The Urinals: Kev, John & Rob (2008)

Plus, we’d second on the bills to Midwestern legends Killdozer, which sounded fun.

And a few days on the road with John and Kevin (the founding/original members of the Urinals) is always great. So, off we went.

I realized on this trip they don’t pay you for playing shows—they pay you for getting on planes and driving though seemingly endless fields of corn with billboards for Cheese and Fireworks. The shows are a blast—but you earn your money eating crappy road food and praying you’ll never see another stalk of corn.

So, it was up early Thursday and off to LAX. I’d brought my Tele (a new one as I can’t replace my ’69 of something happened to it on the road) and my Eastwood Airline Tuxedo, some pedals and cable. We’d be using a backline on the shows—i.e., other people’s amps and drums—so I just brought a good overdrive pedal, not knowing what kind of tubes I’d be pushing (none, it turns out).

We got to Chicago, got stuck in truly dreadful traffic and found the hotel. A 30 minute nap was followed by more hideous traffic—complete with tolls! In Chicago, not only is driving a slice of hell, but you pay cash for the privilege of sitting sucking diesel fumes and doing less than one mile an hour.

We finally get to the club and, despite being late, we get a sound check. My guitar sounds pretty terrible, as I’m using a new pedal and a borrowed amp (a Roland Jazz Chorus this night). My Tele’s too brittle and bright. I decide to use the dirt pedal I know better at the show.

Using borrowed amps is one of the things you get used to on the road. Normally, at home, I use, for various gigs: a little Lafayette duel EL84 (for small gigs with the other band), a late 50’s Magnatone 260 (modified for more gain and volume), or a Mack Skyraider (for louder Urinal gigs). In the studio, I’m spoiled with a bunch of lower wattage vintage Valcos and such. So, I’m kinda spoiled amp-wise.

But, out of town, you come to realize that most of the crowd couldn’t give a rat’s ass about your tone. They’re out for a fun night with good songs played well. They don’t really, hard as it is for a guitar geek to admit, know the difference between a Tweed Deluxe and a Line 6. And, while you might more readily play better with an amp you love, part of being a pro is not letting that kind of thinking affect your playing. That positive mindset is hard to keep when you end up playing, as I did once, through a 70’s Peavey PA head that a club thought was just fine for guitar.

So, the Chicago show goes well, the Abbey is a great place with great sound, and the show goes off without a hitch—I don’t even break a string. Kev, from the MM, joins us for a spirited “I’m a Bug.”

A hot woman thanks John for playing “Strip Club” (Kevin and I look at each other like, “we were there too” but she’s only talking to John. Some other woman at the merch table tells John he has the “Sexiest voice in rock and roll.” She’s cute, too. I get a bunch of geeky guitar guys asking about my guitars and my elbow. No fair.

Day two consists of much driving though Illinois and Wisconsin. We stop for photos under an enormous metal cow and a giant “CHEESE” sign. At every road stop are billboards for cheese and fireworks. On seemingly every mile of travel is…corn…corn…more corn. It’s a good thing that John and Kevin (the other Urinals) are two of the funniest, easiest tempered guys in the world.

Much kidding John about the Sexiest Voice in Rock and Roll.

Before the show, we hit what’s purported to be a great St. Vincent DePaul (recommended by the guys in Killdozer, who know the town well). Men from Killdozer don’t lie—this is a great vintage shop. I get some cool vintage plaid pants and some odd bean that I wear onstage that night. Michael, the bass player from Killdozer, tells me about a Goodwill in town that is organized by color. All the green clothes, men’s or women’s, in one section, all the orange in another and so on.

Night two, in Madison, at the High Noon Saloon, is a blast. The owner, Kathy (Cathy?) is super cool, the green room is comfortable and clean, and each band has a huge cooler of beer and water. Stylin’

Show goes pretty well. Pop a string on my Tele on the fourth or fifth song. The Tuxedo sounds fatter, anyway. The amp the 2nd night is a Silverface Twin Reverb….a fine amp, but not one you can get into distortion without peeling the faces of the first twenty feet of the audience. So, once again, most of my distortion comes from a pedal.

I go out to have a smoke after our set in Madison, still wearing the beanie from St. Vincent DePaul and some guy says, “Nice hat, faggot.”

Later, at merch table, a guy says, “You sounded pretty good for a hippy.” (Kev from Mannequin Men offers to punch him for me. It’s good to have passionate friends, but I tell him not to punch the guy. “Say the world, and I’ll go Miagi on his ass.”).

