Bobaflex front man reflects and talks about Hell in My Heart record

by Reggie Edwards

It’s been one crazy road for West Virginia-based rockers Bobaflex. They have found success in their latest single, “Bury Me With My Guns On,” but it hasn’t always been a bed of roses. “It’s been pretty crazy,” says singer Marty McCoy, who shares the mic with his brother, Shaun. “We started around 98, it wasn’t a real band in 98; we played some bar shows and whatnot. Then around 2001 we got real serious and got all the original members that are in now and just started playing like crazy and getting to play everywhere. It’s been really cool, we got signed to Eclipse Records then got signed to TVT Records, then TVT went bankrupt, now we’re doing our own thing on BFX Records and that seems to be working pretty well for us. “It’s been a crazy road, I mean, we’ve toured with everybody and we just tour as hard as we can go, that’s how we made our thing happen. After TVT Records went bankrupt, the members of Bobaflex eventually founded their own label in BFX Records, a change that has brought more focus and drive to the band. “The biggest difference is that besides doing it on our own,” McCoy says is, “we really care about our band a lot and everything with Bobaflex is 110%. TVT was great and there were some really great things that happened on TVT Records, it was just an unfortunate time for the record industry. They were cool, though. We did some really big tours with TVT Records. “I think we get more focused with radio and with our record releases when we’re running it ourselves. Looking back on 2011, Bobaflex had a huge year, a year that saw the band release Hell in My Heart, their first record since 2007 and breathe a breath of fresh air and relief. “It was a really big year,” McCoy says. “We went to radio with “Bury Me With My Guns On.” We were doing it out of our pocket and didn’t have a lot of money so we were hitting stations when we could do what we could do and it just kept growing and growing and “Guns” went to 30 or 34 or something like that on the charts. It just changed the whole…our shows have been great. There would be a couple hundred kids there and once the radio campaign went off, now the clubs are packed, so it’s been a huge impact for us with that song on the radio. We’ve met a lot of stations and kinda figured out what we needed to do with the label to take the band to the next level as far as going to radio and online-kind-of-things, so it’s been a real cool year. Things have taken off really fast.” The songs on Hell in My Heart may sound very personal and emotional, which McCoy says isn’t by coincidence. “It’s all true stories,” McCoy says. “We were going through dark times with TVT Records. When they went bankrupt, nobody knows, attorneys don’t have no idea, nobody has any clue what’s gonna happen with the band, the band’s just kinda stuck in limbo while everyone fights in courts for years and years. So it was a dark time, we were out cruisin’ around, selling t-shirts to pay attorneys to try and get out of this TVT thing. We would just show up at the town with new t-shirts and our fans would buy them, but our crowds kept getting bigger so I was like “okay, we’ve gotta get through this thing.” Once we got free from TVT Records, Hell in My Heart is pretty much from beginning to end what it was like to not even be able to sell your music or…we were bankrupt, it was crazy. It was insane times.” “Bury Me With My Guns On,” the band’s latest single, is one of the deepest songs on Hell in My Heart, telling the story of one of McCoy’s friends. “I had a friend who was in the military who went over to Afghanistan, Iraq and all that stuff and had some pretty foul stuff happen to him, seen some crazy stuff and then when he got home, his lady had moved in with a neighbor and some crazy shit like that and really, he had that 10,000-yard stare, he was lost. He said “you know, when I go to the other side I’d like to take my guns with me so I can show the man upstairs what it feels like to get shot at and killed.” “I was like “whoah!” it just stuck with me, man; a crazy concept but interesting concept. “Dark times man, [we’re] seeing better days now and times are great now making the record we didn’t know if we were going to make the record or not or if we were going to be able to, if we were legally going to be allowed to be a band anymore and it was just crazy, there was a lot of personal things going on and a lot of crap.” Releasing such an honest and personal record can be scary, but McCoy said the response has been great and they love the experience of putting themselves out there. ‘The public connects with it a lot better,” McCoy says. “It’s just something really cool. You tell a story and how you feel and everything and people feel the same way, everybody feels the same way. It’s…I can’t describe it, I’m ready to do another record, I’m ready to do something really personal, about how I brush my teeth and stuff, real personal. It just feels better, the lyrics flow out of you, the music flows out of you, then you get out and play in front of the crowd and you can just see them feeling the same thing and it’s just really a wild experience.” For 2012, Bobaflex is slated to head out on the road and tour for most of the year. “We’re doing a coast-to-coast tour with our good friends, Royal Bliss, out of Salt Lake City, Utah, great band and we’re gonna go coast-to-coast, hit their markets and our big markets, stretch it out for two months and play big rock shows and after that we’re looking to jump on a tour.”