Jonathan Coulton concert preview

Written for Brick Weekly, Richmond, VA.
May, 2010

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Type: Album review
Subject: Chris Thile, How to Grow a Woman From the Ground
Date: October 2006
Publication: Platter Chatter

Details: Platter Chatter is the customer newsletter for Seattle record store chain Silver Platters.

* * *

Once a child prodigy of the mandolin, then an enterprising teenager with the increasingly popular band Nickel Creek, Chris Thile has been making solo albums since the tender age of 14. How to Grow a Woman From the Ground is just the latest step in the musical evolution of one of bluegrass’ most innovative performers.

Thile wrote only half the songs on the album, in stark contrast to his last solo effort, Deceiver, on which he not only wrote all the songs but also played all the instruments. For How to Grow, he assembled a group of talented young bluegrass musicians (dubbed “The How to Grow a Band”) to perform with him: Noam Pilkeny (banjo), Gabe Witcher (fiddle), Chris Eldridge (guitar), and Greg Garrison (bass). His bandmates seem to have served to center him; where Deceiver was a brilliant but sprawling cacophony of diverse influences, How to Grow a Woman From the Ground is more cohesive and grounded, though no less inventive.

Thile’s choice of tunes to cover reaches every end of the spectrum. “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” is a selection improbably borrowed from art-rockers The White Stripes; there is no love lost between Jack White and myself, but Thile’s bluesy interpretation flows easily with the rest of the album, seeming neither gimmicky nor incongruous. The Jimmie Rodgers tune “Brakeman’s Blues” seems a more likely choice for this group, and we are treated to some vocal pyrotechnics by Thile, including some Monroe-style yodeling. Thile takes “Heart in a Cage” from mod-rockers The Strokes, turning the dark electro-rock song into a gospel-tinted bluegrass tune. Straying to yet another genre, “O Santo De Polvora” is a pleasant Irish reel from Spanish Celtic band Milladoiro. Thile takes Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’ “Wayside (Back in Time)” up several notches on the energy scale and makes it travel. Even the title track is a cover, a haunting tune by little-known folky Thomas Brosseau.

But let us not neglect Thile’s original compositions in this whirlwind of surprising covers. “You’re an Angel and I’m Gonna Cry” is a ode to unattainable love, showcasing Thile’s heart-rending vocals. “Watch ‘at Breakdown” was specifically tailored to be the first track and modeled after Bela Fleck’s “Whitewater,” which Thile calls, “One of the best first tracks of any record in any genre.” I dare any traditionalists not to have their toes a-tapping to that one.

Recorded practically live through just two mics and almost entirely analog, the album captures the intensity, heart, and talent of this group, all of which they possess in spades. Lucky for us, they don’t plan to stop anytime soon: now that Nickel Creek is all but dissolved, Thile has announced that he intends to continue touring and recording with this group, soon to be called The Tensions Mountain Boys. How to Grow serves as not only Thile’s best solo album to date, but a taste of what this talented group will accomplish in the future.

Type: Album review
Subject: The Can Kickers’ Dark Molly 7”
Date: April 2008
Publication: Razorcake (Issue #43)

Details: Razorcake is a non-profit, independent music magazine from LA. They publish short reviews of mostly underground, independent music.

* * *

The Can Kickers play loud, raucous, off-the-cuff old-time music, and I can hardly think of a better way to describe them than how they do on their website: “What would happen if Minor Threat and the Ramones picked up banjos and fiddles and joined a New Orleans-style second line?” It’s all there—the “here goes nothing” attitude of early punk, dirt-folk rowdiness, and a certain Cajun flavor that makes the Can Kickers one of the most fun old-time bands I’ve ever heard. A lot of people playing old-time music are set on preserving the original style and attitude of the music, but The Can Kickers just do it, for the pure love of making noise.

Type: Interview article
Subject: Cartoonist Stephen Notley
Date: August 2005
Publication: The Jibsheet

Details: Interview with Stephen Notley, a Canadian cartoonist who had recently moved to Seattle. Published in The Jibsheet, the student-run newspaper at Bellevue College in Bellevue, Washington.

