Alternative to what: Untangling Bloodshot Records' "alt-country" pileup
Punks in Stetsons: The Waco Brothers
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Trying to pin down "alt-country" as a cohesive genre is kind of like dredging a lake. When the net’s unloaded, everything comes from the same place, but you’re just as likely to find a leather boot as a lost wedding ring (or maybe even a decomposed body). Likewise, alt-country encompasses everything from backwoods banjo pickers to punk-inspired bands that barely skirt the rusted edges of the “country” they’re lumped in with. Perhaps that’s why Chicago’s long-running Bloodshot Records hates the term so much: For 15 years it’s fought the “alt-country” tag, preferring terms like “insurgent country” to describe its roots-based rumblings. But even that qualifier doesn’t do the label’s diverse lineup justice, so to preview Bloodshot’s 15th Anniversary Beer-B-Q on Sept. 19 at Yard Dog Gallery, The A.V. Club broke down its participants from clang to twang.
Big guitars and boozy fun
Dex Romweber Duo
Former Flat Duo Jets frontman Dex Romweber came up playing shows next to both R.E.M. and The Cramps, which speaks to his overarching love of Southern music—whether that be amber-colored country jangle or scorched-brimstone rockabilly. Among his most fervent admirers is Jack White, who recently dueted with him on the fiery “Last Kind Word Blues”/“The Wind Did Move” 7-inch.
Deadstring Brothers
The Deadstring Brothers' frontier iconography looks like it would be perfect headlining a marquee in Deadwood in the 1870s, though their music would surely be more at home 100 years later. Channeling '70s-era Stones with a blues-rock-country fusion, the Deadstring Brothers’ rumble is a perfect soundtrack for a honky-tonk bar brawl.
Do you prefer Cash or Rotten?
Waco Brothers
Chicago’s Waco Brothers come by their cross-genre leanings honestly—lead singer Jon Langford came up in first-wave punk band Mekons (whose accordion player Rico Bell joins in here), and formed the band to scratch an itch he had to play more country-influenced music. At times it can be a little strange to pick up Langford’s British growl behind a wall of honky-tonk and rockabilly, but what the Waco Brothers do is still a long way from Mekons’ minute-long blast of “Never Been In A Riot.”
Exene Cervenka
Like Langford, Exene Cervenka came up in a legendary punk band—Los Angeles’ X—with a fetish for rockabilly and country, a passion its members indulged in side project The Knitters. Cervenka’s upcoming solo album for Bloodshot, Somewhere Gone, reveals a slightly more subdued, ruminative side to the two-fisted snarl of her recent work with backing band The Original Sinners, made even dreamier by the sparse arrangements of piano, organ, and cello drifting in the background.
Left of the dobro
Ha Ha Tonka
Ha Ha Tonka’s name is inspired by a state park in the Ozarks, and its first album, Buckle In The Bible Belt, recalls the band's Missouri roots. That said, HHT still piles a whole bunch of indie cred into the bed of its pickup. Its latest, Novel Sounds Of The Nouveau South, doesn’t kick up its heels quite as much as Buckle, but it’s no less enjoyable as it weds melodic pop with brushstrokes of bluegrass and rock.
Mark Pickerel And His Praying Hands
Former Screaming Trees drummer Mark Pickerel deserves credit for “most stylish comeback” for shaking off his grunge origins, slicking his hair into a sleek pompadour, and reinventing himself as a brooding, Nick Cave-style balladeer. His 2008 album, Cody’s Dream, rolls languidly through a barren but beautiful wasteland full of abandoned saloons, narrated by Pickerel’s smoky voice. Bits of big-’80s guitar a la The Church and chiming string and mellotron textures add to the broken loveliness.
No sleep ’til Nashville
Rosie Flores
One of Bloodshot’s most “traditional” artists, San Antonio’s Rosie Flores needs no introduction around here—after all, we just celebrated Rosie Flores Day on Aug. 31. Flores has been wrangling Wanda Jackson-style rockabilly, Sun Records honky-tonk, and Western swing for more than two decades, beginning with a stint with cowpunks Screaming Sirens. And while she may not have become the “female Dwight Yoakam” her major label was looking for in the ’80s, she’s twice as handy with a Gretsch—and way prettier.
Scott H. Biram
Though Scott H. Biram would definitely balk at being lumped in as a traditionalist, Austin’s “dirty old one-man band” has plenty in common with history’s best bluesmen—the ones who didn’t study under Eric “God” Clapton, but the devil himself, like R.L. Burnside and Robert Johnson. Biram takes their fire-in-the-belly songs and stokes the flames higher with douses of whiskey and heavy metal. And we’ll be just as damned as he is if “Still Drunk, Still Crazy, Still Blue” doesn’t sound like what Hank Williams would be writing were he still alive.
