Lars Nagel: Guitars

Chris Gray:  Vocals

Bryan Stuart: Guitars

John Barnes: Drums

Ken Plastic: Bass

www.myspace.com/motor76rocks

January 8th at the Star Bar with the Hot Rods and the El Caminos!

January 15th at 9pm at the Masquerade with The Unsatisfied, Super Hooligan and the Sid Vicious Experiential

August 18th at 10pm:   Live on WREK 91.1 FM.  Tune in live or visit us on the web at http://www.wrek.org/tuesdayshows

January 31st at Lennys...The Day the Music Died tribute to the 50th anniversary of the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper

December 13 with Dash Rip Rock at the East Atlanta IceHouse!

June 6 2008 at the Sweetwater Bar in Duluth, GA with the Sid Vicious Experience!  9:30pm

SUNDAY...June 29 2008 at 2pm at Corndogarama!!!

__________________________________________________________

June 2007:  Rock Tour Part II in Kinsale and Cork, Ireland, and the 12 Bar Club in London with My Evil Ex in June 2007 was a blast!!!

Photos at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lopez1

or

http://www.flickr.com/photos/katums3

Artwork by Chris Gray (follow link for more)

(Rock Tour I was May 2006 in Ireland)

See pics of shows in Waterford, Cork and Kinsale 2006! 

*Just click on Cute Katie from Canada below.  She's up for just about anything!

Check out this important and amazing magazine: 

PunkGlobe Magazine!

Thanks Chris for all of your support and spreading the good word.

Motor 76 RAAAWK!

"Plastic Classic"

Release Date: Available NOW

By Chris Rockson from PunkGlobe Magazine, Manchester, UK

December 2007

www.punkglobe.com

Motor 76 recorded ‘Plastic Classic’ during 2005/2006 with producer Rob Gal at Snack‘n’ Shack Studios, Atlanta.

Lars and Bryan’s influences include the Stooges, Ramones, Dead Boys, Devil Dog’s and the Heartbreakers.

With the addition of new drummer, John Barnes, and a new bass player, Ken Plastic, Motor 76 played Europe twice (06 & 07) along with this last June, where they played CD Release Parties for ‘Plastic Classic’. They played in Ireland and took the place by storm, finishing up at London’s 12 Bar Club on June 15, where London’s very own legendary 'Simone X' came out and rocked with the band.

 Lars : Simone told Bryan and I that she’d seen the Heartbreakers a bunch of times, along with being good friends with Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, and she liked Motor 76 a lot!! We were thrilled and honoured to play for her and her friends from ‘back in the day’ because a lot of the riffs we write on the guitars are based upon those wonderful heroes of ours.

Playing the ‘Plastic Classic’ release party at the 12 Bar Club was everything this record is….Sweaty and LOUD!!!!

Loud, dirty, snotty guitars and a blistering backline sets up the show very nicely for Motor 76, on this release ‘Plastic Classic’.

The tempo is just right, the volume shocks you to the bone, it’s high energy rock ‘n’ roll served up just like it’s supposed to be.

The guitars snarl in the styles of Johnny Thunders and Ramone combined and the rhythym section blitzkrieg and pure-driven lyrics back it all up. Think Iggy and The Stooges ‘Raw Power’ and the Dolls first album and your almost there….This is pure, dirty rock ‘n roll and it takes no prisoners!

 Motor 76 officially RaaaWWWKKK!!!!

Catching up with Motor 76

A drink or a few with three members of Atlanta's favorite greasy rock quintet  By Tom Cheshire/Dry Ink Magazine (May 2007)

www.dryinkmag.com/catching-up-with-motor-76

Motor 76 are five thick guys, one of them plays hockey, another is a butcher. The singer has a tattoo of a panda on his back and the guitarist has a Swedish name and a 14-inch tongue. These guys stink of meat and beer. I met them at a Rancid show in the mid 90’s and we’ve been friends ever since. Really sweet people making honest rock and roll and on their own terms. I caught up with Chris Gray, Lars Nagel and Bryan Stuart at a Piccadilly on Buford Highway in Atlanta. Bryan had a Guinness in his hand. Lars was swinging a tennis racket. Chris wore golf shorts with a piece of toast in his back pocket. We decided to head over to The Brewhouse in Little 5 Points to take things to another level.

Motor 76's Chris Gray, Bryan Stuart and Lars Nagel hangin' out by the WC at the Brewhouse in L5P.
Photo by Karen Rugg

Dry Ink: Where in the hell have you been?

