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