John Polle

4 songs solo live at the Red Room 2011

The work of Idaho to Tucson transplant John Polle, reminds me of his fellow Idahoan, Doug Martsch. He’s the guy that actually replaced Martsch when he left the Treepeople before their last and worst, but not as bad as some people make it out to be album, Actual Reenactment. Since then, like Martsch with Built to Spill and Halo Benders, Polle has been refining his own unique brand of American indie-pop/rock with his bands the Solace Bros., Lenguas Largas and Discos. I think he might have played in the post-Treepeople band Stuntman too. Also like Martsch he does the occasional acoustic solo set. His guitar picking skills are really evident here and the songwriting is great. On these songs he sounds less like Martsch and more like The Tallest Man On Earth playing stoned. These four songs are taken from the “Live at the Red Room” CD series vol.2 (available at the bar). I think he has a two song 7” of him playing solo like this too. New records by Lenguas Largas and Discos have also just come out. John’s a busy man. Sorry no song titles, but the first song is a version of Discos’ “Up in the Air.”

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Marty Dog Kubiak

acoustic demo cass. 1997

Ugstad played drums in Hobart, but the real creative force behind that project was Marty Dog. He would be an immense creative force on me during those eight years and by proxy everybody I’ve played with since. After Hobart had been together for a while Marty started to play some solo acoustic shows, usually with DJ Buttafly, opening for Waffle Butt at the Airport Lounge. Those shows were always great, but listening to this in retrospect Marty Dog’s mellow, somber songs seem like a strange contrast to Waffle Butt’s ass shaking party funk. Nevertheless these songs are great. Marty used two boom boxes that had recording capabilities to make a two track recording. The latencies and the way the melodies are layered give it a haunted feeling. These songs are very heartfelt and really sad in the most genuine way, because they were recorded during really tough times for Marty Dog. Two of these were Hobart songs, two were originals and one was an Evergreen cover. I think this release was limited to about fifteen copies.

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Mr. Chatterbox

The next grip of posts will be solo recordings by Tucson musicians whose bands I’ve already written about here, some of whom I’ve had the opportunity to play with.

filmworks circa early 2000s

Mr. Chatterbox is the solo work of Brandon Ugstad. He was commissioned to do this music by San Francisco filmmaker Edward Rosenblum for some of his short films. Like all good film music it is sometimes quite, moody and sparse. Other times it’s loud and heavy (in a Spill Blanket way). Other times it’s neither of those. A huge array of instruments and electronics were used. I know he loves David Lynch and John Zorn and those influences show up sometimes. I’ve been seeing his bands since the late 80s, so to me it sounds like he took all the best elements and experience of those bands and projected them in a calculated manner to make great film soundscapes. He really shines without somebody like me fucking up his riffs. We’ve been in a bunch of bands together and he’s been in a bunch more w/o me (Rhythm Squids, Spill Blanket, Absinthe, Hobart, Birds Ate My Face, Chick Cashman and the Countrypolitans, Jane Doe and the Decomposers, Staircase Wit, Found Dead On The Phone, the F.A.N.S.S, Mascaron, Kamikaze Autopilot plus me and him just started a new project with Pathos/El Creepy/Mascaron drummer, Andy Bell and I’m sure there are some I’m forgetting* or don’t know about). He has been one of my favorite persons to play music with for the last 15 yrs. because his skill and taste are impeccable and he has the patience of a saint. Somehow he squeezes all this musical output between a wife, two kids and a more than full time job. Sorry no song titles and I had to dump the last song, a beautiful piano and cello piece, because of skips.

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*he even did some studio bass work on a Machine of Loving Grace album!

Run-On Sunshine

Memory Game cass. 2011

If you’ve been to a show in downtown Tucson in the last 10 years and there wasn’t a short skinny guy with a funny hair cut named Mullarkey dancing right in front of the band it’s because there was a better show going on that night and Mullarkey was at that show. For many years at shows he was mostly a spectator, but he has recently had an explosion of creativity that first manifested in his karaoke displays, then the band Monster Pussy, then Run-On Sunshine and now every time I run into him he tells me about some new really unconventional project he has in the works. Run-On Sunshine is extremely unconventional consisting mostly of Mullarkey singing. There is sparse instrumentation consisting solely of acoustic children’s instruments provided by Autumn Bree (Kamikaze Autopilot), a fine singer in her own right, who actually has a much larger range than Mullarkey’s mostly monotone approach, but she doesn’t sing here. This is pretty strange music that is not for the causal listener, but there are some catchy melodies and Mullarkey’s love of Calvin Johnson is evident. The lyrics are as intimate as the delivery and are mostly autobiographical and very heart-on-sleeve, with moments of brilliant insight, like when he is reminiscing about his recollection of the old days and thinks “…these memories could be altered to fool myself” which is a thought that has entered my head many times since I started this blog. 

