The Rattletraps don’t fit neatly into a box, and they’ll be the first to tell you. The Chapel Hill eight-piece plays what guitarist Mitchell has dubbed “southern sleaze rock”, a tag that makes a lot more sense once you’ve heard it. There’s lap steel and harmonica rubbing up against grimy electric guitar; you’ve got songs that were written to be country and came out sounding like rock, and vice versa. Somewhere in that blur lives the band’s debut double single, Natural Crawl, which lands closer to early The Black Keys than anything you’d hear getting called country these days. (We’re looking at you, Jelly Roll.)
That kind of hard-to-pin-down energy fits right into the Chapel Hill and broader Triangle scene they’ve grown up in. And The Rattletraps have been soaking it all up, playing The Cave, The Pour House, Cat’s Cradle Back Room, and Carrboro Music Fest, to name a few.
With a full LP on the way and a summer tour taking shape, they’re not showing any signs of slowing down. Nick Parker and Paco Marvelli sat down to talk about finding their sound, recording live to tape at Nightsound Studios, and what’s next for a band that’s only just getting started.
What’s something y’all have been listening to lately?
Paco (guitars/vocals): I’ve been listening to Muswell Hillbillies by The Kinks a lot. That album’s awesome.
Nick (vocals/guitar): I’ve been going through Nick Cave’s B-Sides & Rarities. He’s already so weird, but it’s got all the songs that were a little too weird for his regular records. Oh man.
What was the first artist or band that you remember finding on your own and just obsessing over?
Nick: For me, it’s Silver Jews. I got so into them at the start of high school. The first song I ever played live for no real reason was “Horse Leg Swastikas” at my first open mic when I was 18. Which is such a terrible song to play to strangers. Because no one’s listening to you, and then you throw that song name at them. But they were kind of my gateway into songwriting. And we played a couple of songs at Silver Jews tribute at Local 506 a couple of weeks ago.
Paco: For me, it’s definitely Cage the Elephant. I remember finding them in middle school, they had a Flash game on their website. I listened to every album as it came out, besides the first one. I remember buying Borderlands and just locking on to that intro screen because I already knew that song.
With the Silver Jews tribute show, how did that come together?
Nick: That was Virginia Sloop. She put together the first Silver Jews tribute show about this time last year at the Cave. And then it got upgraded to Local 506 for the second one. It was us, Scivic Rivers, ENTREZ VOUS, and like a dozen other bands. She’s been doing stuff in the Chapel Hill music scene for a while.
You mentioned you got started with the band about a year ago. How did y’all come together?
Nick: We had a few different names. I think the only one we actually settled on before The Rattletraps was the Beer Shirts because we were all showing up to gigs wearing beer-branded stuff. Cole had a Natty Light one, Dan had a Bud Light one.
Paco: [unzips his coat to reveal a long-sleeved beer shirt]
Nick: We did an open mic at Yonder Southern Cocktails in Hillsborough, and they promptly banned bringing multiple amps on stage at the open mic afterward. The first show we did with the lineup we have now — our second or third gig with a drummer — was at The Kraken in February 2025.
Paco: We’d only really played the Pour House and the Cave before that. But the Kraken, week after Valentine’s Day, was the first gig that had the steel, the guitar, the drums, the bass — everything kind of in place the way it still is now.
Before that point, what was the process for building out a set list and working up to that stabilized lineup?
Nick: We were arguing over what covers to play, so we ended up just learning originals because we couldn’t agree on which covers to do.
Paco: Pretty much, yeah. All of us had been playing our own sets, solo gigs or with whoever, and we’d throw in whatever covers and originals we had. And it’s just like, “Alright, what songs are we playing? I don’t know any of them, but we’re going to do it.”
Nick: Paco had put out music as Paco and the Panhandlers, Cole [Cook, harmonica/tamborine/vocals] had his stuff, and I’d been in a band beforehand. So we didn’t have a lack of material when we started. All the songs that I wrote and felt were country ended up sounding like rock. And weird songs that were supposed to be rock ended up sounding country, because when you have six people playing a song, they’re going to do their own thing.
Paco: It just took shape organically. I got a penchant for collecting instruments, and I picked up steel guitar. I was like, “If I play lap steel and get good at it, maybe I’ll get a pedal steel someday.” And then I just kind of put it down and didn’t play it for a while. Then we get this band together, and there are five guitar players in the room. I thought, “I’ve got to do something else,” so I picked it back up and have been playing almost nothing but that ever since.
I was listening to the two songs y’all just put out. It feels like early Black Keys meets Vs.-era Pearl Jam — especially on “Make Right”.
Paco: Cole would love the Pearl Jam comparison.
Nick: When we first started playing, the sound definitely lent itself to us doing a much more straight kind of country thing. Which was interesting in and of itself because I don’t think any of us would have said we were straight country musicians. But when you have someone clacking on the bones, and you have the harmonica and acoustic guitar and a steel guitar, it’s just going to skew that way.
But also, what is “country” now? Sturgill Simpson is releasing essentially rock albums.
Paco: I think we’re more country than Jelly Roll.
Nick: That’s our biggest inspiration right there. He taught me how to cry on stage. [laughs]
Mitchell, our guitarist, came up with a characterization of what he’d call the genre of music we play: “southern sleaze rock.”
