News

Self-identifying as the “Party Band for the Dystopia”, Nashville's Upset Boy and the Queens are back with their new single “Amphetamine Queen,” which will be out tomorrow via Sweet Cheetah Records.

"I originally wrote Amphetamine Queen for my former project Dirt Reynolds," says vocalist/guitarist Chris Watts about the new single. "Throughout 2020 and most of the pandemic I went through a separation and eventual divorce. I moved out of my home as soon as I could when I heard a musician in town kept a spot open for recently divorced musicians. It was a converted attic, but it had a cool haunted vibe and it was all I could afford. He told me Justin Townes Earle lived there once and wrote/maybe even recorded one of his albums up there. I had not picked up a guitar in months.

Justin Townes Earle passed away a few days later. We were both 38. I didn’t know him, but his overdose shook me as I was dealing with my own demons at the time. My publicist at the time (who coincidentally was also JTE’s publicist at one time) really jumped my ass to start writing again. So I picked up a guitar and wrote "Amphetamine Queen" and "Trying To Get To You."

I brought "Amphetamine Queen" to DR and we tried to cut it in the studio, but we just couldn’t capture how it sounded in my head. So we scrapped it. Both songs eventually became part of the first batch of Upset Boy tunes, and I think we nailed them.

Writing "Amphetamine Queen" ended the longest bout of writer's block I think I’ve ever had. I made myself write a dumb fun rock song that made me laugh and no one would ever hear, and that’s how it started. I don’t mean to discredit it, I’m proud of how it turned out. We worked it up into something good.

But that’s my advice to writers or creatives. I don’t really believe in writer's block anymore. If you can’t get past the blank page or canvas, make yourself write a shitty song or paint a shitty picture for no-one else but you, like a journal entry. Make yourself laugh."

Born in the dying ashes of one of Nashville’s last independent rock clubs, Upset Boy and the Queens started as a joke. In late 2022, Nashville’s iconic Exit/In threw one final concert before closing its doors to an uncertain future. Somewhere in the crowd singer/guitarist Chris Watts (Dirt Reynolds) and bassist Lulu Jones (Thelma and the Sleaze) stumbled into each other so hard they knocked each other to the ground. Cackling in a pool of their own cocktails they joked about starting a dumb rock band because, “why not, the world is ending and the clubs are closing anyway?”. Upset Boy and the Queens officially got to work in late 2024. Now joined by drummer Dan Dolive, the band is back and ready for more!