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Young Hunter

two song demo cass. 2011

Here is a newer Tucson band I recently saw that is made up of members of other Tucson bands that I haven’t heard and only scarcely heard of. Some of their sound is heavy and really full (two drummers!) and other times it’s real quiet and sparse, but it flows smoothly between the contrasting sounds. It’s a fairly dark take on indie rock and sounds like a bunch of Brooklyn or Portland hipsters were pumped on the Canadian indie bands (Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, Frog Eyes etc.) and tried to interrupt the sound in the desert setting with a desert vibe, like they smoke a lot of shitty pot and don’t leave home when the sun is out. Lo fi approach works pretty well for demo cass., but I hope they can keep it together long enough for a proper studio release which would allow the many layers to shine through.

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Earthmen and Strangers

LP 2009

I thought that Ryan Rousseau could do no wrong, but sometime in this last year I saw the current incarnation of Destruction Unit and I did not like them. They dove into a moody, dark, gothic post-punk sound that reminded me of the fist time I saw Digital Leather with just Sean and Arrow playing keyboards and singing, which I thought sucked. Nevertheless Rousseau’s songwriting skills are better than ever, but it’s more evident in Earthmen and Strangers, my favorite project of his so far. Everything is more thought out and controlled compared to his noisier punk bands, but it still has enough punch to keep the head bobbing. There is some mood and reverb, but it’s not dark and overdone. “Bartender” is just about a perfect song. “Photo Lie,” which also shows up on a Digital Leather release is done here. I don’t know if Sean or Ryan wrote it, but both versions are great. There is also a quitter, tamer version “Desert Snow” than the one that appears on Tokyo Electron’s AZ 238 LP. He’s taken his familiar song structures and let them open up and expand into poppy new wave indie rock songs rather than just shoving the music down your throat like some of his past and current work. It’s mature, but in all the right ways.

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My Feral Kin

The Blackened Flat Tax Cd 2008

This band played at my house when I lived in Flagstaff, but I missed the show because I had to work. My roommate, Dirty Steve, who is always looking out for my record collection, picked me up a copy of their CD. When I got home that night the house was trashed, our wood burning stove was demolished, the walls were covered in beer, beer cans everywhere, a few stragglers were passed out or still partying and hard drugs were consumed. After hearing this CD I thought that surly all this chaos couldn’t have been caused by this band, and it wasn’t. Those honors go to Sante Fe’s High Octane Hell Ride, who know how to party. I’m sure seeing the quirky indie-pop of My Feral Kin was a bizarre contrast to High Octane’s hardcore-thrash, but those are often the most fun shows. I’ve listened to this at least once a month since I got it. I lost the actual CD along the way and the above art work (which I found online) is not the same as I remember. Anyway I don’t know anything about these guys, but the music here is great. Wandering, dueling guitars make up most of the foundation while catchy high pitched vocals cover a huge array of instruments with catchy nursery rhyme patterns, except with words that are not nursery rhyme material. The structure is sometimes short and poppy, but some of the songs drift into extensive jams without beating the wandering to death. I can’t believe this band isn’t huge with the people that read Pitchfork and buy current Sub Pop releases. My half-assed internet search makes it seem like they’re not active, which is a shame because I would have loved to see how they’d followed this up.

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the Vinegar Sting

Coronado Historic District Sampler CD circa 2002

Dick told me that Lenguas Largas have been playing some pretty good shows in Phoenix recently. The only time I ever had a good string of shows there was with the Blacks around 2000 when we would play parties at a house in Tempe occupied by members of the Vinegar Sting and Jack Doyle from Underground Railroad to Candyland. We played with the Vinegar sting a lot. They reminded me of some of the earlier Phoenix bands because there’s an anything goes aesthetic and the Sun City Girls were an obvious influence. Sometimes they did sets of all Sun City Girls songs. They were also informed by the Minutemen and some of the more artsy emo stuff from the 90s, like Harriet the Spy or some of the noisy rhythmic San Diego bands or even the Make Up on a song like “ACU.” It sounds dark but they are fun people. It sounds like they take drugs and that’s because they do. They’ve had to go on hiatus because their love of drugs has landed some members in trouble with the law, but they’ve been playing as recently as last year with new material. Years ago at a show at Cannery Row their drummer Andy did a crazy drummer freak out thing and his snare drum fell off the stage, which was on the second floor, directly onto the head of a girl, who was on the first floor and who was trying her best to ignore the band. Huge gash, blood everywhere and I doubt it’s related but the bar didn’t stay open much longer after that.

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Hobart

1995 demo cass.

