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Pre Tour Blog Part 2 – Filming the "I’m the Man Who Writes the Country Hits" video Heading to Moses Lake in eastern Washington State is the first activity for the new Rodeo lineup with Steve Davis on electric guitar. Our last lead player, Scott "Big Molecule" Swayze, did us a huge solid by commuting from Portland to Seattle before and after the ’08 Euro Tour-o. But it was time to rope in some local talent. Steve Davis stepped in with serious guitar skills and cigarette smoking abilities that would made a Dutch native hack up both lungs. Brent started calling him "Tiny Dancer." This is a time of transition, friends. We’re going from Big Molecule to Tiny Dancer.
We arrived in Moses Lake where Jay Cynik is directing the grindcore movie Punch. He filmed the video in exchange for our appearance and music in the film. We followed Jay’s directions to a yuppified apartment complex. It was hard to tell if we were in the right place. Johnny started poking around and waved us over to a staircase. Pointing at the steps he said, "I think this is the place." A trail of blood led up the stairs. Blood all over the railings. Blood up and down the hall. Pools of blood near doorsteps where other tenants had cute little displays of homemade wooden geese wearing little hats. We followed the blood (fake blood, I hope) to Punch HQ and knocked.
After five full minutes of knocking, a young man in a Skinny Puppy t-shirt opened the door and told us to come back in 2 hours. I took a peek inside: sleeping bodies all over the floor in twisted blankets, fast food wrappers, shitty furniture and a gross little dog.
We headed to a bar for morning beers – it was nearly 11am and almost 90F. There I met an illegal immigrant with a passion for local politics. He spent 15 minutes telling me how much he’d love to put the blocks to Washington Governor "eh-Christina" Gregoire (she goes by Chris). He said he’d lived 40 years in the US, relying only on his "cabeza, manos, y huevos." Nice fella.
A couple hours later, we were back at the apartment. It’s clear that this crew had been working 18 hour days for weeks and were deep in the project. It’s cool. Anyone who’s recorded an album or just busted serious ass with a gang of people knows the vibe. Every inch of walls was covered in cardboard and on the cardboard were life-size portraits of carnival freaks, vaudeville strongmen, and floozies. One of the floozies looked eerily like former Rodeo guitar man Louis O’Callaghan. I pointed this out to Brent and he said, "That’s sick. You’re a sick person. Don’tever tell that to Louis." Hi Louis!
The filming took place across town. Like the last video we shot, there was a lot of hurry-up-and-wait. Only this time, we were waiting in the sun on scorching hot asphalt in our black outfits. The electricity for the cameras came from a truck-mounted solar panel, which is important because you know how much the Rodeo cares about our carbon footprint. Jokes.
Out in the sun, we ran through take after take of "I’m the Man Who Writes the Country Hits" without Brent. We were out there so long that Sugar got a nasty sunburn on his ear that the skin was oozing blood. Real blood.
Where was Brent? He was in an air conditioned room with a topless actress and Johnny. They were filming the intro scene with Johnny Podhradsky (pronounced: "pot brownie"). This was not only Johnny’s first appearance in a Rodeo video, but also his softcore skinflick debut, and probably the only time he’ll appear on film with Brent’s guitar jammed through his head and out his mouth. Johnny is the Rodeo’s internationally published photographer. Check out our myspace photos. Johnny took 99% of those pictures and 100% of the truly great ones. On top of being an ace with the camera, Johnny is also the "cape man" at our live shows. Maybe most importantly, he is the guy who keeps the tours fun. I don’t know how he does it, because he’s usually either busting your balls or administering an electric shock (really) to you. And the girls just love this guy.
Go ahead and check out the video:
that’s our man with deep stroke, snorting like a stallion. After his scene, he hung around in the parking lot with the rest of us, sporting just a towel and his camera.
After this, things managed to get weirder and weirder (and I’ve left a LOT of weird shit out of this story already – buy me and I’ll tell you almost everything). Weirdness snowballed and my memory is now full of holes. We moved the operation to a local bar for the zombie dance scene and kept plugging away until 6 or 7am.
I remember going to a house party where we took turns singing songs and strumming a guitar. Terrible, I know. A meathead type dude said he felt like he was "listening to something important. Like Bob Dylan." I couldn’t tell if he was kidding, but I sure hope he was. I remember riding around in a car with a 51 year old woman who dressed like she was 15, trying to find for more beer for her daughter (a high school junior). I remember a plate of bean dip that looked and smelled just like shit and sour cream, and a cat was eating it. It’s funny what you remember.
Back at the video shoot, I remember zonking out for a few minutes before being called back to the main room for more filming. On the stage, I saw 4 black clad cowboys prone, motionless, surrounded by keg cups, like they’d all drunk the Jonestown kool-aid. Wish I had a picture of that.
