I have seen the Dwarves twice, which is one more time than I've seen a performance by Victoria's Ty Stranglehold (who will be fronting Knife Manual when they open for the Dwarves on December 7th, but who is also the singer of the Angry Snowmans and formerly of the Hoosegow; he will be the subject of the actual interview, below, but first I must do justice to the Dwarves).
My first Dwarves experience was circa the Blood Guts & Pussy album, in the early 1990s. The band played Vancouver's Cruel Elephant (the Granville location, if that means something to you: there were a few incarnations of that venue). Singer Blag Dahlia had long hair hiding his face and closed the set by kicking glasses and bottles into the audience, while guitarist HeWhoCannotBeNamed was naked except for boots and an bag over his head. The band played for only about fifteen or twenty minutes, but that might have involved fifteen or twenty songs, with their fiercest tunes, like "Fuck You Up and Get High," clocking in at around 40 seconds. It was terrifying, memorable, and completely satisfying -- perfect for its violent concision -- though I'm glad I wasn't sitting close enough to get hit with broken glass. Note to self: if you get up close to the Dwarves, you do so at your own risk.
The band was nothing like that when they played Fortune Sound Club, the next time I saw them, some 20 years later. HeWho was either absent or clothed. Blag had short hair. They played a fullsome set of much longer, poppier punk -- my favourite song on the album they were touring, 2011's The Dwarves Are Born Again, is "I Masturbate Me" -- which was particularly relevant, in that I also am a "Catholic escapee," as the rhyme goes, but not especially frightening (note: somewhere I have a tape where I talk with Blag about jerking off, apropos of that song, but I'm not going to rush to transcribe it. He also talks about being somewhat disappointed to discover that all the girls backstage at a Motorhead event were hired local strippers, some of whom he knew, uh, well. He presents as a shamelessly good-natured reprobate -- a reprobate with standards -- and will be doing a solo acoustic event the next day at LanaLou's. I think Ralph Champagne is actually his alias for that project; see here for a taste, and here for the event page).
Dwarves by James Farrell, Blag top left
Alas, thinking things were safer now, that night at the Fortune Sound Club some dozen years or so ago, I made the mistake of getting right up front, not realizing that Blag (who has enormous feet; we'd actually talked in the interview about how both he and Tesco Vee of the Meatmen had, like, size fifteen shoes) would spend much of the night diving into the pit, which more than once involved my getting kicked about the head and face -- not deliberately, not particularly painfully, but when you're right up front and the singer leaps over your head to ride the wave, a size fifteen shoe is hard to fucking avoid, you know? Note to self #2: if you get up close to the Dwarves, you do so at your own risk.
I guess I'm less likely to get kicked in the head at the acoustic gig, eh?
I have not yet seen Knife Manual, the new band of Ty Stranglehold -- opening for the Dwarves at the Waldorf on December 7th -- but odds are, if you're a Vancouverite, you haven't either, as they've never played Vancouver before! Stranglehold's other band, Angry Snowmans, has, and marked my first encounter with Stranglehold as a frontman last year, though I'd previously interacted with him in journalistic and punk fan capacities and had other points of intersection. We are both thanked in the liner notes for the Subhumans' Death Was Too Kind, which was a very nice thing of the Subhumans to have done (and speaks more for how considerate Subhumans Canada were than the contributions of either myself or Stranglehold).
And somewhere out there is a signed Chris Walter novel (maybe Welfare Wednesday, which I accidentally sold, thinking the inscription was in Shouts From the Gutter) where Walter, who had been interviewed by both Stranglehold and myself, began his inscription to me, "To Ty." The conversation that ensued involved my saying something like, "What the fuck, Chris, I'm Allan MacInnis -- that's Ty Stranglehold over there" (pointing across the Cobalt), whereupon Chris said something like "Fuck!" and moved to throw the book aside and do another one, whereupon I said, "No, it's okay, just cross it out and fix it, I want a record of this!" (I meant to keep it as evidence of the fuckup, so if you have that copy of the book, I'll buy it back off you!!!).
Anyhow, the Angry Snowmans -- who rewrite punk classics to have Yuletide themes, like taking D.I.'s "Richard Hung Himself" and turning it into "Richard Hung his Sock," or the Minutemen's "Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs," and revising it to be "Bing Crosby Wrote Festive Christmas Songs" -- are delightful (you can see them again in Victoria on December 20th, but it's sold out online, so good luck; you could even conceivably see both that show and NO FUN at Christmas on the same weekend; Stranglehold and M. are kindred spirits in their attitude to the holiday season).
