Crazy Tacky Cool

Living in a suburban jungle, Elk Grovians are experts at taking something slick and mass-marketed and putting their own stamp on it—whether it’s planning a romantic date at the Macaroni Grill or mixing a shirt from Target with something vintage and rocking it just right.

In that same category of things that are simultaneously tacky and cool, Elk Grove pop band Litchfield recently released a tongue-in-cheek video for their single “She Moves Like Sex.” It features the guys getting turned away from a nightclub and bandmember Devon White playing guitar while sitting on the toilet.

The band’s tweeny, alt/pop/dance/punk album California Girls is making adolescent hearts swoon with its thumping beats and crooning vocals. Released last year on their own label, Rogan Records, it reached #7 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart, which highlights top-selling new acts. This summer, the band will take off for its third stint on the Vans Warped Tour, hitting cities across the country along with better-known groups like Gym Class Heroes and The Devil Wears Prada.

The workaholics of the Elk Grove music scene, the guys first snagged a spot on the tour the old-fashioned way: by sneaking in.

“We made friends with another band that told us you just start following the tour and eventually you get on,” said singer and songwriter Mario Rodriguez. “We pressed 5000 copies of our CD and were playing our own shows at nighttime in the same cities, driving all night, then going to Warped Tour in the daytime to give away CDs. We got on legitimately after two or three weeks. Before that we were just hustling, walking around with backpacks.”

Rodriguez lives in the Grove, while brothers Adam and Ben Hedman (drums and guitar) are local boys who attended Joseph Kerr Middle School. (The band’s moniker is their mother’s maiden name).

At their practice room in the hinterlands of South Sac, they and bassist Josh Helsel showed Elk Grove Patch the fruits of their labor—tens of thousands of dollars in instruments, CDs and cotton booty shorts emblazoned with the band’s logo and the words ‘Dirty Girl.’

Like in any success story, bandmembers say, the haters have started to come out of the woodwork. They grumble about competition and lack of support in Sacramento, where their shows draw fewer fans than in places like Denver and Maryland.

But after listening to the radio-ready, love-and-sex tunes on California Girls, we wouldn’t be surprised if they’re all over the local airwaves soon.

Despite being savvy businessmen, the Litchfield guys refuse to take themselves too seriously. That’s good, because we can’t either. Our favorite line on California Girls, “You are the catcher and I am the rye,” is about as deep as it gets. And Litchfield wants you to know that that’s OK.

You said on the phone that you started out as indie rockers, then began making music that was more commercial. Have you had to compromise to earn some success?

Josh: Our style changes a lot. We have our own label, so we decide what we want to do. We’re really into dub-step, so we’re putting on an event in Colorado with the largest DJs from around the world. We’re the main sponsor.

Mario: The biggest part of art is to express yourself, but we have to at least be fluent enough to look at how the system already works and take it up a notch. So if I have to put it in a little package, add some pretty colors, lasers, whatever, that’s OK as long as at the end of the day people get it. When we’ve got a million dollars in the bank, then maybe we can say we sold out.

Ben: It’s all about making people happy. That’s the point of music.

Describe your sound in three words.

Mario: Fun

Adam: Exciting

Ben: Energetic

Adam: You a$#hole, that’s like, the same thing.

Any musical influences?

Adam: Blink 182. That’s what inspired me to pick up a guitar.

Mario: Taking Back Sunday. Smashing Pumpkins. We’re not just inspired by music but by ideas, books, other people.

Adam: We’re really into the Law of Attraction, [business self-help author] Napoleon Hill.

What’s the coolest thing to do in Elk Grove?

All: Um…[sighs]…Elk Grove…

Mario: I got it: Pizza Bell. Pizza Bell is an Elk Grove landmark.

Adam: There isn’t anywhere to play in Elk Grove. They just wanna see the riff-raff out, and they see the music scene as bringing problems.

Mario: It drives business away. Teenagers have money, too.

In your video, you guys get turned away from a club. Is that autobiographical?

Mario: It was like a parody of a video. All these other artists fake it in their music videos; they’re up in the club with all these hot girls, drinking Cristal.

Adam: That’s not how it works in real life.

Josh: People say, ‘The song is about a girl, but she’s not in the video. Where’s the main character?’

Mario: Yeah, we couldn’t find any hot girls. [Laughs].

What’s next for Litchfield?

Josh: We want to help other bands do what we did. We’ve learned a lot over the last four years.

Adam: We’re not going to big-time anybody. We play birthday parties, we did the Elk Grove Chili Cook-Off. There’s always time for an autograph or picture with a fan.

Mario: We’re starting to see the potential in our band, and it’s putting smiles on our faces, because it took us a long time to get to this point.

Litchfield plays The Boardwalk on Friday, April 22.