Artist Spotlight is a segment that we started to introduce our readers to some deserving up and coming artists/bands. They have made an impact on us for all of the right reasons. We think they kick ass, and we hope you do too! Let’s shine the spotlight on the cosmic country rockers The Oil Barons.
From deep in the heart of Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, The Oil Barons are a reprobate quartet forging their own volatile brand of 100-proof Rock and Roll laced with Cosmic Country—and infused the kaleidoscopic haze of Heavy Psych. Cinematic and chaotic, their sound is a sonic stampede that veers as wildly as the western frontier they mythologize.
This fall, they band returns with their most ambitious project yet: GRANDIOSE, a full-length LP that gallops across dusty plains, shreds through sonic badlands, and dives deep into the surreal and the sublime. A Psych Doom Western Adventure.
Their debut album The West is Won (2019), produced by Zach Fisher (Weezer, Bad Religion, Epitaph Records), was funded by fans through a $10,000 crowd-sourcing campaign. The record featured the standout single “VITCH”, which made its way to primetime TV via Syfy’s Resident Alien. In 2020, they followed up with the Grease Pop EP, further expanding their genre-bending vision.
But that’s not all. Each December, the band dons their funereal metal alter egos as SCROOGE, a one-of-a-kind Classical Doom Drone outfit. They perform an intense three-night adaptation of A Christmas Carol, with lyrics drawn straight from Charles Dickens’ original text—one night for each ghost that torments old Ebenezer.
The Oil Barons—Lou Aquiler (electric and acoustic guitar, vocals,) Andrew Huber – (Bass, lead vocals,) Jake Hart (Drums, Vocals,) and Matt Harting (Organ, Acoustic Guitar, Vocals) have spent the past decade captivating Southern California stages with their unpredictable, high-octane sets. “We specialize in West Coast Rock and Roll, delivered loudly into your face and ears,” says Aquiler. “We get bored very easily, so the songs tend to change frequently and abruptly—which keeps you on your toes.”
With new music and videos rolling out ahead of the fall album release, the band is gearing up for a new chapter. One thing’s certain: The Oil Barons aren’t planning to ride off into the sunset—they’re planning to set it on fire.
About the band name, Aquiler shared, “The band name comes from the Paul Thomas Anderson film There Will Be Blood and the deliciously hateful main character, Daniel Plainview. We loved the idea of writing from a villainous point of view, and we believe that great western sin of our time is GREED, which is perfectly encapsulated by the nakedly ambitious, morally devoid, and totally merciless oil baron.”
We had a short, but fun Q&A sessions with The Oil Barons.
Every superhero and villain have an origin, and an artist is not different. Well, minus the radioactive spiders and secret government experiments. What’s the origin of The Oil Barons?
ANDREW: Lou and I were in a band already, Live Nudes. And we loved There Will Be Blood.
LOU: And I believe we were drinking at someone’s house in Brooklyn where neither of us knew anybody. And we ended up in the corner barking into a voice note on a phone, just the dumbest heaviest riff that we could come up with, which I believe was “Drill”. [from the 2019 debut LP The West is Won]
ANDREW: That’s correct.
LOU: And then Andrew moved, and the dream was dead, and then a year later I moved and then it wasn’t.
Tell us about your new album GRANDIOSE (Out Sept. 26) where did the name of the LP come from?
LOU: Well, we’ve always had a flair for the dramatics. We’ve always been a little theatrical, but we went even further into that with both the writing and production of this one.
MATT: It did seem like it came to you out of a dream. Many of the songs did feel like they came from a place of exploring as far as your imagination could take these arrangements.
LOU: The first LP, we wanted it to sound very live, like a trio in the room with you, but for Grandiose we wanted the sound to be layered and richly colored and cinematic. And the jams are long and exploratory, and the whole thing has an air of grandiosity to it. High drama, mamma.
What makes Grandiose stand apart from your past work?
ANDREW: It’s less aggressive. And more.
LOU: Yeah, and louder. It’s simultaneously less aggressive, but also heavier. We favor major keys on this one, and we favor dynamics. It gets quiet, nice…quiet and pretty.
ANDREW: We like quiet and pretty on this practice, we do.