* * *

Sitting in a chic Seattle coffee shop, perched cross-legged in a leather armchair and sipping a grande milk, Stephen Notley exudes unconventionality. And this is before you learn that he draws a comic strip about a five-foot-five, walking, talking, laser-toting, robot-building flower named Bob.

Notley, a Canadian citizen, has been drawing Bob the Angry Flower since 1992. The strip started out in college newspapers and continued syndication in various magazines and newspapers in Notley’s native Alberta, as well as some college newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. His website, www.angryflower.com, was up and running in 1995, a time when webcomics were still few and far between, making him one of the pioneers of the movement. The site is updated with a new comic strip every week.

In a time when many Americans have discussed moving to Canada (albeit with varying levels of sincerity), Notley is one Canadian who moved to America. “I’d always wanted to move to the U.S. just to see what it’s like,” Notley said, adding that his mother was a United States citizen. “But [moving to the U.S.] is sort of difficult to do unless you have some sort of offer of employment.” Notley’s opportunity came in the form of a job offer from PopCap Games (www.popcap.com) a game developer based in Seattle. “It is a bona-fide dream job,” Notley admits.

He left his home of Edmonton, Alberta three months ago, where he drew his comic and wrote movie reviews for local newspapers and magazines. He now writes dialogue for games, creates characters, and writes and draws a comic strip for PopCap’s members-only newsletter.

“The biggest change is not the transition of Edmonton to Seattle or from Canada to the United States; it’s the transition from the life of a layabout to full-time job,” Notley quips. However, he is still dedicated to his comic.

“When I was in Edmonton, people would ask ‘what do you do?’ and I would say ‘I’m a cartoonist,’” Notley said. “In preparing to move to Seattle, I was kind of thinking, ‘How am I going to answer that kind of question?’ I found that when people ask me what I do, I now say ‘I’m a technical writer,’ because technically, I’m a writer at PopCap. Sometimes I forget to say I’m a cartoonist! It’s time to establish it,” he said, pounding his fist on the table theatrically, “Dammit, I am a cartoonist! First and foremost!”

His fanbase, which numbers in the thousands, will be glad to hear that Bob is not going away anytime soon. “I’m obliged to my readers,” Notley said matter-of-factly, “They do like [the comic], and to me, I am one of them. I am one of those people who is a big fan of my cartoon.”

Four Bob the Angry Flower collections have been released: 1997’s In Defense of Facism; 1999’s Coffee With Sinistar; 2001’s Everybody vs. Bob the Angry Flower; and 2003’s The Ultimate Book of Perfect Energy. Soon to be released is Notley’s fifth book, currently titled Dog Killer.

“How do you follow up the ultimate book of perfect energy?” Notley mused. Dog Killer will be his first book not self-published, and he has already run into some trouble with his new publisher over the book’s title. “The title I had before that was ‘Kill Everyone,’ which they were totally fine with,” Notley explained, chuckling. “It does seem sort of odd, although it makes perfect sense to me. ‘Kill Everyone’ is sort of [a joke], whereas ‘Dog Killer’ has that touch of ugliness that I like.”

Notley blends that “touch of ugliness” with surrealism, absurdist humor and the occasional pop-culture reference or social and political commentary. But whether Bob is defying gravity, battling bizarre supervillains or hanging out with Kofi Annan, it’s always done with tongue-in-cheek humor and a sense of levity that makes Bob the Angry Flower an enduring force in comics on and off the web.

Type: Feature article
Subject: The rise of folk punk
Date: June 2008
Publication: Razorcake

Details: An article inspecting the recent rise of folk-punk, a genre combining folk music (primarily British, Irish, and American) with punk rock. Published on Razorcake.org, the companion website to the LA-based music magazine.

* * *

“Hey, can you recommend any bands that combine punk and folk?”

When a customer came into the record store where I work and said those words to me, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. It’s a rare thing to be asked about something I’m really interested in while at work, and for the past few years I have been almost completely absorbed with folk, country, and bluegrass—both traditional and modern—as well as the recent influx of bands taking these influences and blending them with punk and DIY ethics.

