Featured Artist of January 16, 2025
with the album: "Shout It on the Mountain"


Artist's Biography

Neverland Ranch Davidians aren’t shy about butting heads with the supposed gatekeepers of popular culture, their name being a mashup which references the “King of Pop,” Michael Jackson, and notorious Waco cult leader David Koresh.

Formed in Los Angeles in 2019, the group features vocalist/guitarist Tex Mosley, guitarist/vocalist Will Bentley, and drummer Max Hagen. Working from a primal bedrock, the trio is free to expand its sonic template to include tense blues grooves, greasy hip-shaking R&B, scuzzy high-voltage riffage, and bristling punk rock. Through it all, Mosley’s voice cuts like a knife — upfront, in your face, and immediate.

“I’ve always loved the minimalism of Suicide, and that less-is-more approach is hardwired into the Davidians’ DNA,” said Mosley. “That’s probably why we never bothered recruiting a bass player for our live shows. We’re huge fans of the Cramps and the Gories, neither of which had bass players, so we didn’t feel we needed one either.”

Mosley’s roots in underground rock reach back to the late 1970s when he was learning to play guitar as a teenager. Raised in Philadelphia by a family with a deep appreciation of music, his parents happened to be friendly with the early Afro-punk quartet Pure Hell. On a visit to the Mosley household, Pure Hell bassist Lenny Boles overheard Tex playing his sister’s acoustic guitar. Impressed, he took the rudimentary chords he heard to his bandmates, and they became the framework for the 1978 track “No Rules.” As a gesture of solidarity, Pure Hell credited the young Mosley with the music.

Suspecting he might be on to a good thing, Mosley formed his first band, Bad Actor, when he was 16. When Pure Hell came to an end in 1979, drummer Michael “Spider” Sanders joined Mosley in the new venture. After catching Bad Actor warming up for the Circle Jerks and the Stranglers at Philly’s Starlite Ballroom in 1981, Circle Jerks manager Gary Hirstius convinced them to move west to Los Angeles. Upon arrival, they began to book gigs and eventually found themselves in the recording studio, although nothing from this era has ever been released. Bad Actor split around 1985. Incidentally, this was not Mosley’s only connection to the Circle Jerks. He and the band’s singer, Keith Morris, also had a short-lived band called the Whores of Babylon.

Since the breakup of Bad Actor, Mosley has stayed busy with a string of musical acts. In 1990, he played alongside Richard Elerick (AKA “Rik L Rik,” vocalist for punk bands F-Word and Negative Trend) on the self-titled debut album by the Slaves, released by I.R.S. Records. That same year, he joined the long-running L.A. rock group the Hangmen, an affiliation that lasted until 1997. In 1994, the Hangmen recorded an album with Australian rock vocalist Rob Younger (Radio Birdman, New Race, The New Christs) as producer. Unfortunately, the album was shelved and only a handful of tracks have surfaced in various formats over the years.

From 2007-2011, Mosley played guitar for the Neighborhood Bullys. Head Bully Davey Meshall’s father was songwriter and publishing executive Billy Meshall. The elder Meshall was friendly with legendary producer/songwriter Mike Chapman (Blondie, The Knack) who was in pre-production for a new record by Suzi Quatro. Since Quatro needed a band, Meshall suggested that Chapman should check out the Bullys. Suitably impressed, the producer hired the Bullys to back Quatro on her In the Spotlight album which was released by Cherry Red in 2011. There were also plans for the Bullys to back Quatro on a U.S. tour, but the tour didn’t happen.

Simultaneous to his time with the Bullys, Mosley performed with professional skateboarder and punk rock singer/songwriter Duane Peters (U.S. Bombs). Peters’ main band at the time was The Duane Peters Gunfight, and while they did record two albums, Mosley doesn’t appear on either and instead his focus was on live work.

Which brings us to Neverland Ranch Davidians. 2023’s “Spirituals from Life’s Other Side” EP marked the band’s recorded debut, and it was swiftly followed by a self-titled debut LP. Neverland Ranch Davidians made fans in Europe with Classic Rock Magazine’s Ian Fortnam awarding it “9 out of 10,” writing:

“Stoner psych gets its groove on in an irresistible fuzz-funk firefight that calls to mind a tight-but-loose, chitlin circuit-era Hendrix on ‘Fat Back.’ Elsewhere, there’s the overdrivepedal-to-the-metal freeway head rush of ‘Rat Patrol,’ swampabilly grunge (the powerfully wrought, George Floyd-inspired ‘Knee on My Neck’), and Cramps lurch (‘Aqua Velveteen’). Hell, to be perfectly honest it’s tough to cherry pick because every which way you turn there’s a dynamite tune.”