MATT: Yeah, I think even the quiet songs like “Vivienne”, to me, when I listen to that song, it’s heavier than when The West is One was trying to be heavy. And I mean that in the sense of, like, it just…it lands emotionally in a way where I’m like, ooh, I feel like I’m carrying something – you know, in a good way.
Your single “Gloria” has a vintage rock feel reminiscent of the Laurel Canyon scene—who were some of your biggest influences while shaping the sound of this track?
JAKE: Hey, that’s a nice comparison.
ANDREW: I was just influenced by the word Gloria. And ukulele. I was also drunk. So, Lounge. That’s what it really was. That was around the time when we were thinking of drunken lounge songs, like Heavy Lounge, and that was one of those.
MATT: On that one, I always feel like because the structure of the song is so baked into like the American songbook, it’s got the most like context in terms of a style. For the organ, it always felt…if I’m not playing this song right, this is the kind of thing where the ear hears it as wrong because there’s so much context. So that song made me want to get better as an organ player and practice more.
JAKE: I would just say it’s probably the one song, maybe ever with this band, where there was no thought process about “well, what could the drum pattern be?”, it’s just very obvious that this is what it is. I think I even played it the exact same fills every time we practiced. All the parts are feeding each other.
LOU: The whole song dropped out of the sky kind of fully formed, Andrew just kind of brought it to us freshly baked – he even sang me that guitar solo. That melody didn’t come from an improvisation or any composing on my part, he literally sang me that melody…except for the back couple of bars. As for my approach, I think it’s very obvious that I was influenced by Brian May on this one. I am in a lot in my playing, whether I’m aware of it or not. He’s just huge for me, and I wanted that, like, ragtime band, wire choir – the solo was begging for it. For the rest of it, I just wanted to be low and growly l as I could without, like, sounding like metal, so those low chords are as low as it gets, like, you know, that’s Electric Wizard tuning, but it sounds major…so kind of, like, somewhere between Neil Young and Electric Wizard.
Rock has always had waves of reinvention—where do you see The Oil Barons fitting into today’s musical landscape, and what do you hope listeners take away from your music?
MATT: I hope that they can hear the human people playing the music. I love that we recorded it all as a band, live. I know there was a lot of stuff done in post-production, but the core of all of these songs were four people in a room. And I think that that’s never been more important as a statement of what makes the music exciting.
LOU: Analog sounds made by people. Beautiful sounds, nasty sounds. Amp worship is a big part of this. Tone-squeezing. And we like to really ring out. A big part of the reason I need to play live is so I can go BWOOOOMMM and just bathe in it. So, I want people to enjoy their sound baths, their tone baths.
MATT: And we didn’t make it perfect. We left mistakes in, and every time I listen to the songs, it’s starting to not sound like mistakes anymore. Now it’s just fun things that make the song new every time I hear it. And I realize that all of my favorite records left those things in them.
LOU: Yes. This album is much more produced than our previous stuff, but it is still spontaneous, and we will never make anything that doesn’t have that energy. Rock and Roll will never die.
If you could put together a dream bill with The Oil Barons and three other bands, past or present, who would you choose and why?
ANDREW: I want to play with [John Philip] Sousa and his orchestra.
LOU: Oh my god, yes.
MATT: My mind went to classical, too. Let’s get Beethoven in there. See what kind of string arrangements he could put behind these guitars.
JAKE: These questions are bad for my brain, but yeah…Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson –
LOU: Townes Van Zandt, Graham Parsons –
MATT: Haggard, Atkins, like all those guys that were just real messes in their personal life, but just the best musicians.
LOU: Obviously I’m going to say Black Sabbath. The Groundhogs, who are way under-appreciated. Let’s get a modern band in there…
ANDREW: I mean, Sleep works. Or Bongripper.
LOU: Santana, Allman Brothers, and the Dead. The only three jams bands.
If your music were a cocktail, what would be in it?
JAKE: Anything with mezcal.
LOU: Rotgut whiskey.
JAKE: Lou, you’re a bartender, riff a cocktail right here right now.
LOU: Split base mezcal and bonded rye, ounce each. Quarter ounce Green Chartreuse, for all the esoteric, mysterious herbaceousness. Quarter ounce Italian Amaro for some unexpected funk and bitterness. Dash of rich demerara syrup, and four dashes Peychaud’s bitters. Stir it over a big cube, express lemon AND orange oil across the top. Done.
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