The Book Of Right On's right on
David Joe Holiday knows what he wants out of a rock band: It has to be loud. It has to be percussive to its core, with rhythms bouncing off each other at crazy angles. And it has to be done for the pure love of making music. The burly, tattooed singer has been working this approach for years in the Twin Cities music scene, fronting bands like Kentucky Gag Order and Belles Of Skin City that hit like a freight train with bold, exciting noise-rock. They also exited the scene in much the same way: Belles broke up acrimoniously in 2007 after Holiday’s band-mates, he says, “staged a coup.”
“I can understand that it’s pretty hard to tolerate my erratic approach to a lot of things,” he says wryly. Feeling burned out, Holiday took his time assembling a new band, starting with longtime collaborator Jason Underwood, and the slow approach has paid dividends both in the music and the interpersonal dynamics.
His new quintet, The Book Of Right On, has all the elements that made his previous projects sizzle—pounding polyrhythms, dryly witty lyrics belted out with a crazed-sounding yelp, and the quick-footed ability to jump off in a surprising direction at a moment’s notice. It’s the culmination of a sound he’s been refining for a long time. On Saturday at the Triple Rock, the band celebrates the vinyl release of its new debut, All These Songs About Music, which is tighter, richer, and more compelling than anything he’s done before. It's a leap forward undoubtedly helped by his new crew, which doubles up on the percussion with seasoned local drummers Mark Jorgenson (ex-Song Of Zarathustra) and Kelly Pollock (The Haves Have It).
“I’m really happy with these guys, and I feel like the many years I’ve been doing this, this is it as far as compatibility,” he says. “We all have our idiosyncrasies, but they work well together.”
“The one thing is, yeah, I’m hard, I’m erratic, and I bounce all over the place. I have an idea one day, and then the next day when everyone’s used to it I go, ‘No, we’ve got to erase that.’ Ultimately there’s this executive veto, but I will always ask when we’re done if everybody is happy with this.”
“Dave wants this band to succeed, and it takes a group of guys around him who don’t underestimate that,” Pollock says, underscoring the point by mock-serenading Holiday with Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath Your Wings.” Guitarist/bassist Justin Donley also tells Holiday not to worry about being too autocratic: “We’ll just smack you in the mouth,” he says with a laugh.
Crucially, Holiday and his bandmates all agree on their definition of success. “There’s really no rush to achieve any nominal fame—just to make good albums,” Holiday says. They’d rather earn a small but devoted audience through word-of-mouth than chase any grandiose dreams of stardom—a careerist attitude Holiday’s seen in plenty of other local musicians and pokes fun at repeatedly on All These Songs, culminating in the album’s sardonic closing line, “Do I detect a longing for street cred?”
The band isn’t interested in trying to break big at all costs, Pollock says. “We’re ambitious, but we’re also realistic, just being in our 30s. We are, I think, grounded in knowing that we’re living and working in Minneapolis. Nobody’s moving out of town. We’re not going to L.A. to make it, or Portland to die.” It’s a DIY ethic that takes inspiration from ’80s indie stalwarts like The Minutemen. “I feel like I’m in a band that’s doing something similar, in a similar time of music,” he says. “They were reacting against what appeared to be a very vapid music scene, and we do the same thing. ... We’re blue-collar dudes, playing a style of blue-collar music.”
“I’m a pop kid,” Holiday admits. “I like XTC, I like Brian Eno, all that stuff. ... [Our music] isn’t holding on to people’s hands. That’s what’s going on in mainstream music, and that’s ultimately why the album was named All These Songs About Music. I hear tons of mainstream music, and it seems like there’s no real content, no conviction in it, and people just eat it up anyway. ... You owe it to yourselves, and to the people, especially those that are intellectuals or otherwise, to at least dabble a bit.”
Holiday also took inspiration—as well as his band’s name—from idiosyncratic songwriter Joanna Newsom, with whom he shares an uncompromising artistic attitude, if not necessarily a sound. “She’s a very polarizing artist,” he says approvingly. “The minute I heard that song, and the title itself, I just knew. ‘The Book Of Right On’—how awesome is that? I actually welled up with tears the first time I heard it. It was a defining moment, because I was burned out, and it honestly was the catalyst of me wanting to play again. I always wanted to have that feeling of being 16, and being really into some [song], and you grab whatever looks like a guitar in your room and go nuts. You think you’re going to feel that in your 30s onstage, but you don’t. It’s a different thing. You could be balancing your checkbook in your head.”
“To do it for a living would be great, but we’re not doing it for that reason. I’m not a very marketable individual,” Holiday says with a grin. “I’m not pretty, I’m not svelte, I’m closer to 40 than I am to 30. .... [But] I think this band is the one that’s going to stay the course. ... What about Howlin’ Wolf? Nobody gave a shit about him until he was 40. I will always be driven to make my own music with people that totally believe in it, so it’s our music.”
“There’s two words that sum it up,” Pollock says, “And that’s: Don’t. Stop.”
