So I don't know all the bands playing at the Anza this Friday. After a quick peek, Pilsgnar's bandcamp first song sounds like metal-inflected contemporary political hardcore, kinda akin to the Rebel Spell; their second song, "East Second," goes kinda Descendents by way of Minneapolis. Didn't get an overall sense of their music but both of those impressed me. Total Shock seems a bit poppier but hooky and fun, sounding like west coast punk before hardcore; like Landmark 20, to someone whose prime consumption of punk occurred well before "the year that punk broke," they sort of sound like punk by way of its more commercial, more recent manifestations (I mean, Green Day, the Vans Warped tour, Sum 41, Blink 182, and all them newfangled punk bands are beyond me - I was off listening to John Zorn when that was happening, having lost the taste for punk rock for some time after the Nirvana phenomenon; the underground had been turned inside out and those of us with an investment in it needed to dig deeper, and Green Day wasn't it). Even if there's some sorta punk rock generation gap at work, there's enough hooky popcraft at hand in all three bands that I could see myself enjoying them, depending on their live performance, which in no case can I speak to... yet...
But the Campfire Shitkickers I have seen and vouch for with GREAT ENTHUSIASM. While it is not all they do, by far, they bring the vulgar wit of classic sea shanties into the realm of folk punk, which has often been, in a way, a bit too polite. Maybe there are some shamelessly vulgar tunes in the repertoires of some of their peers - I mean, the Dreadnoughts give the measurements of the "Hottress," for example, but it's nothing on "The Winnipeg Whore" by Oscar Brand, say. Mostly bands I associate with folk punk seem pretty civil, even serious at times, but the Campfire Shitkickers bring a bit more of an old-timey, humorous rudeness to the fore, though I don't know how politically incorrect they get (I'm pretty sure calling sex workers "whores" is off the menu as a lyric these days). I mean, they invite you to climb aboard their "Salty Dog," so...
My first interview with frontman Philly Roach below.
And the SLIP~ons, speaking of Minneapolis, are a favourite local live band, whom I previously profiled here (well, really Brock Pytel, but he's their singer; I talked to Rob Matharu apropos of the Spitfires here). Checked in with Brock to see if he had news, so that will be part two.
Be aware that any congregating indoors these days comes with the risk of COVID exposure! Judge your own risk factors as best you can and try to act accordingly.
Campfire Shitkickers by Bob Hanham, not to be reused without permission
Campfire Shitkickers: interview with Philly
(I'm in italics, he is not).
AM: I love the band name, but I am not sure what a "campfire shitkicker" is - a type of boot? A type of shitkicker who hangs out a campfire? A person who kicks the shit out of campfires, perhaps on beaches? ...What's the origin/ meaning of your bandname?
PR: Going back a few years, I veered away from the hardcore punk-rock stuff I’d been playing my whole life. So, I was playing the solo acoustic stuff I’d written over the years, and I acquired an upright player, who brought in a cajon player. We’d change the name at every show, not taking it too seriously. We were playing a show - and still have that manic punk rock energy - and after the show, some dude comes up to me, all stoked, and says, “Man!!! You guys are like campfire shitkickers!!!” And that was that. The angels did sing! A campfire shitkicker is someone who kicks the ever-lovin’ SHIT out of a campfire situation!
Can you give me a history of the band? I saw you with Doug Andrew & China Syndrome at the Flaming O in Surrey a few years ago... loved it... very funny... but I hadn't heard of you before that.
