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Brian Cook : guitar and vocals Official Website
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Seattle has a long history of rock bands operating outside the mainstream music industry. The grunge explosion of the early nineties is obviously the most notorious shift in pop culture to be born in the Northwest, but this geographical corner has had no shortage of equally brave artists fine-tuning their craft beneath the radar. From early garage pioneers like the Sonics to the recent assent into the public eye of bands like Modest Mouse and Death Cab For Cutie, the Emerald City seems to breed focused, independently-minded, and bullshit-free musicians.
It's no surprise then that a quartet of artists raised on the periphery of this fine city would pay tribute to their hometown by naming their band after a nearby spot on the map. Like Boston and Chicago, this band wants to pay it's dues and tip their hat to their nurturing environment. But you really can't get away with naming a band Seattle. So instead these men looked outside the city to the roads that lead back into the woods and up into the mountain passes. Nestled amongst the meth-lab trailers and militia campgrounds is the sad town of Roy. It's a place just outside the urban glamour of the big city, mired in its own tragedies and vices, and constantly looking north to it's peer cities and quietly shaking its head.
Roy is the perfect metaphor for a band that believes in traditions but acknowledges the natural and inevitable evolution of culture. Acoustic guitar and folky songwriting are paired with layers of fuzzed-out bass and delayed guitar. The stripped down rhythm section finds itself battling a throbbing drum-machine. The down-to-earth lyrics are steeped in themes that harken back to the days of Woody Guthrie, yet are full of references to the current issues that plague us. Even the recorded output of the band jumps back and forth between the intimate tape-hiss of a four-track machine and the lush possibilities of two inch tape and the latest Pro-tools software. And yet the band makes it position clear in a song off of their debut album with the lyrics: "Please don't auto-tune my soul, or replace it with merchandise from records that went gold."
If going gold was Roy's biggest fear, they must be breathing a sigh of relief. The 2004 full-length, Big City Sin and Small Town Redemption, received glowing praise in the press and contributed to their already-growing legion of fans. But the band hardly rocketed into indie royalty. After stints on the road with The Weakerthans, Constantines, Onelinedrawing, Decibully, Okkervil River, and Rocky Votolato, the band went on hold as the dueling singer/guitarists Ben Verellen and Brian Cook assumed their rhythm section duties in the post-punk outfit These Arms Are Snakes and embarked on a series of tours. Bassist/vocalist Mike Cooper went tramping across Europe and wrote home with tails of destitution, hardship, and awkward sexual encounters. Drummer Dave Verellen held down the fort while working for a fire department that puts out the blazing infernos of failed meth-labs in the town he named his band after. Was Roy extinguished?
Reconvening in January of 2005, the quartet holed up for the rainy season in a studio down in Tacoma. Taking advantage of Ben's recording skills and his temporary assignment as studio manager, the band set to work recording songs that they'd written independently during their summer and fall hiatus. Were they demos? A series of seven inches? Did they even have a label willing to work with them? All was uncertain except for the drive and passion of four young artists. What was originally intended to be a seven song recording session grew to seventeen, and a theme was beginning to emerge. The results can be heard on Roy's second full-length Roy Killed John Train.
John Train is a significant leap from Big City Sin. While the melodies, smart lyrics, and genre-hopping of previous work are still present, Roy has pushed ahead into new territories. Favoring fucked-up chords to standard major-chord folkisms, sparse drumming to bashing cymbals, delay to distortion, '60s and '70s artists for inspiration instead of indie records from the late '80s and early '90s, and quietly sowing the seeds instead of crashing out of the gates, Roy has taken a new approach to their band.
"I think we nearly became what we hate," says Brian, "Everyone we worked with was pushing us in the wrong direction. I don't want to be a posterboy for glossy 'indie' mags. I don't want to go on Warp Tour. I don't want to be on a package tour with a bunch of whiney pop-punk bands. I want to put out good records that people will still want to listen to ten or twelve years from now. In fact, I'd rather have people like it more down the road than have immediate success." Although the future remains to be seen, indicators are good for Roy's battle plan.
Roy Killed John Train comes out on Lujo Records in February of 2006. Look for them on tour in late winter and early spring as they continue their work in cementing their cult status.
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Roy Killed John Train (lujo040)
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