There's a sign inside of Mt. Pleasant church space turned alternative venue La Casa that reads "Capacity: 74 people." It's a picture that, if juxtaposed with the number of music lovers actually crammed into the place to check out U.S. Royalty at a benefit for victims of a neighborhood apartment fire last month, could've found itself a spot in The Onion. The crowd already knew that established acts like Kitty Hawk and Ra Ra Rasputin would put on exciting sets, but U.S. Royalty seemed to be the night's great question mark since a buzz had already started to simmer, despite having come into existence only six months before. After a powerful set that saw singer John Thornley fall effortlessly between the microphone and the piano bench and provide some exciting hooks that ranged geographically in influence from Brazil to Tennessee, the question mark wasn't whether the band was any good, but for how long they'd stay local. It seems they've picked an appropriate band name, although we'll have to wait until July for their first release.

We caught up with singer John Thornley, guitarist Paul Thornley, drummer Luke Adams and bassist Jacob Michael before their first headlining show last Wednesday at DC9 to talk about how they met, their songwriting process, and why one of their songs is named after a dog.

Check them out on the web at: http://www.myspace.com/usroyalty

See them next: At the Rock and Roll Hotel this Friday opening for Army of Me.

Photo by Ryan Wakeman

Other than the two of you who are brothers, how did you guys meet each other?

JT: We met [Luke] up out Indiana, we went to college up there. That was back in 2002. I actually knew him for probably a year before I knew he played drums. I met him in a class and then a year later my brother came out there and then I learned that he played drums and we started playing in a band together out there. And then we moved back here to D.C. and everyone just kind of hit a wall creatively and then we ran into [Jacob] and started jamming with him.
JM: That was right upstairs, here.
JT: That’s right, that’s where we met. I was out for Nouveau Riche, and we started talking about influences and stuff we liked and bands and we said, oh yeah we’re in a band and we started practicing in a trailer and he came. For January and February he drove like an hour and a half to get there.
JM: I lived in Rockville at the time.

What were some of those shared influences that you talked about?

JT: Oasis.
JM: Kings of Leon.
JT: These days, now, there’s been how many years of recorded music? Eighty or ninety? It’s getting to the point now where there’s so much music now that you can’t just say, “Oh I like '80s stuff or I like '90s stuff.” I think that people our age now hear all of it. I think the real challenge is finding bands that cover what you’re kind of going for. So when I say I like a band like Oasis or Kings of Leon, that’s not necessarily saying that I want to write music like they did, it’s going for a certain vibe or sound and saying, “These guys would be great to play with.”
PT: What else? The Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Lindsay Buckingham, I like every era of rock and roll.
JT: I think we appreciate a lot of stuff so I think we take each song by itself. We write a whole bunch of songs and then we try to figure out how do these fit in together. Like we played one song for our first couple of sets and then we wrote a new song and we’re like, “OK, let’s drop the other one because we have one now that fits better.” But I think we do better in an album setting because the albums seem kind of disparate in a sense. There’s different kind of aspects of rock and roll and in the context of an album they make a little more sense.
PT: I think musically they differ quite a bit, but I think melody-wise, that’s what ties them together very well.
We’ve got “John Henry” which is kind of like a more southern rock kind of feel and then you have an every-summer type pop feel, it’s more of a fifties.
JM: I think the titles sum up what the songs are. When you think about “Every Summer” you think about a fun time, summer time. “Raincoats” is more, I don’t know, technicolor?
JT: "John Henry" is grittier. "John Henry" is written a different way than "Raincoats" and we ended up changing around the arrangement so that it sounded like a more acceptable song. The way it sounded before kind of sounded cliché. The melody stayed the same but we kind of changed around the arrangement and use different influences, like the musicals of the ‘40s and ‘50s and the broad range of vocals but they didn’t overtake the song because I’ve got the other guys here who are like, “OK, we’re not doing show tunes here.” They add in other aspects so that it ends up becoming a song where some of our band has one idea but we make it into something that’s ours.

One of your only shows thus far has been at La Casa for the Mt. Pleasant Benefit Concert. How did you guys feel about playing an alternative venue?