This is by far not all Ty has done: recently, Stranglehold also curated a must-get comp of covers of Texas funk/ punk Big Boys, with written input from the late Gary Floyd (friend of Big Boys' vocalist Biscuit), which you can find online, buy vinyl of on the cheap at Ditch Records, and maybe even get on the merch table.
But when Stranglehold and I met at a Victoria coffee shop to swap Mamas, this past August, our conversation mostly focused on Knife Manual. The Dwarves gig had only just been arranged. That show is now sold out, as far as I know; no word if there are tickets to be had at the door. But we'll surely see Knife Manual this way again, and you'll be well prepared!
We take you now to a Victoria coffee shop around the corner from Ditch Records...
Knife Manual L-to-R: Tyrone (guitar), Jeff (bass), Donnie (drums), Ty (vocals), Rayce (guitar)
A: So why the name Knife Manual?
T: Well, the name is based on a song title from a band in Seattle in the late 70s/ early 80s called the Silly Killers. They were one of the Seattle punk bands; I think Duff from Guns 'n Roses played with them [he did!]. And the funny thing was, I didn't know it was a Silly Killers song for many years, because the band Gas Huffer covered it on a split 7" with Mudhoney. And Mudhoney covered the Angry Samoans [the band from whom Angry Snowmans derive their name, if anyone is unclear on that point!]. I didn't realize at the time it was a cover; I was going, "This is like, my favourite Gas Huffer song ever!" And years later, I found it it wasn't their song, and I heard the original, and went, 'Oh, this band is pretty cool,' y'know?"
T (continued): And it always stuck out in my head that that would be a really great band name. And I popped it onto my list. I think a lot of people in bands in the digital age have a running list on their phone of potential band names; I know I do, and a lot my friends do. And Knife Manual shot to the top of the list. And then in 2019, when I was looking to start a non-Christmas themed band again -- it had been awhile! -- a few friends of mine were practicing, and they were like, "Hey, do you want to come down and maybe sing or something?" "Cool! Can we call it Knife Manual?" "Yeah, we can." And I had already drawn a logo in my head. And that became our logo...
A: What's the original song about?
T: It's kind of funny -- which is, I've always thought, an important staple of punk music: there's got to be a level of humour in it. But the guy's lamenting, how does he have any hope of being able to kill anyone if he doesn't have the manual to his knife, basically -- that's a line in the song, "How can I hope to kill without it?" It's stupid but yet hilarious, to me, and stupid and hilarious are two of my tenets, when it comes to punk music.
A: Did you have contact with anyone in Silly Killers?
T: In a roundabout way. I've got a few friends who are older, Seattle-crowd-type people, and a friend of a friend of mine did play with them, and I think he was involved with Gas Huffer in some way, which is maybe why they covered it at that point. So I'd given my friend in Seattle a Knife Manual patch, and he'd put a photo of it on his social media, and the guy -- he was either in Silly Killers, or associated with Silly Killers -- was like, "How do you even get one of those?" And I quickly messaged him: "I'll get you one," and sent an extra down to my friend: "Make sure he gets this," y'know? And they were laughing -- I don't know what they assume, but everybody knows exactly where the name came from.
A: So a confession: I've only ever seen you with Angry Snowmans, so I don't know what the Hoosegow sounded like. I don't know what Knife Manual sounds like! [We were meeting to swap t-shirts and taking advantage of the moment, but I hadn't done homework]. Is there a sonic consistency between bands?
T: A little bit! I guess the consistency for me is lyrically, because that's me being the frontman/ lyricist in both those bands, and obviously the Angry Snowmans too, but obviously we're doing other people's songs in that one, just changing the lyrics, so it's a different style -- though again, "stupidity and humour" is key. I guess musically it's a little bit different. I think with Hoosegow there was a little more of a rock'n roll element to it, an old-school 80's skate-punk kind of element to it. There's a little bit of that in Knife Manual, but Knife Manual leans more into hardcore territory. Like, I kinda go by what people liken us to after they see us play. I often get Poison Idea and Millions of Dead Cops, and a lot of that is maybe vocally, my voice sounds like Dave Dictor or Jerry A, a bit -- we have the same sort of cadence? [I was thinking Stranglehold reminded me of Articles of Faith vocalist Vic Bondi, but I can hear what he means]. Musically, I think we lean into Poison Idea territory. And MDC too, which is good company to keep, as far as I'm concerned. And lyrically, I think with Knife Manual I do touch on a bit more serious topics, but in a humorous way.