After Slag split up, Marty and Nathan called me up and asked me if I would play in their new project, Hobart, and I jumped at the chance. They were still hyped on the aggressive ugly nature of Slag, but we started to incorporate influences from bands like Unwound, Drive Like Jehu and the Treepeople. At least those were the bands we were listening to the time. This doesn’t really sound like any of them, but I think they’re apt reference points. Playing with Marty and Nathan was a rude awakening to how terrible a musician I was. They were years ahead of me and I had to get good and/or fake it real quick like just to keep up. Not too long after we recorded this Nathan would move to the Bay Area and we would nab Absinthe drummer Brandon Ugstad and continue the project for a total of eight years, the longest running band I’ve been in. Each cassette had a unique cover made of random photos brought home by my then roommate, Dan (photographer, above) who worked in a 24 hr. photo place. We made only about 20 of these and gave them away to friends. I took the name for this blog from a line in the song No Man’s Land.

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Jason's Cat Died

7" circa 1994

This is probably my favorite record put out by any Tucson band ever. The sound is hard to describe. It mixes punk, indie, emo, rock and even a little ska, but the amount of feeling they dumped into this is what has made it stick with me over the years. Like Spill Blanket, I had seen a lot of their earlier shows but missed them in their later years when they got real good. I heard this long after they broke up and almost couldn’t believe that this was the same band I had seen so many times at the DPC. The masterminds behind this band, Chris Vlassic and Ryan Doten, would go on to refine their skills together in Yellow Brick Roadkill and separately in too many bands to mention. Actually they both played together in the Zero Tolerance Task Force at one point, but that probably did more to refine their survival skills than their musical skills. These are the two musicians that I have always wanted to play with, but they have somehow eluded me over the years. Chris is currently living in the Bay Area and Ryan is playing in the revamped and totally awesome Vanish Twin.

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Quarterhorse

CD 2005

After the break up of Invisible City Adan and Steve didn’t waste any time putting together Quarterhorse. They decided to not replace Bobby on bass and just went with guitar/drums for the base. They did find a singer that was as good, if not better than Hesper. She had a real strong voice like the singers of Sleater-Kinney or The Long Blondes and knew how to use it. Only problem was that she lived in San Francisco, which makes a Tucson/Flagstaff band seem easy. Naturally they didn’t play a lot around Tucson, but they did tour and put out this great, albeit short CD. The sound isn’t too far off of Invisible City’s, but it’s less noisy, more in control and more melody for better or worse.

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Invisible City

Demo CD circa 2004
Bobby Carlson always seems to have a couple bands going at any given moment and is probably in the process of starting a new one. Invisible City is probably my favorite band of his to date, which isn’t to demean his other efforts (Babies, the Ponies, Feel Free etc.), it just seemed like Invisible City brought together a group of really good musicians that created an original sound. Bobby once told me that Steve was the best guitar player he has played with and it’s easy to see why. He has a really creative approach to guitar that incorporated a lot of noise while working within the song structure. I remember him using a drum stick to play the guitar in weird ways. Drummer Adan is a great drummer and singer Hesper comes off like a 90s riot grrrl singing in Crass! They were a Tucson band for a while, then I think they functioned as a Tucson/Flagstaff band after Bobby and Hesper moved back up there. The sound is kinda rooted in the 90s Olympia punk sound but crossed with the current heavier noisier Olympia sounds of Milk Music, White Boss or maybe Gun Outfit. Steve is currently playing in Monster Pussy. Adan was living in Phoenix last time I saw him. Besides Red Dress Press I don’t know if Hesper has played with anybody else and like I mentioned Bobby is always busy with something. He’s also the music editor of the N. Az weekly (that comes out monthly) The Noise. Sorry no song titles.

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Foolscap Fire

2005 CD-R

Here’s a release that went criminally under-rated/unheard. I listened to this more than any other Tucson release in the years I was living in Flagstaff. Their sound reminds me of current Brooklyn hipster bands like Vivian Girls or Grass Widow mixed with a haunting Sonic Youth vibe. The Roger sisters played in a number of bands before this, but always seemed to chew up members and spit um out. Then Matt Rendon (the Resonars, Knockout Pills, Marshmallow Overcoat etc.) came into the picture and they came into their own. I don’t think it was due to Matt’s musical influence as much as his patience and ability to work with Cherish and Katie cause this isn’t like any of his projects before this. His talent is apparent though. They spent a lot of time recording this at Matt’s own Coma Cave studio and it sounds great, but then they went with generic rushed art work and did a limited CD-R release on Scott Moody’s Star Time Records. Moody’s releases are always reliable but he never dumped a lot of money into packaging, advertising, distribution and all that stuff. From what I understand Foolscap Fire quit because of Cherish’s problems with carpal tunnel and Katie’s busy schedule as a lawyer. Matt is probably recording a new record as you read this.

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