Fake

The Zoo Crew just dropped the needle on "Fake," track nine off Dirty Damn Tricks, the debut from The L.A. Maybe, and if you are a Zoo Freak who likes your rock with a little grit under the fingernails, this one earns the spin. The Carolina outfit built the record like a bar band that finally got the keys to a studio and refused to waste the hours. Guitarist and lyricist Dallas Dwight has said the whole album was written, recorded, mixed, mastered, and pushed out in about six months once the right lineup locked in. A friend of the band cracked a joke poking fun at the way AC/DC names songs, tossed out the three words dirty, damn, and tricks, and the guys liked it enough to stamp it on the cover. That is how a debut gets a title that sounds like it belongs on a leather jacket.

"Fake" was already in the pile before singer Alvi Robinson walked in. In a 2022 talk with CGCM Rock Radio, Dallas ran down the older songs and put "Fake" on that list, right alongside "She's Reckless," "Peace of Mind," "Take Me Away," and "Sweet." Almost half the album, he said, had been written quite a while back, some of it in the days when Goliath Furr was still out front. So the track you are hearing is not a last-minute studio invention. It is a song that sat around, got tightened, and then found a new voice. The band later spent a whole episode of their own podcast, Your New Favorite Band, tearing the mix apart with Dallas and guitarist Drizzle Silvera, which tells you they never treated it like filler. Track nine got the same flashlight as the singles.

The story inside the song is the old music-business hustle, told from the kid who still believes the promise land is down the road. The lyric nods straight at the AC/DC line about it being a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll, then walks you into a room with a man in a nice suit and a Cadillac who says the kid has got something and ought to sign on the dotted line. The chorus turns on him. You are just a fake, all the rage until they figure you out, a temporary place, a superficial face in the crowd. Then the bridge stops asking permission. If the only things left are the dreams inside his head, he is still going to take it all. Reviewers split on where it sits in the running order. Sleaze Roxx heard it pick the pace back up after a run of slower cuts and still wanted more. Rock and Blues Muse called it one of the deep cuts you miss if you bail out early. Both of them are hearing the same record. One wanted a knockout. The other heard a band that saves a little muscle for the back half.

Here is the part that makes the song mean more than the day it was written. When CGCM asked if "Fake" came from real dealings with bad management, Dallas laughed and said it was not about anybody when they wrote it. Then he added that they had definitely had some experiences since, and he wondered out loud why four of their shows got cancelled. The song, he said, hits differently now. Drizzle would not drop names. He said there is a special place for certain people, they know who they are, and left it at an evil laugh. That is about as close as a working band gets to naming the suit in the Cadillac without lawyering up. Zoo Freaks who have watched a favorite act get jerked around by a promoter will recognize the temperature in that chorus.

The band itself started the way a lot of good rock bands start, which is by getting tired of somebody else's set list. Dallas and founding drummer Ryan Fosnow, the guy they call Foz, were in a Journey tribute outfit, playing three-hour cover nights for a little cash, and they wanted a band that wrote its own stuff. The name did not come from a marketing meeting. Dallas was in the Chicago airport, overheard somebody say a woman had given him the old L.A. Maybe, and liked the phrase. It is a jab at the way some Los Angeles folks never quite commit, always waiting on something better. He floated The L.A. Maybes. Foz told him to drop the s. They never looked back. Dallas keeps a running list of band names, more than 150 of them, mostly funny, and Dirty Damn Tricks and the song "Oh Sugar" both came off that same scrap of paper. Outrun The Weekend was one of the near misses. The Carolinas won. Charlotte and the surrounding heat is home base, not Hollywood.

Lineups shifted. Summer of 2020, in the middle of the shutdown that cancelled the cover gigs, they settled the group that cut the album: Alvi Robinson on vocals, Dallas Dwight and Drizzle Silvera on guitars, Josh Thompson on keys, Rahsaan Lacey on bass, and Foz on drums. Six pieces, which is more than the four-man template most new rock bands use, and the extra hands show up in the tracks. Dallas has talked about having the freedom to mess with congas, shakers, triangles, even a gospel choir on one song, because they were not on a studio clock with a producer tapping his watch. They have also said, plain as day, that they are just trying to be true to themselves and not fake anything. Coming from the band that wrote "Fake," that line lands with a grin.

Alvi's road into the group is the story people already half know. He had been singing rock and roll since he was a kid, joined the AC/DC tribute Thunderstruck around 2013, and in 2016 got the call that still sounds made up. Brian Johnson was off the Rock or Bust tour with hearing trouble. Cliff Williams had reportedly seen Alvi on video. The agency asked his guitar player if he would be interested, which is a silly question. He was one of only four singers who got in the room. He thought it was a prank at first. The tryout was so locked down he could not tell his boss at the HVAC job why he had to leave, and he lost that job over it. He flew from Raleigh to Atlanta, about fifty-five minutes in the air, and spent roughly three hours in a rehearsal space running the tour set and a few of his own favorites with the band. Axl Rose was in the same orbit. Alvi found out after he landed, when a friend texted him. Axl got the gig. Alvi has said he did not walk in with high hopes, and the email saying they were moving on still hurt. People told him to be grateful he was even considered. He wanted the big stage anyway.

He kept singing, including with a Guns N' Roses tribute called Nightrain out of Raleigh, and eventually hung up the work-truck keys. Dallas reached out about filling in on some Guns N' Roses tunes. Alvi nearly blew it off, because he gets those asks all the time and did not want another cover band. A week or two later Dallas came back with the words that mattered: original music. That had been the desire all along. By July 2020 the band was announcing Alvi out front, and Dirty Damn Tricks followed on March 26, 2021, with a deluxe edition in 2022 that added tracks cut entirely in-house. Loudwire premiered the "Mr. Danger" video. The rest of the record, including this one, is the sound of players who left the tribute circuit so they could shoot their own shot.

If you want the long version of how a Carolina band with an airport nickname and an AC/DC audition story ended up on a freeform rock station, stick with the Zoo Crew over at THE ZOO. The old lamaybe.com shop is no longer the band's house, so we are not sending you there. Their official pages that still answer are Facebook and Instagram. No separate fan site or public fan group turned up that we could confirm still belongs to them. "Fake" does not need a street team to make its point. It is a deep cut about the suit, the Cadillac, and the kid who signs nothing until the song says otherwise. Turn it up.