That is All.

DDecember 10, 2004-
As I sit here in my office, contemplating what to write, I am surrounded by the ephemera of my life as a music fan. All around me are posters, setlists, and photographs of shows that Wendy and I have been to over these past few years, including many, many shots of our friends and fellow fans. One item is layered on another in a hodgepodge of memories, clear evidence of a fevered mind- the kind of thing that a television detective might find in the hidden lair of an insane killer just after he’s made his escape out the bathroom window.
However, despite the lunacy evident in this display, there is a common thread that ties all of this together. Broadly, this connection is clearly music, particularly of the rock ‘n roll or alt-whatever varieties. But as I look around these walls, drawing mental lines from one thing to the next, it soon becomes apparent that the real nexus of it all is Slobberbone.
A person can point to few things that alter the course of their life, and most of them are obvious- your parents, your relationships, moves, careers, and so on- but, for good or ill, I can say with complete honesty that Slobberbone changed the world that I live in. Not only did they awaken within me a reverence for music that has become my religion, they also became in time the fire around which I met most of my closest friends, who had also gathered there to bask in the warmth. Directly or indirectly, virtually all the things that I love the most have come to me via my connections to Slobberbone. Ridiculous though that may seem, I have only to look around to see that it’s true. Amongst my closest friends there are only a couple of people who I didn’t meet at a show, and that couple- Wendy, of course, and George “Gammy Lee” Savage, to be specific, became just as obsessed as I did over these last few years. George, in fact, introduced us to Slobberbone way back when, and for that, I will be eternally grateful. Furthermore, most of the music that I obsess over these days was introduced to me either through Slobberbone or one of the many friends that I keep going on about.
So maybe it’s understandable that when I first heard rumors that Slobberbone might be breaking up, my response was “don’t even say that.” As the past year or so has slowly unfolded, these rumors became discussions among my friends, and the “hiatus” started looking more and more like a breakup, but I continued to refuse to admit to it. So, despite the fact that I knew it was coming, the announcement last week hit me like a dead fish to the face.
Ridiculous as it seems, particularly given the role that music plays in my life, I actually found myself thinking that maybe I was done. Done with live music. Done with the very passion that drives my life. That was last Wednesday.
Coincidentally. our good friend Susan “Glitter Lee” Rowland came for a visit on Thursday. Though no one else may have seen it that way, for me at least, her visit became a sort of three-day wake. A few of us came together to mourn, after a fashion, which is to say that we drank too much, cried a little, laughed a lot, over-indulged in typical fashion, and went to see a little live music.
Thursday night, we walked into the Triple Crown, a great little bar in San Marcos, to the strains of Blackwater Gospel, a band that has clearly listened to Slobberbone a time or two, but to whom I paid too little attention, preoccupied as I was with getting beer and talking to my friends.
Soon, my synapses sufficiently lubricated, I settled in at the front of the stage to listen to Centro-matic. I knew that they would be great, as they always are, but my heart was still heavy, and I thought that I could never again be as excited as I had been so many times at Slobberbone shows. This lasted about twenty seconds, as Will Johnson and company blasted through any barriers that I might’ve put up in my grief.
To quote Pete Townsend- Rock is dead. Long live rock!

That was written more than fifteen years ago. Since then, we’ve seen many, many more live shows. We saw a number of our other favorite bands fade into the past- The Gourds, The Damnations, and Centro-Matic among them- and we saw Slobberbone reunite. And I made a movie. I’ve already written about how that came about, and I talked a little about how I returned to it after years. Finally, I put it up for sale, and a number of fans and friends were kind enough to purchase it sight unseen, for which I am very grateful.
Today, Wendy and I watched it in its completed form for the first time, and here comes that dead fish again. I spent literally thousands of hours in front of a computer forming many hours of raw footage into a movie, hundreds of them these last few months. These have been difficult months for most of us, as we have had to cope with pandemics, police killings, protests, and stories of killer hornets. But, for me, music, and Slobberbone in particular, has been my saving grace. Too busy to worry too much about the state of world affairs (though painfully aware of them,) I have instead been immersed in the music of one of my favorite bands, and some of my favorite people. Though much of the work was done years ago, I still had to take what was, I think, rough stone and carve it into something more closely resembling a gem. I can’t say how well I succeeded- you will have to be the judge of that- but I think that it epitomizes the term “labor of love,” for I truly do love the music and the people who make it, despite being neck-deep in it for these many weeks.
I am too tired now to wallow deeply in the emotions that come with having come to the end of this long process. Suffice it to say that I am happy and sad, and a little overwhelmed by it all. Of course, my relationship with Slobberbone and this movie is far from over. It is my hope that we will be able to put it in front of many, many people, that we are able to grow the family that I’ve enjoyed these many years, and that Slobberbone will continue to put out new music for a long time. But I won’t be spending so much time in the company of these songs and this footage, which I hold dear because it is the vestige of a very important time in my life, so it is, in a sense, a letting go of something, and so bittersweet. It is also something of a relief, to finally put a period at the end of a very long sentence. I also know that, as Will Johnson sings in a tribute to Slobberbone which appears in the movie, that “the sun ain’t falling here, it’s rising somewhere else,” so I look forward to that “somewhere else,” which, in our case, is commencing straight away, as we go off on a new adventure. But before we go, I want to thank you all for being a part of the adventure that was and is Gimme Back My Band. Thank you very, very much.

