CLICK THE ARROW ABOVE TO PLAY ALIEN HARVEST AND CATTLE RUSTLERS FROM THE SKY
Having been called the “Apocalypse Now of cattle mutilation songs”, ‘Alien Harvest’ and ‘Cattle Rustlers from the Sky’ venture into the Fortean inspired topic of extraterrestrials visiting earth, told from a rural perspective.
RK Bronco (Ryan Leisinger) and Colt Winchester (Scott West) switch usual instruments (RK on vocals and guitar and Colt on drums on these tracks) and a spooky tale of alien abduction and animal mutilation is spun, with extra guitars added by occasional Rodeo Kill hired hand, Jon Merithew of the Olympia Hobbit Rock band C-Average.
Rodeo Kill performs Jerry Reed’s East Bound and Down, the theme song of the movie Smokey And The Bandit at the 4th Ave Tavern in Olympia WA. May 10th 2008
As I put down the guitar and stepped off the front of the stage, my intent was to punch the sound guy in the face.
Anyone who has been around me much knows I’m fairly even keeled and calm. Frustration of this caliber is a rare and fleeting thing, but I was ready to take this little episode to a violent place and calling my wife from the King County Jail and asking if she would pick me up seemed like a possible end to the evening.
Rodeo Kill had been asked to play Hartwood’s CD release party that night at Jules Maes in Georgetown, just south of Seattle. Being asked to play a release party is a great compliment; the band who is celebrating wants to hear your band and wants their fans to hear your band. It is an honor to be asked. Hartwood asked we play last, so they could whoop it up, get drunk, mingle with their peeps and have an overall good time. It was their party, so of course we agreed, full well knowing that some folks who came just to see Hartwood would leave, but the band and their fans who where there to really celebrate would stick around, get drunk and be fun.
We had played Jules Maes before several times, great venue, the stage and room where the band plays is tucked in back. Not a huge space, but good energy and you can get the place rocking. Hartwood got up and did there thing, running late, but who cares, we would play as long as they would let us, it was their night. They finished, cleared their gear off stage and the sound guy, not the one we has previously worked with there seemed friendly enough, a bit distant, but not the worst attitude Rodeo Kill had ever come across. The usual rules applied, turn your amp volumes down on stage, and let the sound guy adjust them thru the monitors and the house PA. We got set up, got our drinks and setlists in place and started in.
The on stage sound was awful. Our main vocalist and guitarist Scott West’s pleas to the sound guy for more vocals and guitar in the monitors went unanswered. In fact, the guy behind the sound didn’t even seem to notice. We are not prima donnas. We have played and rocked with some truly horrible sound, but the sound at Jules Maes doesn’t have to suck and the lack of response from the sound guy was almost surreal. Scott’s frustration grew quickly. We turned his guitar amp on stage up, that might have made it all worse, and his voice quickly wore out from having to yell just to hear anything from the monitors. The sound guy made several small adjustments, moving around a bit in the back of the room where the sound board was, but it was bad and it was hurting out performance. Frustrated, we called on a friend Paul Shrug who used to play with us to come up and sing a song off the set list. We butchered it, Paul was a good sport. The room was clearing out, our frustration showing. The sound guy was responding and even got up several times and left the room, going to the front of the bar for something.
A sparse crowd was left back there when we skipped several songs and I switched spots from drums to guitar with Scott to play several songs. I got going and it was actually worse that Scott had led me to believe. Between lyrics I yelled for the sound guy to adjust things, he stared at me blankly and when he got up and started walking towards the bar again is when I flipped out, set down the guitar in the middle of a song as the song broke apart, and went after the sound guy.
There wasn’t a bunch of crowd at that point to part, but a path opened between me and the sound guy, he saw me coming and got back up behind the sound board, placing the mixer between us. I was yelling obscenities at him and gesturing wildly with my arms. Rodeo Kill had quit, several member packing up their gear and heading out the door. Scott came out from behind the drums and met the sound guy on the floor as he finally got up the courage to get out of the sound booth and head towards the front of the bar, probably looking for safety.
Scott and I talked for a moment, also including some from the remaining crowd who found this outpouring of Rock ‘n’ Roll drama quite entertaining. After a bit, the sound guy returned and started rolling up the equipment on the stage.
I’m not sure all what was said. I know at one point he tried to blame us. I know at one point I was insulting his mother. I know the word Fuck was being used generously. I was fairly sure either Scott or I would end up hitting him. The sound guy did this weird thing was Scott was bent of picking up his pedals or cords where he stood over him. Scott quickly stood up and I was sure an assault charge was going to be filed.
Somehow it mellowed after a bit. Both Paul and Jerry Ziegler, drummer for Hartwood, were sure to express me it was one of the great rock and roll moments of recent history.
Within several days, I emailed both the bar manager and show promoter. Both explained that he wasn’t the usual sound engineer and they would take action. I never heard back and we’ve never been asked back.
I have been approached by people since then who have heard the story. In two cases, they heard it did result in punches being thrown, and I was congratulated on being such a badass. Sometimes the stories are better than the actual event.