While the idea of blending punk and folk music is hardly new (just ask The Pogues), in the past few years it has grown in leaps and bounds. Bands have been popping up all over the country with varying ways of combining these two musical backgrounds. Whether roots music was a childhood influence or a later discovery; whether on acoustic instruments or electric, whether covering traditionals or creating their own, bands are taking this musical combination in surprising and new directions. Some take the songwriting style and instruments from folk and country and play them with punk attitude and intensity, like Boston’s Bread & Roses.

“It was never really a conscious decision,” said Morgan Coe of his band’s combination of two seemingly divergent styles. “I originally started Bread & Roses as an electric punk band with my friend Andrew… We only started playing acoustic because our first drummer was often late or absent for shows. The turning point came when he quit and the first drummer we jammed with brought a banjo to practice.”

Bread & Roses takes their roots influence in the form of both acoustic instrumentation and country songwriting style—the punk roots come through in their breakneck speed, devil-may-care attitude, and sometimes lyrical content (although they’ve been known to do straight-up country songs like Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried”). In Coe’s instance, this eventuality grew from the combination of a childhood listening to country and teenage years discovering punk rock.

There are other artists who have a more roots-centric approach to this combination, such as Connecticut’s The Can Kickers, who describe their sound as “what would happen if Minor Threat and The Ramones picked up banjoes and fiddles and joined a New Orleans-style second line.” The group definitely falls closer to the side of old-time music, but plays their blend of folk, zydeco, and country with an off-the-cuff, what-the-hell attitude not commonly found in traditional folk outfits.

Yet other bands have taken folk instruments and used them to play punk music, like Defiance, Ohio. This DIY punk band features an upright bass, fiddle, and acoustic guitar, but otherwise bears little resemblance to folk music of any stripe. “If someone asks me what kind of music I play, I say I play in a punk band,” said bassist Ryan. “I think we identify much more with the way a band conducts itself than we do to it stylistically.” Cellist and banjo player Sherri added, “I would say DIY punk…I prefer this term to ‘folk punk’ because, at least for me, it seems to reference the ethic beyond the music, and speaks as much about the people listening to it as the people performing it.”

Folk punk, acoustic punk, indie roots, alt.country, cowpunk: all these terms and more have been used to describe this phenomenon. We punks tend to get a little tetchy about labels, and any time you investigate a new musical trend or style, you’re going to run into issues about what to call it. Is acoustic punk different from folk punk? Is cowpunk a variant of alt.country? Does it matter? This is the problem when you try to analyze a music scene that bucks convention and dislikes categorization.

“While it’s convenient to categorize, many bands can get pigeonholed by these terms,” said Erik Petersen of Pennsylvania’s Fistolo Records, a label that specializes in folk-punk bands. “Honestly, these terms aren’t so much describing a music style as they are a scene. There are so many categories and subcategories, it’s hard to find a band that is purely one thing or the other. Something like alt.country is taking traditional country and modifying it in a pop format. Maybe that’s what folk-punk is,” he muses. “Taking traditional folk and putting on a basement show.”

From the outside, these genres seem fairly non-compatible—taken on stereotypes, they could be called diametrically opposed. So why are they being combined so often, and often so well? “When you look at (folk, country, and punk), they have similar evolutionary stories despite their varied styles,” said Petersen. “It’s all essentially people music, and human songs, much more accessible than classical or overproduced pop or the many electronic subgenres. So much folk and country is rebellious, whether pastoral or urban. It wasn’t a contrived sound, just people singing about whatever it was they were dealing with. Working, poverty, struggle, love.” Looking at it this way, one might even call punk a brand of folk music, trading backporches for basements and weary coal-miners for angry teens. “I couldn’t say [how it got started],” said Plan-It X Records head Chris Johnston. “I think punk and folk have a lot in common…it’s just that simple political music has always been appealing to the kids who want a change in the world.” This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb guitarist Rymodee agrees, “That’s what I loved when I started finding out about all these older styles. They were singing the same things I had been hearing in punk for so long, just with a banjo.”

Pinning down when a new musical style began is often impossible, but Johnston guesses, “I would say at least ten years. I think This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb was really one of the first bands to combine punk and folk. A lot of people combine country and punk, but they really do American folk music and they play it fast and loud.”