In the fall of 2024, it was announced that a follow-up LP, Shout It on the Mountain, would arrive in early 2025. The new set will once again be released by Heavy Medication Records, an independent rock ‘n’ roll label started in 2018 by an American expat living in Warsaw, Poland. “Rock ‘n’ roll is still respected and celebrated in Europe, so we were happy to catch the ear of a cool Euro label like Heavy Medication,” said Mosley.


About the Album:

NEVERLAND RANCH DAVIDIANS ANNOUNCE SECOND ALBUM,
SHOUT IT ON THE MOUNTAIN, OUT FEBRUARY 7
VIA HEAVY MEDICATION RECORDS

“Fronted by Tex Mosley, this defiant two-guitar power trio boasts a sound that’s as unlikely a hybrid as their once heard, never forgotten name” — CLASSIC ROCK MAGAZINE

Shout It on the Mountain will be available on vinyl, CD, and download.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — Neverland Ranch Davidians, a Los Angeles rock trio renowned for their incendiary live shows, have announced details of their second album. Shout It on the Mountain will be released on LP, CD and download via Heavy Medication Records on February 7. To coincide, the band will play an album release concert at The Redwood in Los Angeles on March 7.

The Davidians’ lineup features vocalist/guitarist Tex Mosley (vocals, guitar), Will Bentley (guitar, backing vocals), and Max Hagen (drums, backing vocals). While the band does not feature bass guitar in its live shows, Greg “Smog” Boaz (Mavis Staples, Dave Alvin and the Guilty Men, Tex & the Horseheads) plays bass on the new album.

A native of Philadelphia, Tex Mosley relocated to Los Angeles in the early 1980s and has played in a succession of punk-leaning bands: Bad Actor, featuring Michael “Spider” Sanders of Afro-punk legends Pure Hell; Whores of Babylon with Circle Jerks singer Keith Morris; The Slaves with Richard Elerick (AKA punk vocalist “Rik L Rik”); The Hangmen, a group which recorded an unreleased album for Geffen with Mosley; The Duane Peters Gunfight, a Tex-Mex infused punk group featuring skateboarding legend Duane Peters; and the power pop-leaning Neighborhood Bullys. It was with the latter band that Mosley backed up Detroit legend Suzi Quatro for her 2011 album, In the Spotlight.

Neverland Ranch Davidians formed in Hollywood in 2019. Mosley, Bentley and Hagen honed their sound performing at a string of southern California live shows before recording their self-titled debut album in 2022. Released in January 2023, Ian Fortnam at Classic Rock Magazine hailed Neverland Ranch Davidians as a “Future Classic” and awarded the album “9 out of 10.” Iggy Pop added a pair of the album’s tracks to the playlist of his BBC Radio 6 show.

For Shout It on the Mountain, the band has added a more pronounced rhythm & blues vibe to its sonic stew. “For me, R&B and punk rock are just two colors on the rock ‘n’ roll palette,” said Mosley. “They’re what I’ve listened to all my life. Little Richard was the punk rocker of his day. The New York Dolls were labeled as glam, but if you listen closely, they were trying to be a more rock ‘n’ roll version of the Shangri-La’s. The Davidians are all the things I love thrown into one pot, from Stax soul to cowpunk to NYC Lower East Side trash."

Shout it on the Mountain was recorded earlier this year in Los Angeles except for “Happy,” which dates to the sessions for the first album. The new album features two cover songs: Eddie Floyd’s ‘Big Bird” (originally issued on Stax Records in 1968 and written by Floyd and Booker T. Jones) and Half Pint & the Fifths’ “Orphan Boy” (an obscure Chicago garage rocker issued in 1966 which later appeared in the popular Back from the Grave series). All the original songs are band compositions with most of the lyrics written by Mosley, with additional help from Bentley.

The album was produced by Will Bentley and Bjorn Winberg. Shout It on the Mountain will be released by Heavy Medication Records, a label run by native Chicagoan Derrick Ogrodny from his longtime homebase in Warsaw, Poland.

NEVERLAND RANCH DAVIDIANS — Shout It on the Mountain (Heavy Medication Records; LP: HM027, CD: HM027CD)

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