I wonder what I did to Madison to get this treatment from strangers. Also, why hippie? I don’t mind being called a faggot, but hippie is another matter. Hippies are annoying. I have no hair. The guys in the band start calling me “the faggot hippy”.

Later, a woman wants the band’s autographs, but the last CD doesn’t have me on it, so I don’t want to sign. But it’s too hard to explain, so I had to sign Rod Barker’s name on a CD for a drunk woman who wanted autographs on WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT.

The guys start calling me “Faggot, hippy Rod Barker” (Seemingly endless hours on the road leads to sophomoric humor).

At the merch table, a woman comes on to John. I get called more names. A woman says, “I NEVER thought I’d like a band called the Urinals.”

Next day’s drive to St. Paul. More corn. Eventually, blissfully, replaced with lakes and rivers.

Before the last night, we have dinner with the Mannequin Men and some of their cool pals. That puts our group at nine or ten for dinner. We try to go for Ethiopian food, but the place is packed, so we settle for pizza—a road staple we were hoping to mix up a bit, but no such luck. We make plans to do a cover single with the MM, where we cover one of theirs and they cover one of ours on a 45 (remember them? They’re back!). There’s talk of past tours and future tours and the general good-feeling of hanging with pals on the road.

The last night, at the Turf Club, I’d planned on using Ethan’s (from MM) Twin again, but the guys in Killdozer blew one of its speakers the night before. So I end up with the sound guy’s Fender Deville, which he tells me is a “great amp”. I’m not so sure that’s true, but it’s his and I don’t say anything, and it sounds fine…it gets loud and has a good clean channel (which sort of defeats the whole idea behind a tube amp, but whatever), so I can crank the clean and get, once again, dirt from the floor.

We have, maybe, our best show in St. Paul. Much fun. Miles and Kevin from MM join us on “I’m a Bug”. We close with a very fast version of 13th Floor Elevator’s/Roky Erickson’s “You’re Gonna Miss Me.”

We hang out at the club. It’s 1AM. Killdozer is playing a pretty great, over the top cover of “I Am, I Said.” We have a flight back to California in 5 hours and I’m wondering if I should nap or stay up all night. A woman hits on John after announcing, “I’m not a stalker, but I needed to see you!” Clearly, a stalker. To add insult to injury, her boyfriend stands there while she just about pins John to the pool table. Interesting. No one hits on me. More questions about the eBow and my guitars (well, my guitars are kind of cool). Ah, well. Rock and Roll.

On The Road With The Urinals (Sept. 2009) from MyRareGuitars.com

1. Voices in my head.
This is not an album, but actual, annoying, mostly dissonant, sometimes resolving to melody and harmony, but mostly the clang of plates and the murmurs of distant conversations in my head. Mostly medicated, most recently, professionally (and with un-fun and responsible medicines…self-medicating is so much better, buzz-wise, except you could end up homeless, in jail, suicidal and welcoming death…otherwise, it’s the way to go) so. NOT RECOMMENDED. One star out of ten. For “Roberge complete-ists” only, of which there are, at last count and including me, exactly none on the planet. (Note that all of the following were listened to with #1 going on in the background, so your mileage may vary).

2. South San Gabriel’s WELCOME CONVALESCENCE (2003)
This has been in constant rotation since the year of its release. The quieter cousin to the other Will Johnson fronted Denton TX band, Centro-Matic, SSG is an incredible band. There’s not a dud on this album, and most are classics. The kind of album you start making a mixed CD for someone and you realized you, one-by-one, selected the whole damn record. 10 stars out of ten. Go buy it.

3. Arnold Schoenberg: Piano Music.
Paul Jacobs, piano. Zionks, Scoob! This is great.

4. Jay Bennett’s THE MAGNIFICENT DEFEAT (2007)
Bennett shows his studio wizardry that made 1996-2001 Wilco so interesting, while supplying his own beautiful husky voice to a bunch of hook-laden wonderful songs that should please any fan who wants to hear what the bastard child of Elvis Costello and Tom Waits might sound like, given plenty of studio time and a Melotron and a rare dose of melodic genius. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

5. The Gamble’s Quail
I feed outside my back door every morning and sundown. Only for those in the Southwestern US desert. The rest of you, I’ll have to send you a field recording. They sound great.