What would This Bike say about being named front-runners of folk-punk? Oddly enough, Rymodee doesn’t seem to agree with the honor. “Right now I would say we’re a punk band. I remember we used the term folk punk before, even before we did any actual folk songs, but I don’t think that’s a word I would use anymore.” He’s not amongst the folk-punkers who had a history with roots music, either. “Definitely punk rock [came first],” he said. “I’ve been going to shows since about 1986, but it wasn’t until 1992 or so that my friend Todd X gave me a Johnny Cash record, and I just went nuts trying to find old country, folk, blues, and random weird shit like that.”

In addition to the humanity-based songwriting, there’s another aspect tying together punk and country—the role of the rebel. There’s a storied history of “Outlaw Country” singers, the best known probably being Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and David Allan Coe. These singers took on a rebellious persona, and while Cash may never have shot a man just to watch him die and Hag isn’t really doing life without parole, they embodied the attitude in their songs. And what are punks if not rebellious? Many groups combining country and punk cite these artists as favorites or inspirations. Heck, even ‘70s L.A. punk band The Dils eventually became Rank And File, a straight-up country band, in the ‘80s.

Folk-punk combinations, on the other hand, seem to have first manifested in the form of Irish punk bands, combining rousing Irish pub songs with punk rock. The Pogues were certainly at the forefront, followed by The Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly, and countless others after them. This could have merely preceded the combination of punk with American folk, but it seems to have given rise to it: a number of current bands in the scene list The Pogues as an influence, or at least a band they’ve listened to.

Worth mentioning too is the acoustic punk phenomenon: from (early) Against Me! to John Jughead’s Even In Blackouts, these groups play punk music without the aid of electricity. However, bands that identify as acoustic punk are usually just that: punk played on acoustic instruments, without any particular folk or country influence. Still, it is certainly a “sister genre” to folk-punk, in the same vein, played and/or enjoyed by many of the same people. It perhaps stems from the same desire to simplify, to break the music down a little further, and strip it of some of the weights or expectations that have been applied to it over the years.

That desire to simplify is exactly why trying to really pin down what’s happening with this genre and why is a futile effort. Not only is it still developing, its very nature defies close criticism. Let’s face it, punk music has been in need of a little shaking up for a long time, and I think roots punk is exactly the breath of fresh air it needed. Yes, there are still plenty of great bands out there doing more traditional punk, straightforward pop punk, or classic hardcore. But how many more bands out there are doing the same tired old thing with nothing of their own, nothing new? When you need something new, sometimes you can learn a thing or two from what’s gone before. Maybe the old adage is really true after all: everything old is new again.

Type: Interview
Subject: Dengue Fever
Date: January 2010
Publication: Jew-ish.com

Details: Article including an interview with Ethan Holtzman, founding member of LA rock band Dengue Fever, for Seattle-based Jewish webzine Jew-ish.com.

* * *

Few westerners know it, but in the 1960s Cambodia had a huge pop music scene, with artists recording hundreds of songs, playing concerts, and selling records all over the country. Intellectual city-dwellers that many of them were, most of those artists were killed during the Khmer Rouge regime, and much of the music was lost. It was certainly unknown to most Americans — that is, until two Jewish brothers from Los Angeles decided it was time for a revival. Dengue Fever, founded in 2001 by Ethan and Zac Holtzman, has toured the country and the world with their blend of Cambodian pop and psychedelic rock. With bassist Senon Williams, drummer Paul Smith, David Ralicke on brass, and vocalist Chhom Nimol (a Cambodian singer they met in a karaoke bar), the brothers have spent the last nine years making some of the weirdest music to ever inspire Americans to get up and dance. While preparing for their upcoming tour (including a stop in Seattle), Ethan Holtzman took some time to tell me a little about how his very unique band got started.

Jew-ish.com: In 25 words or less, what is Dengue Fever’s deal?
Ethan Holtzman: Asian psychedelic rock music [with a] dance party vibe, and our vocalist, Chhom Nimol, takes it all over the top and gives you the chills.