Well, I moved to Vancouver 7 years ago, and I really didn’t know anyone aside from a couple friends, and I’d been writing & collecting songs which didn’t fit with the bands I’d been playing with over the last decade or so. So I started playing open mics & shit, wherever would have me, hoping to meet some likeminded musicians. After I was approached by an upright bassist, we started jamming & he had a friend who was at all our jams & shows, so I told him if he was gonna hang around, he had to do something. I told him to grab a cajon, and he did. We were a 3-piece for 1 show & got approached by an accordion player. We recorded our first self-titled album in that formation, then acquired a mandolin player, & a banjo player. We recorded an EP - The New Crusty Minstrels, with that formation and a new upright player. We played with that incarnation for a while, then the pandemic hit. We’d slowly been evolving as a band, but the pandemic was a tectonic shift for us. With nothing to do but rehearse & write, we evolved exponentially - out with the acoustic, and in with the Gretsch. Josh, our drummer, upgraded to a full kit, and our sound was born. It was all very organic. We got signed to Batcave Records out of LA, and recorded our latest effort, Parole Models. We’ve since trimmed the fat a bit, into a high-octane 4-piece, infusing our acoustic beginnings with our current electric vibe, with a punk-rock injection.
What's your history with Mr. Chi Pig?
That’s a big one. Obviously was a huge SNFU fan, being a Calgary boy & all. He was - and remains - one of my all-time favourite lyricists growing up, then when I was in The Dabblers, we opened a few shows for them & I kinda got to know him. Played a few more shows with them when I was in The Turrettes, and by the time I owned The Distillery, I was booking them and taking care of them whenever they rolled through Calgary. So by then we had a pretty solid respect for each other. I’d be rolling through Vancouver with The Turrettes & he’d bring us pizza, telling us how bad eating on the road was, hahaha! Fast forward to 2 years ago, and the Shitkickers were covering "Cockatoo Quill," and were planning on recording it. So we called him in the ICU & played it for him, you know, get his blessing & all, and he told me I sang it better than he did, looooool! And that was the last time I talked to him. 2 weeks later he left this dirty rock. Rest In Peace, Piglet.
I love a good vulgar sea shanty or bawdy ballad... Do you have favourite rude folk songs or artists, or do you mostly gravitate to folk punk?
Nah, I just fucking love music. Although we have a few shanty-style songs, we didn’t really grow up with it. Like every other genre, it left an impression on us & that comes through in our music. We’re just fortunate that our style - lovingly dubbed ‘Clusterfolk’ - has put us on the same stage as some of those influences; Flogging Molly, The Dreadnoughts, Gogol Bordello, Mahones, etc. It’s good company to keep!
I've seen you at the Bowie Ball but most of what I heard you do in Surrey seemed to be originals... besides Bowie and Chi, what other covers do you do?
Oh, man; we’ve done a bunch over the years!!! "The Rodeo Song" (Garry Lee & Showdown) is a crowd fave, but we’ve done everything from Sinead O’Connor to The Misfits, Mr. Bungle to Frank Sinatra & everything in between. We like to keep things fresh.
"For All the Dickheads" has a kind of oi!/ streetpunk vibe to it - is it targeting that genre specifically - the skinhead contingent and such - or is that a coincidence?
It’s just more of our influences coming through. I grew up on that shit, so it’s gonna come out every now & then. Our music runs the gamut.
AM: I love the band name, but I am not sure what a "campfire shitkicker" is - a type of boot? A type of shitkicker who hangs out a campfire? A person who kicks the shit out of campfires, perhaps on beaches? ...What's the origin/ meaning of your bandname?
PR: Going back a few years, I veered away from the hardcore punk-rock stuff I’d been playing my whole life. So, I was playing the solo acoustic stuff I’d written over the years, and I acquired an upright player, who brought in a cajon player. We’d change the name at every show, not taking it too seriously. We were playing a show - and still have that manic punk rock energy - and after the show, some dude comes up to me, all stoked, and says, “Man!!! You guys are like campfire shitkickers!!!” And that was that. The angels did sing! A campfire shitkicker is someone who kicks the ever-lovin’ SHIT out of a campfire situation!
Can you give me a history of the band? I saw you with Doug Andrew & China Syndrome at the Flaming O in Surrey a few years ago... loved it... very funny... but I hadn't heard of you before that.
