Today we’d like to introduce you to Crooked Diehl
Hi Crooked Diehl, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
(Malcolm): We all knew each other from various ways. Jake and I were in the music scene on campus in the school jazz band and Fred and I went to high school together in Nashville. Fred knew Sadie because they are brother and sister and Fred knew Zach because they were in the same fraternity. Those three (Sadie, Zach and Fred) played a show or two before we formed the band. They played at an SAE Homecoming tailgate and I think their set was about 45 mins long. After a while, Fred reached out to me because he knew that I was doing music in high school and at Rhodes, and he wanted to get bass and drums in the band. He asked me to come play with them and then asked if I knew any drummers. I had been playing with Jake for a few months and he was pretty much the only guy I thought of. So we practiced for the first time just for fun in the Jazz band room that Jake and I snuck us into at night, and played a couple of songs. Zach had never played with a full band before so I think that moment was pretty special for him. I knew that my fraternity (KSIG) was putting together an end-of-year Crawfish Boil with live music in April, so I asked the band if they’d be willing to play at it and everyone said hell yeah. We practiced about nine or ten songs and played them at this outdoor show. We clicked pretty well but then the school year was over and summer came, and we barely talked to each other. I think we made one setlist that never got played, but other than that it really wasn’t a big deal for any of us. Once the fall hit, we played another show at a Fraternity party and got paid for the first time, and I remember handing out the money and saying to everyone “Congrats on being a professional musician.” I think it was like 10 bucks each. After that we started practicing inside the SAE frat house on campus (even though only Zach and Fred were SAE’s, the rest of the guys were nice enough to let us practice in there, probably some of our first fans) and playing shows around campus. Eventually Fred got a call from his friend at Auburn University who wanted us to come down and play for their Fraternity party. We instantly agreed and a few months later, we took three cars (only two made it) on a 6 hour road trip with all our stuff packed in. We made it with about 30 mins to spare. Set up, played for four hours and then slept on their couches, leaving in the morning back to Memphis for another show. This was our first real taste being a band, being on the road, and performing for other people. Something about that performance catapulted us forward and we started to sound a lot better. That year we just took off. We were playing almost every weekend in Memphis and getting asked to play shows all over. We would get messages on Instagram from people wanting us to play weddings in 2025 (this was still 2023 at the time) and fraternities at schools up north asking how much we charged. The spring of 2023 we went down to Birmingham Southern College together in a UHAUL that I borrowed from my roommate and played a set there before the school shut down. When we got back we signed up for our school’s Battle of the Bands, which we won, then got the opportunity to play at the 2023 Rhodes’ annual spring concert, Rites of Spring, and we opened for A Weirdo From Memphis and COIN. This was a huge break for us and we soaked in every second of it. But then the school year ended, Fred graduated, Sadie went abroad and suddenly everyone was asking us what was going to become of Crooked Diehl.
This is kind of like a first chapter second chapter type deal. I feel like after Fred graduated, and decided not to stay with the group we lost a bit of momentum. He was the guy who pretty much started the band and once he was gone we knew we had big shoes to fill. For a second we thought about bringing someone in to fill in the gaps on guitar, but there was no obvious choice and as much as our sound would change without him, we couldn’t think of anyone who’d be a good fit personality wise either. So we stayed as a four piece, except Sadie was studying abroad in Italy, so we were now a band that lost their sibling duo of guitar and vocals. Not ideal. We weren’t really ready for our European tour yet so the three guys decided to stay in Memphis and do our best. Zach and I started singing a lot more, and we delved into new types of music, new sounds, and it pushed us to really be much better at our instruments. Although there were a few times that we struggled, and being without Sadie and Fred for the first time was definitely scary, but we pushed through, and actually thrived during that semester. We made connections with the community of Memphis and started playing shows outside of the gates of Rhodes. We started playing at B-side, Hi-tone, Railgarten, and a bunch of other places around the city. We started making friends with other musicians and groups and really found out how awesome the community of Memphis is for music. Everyone wants to collab, help out and do things together almost like a family. So we made a lot of progress that semester despite lacking our lead singer. When she came back, we were better than ever.
So this is kind of how the band is now. Sadie Jackson on lead vocals, Malcolm Bryan on bass (me), Zach Jennings on guitar, and Jake Sanders on drums (although he is learning bass as we speak). When Sadie came back it was a bit of a struggle at first to get shows. For whatever reason the start of that semester we didn’t play a lot, and that was a bit stressful. While Sadie was gone, we turned my garage into a space that we could practice, hang out and record in. We called it the Crooked Lounge (sounds dumb in writing so you don’t have to use that if you don’t need to). In that garage we would practice 3-4 times a week and we knew how good we were sounding, but we couldn’t get the shows to prove it. Like with anything though, enough emails over and over will get it done. Eventually we packed our semester with gigs and we were at the top of our game. We played about seven shows all around Memphis and we were constantly being asked to come back, we won our schools Battle of the Bands for the second year in a row (we were terrified that they would DQ us for winning it previously) and this year we opened for Waka Flocka Flame (we have a great photo with him I’ll send). We played some great shows and got to travel to Nashville and Starkville, Mississippi, in the span of one weekend which felt like our own little mini tour, playing five shows in four days and traveling something like 16 hours. The big news from that semester though was that we finally sat down with all our originals and made an album. We had been playing our originals for a while but could never find time to record them. We asked some studios in Memphis but they were all way out of our budget for a full album. Instead, we decided to do it ourselves.