What was it like to record the “Natural Crawl” double single? Those two songs felt like a sampler; are they going to be on the full album?
Nick: No, we’ll keep them separate. We just have a lot of songs. Our set right now is probably about 25 originals.
Paco: We’ve got the two songs out now. We’ll have 10 on the album. We’ve also got a pretty firm idea for a live album next, maybe 7 to 10 songs. And then there’s another album’s worth of material after that, I bet.
Nick: The album’s not really a concept album, but thematically most of the songs harp on the same themes. The idea is to have them gel. When we play live, especially Paco’s set, it often just flows back-to-back-to-back with five or six songs in a row.
Paco: I’m definitely into that thing of just ifting up the floodgates, you know? Show starts, show goes on, show finishes. Did they even say who they were? What was the name of that song? Who knows, man!
Nick: We have a recording of us from our first gig at Cat’s Cradle Back Room, where we were the main headlining band. We listened back to it, and the talking between the songs was so bad that we sounded stupid, so our rule is just “No.” Don’t talk into that microphone; only sing into it.
Did y’all record it yourselves or go into a studio?
Paco: We recorded at Nightsound Studios with Paul Blackwell producing. That was an awesome experience. Most of us hadn’t been in that kind of space before.
Nick: Doing it on tape, too, was incredible. Paul also works at Cat’s Cradle. He’s seen us play and knows us pretty well. We’d had some attempts at recording last summer that just didn’t come together. We didn’t have enough technical know-how on our end, but when you’re in that position, you need the producer to know how you want it to sound, not just lay out all the options and let you pick. Paul’s been really good at nudging it where we want it to go without telling us what to do.
Paco: The big bonus of doing it at Nightsound was that we were able to get almost everything as live as possible. We’re all in the same room, everything isolated and recorded together, rather than going in one person at a time. That just doesn’t have the same organic feel.
Nick: On almost every single song, we were getting two electric guitars, acoustic or lap steel, bass, and drums all in the room together. So you’re getting the whole rhythm section done at once. That helped us way more than playing to a backing track and overdubbing.
Paco: I was ripping my hair out when I tried recording stuff by myself. It would be take 70 and then you listen back, and it’s like, “yeah, take 3 really had it.”
Nick: There are some songs that we wrapped on literally the second take. With vocals, it makes a big difference. It’s really tough when you don’t have people in front of you. It’s like acting in a one-man play.
At a show, you’re moving around, there’s a crowd in front of you, but then you go into the studio, and you’re just staring at a microphone. Couldn’t imagine doing love songs that way. Having four people in a room listening to you sing a love song in isolation would be uncomfortable. We don’t have many, so that problem didn’t present itself.
Other than getting the record out and playing more shows, what does 2026 look like for you?
Nick: Not beating each other up is going to be a good bar to clear. We came pretty close at a couple of shows this year; at the Carrboro Music Fest, there was almost some onstage violence. [laughs] The big thing we’re looking forward to is more festivals. We’re going to be at Shakori, probably Eno Fest again.
Last year, we went up to this thing called Grouse Fest in Virginia, which was a great experience. But it’s really funny, because it’s like, “Oh shit, we’re crossing state lines, we’re hitting the big time,” and then every single person there was from Durham. It was us, Mellow Swells, a few others. You’re like, “Where are you from?” and they’re like, “I live right off 9th Street.”
Paco: We’ve got the LP coming, but we also just joined an artist collective called All Y’all. Started playing some music with those folks, and trying to get things together for a summer tour. We had a music video come out recently with Alala Productions; they did an amazing job. That’s given us a bit of a push to build up our YouTube presence. And a photo shoot — get us all in the same room on camera.
What are some of your favorite local or North Carolina-specific bands or artists?
Paco: I’m huge into Squirrel Nut Zippers from Chapel Hill. Just fantastic music, and Katharine Whalen’s still out playing in Certain Seas and Jazz Squad.
Nick: We got to play a show with Flower Gauntlet at Huron Stage, which was a good one.
In terms of folks we play with a lot, Raleigh’s got a weirdly good scene going, especially in the more alternative country space. Ol’ Joey Scrums and Kit McKay are two of our favorite bands out there. And the All Y’all guys: Jesse Fox, Charles Latham, Max Lane. Max did an Alala session in the church that we did; we actually filmed on the same day.
Paco: Folks like Johnny Sunrise, Autumn House are some other bands we love playing with.
Nick: There are some great older songwriters here like David Prather, who’s an absolute killer. Used to play in Kris Kristofferson‘s band, did gigs with Townes Van Zandt, and just knows everything. He’s still writing amazing new songs and has a residency at the Cave on the third Wednesday of every month. It’s just awesome to go down there and see a complete, lifelong songwriter who’s devoted themselves to writing the best lyrics they possibly could. And they’re usually not sad, which is remarkable for a lifelong songwriter.
Paco: And of course, MJ Lenderman. Our drummer Dave used to be in My Sister Maura. They did that secret show for Wednesday and opened for them under a fake name in the Cat’s Cradle Back Room. I got to continue my tradition of finding a pedal steel player and drooling all over them. [laughs]
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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