Well, I moved to Vancouver 7 years ago, and I really didn’t know anyone aside from a couple friends, and I’d been writing & collecting songs which didn’t fit with the bands I’d been playing with over the last decade or so. So I started playing open mics & shit, wherever would have me, hoping to meet some likeminded musicians. After I was approached by an upright bassist, we started jamming & he had a friend who was at all our jams & shows, so I told him if he was gonna hang around, he had to do something. I told him to grab a cajon, and he did. We were a 3-piece for 1 show & got approached by an accordion player. We recorded our first self-titled album in that formation, then acquired a mandolin player, & a banjo player. We recorded an EP - The New Crusty Minstrels, with that formation and a new upright player. We played with that incarnation for a while, then the pandemic hit. We’d slowly been evolving as a band, but the pandemic was a tectonic shift for us. With nothing to do but rehearse & write, we evolved exponentially - out with the acoustic, and in with the Gretsch. Josh, our drummer, upgraded to a full kit, and our sound was born. It was all very organic. We got signed to Batcave Records out of LA, and recorded our latest effort, Parole Models. We’ve since trimmed the fat a bit, into a high-octane 4-piece, infusing our acoustic beginnings with our current electric vibe, with a punk-rock injection.
What's your history with Mr. Chi Pig?
That’s a big one. Obviously was a huge SNFU fan, being a Calgary boy & all. He was - and remains - one of my all-time favourite lyricists growing up, then when I was in The Dabblers, we opened a few shows for them & I kinda got to know him. Played a few more shows with them when I was in The Turrettes, and by the time I owned The Distillery, I was booking them and taking care of them whenever they rolled through Calgary. So by then we had a pretty solid respect for each other. I’d be rolling through Vancouver with The Turrettes & he’d bring us pizza, telling us how bad eating on the road was, hahaha! Fast forward to 2 years ago, and the Shitkickers were covering "Cockatoo Quill," and were planning on recording it. So we called him in the ICU & played it for him, you know, get his blessing & all, and he told me I sang it better than he did, looooool! And that was the last time I talked to him. 2 weeks later he left this dirty rock. Rest In Peace, Piglet.
I love a good vulgar sea shanty or bawdy ballad... Do you have favourite rude folk songs or artists, or do you mostly gravitate to folk punk?
Nah, I just fucking love music. Although we have a few shanty-style songs, we didn’t really grow up with it. Like every other genre, it left an impression on us & that comes through in our music. We’re just fortunate that our style - lovingly dubbed ‘Clusterfolk’ - has put us on the same stage as some of those influences; Flogging Molly, The Dreadnoughts, Gogol Bordello, Mahones, etc. It’s good company to keep!
I've seen you at the Bowie Ball but most of what I heard you do in Surrey seemed to be originals... besides Bowie and Chi, what other covers do you do?
Oh, man; we’ve done a bunch over the years!!! "The Rodeo Song" (Garry Lee & Showdown) is a crowd fave, but we’ve done everything from Sinead O’Connor to The Misfits, Mr. Bungle to Frank Sinatra & everything in between. We like to keep things fresh.
"For All the Dickheads" has a kind of oi!/ streetpunk vibe to it - is it targeting that genre specifically - the skinhead contingent and such - or is that a coincidence?
It’s just more of our influences coming through. I grew up on that shit, so it’s gonna come out every now & then. Our music runs the gamut.
I don't know your bandcamp album as well as I should but could you walk through a few songs? What is "Sweetest Fruit" about? Whose head is up their ass in "Shitbox to Nowhere?" Any favourite songs you want to give some backstory for...?
"The Sweetest Fruit" - which was re-vamped on Parole Models - was written around a relationship I was in. It’s a nutshell version, from the beginning to the end, wrapped it metaphors. "Shitbox" is just about the general public - a song for them asses, as I like to say. That one was also re-rooked for Parole Models. My favourite lyricists (Chi Pig, Mike Patton, Leonard Cohen, etc.) always had something to say, and I take a lot of pride in my lyrics, which is why I always include a lyric sheet in the albums. You can read them however you want - again, metaphors are everywhere - but they all have meaning to me. And that could be vastly different than how you read them.