JM: I liked it. That show had such a good feel to it, it was for a good cause, it was a benefit for the people who lost their homes. It was like a house show, we knew a good amount of the people there.
JT: And we all played in the middle of a circle. It was a lot like the shows we used to play back in college.
PTl: We did play a lot of house shows and basement shows with the old band.
JT: It’s got a good feeling, it’s like a tight group of people there that are out to have a really good time and you’re not there because of the bar or anything, you’re there because you want to hear good music. It’s good for us out here in DC because we always play venues and we used to play a lot of these kind of shows, like La Casa.

Are there any venues you particularly like in D.C.?

JM: 9:30 Club’s my favorite venue of all time. It’s such a good venue to see big bands.
JT: I like Rock and Roll Hotel a lot just because I can hear myself in the monitor. I can hear what’s going on. But we’ve only played three shows.
LA: We’ve actually played Baltimore more.

Are there any bands in the D.C. area that you particularly like or like playing with?

PT, JT & LA: Fever.
JT: Those guys have come a long way, too. I remember last summer and it was just Justin and Alex. They didn’t have anyone playing drums. But they’ve developed their sound a lot more and they’ve gotten a lot more practice and it shows too just watching those guys play. We’re always constantly practicing at the same time. When we stop to think about a part, they’re playing and when they stop to think about a part, we’re playing.
PT: We’re still finding out about local bands.
JM: There’s a band called Pash that I really like. I saw Le Loup at the Black Cat, I really liked that.
JT: We like the kids from Sugarcane Crawl. They’re awesome people. Army of Me, who’s coming back to Rock and Roll Hotel and we’re playing with them. They’re a local D.C. band that’s been at it forever. Also, not really bands but the whole DJ side of things. The dance stuff that goes on here like Nouveau Riche and Transatlantic. I like that stuff a lot. If there’s a DJ night, I usually hit it. Garutachi, too.

As disparate as your influences may be, the songs seem to cohere live. Is there a certain atmosphere that you’re going for when you’re playing?

LA: For me...the first band I ever played in was with these two guys so especially with Paul on the guitar, we can communicate nonverbally amazingly well. I know exactly what I need to be doing at one point. And John’s the same way. We’ve been playing together for a good 5 years.
JT: And adding a veteran like Jake in…Jake’s been playing bands forever. He’s been touring with other bands. He used to play guitar.
JM: We share a lot of the same influences when it comes to writing we know the feeling that they’re going for and if you know the feeling that you’re trying to achieve it’s really easy to play with them. It just clicked all the sudden. I think in our first practice we went through one or two songs.
JT: Yeah we went through "John Henry" and we went through "Raincoats".

How have you progressed since your days in Indiana?

PT:There’s a lot more songwriting there’s a new dynamic focusing on what we’re trying to get across other than our favorite parts.
JT: I think we went more from riff-driven. Our live band was like – we were out of breath after every time. It wasn’t really raucous it was just all really upbeat.
JM: I feel like we draw pretty well from the other bands in the city, we share a practice space with two other bands. And we see what they’re doing and we’re like, “Oh, that’s cool, we can feed off that.” I guess the network in the city just kind of helps.

Is there anything you particularly like, or don’t like, about the D.C. scene?

JT: I really like Brightest Young Things. I really think that Svetlana and Cale put together a good spot for everyone to find out what was going on: art-related, music-related, you can find your place. I think in a couple years D.C.’s going to be a place where people talk about again. I think it’s happening right now, but I read an article in GQ recently. [The author] interned at GQ and then came to D.C. for a job and got all GQ’ed up and thought that D.C. was just a blazers and khakis town and had no style and I was just like, “Where do you hang out? Have you not found out about Chuck Brown yet? C’mon!”
JM: I like the collaboration here because you get input from all over the world. Places like New York and L.A. you get people from all over the country, ya know, small towns coming to the big city but here you’ve got embassies and you get everything.
LA: How many other cities have Brazilian night (at Saint-Ex.)
JT: I love South American culture, I think it’s great down there.

I’ve heard about three different bands within the past three weeks with songs called "Queen of the Water Dolphins" and you're one of them. Could you please clarify why?

PT: It started from a nickname of a dog that someone owns.
LA: Justin the bassist [from Fever] has a dog called Lois and I guess sometimes he calls her Queen of the Water Dolphins. And so when we all got together to do the La Casa show they’re like, how funny would it all be if we wrote a song about "Queen of the Water Dolphins" without any kind of ties. Whatever song with the title "Queen of the Water Dolphins."
JT: I think it worked because we were feeling a real Brazilian feel for it. It was funny because all the bands knew about it and none of the audience knew.