and the short films Honk If You’re Horny and Shout at the Ground. Since cutting his songwriting teeth as a teenager in Supergroove, Joe’s approach to songwriting has gone through many different stages that have brought it closer in line with his screenwriting. Most of the songs for Kathy Bates Motel have emerged from a TV series that he is writing.

"A TV series is a massive undertaking and all kinds of stars have to align for it to ever happen. A lot of these songs are integral to the show and I wouldn't have written them if it weren't for the show, but if it never actually gets made I didn’t want the same fate for the songs. I couldn't get them out of my head. I wanted to make them anyway and give them a chance to be heard.”

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