Bryan: Playing here and there, writing songs, putting out a record, getting drunk.

Lars: We just played at The Midnight Room. It’s in the suburbs and straight out of a David Lynch film. Most of the audience was amputees.

Chris: It’s really called The Last Great Watering Hole.

DI: When did you guys get together?

Chris: 2001.

DI: What is the current line up?

Bryan: I play lead guitar. Chris sings. Lars is on rhythm. John Barnes (formerly of The Helgas and Barbarosa) plays drums and Ken Demske (formerly with The Plastics and currently with Rock City Dropouts) plays bass. We’ve been this line up for a year and half now. Chris, Lars and I have been playing together for over 10 years in various bands.

DI: I see you guys got some new t-shirts. I like them.

Lars: Thanks, we brought one for you. Our friend Ashi Doss made them.  She loves rock and roll, she is good looking and her prices are cheap. If you are in a band you need to contact her.

DI: How many records have you put out so far?

Lars: We’ve put out three records and have another on the way. We are really big in the suburbs and we do well in Ireland.

Bryan: We also do well in strip clubs.

Chris: Yea, go to The Pink Pony and ask the DJ to play Bad Girl from our last album All the Highs.

Bryan: They play it at Tattletales too.

DI: What is the title of the new record?

Bryan: Plastic Classic.

DI: Will there be a CD release show?

Bryan: Yes, June 12th in Kinsale, Ireland. Then we play Cork and then onto London where we’ll have another release party.

Lars: We’re playing Ireland and England and possibly Scotland. We’re playing some shows with an Irish band from Cork called My Evil Ex who is great.

DI: You’ve been over there before?

Chris: Yes, we played with the same band over there last year.

Bryan: The guy who helps us with shows over there is an American who moved to Ireland some years ago. Great guy, used to play softball with The Ramones. His name is Tim Smith and his company is Lucky One Productions. He’s also working with My Evil Ex.

DI: What does Motor 76 drink? You are heading to some serious drinking countries.

Bryan: Motor 76 will drink anything, but prefer beer and Jack Daniels.

DI: I think they will have beer there.

Lars: We’re just going to play some shows and have a good time. The people over there seem to enjoy rock more.

Chris: Exactly, the last trip was insane.

DI: Where do you see yourselves in five years?

Bryan: The same place, writing songs in a garage and playing for whoever will listen to them.

Chris: We’re always going to play music. We don’t waste time. We write songs and record them. We hope people enjoy the product. We drink beer and we play them live from time to time.

Lars: That’s it. We play honest rock and roll and love it. We played in front of twenty amputees the other night in the suburbs. We played in front of fifty people at Lenny’s. We’ll play in front of a hundred in Ireland.

DI: Any parting words?

Lars: Yes, we are not part of a trend or a fashion show. It’s about the tunes and a body of work baby!

Chris: We write songs for beer drinkers and women.

DI: Men, thank you for your time. Let us continue the drinking part of this interview.

And drinking we did. We drank Guinness, Miller High Life and Jameson. It was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon but I was hurtin’ on Monday morning. To the Motor 76 boys, once again, thank you for your time and break a leg overseas.

Tom Cheshire is the publisher of Dry Ink Magazine. Write to him at tom@dryinkmag.com

Motor 76 Rock Oscar Madisons

Posted June 13, 2007

Atlanta based rock legends, Motor 76, were back for another whirlwind tour around southern Ireland! Last night they released their fourth full-length album “Plastic Classic” to all Kinsale music lovers, before continuing the rest of their European tour.

These highly experienced rockers have had great success in America where members from the band have played along side the ever popular “Nine Inch Nails” as well as “The Offspring”. The southern country cross classic 70’s rock band held their highly anticipated CD release party on June 12th at Oscar Madison’s.

This performance was a rare treat and one of a kind to Kinsale. Their last album “All The Highs” was admired by fans and critics alike saying ‘This 1976-cum-2004 release would fit nicely in your eight-track rack beside Aerosmith, the New York Dolls, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Sweet.’

Opening the show was Cork renowned punk band ‘My Evil Ex’ who have just finished the “RET2fm 2moro 2our”.

— Katie Varvos, Kinsale Times

NEWS & REVIEWS

It is with deep regret that we learned of John's passing on May 1st last year.  He was Drivin N Cryin's live sound engineer as well as their studio producer for the last 9 years.

He was also the recording engineer and co-producer of some of our early recordings, and he put up with more shit and nonsense from us than one man truly deserves.  