T: I've got a lot of songs dealing with mental health issues. I've been personally, not just through the pandemic but leading up to it as well, really trying to address my anxieties and depressions and learning a bit more about that, and realizing it's not a unique situation. A lot of us here deal with this type of stuff. And I've been kinda vocalizing that a little bit. It's not like an After School Special kind of thing, but it's like -- "Does anyone else lie in bed in the middle of the night, staring at the ceiling and go, "Why is my life so fucked up?" I think a lot of us do, but then we turn around and kind of make a joke about it. We have a song called, "Midnight Anxiety," and whenever I introduce that song, Rayce, the guitar player, is like, "Everyone look under your seat, there's Ativan for everyone!"
Knife Manual by Bob Hanham
A: What Devo song do you do?
T: "Mr. DNA." [Starts at about the 3:50 mark here]
A: Not one I know! Early Devo?
T: It's from their second or third album, I think. They do it as two songs together. "Smart Patrol" goes into "Mr. DNA," and "Mr. DNA" is the fast one, so we didn't do the big, long intro, we just go 1-2-3-4 and we're into it. It's just like all those songs thematically: the human race needs to be saved from itself, kind of thing. It just kinds of fits in.
A: Any Dwarves stories? Ever play with them?
T: I've never played with the Dwarves. I've seen them a number of times. They've been a band that -- I don't want to say an inspiration, but they're a band I've always liked because they're polarizing. It's like, they take their shtick and they stand by it. And I can appreciate a good shtick! I dress up like Santa and play Christmas punk songs in the winter. And the Hoosegow had a running theme where we all wore jail stripes for a period of time. I'm always down for a shtick. And the Dwarves shtick of being repulsive and disgusting but writing the catchiest songs that will stick in your head...
...It's funny, because my wife and I... they don't have a huge female fan base, but my wife's like, "I hate that I love this band so much! These songs are so catchy..." And you catch yourself singing them out loud sometimes -- it's like, "ooh." I'm excited to play a show with them.
A: Did Angry Snowmans ever interpret a Dwarves song?
T: No*, mainly because with Angry Snowmans, we set ourselves a limit on the years we would work within. Technically we could probably start moving that forward, now that we've been doing it for so damn long, but before it was like, a "We're not going past 1986" kind of thing. It has been suggested that we bump that up into the 1990s, but then, I'm like, people will be like, "Why don't you do, like, NOFX or Bad Religion?"(Laughs). Actually, that's not true, we do a Bad Religion song, but it's from the 80s, though! I shouldn't use them as a reference.
A: Which Bad Religion song?
T: "We're Only Gonna Die" The full title is, "We're Only Gonna Die (From Our Own Arrogance), and our version is, "We're Only Gonna Buy (From Our Own Christmas List.
A: I only know Suffer.
T: This is from before that, from How Can Hell Be Any Worse. Which... I also stole that album cover once for a poster for Angry Snowmans and changed it to, How Can Whoville Be Any Worse.
A: So who is in Knife Manual? Is there any overlap between Knife Manual and Angry Snowmans?
T: Yeah, actually, Rayce Shitty plays guitar in Angry Snowmans. He only joined like, three years ago, so he was technically in Knife Manual before he was in Snowmans. And also Donnie our drummer in Knife Manual has filled in for Snowmans I think for two seasons. And that's it as far as the crossover. And then we've got Tyrone. We're all members of Team Shitty, which is kind of like the Jaks team, but not; we suck at skateboarding, but we love it anyway. Tyrone plays guitar. He's played in crusty hardcore bands, he's played in acoustic folk-punky things he's done here... our bass player Dan just left; we're in the process of replacing Dan, but we've got a good friend of ours, also a former Snowman, Jeff, who is going to fill in for the show in December.
A: Let me ask you a question about Team Shitty. I know nothing about skateboarding, but I've seen a punk band opening for Nomeansno and the Hanson Brothers called the Shittys. I think the guy's name is pronounced "Bouj-ee" (Craig Bougie).
T: Bou-jay?
A: The guy who did sound for Nomeansno. Was there an overlap with Team Shitty?
T: No!
A: Aha. Everytime I see "Team Shitty," I wonder, is that connected to the Shittys?
T: Yeah, I've been asked before. I've seen them play, but it has nothing to do with the team!
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