Jew-ish.com: How did you first become exposed to Cambodian music?
Holtzman: Back in ‘98 I traveled in Southeast Asia for six months, and I came across some Cambodian rock and roll that they were selling on cassette tapes in the old Russian market in [the capital] Phnom Penh. That’s when I first purchased some. When I first heard it was on the truck ride from these famous ruins in Cambodia called Angkor Wat. I was in the back of the truck, crammed in with all these locals, and the driver was playing this cassette tape on a little radio, these really good songs by Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Serey Sothea and Pan Ron. He wrote it down in Khmer, and I went to the shops and showed them this little slip of paper…next thing I knew I had a whole stack of really good stuff.

Jew-ish.com: Did you make the instant connection of wanting to play this music, or did that come later?
Holtzman: That came later. It became the main thing I was listening to, to the point where the cassette tapes were breaking and I was tying knots in the tape, quite literally. Then my brother was down from San Francisco, and I hear him listening to this music in the living room and I’m like, “How’d you get this?” He had a CD and next thing you know we started comparing his songs and my songs, and we picked out five or six of our favorites and learned them with our drummer Paul Smith. My brother Zac would sing the vocal lines but he didn’t know how to speak Khmer. That’s how it started.

Jew-ish.com: Are you still doing the covers, or have you switched to all originals at this point?
Holtzman: We write all originals [for our albums] now, but at every show we’ll play half a dozen of the old songs, because they’re a big part of what we’re doing. It has helped shine a light on this body of work that was almost completely wiped off the planet. All the musicians and songwriters we were inspired by, they died during the Khmer Rouge, and it’s nice to pay homage to them. It brings attention to that body of work, and I think people are starting to realize what happened, [people] who didn’t know. For the records, though, we’re writing original material. We have about 20 new songs we’re working on right now, and we’re hoping to cut another album this year.

Jew-ish.com: Has that initial influence faded at all, as you’ve recorded more and found your sound as a band?
Holtzman: Actually, some more traditional Cambodian musical elements are becoming infused with our music now. My brother Zac is having an instrument made in Cambodia right now called a chapey dang veng. Cambodia is always going to be a part of our music. I mean, we have Chhom Nimol, and she’s 100 percent Cambodian.

Jew-ish.com: I had heard that you started doing the covers because when you met Chhom Nimol she didn’t speak any English.
Holtzman: The truth is, Nimol could say “yes” and “thank you.” Every answer was “yes.” We’d ask, “Hey Nimol, can you do a show with us?” and she’d be like, “yes,” but she couldn’t. I think we planned on doing a lot of covers, but we wanted to do originals. They were just harder for Nimol. So our first record had, I think, two originals, then our second had 10 originals and two covers, and our third was all originals. It was just a natural progression. We like to write our own music and to be inspired by all kinds of music, not just Cambodian. At first Nimol didn’t really know us and it was hard for her to trust us, but now we’re like a big family.

Jew-ish.com: Have you ever run into someone who thought you were being disrespectful of Cambodian music and didn’t like what you were doing?
Holtzman: We’ve been really lucky for the most part. We went to Cambodia in 2005 and made a documentary film there called Sleepwalking Through the Mekong. That’s when I was scared, because I didn’t know if there would be Khmer Rouge loyalists in the back of the crowd. We played this show in this village with 1,000 people and we [didn’t know what would happen], so we had to hire security, but it was really cool. We played five shows and people were really positive. It was definitely the first time an American band had gone there and played that music. After we played on this Cambodian television network they aired it like, five times a day. We’re so famous in that country. My brother [is recognizable] because he has this big beard, and Nimol was already somewhat known there, but they recognize every one of us. We were eight hours outside the main city and I went to a bank and the teller said, “Excuse me, are you in Dengue Fever?” It was kind of fun.

Type: Review
Subject: Rocky Votolato, Makers
Date: March/April, 2006 (Vol. 77)
Publication: Platter Chatter

Details: Platter Chatter is a customer newsletter for Silver Platters record stores, an independent business based in Seattle, Washington. Target audience spans age groups from mid teens on up and fans of all genres of music, specifically those who choose to frequent local independent businesses.