Thanks, Mofo Tambo, we'll miss you. 

John Nielsen 1966-2006

Bandmate and friend moves on.

Paul Scott Shamel, 1965 - 2005

(aka Scotty Greyhound, Scotty Crow, and our Rock Ghost...thanks for everything)

Played with the Black Crowes, Shades of Shame, the Valentines, Kickstand and Motor 76.

www.pbase.com/sid_presley/scott

New CD Release 2006

Motor 76 has recorded their upcoming CD...of course, the venerable and nearly-unflappable Rob Gal manned the board at his Snack'n'Shack Studio.  Look for the new release in 2007! 

www.snacknshack.com...Rob's SnacknShack has closed, but he is still in the biz...so track him down.

Gonna Love Ya Like a Bad Girl Would:  When visiting Atlanta's finest topless establishment, the Pink Pony, request "Bad Girl" from All the Highs. Don't let your cawk miss out on the rawk.

Photo courtesy of Lee Smith / Badass Rock Chick courtesy of Ruyter Suys  Visit Lee on his myspace.com site...click on Lee's hat or Ruyter's tongue for link.

All the Highs   by Michael Brooker   Southeast Performer May 2005

If there’s one snappy catch phrase that best describes the infatuation with retro-rock groups, it would be the “old is new” description. This phrase has been thrown around more times in the last few years than in the previous two combined decades.

It’s not surprising, seeing as there’s a new so-called “The” band mugging back at us from the covers of our rock magazines and televisions almost every month. Some could certainly argue that Atlanta’s Motor 76 fall into this niche, but in reality they fall short of it. The truth is, good old-fashioned hard rock never really went away.

Motor 76’s debut album All the Highs keeps the ‘70s flame alive in excellent fashion, dishing out 11 tracks full of Buick-sized guitar riffs, guys-night-out bark-a-longs and lyrics that are mostly about girls and drinking too much damned Pabst.

The members of the band aren’t strangers to this sort of raucous fun of course, with three fifths of them being veterans of the much-lauded band the Ditchdiggers, who were integral members of the “cowpunk” scene that could be heard buzzing around the South some years back.

At about 38 minutes, the CD has a rather short running time. However, most of the songs cram everything the band needs to say over the course of three minutes in true punk rock fashion. “Tick Away” sits at the center of the album, and acts as a nice summary of the album with its honest and hopeful words. “Got all my things packed up in bags/ got all my friends dressed up in drag/ one more weekend, one more tick away” shouts vocalist Chris Gray.

All the Highs pulls out all the stops and does it an earnest, classic-rock manner. If that’s all you want out of a rock record, this is the place to look. Despite what you may have been led to believe, it’s all you really need.

(self-released)

Contact: www.motor76.us

All The Highs By Lee Valentine Smith Creative Loafing July 2004

Greasy Atlanta rock quintet Motor 76 got some young chick to pose playing with her titties on the cover of their new CD, All the Highs.  The best thing you could say about their music is that they'd probably all make very successful pornographers! 

Jeff Clark, Stomp and Stammer 2004

Unpleasant Valley Sunday - Motor 76 roars in the 'burbs By Lee Valentine Smith Creative Loafing 2003

In the heart of Gwinnett County on a Sunday afternoon, an elderly couple walks their dogs along a quiet residential street. They glance toward an otherwise normal two-story house as loud punk rock blares from the garage. Inside, Iggy Pop and Nashville Pussy posters share space with a lawn mower and garden tools, and beer bottles sitting on two Marshall amps vibrate from the volume of the guitars, bass and drums.

Motor 76 is at full throttle.

"This is the urban section of the suburbs," laughs singer Chris Gray as the band takes a break from rehearsals for its Friday show at the Star Bar in Little Five Points. "We've got a Jamaican guy across the street, an Iranian guy down the street, a Cuban family with like eight people living there to the left, a bright yellow house, a turquoise house next to that. And to the right, we've got a Russian girl who's never there. Nobody is callin' the cops on us for being too loud in this neighborhood."

Gray and his band aren't just weekend hobbyists playing garage music for fun. They're professional musicians who performed -- with a different drummer -- as the Ditchdiggers. For six years, they recorded and toured the East Coast, releasing two nationally distributed albums.

As major players in the once- thriving local alt-country scene, the Ditchdiggers -- along with the Cowslingers, Truckadelic and the Drive-By Truckers -- were redneck underground royalty. But times have changed. Only the Truckers remain of the original royal family, and the Star Bar -- once the palace for those bands -- now features more rock than country.