Screw it. We got the video and the video is fucking tight. Jay, you’d make a hell of a cowboy. Let us know when you’re ready to sign on. We’ll call you Tiny Molecule.
PRE TOUR BLOG ENTRY #1
We're gearing up for a new tour. This time, we're going to give the Europeans a breather and stick the Rodeo in some American faces. To prime the pump, here's quick list of what we've been up to since we got home from London in April.
- In April, I think we mostly did laundry and did our best to come back to earth after several weeks on Planet Rodeo. International cape man/photographer/champion Duvel drinker Johnny Podhradsky reneges on his promise to check himself into Schick Shadel Rehab to dry out after the tour – no one minds.
- In May, we played our homecoming show at a big local club known mostly as the place people are last seen before participating in some gun violence. No shootings - it was a cool vibe - but it did get dicey when the club refused to let us drink booze onstage and forbade, FORBADE us from performing the whiskey baptism.
- In June, Brent had a freaky dream where he heard "I've Got a Little Hillbilly in Me" with a techno beat. He had to make it real. This was the genesis of the Hillbilly Electro-Pop project and probably not the last time we let Brent's drug-fueled dreams drive our actions. (More on this later, for sure.)
- In July, Sugar "Sucrose" McGuinn, an ordained minister who has performed several fake marriages on-stage, officiated the for-reals wedding of former Rodeo guitarist Louis "Lewis" O'Callaghan. Then Louis returned the favor by getting himself a license and performed Sugar's wedding a month later. This is despite the fact that Louis had already been divorced, remarried, and accused of a serious crime since his June wedding. Keep your head up, Lu Lu. You've got a great lawyer and no jury is going to swallow the prosecutor's blatantly anti-cowboy line of bullshit.
- In August, we filmed the video for the first video of our new Gravewax album, "Howdy Do!" The video for "I'm the Man who Writes the Country Hits" was filmed in a desert town where a grindcore film was being produced. We found the director's residence by the - no shit - trail of blood leading to his door. Johnny Potbrownie performs in a sex scene and has a guitar jammed through his face by Brent. (There’s definitely more to this story…)
- In September, we rejoined forces with Black Daisy (the masterminds behind the "You're No Good" video) and shot the second video for the album, "When Love Gets to a Man." The title makes it sound like this is a pretty classic sounding country song - and it is. But that's no reason not to put on yellow Devo suits and flower pot hats, metal wigs, or strip down to our underpants for the video. Brent's wife stars as the pretty girl in this video because she’s an actress capable of, in his words, "totally pumping out the 'bitch vibe' on command." (This will also be a full write-up.)
Stick around, we got a lot of stories to tell before we head back out on the road!
NEXT: "Country Hits" video, part I
US TOUR DATES:
| 9.26.08 | Portland, OR @ Towne Lounge |
| 10.11.08 | Admiral Theater, Seattle WA w/The Hands, Panda & Angel, DJ Sets by Animals at Night |
| 10.15.08 | Mitchell, SD @ Moonlight Bar & Lounge |
| 10.17.08 | the razor and die show on WLUW in chicago! 88.7fm and wluw.org! |
| 10.17.08 | Chicago, IL - Montrose Saloon |
| 10.18.08 | Detroit, MI - Painted Lady |
| 10.20.08 | Frostburg, MD @ Dante’s |
| 10.21.08 | NY - CMJ Music Marathon |
| 10.22.08 | NY - CMJ Music Marathon |
| 10.23.08 | NY - CMJ Music Marathon |
| 10.24.08 | NY @ National Undgerground CMJ Showcase 7PM |
| 10.25.08 | NY - CMJ Music Marathon |
| 10.27.08 | Omaha, NB with Filthy Few!! T.B.A. |
| 10.29.08 | Bozeman, MT - KGLT on air radio appearance |
| 10.29.08 |
Bozeman, MT at the Filling Station |
|
11.07.08 |
Portland, OR @ Slabtown w/ Mother Mother (Canada) |
| 11.08.08 | Boise, ID @ Neurolux |
| 11.15.08 | KAOS Radio appearance in Austin, TX / Smooth & Demented Show |
| 11.15.08 | Austin, TX @ Headhunters Club |
| 11.16.08 | San Antonio - "Sunday Sounds" backyard BBQ show |
| 11.18.08 | Oklahoma City, OK Radio Appearance 100.5FM Ferris O’Brien show. |
| 11.18.08 | Oklahoma City, OK @ hi-Lo Club |
| 11.20.08 | Denver, CO at Benders Tavern |
| 11.21.08 | Durango, CO - The Summit |
| 11.22.08 | Flagstaff, AZ - Monte Vista Hotel |
| 11.24.08 | San Francisco, CA |
| 1.31.09 | More European and US Touring in 2009. Stay Tuned! |
One of the coolest things about this project is that it started with a dream. When I say "dream," I don’t mean some grand vision in which an oddly compelling little country song is filtered through the mind of another musician to create a wild new hybrid. That would come later. I’m talking about the kind of dream that comes to us in our sleep and makes absolutely no sense.