6. Mike Martt TOMORROW SHINES BRIGHT (2003)
Full disclosure, he’s a pal. But I don’t hit the “repeat” button just because I love someone—they have to write damn good songs, too, and this little-known gem deserves a wider audience. Martt was the main songwriter in LA’s famous cow punks Tex & the Horseheads along with fronting the criminally under-known Low & Sweet Orchestra, along with handling guitar duties at various times for Thelonious Monster and The Gun Club. TSB is a beautiful record—from the opening Americana of “Fading out of Sight” to the rocking “That’s All Mine” to the beautiful and heartbreakingly honest “Wash”, this album should be on your shelf. Or in your PC. Or your I-pod, or wherever the hell it is you kids keep your music these days.

7. A mix of Roky Erickson
Plucked from various albums from the former front man of the legendary 13th Floor Elevators…While maybe too many of the solo-period originals (“Starry Eyes” “You Don’t Love Me Yet” and “For You” to name but a few) use and re-use the classic doo-wop I-VI-IV-V progression, Roky Erickson’s singling and phrasing makes each of them sound new and different. David Lodge says the job of the writer (and I would extend this to any artist) is to make “the strange familiar and the familiar strange.” Not many (Tom Waits?) can sit alone with an acoustic guitar and make you think you’ve never heard anything like it before. Listen to the phrasing on “For You” for instance and fall in love with the human voice as not just the thing that makes the words in pop music, but as an instrument. The man’s a genius singer.

8. Elliot Smith: “The Ballad of Big Nothing.”
A desert-island track for me, for sure. And while I could name most of his catalog for songs I’d want to keep, this one has all of it—the hooks, the wistful, heart-wrenching vocal phrasing, the off-beat catching up with the rhythm of the lyrics, and the lovely jangle of the droning, melodic guitar. What a song & performance.

9. Some new stuff
John Paul Keith and the 1, 4, 5’s “Looking for a Thrill.” Just a great single. I hit their myspace page once a day to hear that tune. It’s like the Replacements if Dave Edmunds produced them with Nick Lowe smoking behind the board. Check it out!

10. SOME more new music: The Mannequin Men’s FLESH ROT.
The Urinals played a show with these guys at the Bottom of the Hill and they BROUGHT it. One of the best young bands I’ve seen/heard in ages. Bring them to your town…and if they happen to be there, you should check them out. Snotty, tuneful, melodic and aggressive. The way rock should be, or at least one glorious facet of rock, which these guys bring in spades.

11. Why stop at ten?
I’ve been re-visiting Bob Dylan’s best (for me—my Bob Dylan is not your Bob Dylan, after all) period—spanning perhaps the most creative and mind-blowing two years in rick history by a recording artist—where from late 1964 (BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME), early 65 (HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED) to 1966 (BLONDE ON BLONDE), the man was on fire. The outtakes from this period (“Please Crawl Out Your Window”, “Positively 4th Street” and various alternate takes from album cuts) would be better than most people’s albums of that or any time. From the half acoustic/electric of BRINGING IT, to the blistering and sublime high-water mark of HIGHWAY 61, to the mercury tingle of BLONDE, the man did no wrong for a sustained period of creativity and greatness unmatched (even by the Beatles and Stones) in the history of rock. And, shit, “Desolation Row” alone is worth ten desert island discs. Wow.

12. Steve Turner and His Bad Ideas: “A Beautiful Winter.”
File this in the “songs I wish I’d written” category. Just a lovely duet by Turner (of Mudhoney fame) with Holly Golightly…great lyric, melancholy vocal performance and a killer melody. Can’t be beat.

13. The Handsome Family: LIVE AT SCHUBA’S TAVERN
This is, criminally, (and I hope temporarily) out of print, but it’s one of the greatest live albums ever recorded by one of the best bands you’ll ever hear. Husband-wife team Brent and Rennie Sparks have produced some of the most incredible music of the last 15 years and you owe it to yourself to track this (and their other releases) down. Rennie Sparks may be the most creative and interesting lyricist working today (check any number of tracks for astounding evidence, but for starters, “Amelia Earhart Versus the Dancing Bear” “Winnebago Skeletons” “Drunk by Noon” or “Weightless Again”), and the songs are masterfully put together and anchored by Brent’s multi-instrument abilities and lovely deep voice. Imagine if Flannery O’Connor and John Ashbury started a band after listening to the Louvin Brothers and Hank Williams, but got even depressed and more tunefully southern Americana gothic. Actually, you CAN’T imagine how these two sound—go buy some. It’s music so good, you’ll want to annoy strangers on the subway, taking out your earphones and saying, “Damn, listen to this!”

Which seems like a good place to stop—damn, listen to this. Happy 2009, everyone.

Rob Roberge: Looking Busy in 2008

Top 10 Things I Listened To/Am Listening To In 2008 from MyRareGuitars.com