Placemat Blues

Oh, Slobberbone. Between 2000-2005, I probably saw the band 50-60 times and I know Terry and Wendy went well past 100. We were Boneheads of the highest order, rarely missing an Austin show and occasionally traveling to Dallas or Denton to see the band play. But, we weren’t alone in our devotion. There was a national, even international, conventicle of fellow Boneheads and the documentary does a great job of conveying the band’s appeal. Granted, Slobberbone didn’t have millions of fans, but the thousands of fans they had were intensely loyal. Musically, they were a combination of Uncle Tupelo, mid-period Soul Asylum, and Neil Young with Crazy Horse. On a personal level, the camaraderie of the band made you feel like you were part of the performative experience. Ultimately though, the key was Brent’s songs. There was a specificity to his writing, such a defined sense of character and place, and that was the secret sauce. That’s why so many of us remain steadfastly loyal to Slobberbone. That’s why the title of the documentary is Gimme Back MY Band. We all felt – and probably continue to feel – an intensely personal connection, not just to the members of the band themselves, but those songs.

Terry discusses “I Can Tell Your Love Is Waning” as the Slobberbone song that made him fall in love with the band. Why? On one level, it’s in the fine tradition of murder ballads, a sub-genre of country and folk music for decades. But, I don’t think that’s why it’s so memorable. Lots of songs have killed people. The devil, as they say, is in the details. The song takes place in a nearly empty trailer, with items like a picture book, a remote control, and a cookie jar shaped like a cow. There’s a macrame frame sitting in a pool of stale beer on a black and white TV. There’s a baby in the bedroom “who doesn’t know you’re there.” All of this specificity suggests emotional and financial brokenness. The radio could play any song, but it plays “Mack The Knife,” foreshadowing the tool of said murder. Finally, the chorus uses a perfect metaphor for a (literally) dying relationship. “Like getting caught behind a cattle truck and all you smell is shit.” Granted, it may help to be from Texas where cattle culture is a thing, but I think anyone could relate to that metaphor. And because of the precise details planted throughout the song – not to mention sense memory for those of us who’ve been caught behind cattle trucks – we can actually smell the shit. We not only can tell love is waning, we can smell it. That, my friends, is quality writing.

This lyrical exactitude is found throughout the Slobberbone catalog. In fact, let me conduct an informal quiz for longtime fans. I’m going to list a single line from several different tracks and see how long it takes you to name the song.

“Like some empty can of Miller or some mangy blue-tick hound” = _________?
“Where’s the place at the table for folks like us?” = _____________________?
“’Cause if we can’t fight, then be all right, we’re done for in the end” = ______ ?
“You left me standing by the state house stairs” = ______________________?
“Where did all of my money go?” = _________________________________?
“I lost it all for just another score” = ________________________________ ?

Did it take you more than 1.5 seconds to name every song? Me either. That last song is a personal fave. “Pinball Song” is Bukowski by way of Lebowski, a brilliant evocation of what happens when the bro’s before ho’s moral compass runs headlong into thirteen empty bottles and a glass or two or four. On one level, it’s a song about having whiskey glass eye, but it’s also a clever inversion of the traditional rock ‘n’ roll road song. It’s not about a musician on the road, it’s about what happens when the musician gets off the road and is trying to get back into the groove of being a normal human being. Oh, and alcohol.

“Six weeks on the road now, I’m feeling kind of spent
There’s a few things I need and one’s a friend
A few good games of pinball and a double whiskey sour”

The wordplay is just so good throughout. The dark side of a dumpster, Christmas lights that blink, and I guess they did their damnedest but they failed. I love the washes of accordion, Jess’ slashing banjo, and the waltz-time brass quartet outro. If I didn’t think he’d let it go to his head and be impossible to live with, I’d call Brent one of the best songwriters of the last 20 years. Musically, “Pinball Song” reminds me a lot of Uncle Tupelo (“I Got Drunk,” “Still Be Around”), but I also hear some Rhett Miller (“Doreen,” “Nite Club”). Given that Slobberbone and the Old 97s played a ton of shows together in Dallas, Denton, and Austin in the 1990s and early 2000s, that influence would be understandable. “Pinball” also feels like an homage to Soul Asylum, specifically “Never Really Been.”

