Nestled in the mystical land known as Austin, Texas, there exists one of wizard rock’s greatest treasures: The Mudbloods, fronted by Adam Dubberly. Whereas many wrock groups (e.g., Harry and the Potters, or Draco and the Malfoys) are often seen as musical relatives of oddball bands like They Might Be Giants or Ween, The Mudbloods are set apart by their folky, alt-country style.

Given that they have been wrocking in the heart of Texas for around 15 years, The Mudbloods are in many ways one of wizard rock’s old guard. It was for that reason that I was quite excited to chat with Adam via email, asking him all sorts of questions about his band’s origins and how they came up with their tunes. Read on for more!

Paul: Take me back to the early days of the Mudbloods. How did the band come to be?

Adam: We started the band in our college apartment with the original three members, Me, Brandon McCullough (Who still plays bass with us), and David Matsler. I had gotten David to start reading the books and we were playing around on guitars when he was reading Goblet. We started laughing about how “emo” Harry is in that book and made up a song that sounded like Dashboard Confessional because we thought it was funny! We ended up uploading it to MySpace so we could show our friends.

Paul: Who would you consider your biggest musical influences?

Adam: The first record is weird because we were trying to make every song sound like a different genre or artist. So there’s the Dashboard sounding one, one we were trying to make sound like a Sufjan song, one that’s like an old blues song, etc. Through the years that we kind of settled into a more Alt Rock vibe like if Wilco was from Texas and not as talented or something.

Paul: You started your group independent of the New England wrock scene. What was it like when you realized that there were other folks like you who loved Harry Potter enough to sing about it?

Adam: Yeah! So after we uploaded that first song to MySpace we wrote a couple more and uploaded them, again just to show our friends who would think it was funny. Then, I think the wrock scene actually found us first. We noticed that we were starting to get a ton of plays and while trying to figure out why we realized that [Harry and the Potters] had posted about one of our songs or something, then we saw how many followers they had! Then that led us down the rabbit hole and we discovered that there were a ton of people doing what we thought we were doing in a vacuum. It was awesome, we started reaching out and making connections with the other bands, realized that some of them were touring, etc.

Paul: How do you approach the recording process?

Adam: Mudbloods recordings are always fast and cheap! The first record we recorded in our apartment, the second record we recorded in a friends house with the help of one of our friends (Andrew Hernandez) who is now an exceptional sound engineer in Austin; he also recorded A War Amidst Pop Songs in the studio that he was working at at the time. I think another band had paid for a week at the studio but only used like four days or something, so Andrew let us come in and we recorded that in like a day and a half at this really nice studio for practically free. The more recent EPs I’ve recorded primarily at my house with a Scarlett interface and Logic. I’ve got a couple descent mics (Shure SM-7b for vocals and an AT-2020 for pretty much everything else) but nothing extra fancy.

Paul: I’m curious about the Animals That Have Left Me and the A War Amidst Pop Songs 10th anniversary vinyl re-releases. How did those come about?

Adam: One of my friends had a vinyl cut for his wedding gift to the attendees. There weren’t very many people at the wedding so I asked him about it and there was a guy in Austin that was doing really short run vinyl cuts on a lathe. So I reached out and figured out pricing and raised the money for it on KickStarter! The second one we did of A War Amidst Pop Songs we actually got pressed at a factory in Canada that would do a small 100 record pressing.

Paul: What’s next for you regarding your musical escapades? What about wizard rock? Do you think it’s heading in a specific direction?

Adam: Not sure! We’re always ready to play a Con or show (you know once it’s safe and all), we opened for HatP in Austin last time they came through and that was unbelievably fun. But as far as new music goes, something has to inspire it. I’ve written about all the books already, I’ve written about Cursed Child, the last EP we released was based on that bonkers AI Harry Potter chapter and that is maybe my favorite record we’ve made. But, I don’t particularly care about the Fantastic Beasts movies and I don’t anticipate JKR inspiring anything within me probably ever again… So, it would have to be something HP adjacent like the AI chapter that grabbed my imagination, maybe some fandom thing or something will come out and be great?

Paul: And finally, a new semester is beginning at Hogwarts. Into which classes are you hoping to enroll?

Adam: Extracurricular Magical Entrepreneurship (taught by George Weasley) and whatever Professor Longbottom is teaching this semester.

More info about the Mudbloods can be found at Your Wizard Rock Resource. The band’s music can be downloaded from their Bandcamp page, and you can purchase assorted merchandise from their Big Cartel page. Finally, be sure to give Adam a follow on Twitter