* * *

Mellow and deliberate, raucous and sincere, singer/songwriter Rocky Votolato has been a staple of the Seattle scene for the better part of a decade. His band Waxwing may have played their farewell show in December, but Votolato’s solo career is still going strong with the release of his new album, Makers.
Although all Votolato’s albums keep a fairly mellow tempo, Makers takes it down half a notch from his previous release, Suicide Medicine. Where Suicide has a definite rock edge, Makers is all stripped-down folk and country-tinged acoustic head-nodders, complete with slide guitar, organ and harmonica.
Although the incorporation of country sounds in indie rock is on the verge of becoming old hat, Votolato’s sound is anything but trendy. His deceptively simplistic and straightforward songs have that je ne sais quois that separates the dime-a-dozen singer/songwriters from those with a true voice. A 28-year-old father of two, Votolato’s entirely unaffected persona sets him apart from posturing would-be rockstars in folky sheep’s clothing.
Votolato’s literal voice is an equal-parts draw with his metaphorical one on this record. Raspy but tender, Votolato’s unique tone fits perfectly with his lyrics, which combine poetics with real-life imagery, “pink flamingoes and light flickering from the TV screen.” His voice is rough and yet smooth, like a lover’s caress from a hand calloused with hard work.
Cheesy similes aside, this is a quality album. An excellent addition to Votolato’s discography of other well-crafted records, Makers captures real emotion and everyday life in a candid musical snapshot you’ll want to take out and reminisce with again and again.

Type: Interview - excerpts
Subject: Seattle punk band Steel Tigers of Death
Date: October, 2008
Publication: Razorcake Magazine

Details: Razorcake is a non-profit fanzine based in LA and dedicated to supporting independent music all over the country. The original interview was six pages, so I have compiled some excerpts for quick reading.

* * *

They dress up like boy scouts, cat burglars, hula girls, and giant bunnies. They have alter egos: Remington Steel, El Tigre, Bradley Of, and Michael Deth. They like to make a victory lap, complete with high-fives, through the audience…before their set.
So who the hell are these upstarts calling themselves Steel Tigers of Death?
Hailing from Seattle, the two-year-old band recently completed their second tour and released their third recording and first full-length, Steel Tigers of Death Proudly Present Steel Tigers of Death. Their real names, which bassist Bradley Of calls “the worst-kept secret in showbiz,” are Jason Legat (drums), Morgan LaVigne (guitar,vocals), Brad Beshaw (bass, vocals), and Michael Grigg (guitar, vocals). Together, they make the freshest, most energetic, and possibly least pretentious band in Seattle. They’re infusing the Seattle scene with a much-needed dose of comedy, from their lyrics to their penchant for appearing onstage in costume, which vary from the tame schoolboy look of suits and ties to full-body bunny suits.
So the band is funny, you say, but does the music hold up? The rapid-fire delivery of their own concoction of punk-metal intensity, surprisingly catchy hooks, and disorienting time signatures belies their goofy persona. Their onstage presence is electrifying, from Legat’s fierce and fearless drumming to Beshaw’s manic flailing and cheeky mugging. Read on, as I delve into the truth behind the lowbrow hijinks of Steel Tigers of Death.

Sarah: Aren’t you guys a little old for punk rock?
[Everyone laughs]
Brad: I am!
Morgan: You cannot ask that!
Sarah: But seriously. I’m assuming you were all in many bands in your wayward youths. How does this band compare?
Morgan: I think we’ve all had the experience of being in bands that were really difficult, and I know one of the great things about this band was we all came into it wanting it to be really easy.
Mike: No one runs the band. It’s like a co-op.
Brad: You mentioned age and whether it was a joke or not, I’m going to take it seriously. It’s nice being in a band with 30 and [raises hand] 40-somethings because there’s so much less stress. When you’re in your 20s, you want to “make it.” Now it’s all for fun. It’s something we do because we enjoy it, not because it’s the means to an end.
Morgan: Especially because there’s no chance for us to make it.
Brad: I didn’t say that! Some dreams die hard. But it’s not the main point. And make it as what?
Morgan: Yeah, make it in the huge multi-million dollar punk rock industry!
Brad: Some guys want to be an astronaut or a fireman, what does this band want to be when it grows up?