We wrote our first song back when Fred was still in the band. It’s called Jane Doe and Sadie and Fred wrote it together. It’s really special in that way because it has a lasting impact that feels like Fred is still around with us. We had 12 songs in total that we wanted to record but cut it down to 9 in the end. None of us had Easter plans so we decided to go to Savannah Tennessee where my dad works and record all of it there. We took every piece of equipment we had (almost every piece but I’ll touch on that in a second) and stuck ourselves in a room for 3 straight days until we left with an album. We really only got through seven songs but we worked our asses off in that room every day for about 12-14 hours a day. It was the four of us and Brynn Smith, my girlfriend and also one of Sadie’s best friends. Brynn was there to enjoy Easter break and she probably was the biggest reason why we didn’t all lose our minds being trapped with each other for that long. We left Sunday with seven songs and when we got back we knew we had some work to do to get them to the point where we’d be happy with them. Zach was the expert on Pro-tools and had all the mixes. Just he alone probably spent over 200 hours working on them to get to the point where they are now. After we got home, we played a show at B-Side and ended up playing Aces and Eights for the first time live. We liked it so we decided it needed to go on the album. We spend a day in the Lounge recording it and Zach worked his magic and then it became the lead single.
So now we get to the part about Charleston. Zach has played around here for the past two summers. He made a bunch of connections and always talked about the fact that he was part of a band. He made some calls and suddenly we’re spending our summer here and playing three shows a week. We knew we wanted to do this for a while, but actually being here and fully prioritizing Crooked Diehl has allowed us to grow tremendously. We started out last weekend at New Realm Brewery where we played a four hour set, then got asked to play a private show on Tuesday and was asked for a summer residency at the Celt that Friday. Tonight we’re playing at Carolina Butcher and Beer Garden and the rest of the week is filled with more shows and more recording. We are still writing songs, our new single Aces and Eights was released last month, and the album, The First One, is set to come out July 26th and our summer and fall semester are looking as promising as ever. Make sure to check out The First One on all streaming platforms July 26th!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
(Malcolm): a smooth road is not something we have come across while we’ve been together. Fred leaving and Sadie being gone were big struggles but in the end they made us way better. It is always a struggle to get gigs, deal with booking agents,
co-ordinate practices and make sure everyone is happy with setlists and money and whatnot. It’s never a smooth road and each day has its different problems that we are dealing with. Not to mention, we were all full-time college students on top of musicians. Balancing academic responsibilities while being in a band is not easy. But Crooked Diehl has taken all of our college experience beyond what we ever could have imagined. It’s really special after we finish a gig and know that we just gave our all and played the way we did.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
(Malcolm): Well for a while it wasn’t work at all, when we started it was just all fun and games for us. When we got serious we started doing a lot more practicing. Like, a lot more. We played a ton of covers and still do, but the end goal is to play our own music and share it with the world. All of us are big music appreciators and so we will never not enjoy playing music we like, but our own music is special and the goal is to be known for that. I think all of us are proud of the music that we’ve written, but more than anything when we finish a show we are proud of each other for what we have accomplished. We’ve played for some big crowds and been recognized by our school as a group and some of us as individuals. We want to keep doing what we do, and if people like it then great, and if the don’t then we may have to get some jobs on the side to keep paying the bills.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Zach holds three school records for lacrosse, and before the band he was recruited to play at Rhodes. He retired after the fall of 2022 because he wanted to be in the band and travel with us.
Malcolm sang acapella for all four years in high school. He will not say what the group was called.
Jake’s first instrument was trumpet. He hardly remember how to play it.
Sadie was a theatre kid in high school and was in the musicals.
As far as the band.
All of us are in Fraternities. Fred and Zach are SAEs, Jake is a Sigma Nu, Malcolm is a Kappa Sigma and even Sadie is Chi Omega, which is technically a Fraternity not a sorority. Malcolm had played in bands before and had more of a music background, as well as Jake. But the reason we came together is because we were all just kids who like to play music and have a good time. If we had tried to add anyone else to the group it wouldn’t work the way it does now. Us coming together hardly makes sense as individuals but it works perfectly for the band and we couldn’t be more thankful.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.crookeddiehl.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crooked.diehl.band/
- Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/@CrookedDiehl
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4QJLVsxH2cRhKkMSU1Qc3J?si=B98-SScvTDWjVomt8gLXhg
Image Credits
@iamjohnjo on instagram, he took the AB photo
@jchdx.visuals on instagram, he took all of the Rites of Spring Concert photos
@carolineallenphoto on instagram, she photographed our album cover and the Personal Photo we attached