“You were thinking I was distressed about some universal press
I was just depressed about my last pinball game”

Soul Asylum was a huge influence on Slobberbone and this Dave Pirner classic, consciously or not, was a reference point for “Pinball Song.” There’s the obvious pinball reference, but the idea that a rock band could mix up their sound with country/folk flavoring and have it still kick ass was fully digested and appropriated not only by Brent, but considering it was released in 1986, Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy as well. Interestingly, I never heard Slobberbone cover “Never Really Been.” The Soul Asylum cover we got was “Cartoon,” Dan Murphy’s epic from Hang Time and a song that Grand Champeen also included in their setlists.

Speaking of Champeen, in the documentary when various people are asked about their favorite Slobberbone song, Channing Lewis says, “Placemat Blues.” I’m inclined to agree. The track is a blistering fuck you to corporate radio, wrapped in a Replacements homage, cleverly hidden inside a Jim Dickinson tribute. The riff here is basically the riff from “I.O.U.,” the leadoff track from the Mats’ 1987 album, Pleased To Meet Me. In fact, Slobberbone recorded the album from which “Placemat” comes — the brilliant Everything You Thought Was Right Was Wrong Today — at Ardent Studios in Memphis because that’s where Pleased was cut with Dickinson as producer. Dickinson didn’t produce Everything, but he played some piano and occasionally sat behind the boards offering sage advice.

As singer/songwriter/guitarist, Brent Best, told the Dallas Observer in April 2000, three months before Everything came out:
“There’s a song on the album that was sort of meant to be our Replacements tribute song, but it turned out to be just a Replacements rip-off song, I think. But it sounds pretty good. (Jim Dickinson) laid down this just blazing boogie-woogie piano part that we ended up not using, but it was kind of surreal to be there in Memphis, at the studio where he produced (The Replacements), we’re playing our ‘I.O.U.’ rip-off song, and he’s playing piano on it.”

Self-deprecation aside, the genius of “Placemat Blues” isn’t that it rips off one of the great American bands, it’s that Best uses The Replacements as a framing device to address the impossibility of getting on the radio. This is why “the table” is a brilliant metaphor. The table should be a meritocracy with a theoretical place for any number of quality rock ‘n’ roll acts. In fact, seats at the table are owned by program directors, publicists, and various gatekeepers, all of whom control access to the radio. Bands like Slobberbone (or Grand Champeen or Centro-Matic or The Old 97s or The Gourds) are shafted in favor of well-connected dumpster fires like Limp Bizkit and Korn and when the gatekeepers are questioned about their terrible management of the table, they inevitably invoke free-market economics and the invisible hand. Bullshit. The hand is visible, it belongs to them, and it contains 4 middle fingers and a thumb up its own ass.

“That’s my rant, I don’t expect to make a dent
I waste all these little laments
And wait for accidents”

If there’s a fundamental difference between Slobberbone and a mythological force like The Replacements, it’s that the Mats actually commanded respect nationally. Granted, they weren’t U-fucking-2, but they were on the outskirts of mainstream radar. So, while Paul Westerberg lamented missing the whole first rung on the ladder of success, at least he had access to a ladder. For Slobberbone, the best hope was waiting for an accident. Maybe they’d get a song added to a soundtrack selling a bajillion copies (a la Nick Lowe and The Bodyguard) or maybe a song would be used for TV (a la Big Star with That ‘70s Show or The Minutemen with Jackass). Whatever the case, they weren’t getting played on the radio because that would be too easy. People might get the crazy notion that OTHER good bands could get on the radio and then obviously we’d have anarchy. Bottom line: You can’t blame a guy for thinking the whole thing’s just kinda stupid.

“So come on girl, you gotta give me some credit
It was mine before you’d go get it and pet it and let it run
When you threw the damn thing its ball”

At least Stephen King is on our side. In a July 2003 column for Entertainment Weekly, King said, “Ask me to name the greatest rock ‘n’ roll song of all time and I have to say it’s a three-way tie between Slobberbone’s ‘Gimme Back My Dog,’ Count Five’s ‘Psychotic Reaction,’ and Elvis Costello’s ‘(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding.’ King wasn’t wrong. “Gimme Back My Dog” is a masterpiece of lost love, with a bitchin-ass guitar solo, and one of Brian Lane’s greatest contributions to the band, the “GIVE HIM BACK HIS DOOOOGGGG!!!” backup vocal. Ironically, when this documentary goes viral and the band becomes a Jonas Brothers-esque cultural sensation slowly consumed by the mainstream, you’re gonna realize what this song was always about. It was about our unabashed love for Slobberbone and how they, rightly or not, belong to us fans. Again, the doc is called Gimme Back MY Band for a reason. So, before they get so popular that they have to play a three-night stand at the Enormodome and you resent them for pricing you out, remember a time when they were still regular dudes playing rock ‘n’ roll at Dan’s.

–Lance “There’s a certain kind of love you can’t dispute” Davis