Do you have history with Saturna Island? Is the band actually some way "seafaring," or is that metaphoric? "This one's for you Jacques" - is that Jacques Cousteau you're talking about?
We sure do! When we were more of a folk-based band, we’d play there several times a year! Love that place! We wrote that song on the ferry over one time, so its quite literal, hahaha! Jacques is the fella that runs The Lighthouse, where we’d play. He’s a good man!
The "Cockatoo Quill" single is the only physical media I've seen from you, I think. Are there other albums? CDs? Is anything planned? (Is the Batcave stuff more recent than Bandcamp? Is having a label still meaningful for digital-only product when you could just distro your own stuff through Bandcamp?).
We had a run of vinyl for our 1st self-titled album, which has long since sold out. We did CDs for our EP, but CDs are fucking stupid & I'm never doing THAT again. We waited out the pandemic to press our most recent album, Parole Models (Batcave Records) to vinyl, but it’s on order now. So we’re gonna have a proper album release, with 5 or 6 bonus tracks on double vinyl. It’ll be a shaker!
"The Sweetest Fruit" - which was re-vamped on Parole Models - was written around a relationship I was in. It’s a nutshell version, from the beginning to the end, wrapped it metaphors. "Shitbox" is just about the general public - a song for them asses, as I like to say. That one was also re-rooked for Parole Models. My favourite lyricists (Chi Pig, Mike Patton, Leonard Cohen, etc.) always had something to say, and I take a lot of pride in my lyrics, which is why I always include a lyric sheet in the albums. You can read them however you want - again, metaphors are everywhere - but they all have meaning to me. And that could be vastly different than how you read them.
Do you have history with Saturna Island? Is the band actually some way "seafaring," or is that metaphoric? "This one's for you Jacques" - is that Jacques Cousteau you're talking about?
We sure do! When we were more of a folk-based band, we’d play there several times a year! Love that place! We wrote that song on the ferry over one time, so its quite literal, hahaha! Jacques is the fella that runs The Lighthouse, where we’d play. He’s a good man!
The "Cockatoo Quill" single is the only physical media I've seen from you, I think. Are there other albums? CDs? Is anything planned? (Is the Batcave stuff more recent than Bandcamp? Is having a label still meaningful for digital-only product when you could just distro your own stuff through Bandcamp?).
We had a run of vinyl for our 1st self-titled album, which has long since sold out. We did CDs for our EP, but CDs are fucking stupid & I'm never doing THAT again. We waited out the pandemic to press our most recent album, Parole Models (Batcave Records) to vinyl, but it’s on order now. So we’re gonna have a proper album release, with 5 or 6 bonus tracks on double vinyl. It’ll be a shaker!
What have been your best tour experiences? (You played Hands in the Air, right? How did that go?).
Man, the yahoos in this band are a fucking riot, so everywhere we play is the best time ever. And the music we play attracts the rowdiest, kindest motherfuckers - the kind that pick you up when they see you’re down - so yeah, it’s hard to pick. That being said, the Sail Away party on Flogging Molly’s Salty Dog Cruise is a pretty unbeatable memory, no matter how hazy.
Who is in the live band at this point? Any specific plans for the Anza Club show, notes on the other bands - points of intersection with their members, history with them? Have you gigged with the SLIP~ons before?
We’re a trimmed down, hi-octane 4 piece these days. Myself on guitar/vox, Nick Foreman on the upright, Josh Samorodin on drums & Cowbell on the banjo & mandola. I’m a big fan of all the bands on the bill, but aside from playing the occasional show with them, I don’t really know them personally. When running a bar is your thing, it’s tough to make it out to all the cool shows you’d like to see.