Sarah: Going back in time again, do you guys have similar musical backgrounds?
Mike: They’re kind of different, I mean these guys (Morgan and Brad), they know everything from the 80s.
Brad: Well, it may have something to do with our ages. And also our location, because we both grew up on the east coast.
Morgan: Brad and I both came out of the old school east coast punk scene, which kind of morphed into the East coast art punk rock scene. And these guys came from full on Midwest, West coast vibes. I think that in general we have very different specializations, but we have very similar philosophies about music. We all have a DIY thing, we appreciate anything that’s done with a little bit of intelligence and a lot of art.
Sarah: Just a little intelligence.
Morgan: [Laughs] It doesn’t take much to push you out from the crowd, that’s the sad part.

Sarah: Are you guys looking forward to the mini-tour?
Morgan: Totally.
Brad: Ten shows, ten days, with ten-hour drives between each one. The 10-10-10 tour!
Morgan: So, going back to our age? We’re dead.
Brad: I think these guys (Mike and Morgan, who are graphic designers) might die. The guys who sit down for a living might die.
Morgan: The last show is Boise, Idaho, and I’m fully expecting to be the Steel Tigers of Shredded Cheese by the time we get there. That’s going to be the show to go to.
Mike: We’ll be an instrumental band by then.
Brad: Yeah, Morgan won’t have any voice left, and Jason will be playing every song at absolute warp speed with no room for notes.

Sarah: How did your first tour go last summer?
Brad: Awesome. I mean, any time any band tours for the first time it’s usually a nightmare: half of the shows fall through, etc etc. You really find out then whether you can relate to the guys in your band. When you meet twice a week for practice, it’s two days a week, two hours for practice, big deal. You play a show and it’s hanging out in your own town, but when you get in a van and travel for ten hours a day, then play a show and then get back in the van, then you realize “this is great” or “this sucks, I want to go home.” And it was excellent.
Morgan: When you’re an unknown band on your first tour, I mean you’re going to eat some shit, that’s just how it goes.
Brad: And you have to, and you should.
Morgan: Absolutely, but people were really supportive. When we had bad shows, bartenders would sit us down and tell us who to talk to to not have that happen again.
Mike: The assisted living places we played at were the best.
Morgan: Yeah, I personally liked the bookmobile gigs. The kids were great.
Brad: Oh please, I wish!
Morgan: I gotta say, Vegas still stands out.
Brad: We’d talked to people here about The Double Down and they said oh yeah, it’s great, and then we get there…Pulling into Vegas and seeing your first tour band’s name in lights right off the Strip, on the marquee? Nice!
Jason: We drove 14 hours that day from San Francisco to Vegas, so pulling into town and seeing that was awesome.
Brad: Almost as awesome as the blowjob in the bathroom I had to endure.
[Everyone pauses]
Brad: Not me getting one!
Jason: No, he had to give one so we could get gas money.
Brad: No, I watched the tail-end of one while trying to wait in line to PEE, which is what the bathroom is FOR!
Sarah: Not in Vegas!
Brad: Apparently not.

Sarah: How do the costumes work out on tour?
Brad: Very smelly. [Laughs] Exceptionally smelly, especially the mechanic suits.
Morgan: When we played down at The Zoo Tavern, there’s no backstage or anything, so we all go into the men’s room to change into our bunny suits, and this guy walks in and he’s like, “What the hell?”
Mike: He was so startled, he had no idea.
Morgan: That’s got to be a terrifying experience.
Brad: I think even better than the ‘what the hell’ guy were the guys who came in and were like, “C…cool?” They were still sussing it out, like, “Is this cool? I’ll wait to see how my friends react to it.”
Morgan: I keep thinking about the Hunter S. Thompson thing. For the rest of their lives they are going to think there’s rooms of guys getting into bunny costumes, having a much better time than they could ever dream of.
Mike: They didn’t even know a band was playing that night.
Jason: Then we went up on stage and nothing worked. Playing in a bunny suit is one thing…
Mike: We did a victory lap around the whole crowd, high-fiving everybody, and then we get onstage and nothing works.
Brad: And we always thought that doing the victory lap first was the greatest idea, but that time it came back and bit us.
Morgan: It’s only great if you don’t suck right after.
Brad: The day of the show, I had just turned 40, and the first thing I spent money on was $200 on a couple of bunny suits. And I just thought, “This is so great!” If teenage-me could look forward in time and see 40-year-old-me spending $200 on white bunny suits to play a show in, he’d be pretty psyched. That made my 40th birthday. That was pretty much my mid-life crisis.