Brent was excited when he called me at work. "I had a dream! I walked into a huge fucking dance club and the lights were flashing pink and an electronic dance version of ‘Hillbilly’ was playing and it was totally kiler! Nobody was dancing in my dream. Everyone was sitting on their asses except for me and there was a dead dog on the dance floor, too. But the music! The music was awesome! We gotta make a dance remix. We just gotta do it. Is that nuts?" I can never respond to Brent in a way that feels natural when I’m within earshot of my coworkers. And how do you respond to something like that? You say "yes." Of course I thought he was nuts, but that was no reason not to go ahead.
This all happened a week before this year’s Euro Tour-o. After we returned (and detoxed), the project snowballed – probably on account of all the time we spent in European discos. Here’s a little known fact: in the Rodeo’s 200-page operating manual Howdy Do’s and Howdy Don’ts, dancing to trashy European pop is considered acceptable practice provided that the Rodeo member is bombed and is on the continent of Europe.. What started as a one-off remix of the original version (www.myspace.com/hillbillyelectropop) for our own enjoyment grew into an internet free-for-all.
We re-recorded the basic tracks in a digital format (the original version was recorded on guitarist Tim Harmon’s ancient 4-track tape machine, featured nicely in this story: http://lineout.thestranger.com/2007/11/giving_thanks_a_studio_on_the_range_1#more) and made them available online for anyone who wanted to swap ones and zeros with Brent Amaker and the Rodeo and then set up a new myspace page to feature the results.
We’re getting some good ones! Keep ‘em coming by the way – this project is not over. Not by a long shot. Every (EVERY) remix will be posted to the myspace page and the best songs will – fingers crossed – be released on CD. Here’s a rundown of what we’ve received so far…
The first response came from Randy Robot, a DJ from Berlin (MORE PLEASE!). Dang it, people in Berlin dig the Rodeo. The Randy Robot remix chucks out all but a few elements from the original song then tweaks those beyond recognition. This is a challenging listen, even to Rodeo fans who are, I find, some erudite MFers.
Randy Robot’s remix is exactly the kind of transformation Brent had in mind. I am a teensy bit bummed because neither my guitar nor drums made it onto this killer track.
Jay Cynik transforms a song of rural romance into a hip-hop duet with an anonymous male MC. Brent sings, "I wish that you would dance with me," the MC adds "on the m-i-c." It sounds way more natural than it should. Add a healthy serving of fiki fiki scratching and a clever use of the lead guitar line and it’s pretty clear that Jay has had a little bit of hillbilly in him all along.
This is great because Jay, an independent filmmaker, has asked the Rodeo to play live during a bloody riot scene in his upcoming film, Punch(http://www.myspace.com/punchbrandfilms).
The good folks at Radio Free Bakersfield knocked together a minimalist remix that occasionally flies in a dubby, distorted guitar from out of nowhere. This mix and Jay’s have both aired on Radio Free Bakersfield. Big time!
The most unexpected remix comes from Peter Fedofsky. Nothing can really prepare you for this one. Just go to the myspace page and drink it in. The Rodeo’s simple, happy song has become moody with minor keys and echoing choral voices. But just when you get adjusted to the gothic depth of Fedofsky’s remix, a jaunty piano and kazoos (!) lighten the mood with lovely added melodies. Curveball city, right? Well, I think I’m ready for anything now when – IS THAT A HARPSICHORD? Hats off, Pete. You blew my mind with your baroque-abilly remix.
And now I have a request for everyone, especially the Expansions-type cats out there. I too have a dream. I’m in a smoky, unpopular Berlin dance club with Brent. It’s autumn, it’s cold and we’re on tour again. We’re dragging ass at 3am, looking for the door when… BOOM pssh! BOOM pssh! BOOM pssh! BOOM pssh! A big ass four-on-the-floor dance beat give the whole club a second wind. It’s an over the top electronicked out remix of "Hillbilly." Brent’s creepy dead eyes come to life and he smiles like a child. That’s my dream. It may be more disturbing than the one that started us off on this trip...
I know you’re out there, mystery remixer. Make my stupid dream come true!
Comments
Guys - this is a great remix - and a great story. Anything that starts out as a weird ass dream has got to be worth following. ;-)
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awesome photo!
I feel safer knowing you're all 6000 miles away.