Man, the yahoos in this band are a fucking riot, so everywhere we play is the best time ever. And the music we play attracts the rowdiest, kindest motherfuckers - the kind that pick you up when they see you’re down - so yeah, it’s hard to pick. That being said, the Sail Away party on Flogging Molly’s Salty Dog Cruise is a pretty unbeatable memory, no matter how hazy.
Who is in the live band at this point? Any specific plans for the Anza Club show, notes on the other bands - points of intersection with their members, history with them? Have you gigged with the SLIP~ons before?
We’re a trimmed down, hi-octane 4 piece these days. Myself on guitar/vox, Nick Foreman on the upright, Josh Samorodin on drums & Cowbell on the banjo & mandola. I’m a big fan of all the bands on the bill, but aside from playing the occasional show with them, I don’t really know them personally. When running a bar is your thing, it’s tough to make it out to all the cool shows you’d like to see.
Anything I've missed you want to tell people about?
Our album release will be in December, or maybe even NYE! Not sure where, yet, but we’re on it! It’ll be Parole Models, backed with our new EP, Neo Maxi Zoom Dweebies, on double vinyl! Other than that, I think it’s covered! Thanks for the questions, and find us on all the platforms! Cheers!
Our album release will be in December, or maybe even NYE! Not sure where, yet, but we’re on it! It’ll be Parole Models, backed with our new EP, Neo Maxi Zoom Dweebies, on double vinyl! Other than that, I think it’s covered! Thanks for the questions, and find us on all the platforms! Cheers!
SLIP~ons by D. Ballantyne, not to be reused without permission
The SLIP~ons: Mini-interview with Brock
Brock Pytel, reached quickly by email, tells me the band has "No really special plans for these gigs," referring both to the August 5th gig at the Anza Club and the August 20th tribute to Ziggy Sigmund at the WISE Hall, which will also involve Sunday Morning (written about here and here), Crummy (here and here) and Trailerhawk (who I liked better when Tony Walker was in the band, but who do a polished country-rock that has a lot of fans locally).
Brock Pytel, reached quickly by email, tells me the band has "No really special plans for these gigs," referring both to the August 5th gig at the Anza Club and the August 20th tribute to Ziggy Sigmund at the WISE Hall, which will also involve Sunday Morning (written about here and here), Crummy (here and here) and Trailerhawk (who I liked better when Tony Walker was in the band, but who do a polished country-rock that has a lot of fans locally).
He has no Ziggy Sigmund stories. "I don’t think I ever met the man, so I feel the best way to pay respects is to play as hard as I can with joy in my heart... There has been a lot of loss lately in the community. Olivia Quan’s sudden passing has been particularly challenging to understand and accept for me. I heard about it five days after our last session with her."
Brock tells me that of the Anza Club gig on Friday, "We are playing last so the biggest challenge will be staying sober enough to play a set starting at 11:50pm (I’m looking at YOU Shane Wilson)." Brock says "the odds are strongly in favour of at least one of us being effectively hammered by the time we go on, so the most likely outcome is that we play everything really fast…"
The SLIP~ons upcoming EP is all done "and the mixing is in Dave's hands," Brock says. "It’s probably safe to expect a spring 2023 release."
Brock's having had COVID "definitely made tracking vocals more challenging (finished recording EP for Cursed Blessings). I needed two sessions to get performances I can live with. That said, I just don’t feel like I have the luxury of time to wait any longer before performing. I’m super fortunate to have talented bandmates and a handful of people that want to hear what we have to say, so that makes the risk of infection worth it for me. This is what I’m here for!"
More info on the Punk Rock Variety Show August 5th at the Anza here.
More info on the Ziggy Sigmund Memorial (August 20th at the WISE) here.
1 comment:
Thanks for the write up for the Show Aug 5th and great interviews : I am the one that put it on Retro 778 Promos
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