Since August, with the addition of drummer Brad Parker, Motor 76 has been working on its rock-oriented self-titled debut, set for release this week.

Indeed they have. Motor 76 is fueled by a high-octane blend of Southern rock, punk and '70s classic rock. "You get to the point where you evolve," says Gray. "We were writing more rock songs than country anyway, and this stuff is a natural progression from that."

Known for frying bacon on stage and other live antics, the Ditchdiggers weren't always welcome at some clubs. "We couldn't even get into Bubbapalooza after the first year," says Gray. "We were flat-out told that we were too heavy. But we're finally comfortable now. We don't feel forced to write a certain kind of song."

Guitarists Bryan Stuart and Lars Nagel had been writing a number of Stooges- and New York Dolls-style songs in the last days of the Ditchdiggers when Parker came to practice one day. Amazingly, their first session yielded four new songs with little effort. "We have to do what we want to do," says Nagel. "If we don't dig it, people won't either."

For Gray, the last couple of years with the Ditchdiggers weren't all that enjoyable or productive, as the scene changed and audience tastes shifted. "Now, we just want to get out again and play as much as we can, put the record out and see what happens," he says. "The whole cow-punk thing was a nice foray into country-rock, but you have to move on -- and we have."

Motor 76's first show was an opening set for drivin’n’cryin in Tallahassee, Fla., last year. "We went down there and hung out with the guys, and there was a ton of people and dancing girls."

Despite the different sound, Stuart believes old Diggers fans will come to see the new band. "It's the same songwriting nucleus as before, so our old fans who liked the rock stuff are gonna keep coming, and we'll just add more fans as we go."

Stuart and Nagel's dual-cam guitar attack fires the engine of Motor 76 and is often reminiscent of early Lynyrd Skynyrd. "As a kid living outside Philadelphia, I heard the Sex Pistols, Skynyrd, the Dead Boys, Led Zeppelin and Television on the same radio station," says Stuart. "I like blurring the lines between genres."

"Rock 'n' roll comes from blues and country, and it was born in the South," says Gray, taking a swig from a bottle of Jack Daniel's as the band members pick up their instruments to continue their practice. "So, hell, we may as well keep it alive here in Gwinnett County."

2005:  Bubbapalooza, Alley Cat, Scott Shamel Tribute Show, Cabo Wabo Shootout, Star Bar, etc, etc, etc.

12/16/04 Starbar with JJ and The Hustlers (formerly of the El Caminos) CD release and Christmas party.

07/30/04 Motor 76 CD release at the Star Bar

"Tonight Motor 76 celebrates the release of its first full-length CD All the Highs.  Lexington-based band the Yellow Belts round out the bill with a like-minded "rock-and-rock-some-more" work ethic, honed from the rhythm section's hard-hitting other band, Nine Pound Hammer.  Members of Skid Row comprise the Quazi Motors.  Need we say more." 

Lee Valentine Smith, Creative Loafing

5/29/04 Bubbapalooza 2004 with Artimus Piledriver, Gargantua and Bitch

"The third and final night of the Star Bar's 13th Annual Bubbapalooza - the Woodstock of Moreland Avenue - concludes tonight with a roar.  Bitch, Gargantua, Artimus Pyledriver and Brass Castle will offer an unrelenting onslaught of molten rock and melted metal.  Motor 76 - featuring an all-star troupe of Bubba vets - mix the best of revved-up southern rock and New York punk.  While the familiar faces of JJ and the Hustlers honk the tonk.  The sassy and theatrical girls (and boys) of Lust round out the show with a sure-to-be sexy romp"

Lee Valentine Smith, Creative Loafing

7/03/04 Heavy Rebel Weekender in Charlotte, NC.  www.heavyrebel.net

7/30/04 Star Bar with Yellow Belts and Quazi Motors

(see CD release review above for more info)

9/11/04 Third annual benefit show for Atlanta City Firefighters & Policemen with Rocket 350, Johnny Knox & Hi-Test and Seven Foot Politic (one time reunion show).

10/7/04 Masquerade with Social Awareness

10/16/04 9 Lives Saloon with JJ and the Hustlers

12/16/04 Starbar with JJ and The Hustlers (formerly of the El Caminos) CD release and Christmas party.

2002 - 2004 A shitload of other shows

Feb 2002 Starbar with Hank III

Dec 2001 Potbelly's in Tallahasee with Drivin'n'Cryin

Sept 2001 Motor 76 meets at the garage