Sarah: Whose idea was it to wear costumes?
Morgan: It was Mike’s.
Brad: Well…
Morgan: No, it was Mike.
Mike: I had this idea of people dictating what we’d wear.
Brad: But that came after, because I was telling you guys that I used to dress up in my former bands.
Morgan: No, because he brought it up before you were in the band.
Brad: Ah, I knew you were going to trump me! But I remember having a conversation about dressing up and somebody was against it.
Morgan: Yeah, me.
[All laugh]
Mike: Now it’s kind of come back to bite us in the ass.
Morgan: It’s come back to bite you in the ass, because now I’m like, “Let’s take all our clothes off and paint ourselves green!”
Brad: There have been a few costumes that did not fly. I don’t like having anything covering my face, like a pantyho.
Jason: Or a ski mask.
Brad: They got all full of spit…no, the ski masks were okay, but the pantyhose were bad.
Mike: No they weren’t.
Brad: Okay, well I’ll wear the pantyhose if you take off your shirt! Mike doesn’t like taking off his shirt.
Sarah: I feel like we’re playing a really weird drinking game.
Morgan: Essentially, being in Steel Tigers of Death is one long game of Truth or Dare.
Brad: Yeah, I dare you to wear a bunny suit if I wear a pantyho on my head.

Sarah: I’ve noticed you guys get compared to Rocket From the Crypt most often.
Morgan: Good!
Sarah: Do you think that’s accurate?
Mike: I would fucking pray for that. We love Swami, anything Swami puts out.
Morgan: Yeah, I love Swami bands, Swami’s fucking awesome, and Rocket From The Crypt’s one of the best bands ever. I’m a huge fan of anything John Reis does.
Mike: I think we do try to emulate some of their live stuff, there’s no way we could really do that, but we love going from one song directly into the next, so you have just this wall of sound in front of you.
Morgan: At least for me, I feel that Rocky From the Crypt really gifted us, in terms of songwriting, with their ability to do a whole variety of stuff and still sound like them. You don’t get the idea that they ever said, “Oh, that’s not a Rocket From The Crypt song, we can’t do that song.” Whatever came up, they made it theirs. I think that’s awesome.
Brad: With us that’s the way it has to be. We’ve got three people with different sensibilities writing songs.
Mike: And singing them.
Brad: Each person, Mike, Morgan, and myself, brings the kernel of a song to practice, and then-
Jason: I pop it.

Top 10 of 2009
1. Zoe Boekbinder, Artichoke Perfume
2. Nathan Johnson, The Brothers Bloom soundtrack
3. Frank Turner, Poetry of the Deed
4. The Redwood Plan, self-titled EP
5. Mark Growden, Saint Judas
6. 100 Damned Guns, Musica De Tormento
7. The Mountain Goats, Life of the World to Come
8. People Eating People, self-titled
9. William Elliot Whitmore, Animals in the Dark
10. Mandy Moore, Amanda Leigh

Top 10 of 2008
1. Heathers, Here, Not There.
2. The Mountain Goats, Heretic Pride
3. Black Houses, Fury
4. Man Plus, Hungarian Suicide Songbook
5. Katie Chastain, Firecracker
6. Raphael Saadiq, The Way I See It
7. Jason Webley, Cost of Living
8. Steel Tigers of Death, The Steel Tigers of Death Proudly Present The Steel Tigers of Death
9. Android Hero, self-titled
10. Punch Brothers, Punch

Top 5 of 2007
1. Motion City Soundtrack, Even If It Kills Me
2. Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova, Once original soundtrack
3. Fake Problems, How Far Our Bodies Go
4. Richard Thompson, Sweet Warrior
5. Frank Turner, Campfire Punkrock (US release)

Frank Turner concert preview

Written for Brick Weekly, Richmond, VA.
February, 2010