This was written by our good friend, former bandmate, and occasional on stage guest, Paul Shrug, for our Year of The Steer record release. Lots has changed since May of 2007, but it captures the wonderful whiskey, BBQ and gun powder flavor of Rodeo Kill.
The story of Rodeo Kill is told in a vicious Western town, with scrawls of blood embedded against frontier fence posts, where trails are blazed by the zigzagging, unholy pilgrimages of bullets. The accounts of this town are retold in voices soaked in the smell of whiskey, cragged by lustful and careless living, pestered by the finality of judgment hovering over brothels and barrooms like an avenging, stumbling thunderstorm. But enough about Olympia.
In fact, the story of Rodeo Kill started a scant five years ago, when Ryan “RK Bronco” Leisinger and Scott “Colt Winchester” West had a crazy idea about bringing outlaw country into one of the most musically fertile little towns in America. The story culminates, for now, with the release of their first-ever full-length CD, Year Of the Steer. Along the way there are lots of outrageous tales of their own – however, we’re relieved to say, ones a lot less violent than our opening paragraph (though a couple lineup changes came close).
Leisinger and West had played together in various incarnations by the summer of 2002, and being creative musicians had often fantasized about forming offshoot bands with varying degrees of seriousness. One idea stuck to the gas station wall.
“At some point in 2001, I was ’sharing music’ on one of those peer to peer networks,” Leisinger says, “and I started downloading some of the classic country that I remembered hearing as kid — George Jones and Willie Nelson and such. Up to that point I would have said ‘I like all sorts of music, except country,’ but then I would have given a list of artists that I excused, like Johnny Cash and Willie. Honestly, I had never listened to country much, or even realized where bands like Wilco and the Drive By Truckers had taken country.
“And then I found David Allan Coe. I loved the songs and the attitude. Outlaw Country. I was a later comer to alt-country, but did my most to gather everything I could and really open up to the songs and the genre.”
As Leisinger spent time in West’s band, King Dinosaur – which included guitarist Mike Longmire and pianist Paul Pearson – he found himself considering the real possibilities of his idea. “Countless times, I’ve sat with friends and done the old ‘wouldn’t it be cool if we had a band that…’ This time, the dot-dot-dot was ‘play loud, revved-up country songs.’ This one took.”
Leisinger, West, Longmire, and Pearson therefore gathered in the spring of 2002, along with bassist Liv “The General” Johnson and fiddler Nerissa “Lil’ Fiddle” Raymond for the first of Rodeo Kill’s practice sessions. Unlike many other bands in town – whose ethic could be summed up as “two rehearsals and you’re a band” – Rodeo Kill spent a considerable amount of time practicing before taking it to the stage. For West, already an accomplished rock songwriter, this also meant learning the history of country and adapting his writing style for the new medium.
“I came from the perspective of RK Bronco, really,” West says. “I grew up hearing country music all the time; it was my parent’s preferred music. It was the 70’s so I heard all the Outlaw stuff of the time, Waylon and Willie and the one DAC song that got played on the radio, but I also heard stuff by George Jones and Merle Haggard and those guys. Of course I disdained it because I didn’t want to listen to stuff my parents liked. But it stuck with me. I never really had anything against it – I just didn’t pay much attention to it until we started the band. Now I see that there is some brilliant songwriting going on in that classic stuff.”
When it came to writing his own originals for Rodeo Kill – the first of which, roughly, was “Ghost Town” – West explains, “I had to really study it, actually. It was a totally alien way of writing songs as far as I was concerned. I come from a very ‘riff-oriented’ mode of song-writing. The ‘big guitar’ thing. I had to pay attention to the intricacies of how to make a three-chord song interesting.”
With West’s burgeoning new style, Leisinger originals like “Old Hank” and “Cattle Rustlers From the Sky,” and a spate of outlaw covers sung by West and Pearson (whose new handle, “Lum,” was the nickname one of his way-back Texas ancestors), Rodeo Kill hit the streets of the very indie-rock Olympia. Their easy-going, frequently wisecracking stage show and enthusiastic embrace of the country culture made them a unique presence in the bars of 4th Avenue.
To their modest surprise, Olympia embraced them right back. “If anything, Rodeo Kill was to be an affront to what I perceived as the ‘Olympia scene,’” Leisinger explains. “As Rodeo Kill played more shows and I met more people, I realized that Rodeo Kill was accepted and appreciated by a lot of the local bands and others in the music scene. By not wanting to fit in a scene, Rodeo Kill fit in and thrived.”
Rodeo Kill spent the next four years conquering what they could of the I-5 corridor, playing every juke joint and automotive-related function they could between Everett and Chehalis. West and Leisinger continued to bring their originals into the mix and developed their style.
Then came the lineup changes. Pearson and Raymond gave up full-time duty in 2004, and the conveyor belt of bassists finally slowed when West’s longtime friend Reverend Rif took up the four strings for good. Olivia Love, West’s now-wife, moved from being a featured guest singer to full-fledged member. For a time Kelly Smith was added on guitar, though he too has since hit the road.
In 2006 Rodeo Kill was finally ready to make their full recorded statement with Year Of the Steer.
“We recorded in Scott’s basement with help from our now ex-guitarist,” Leisinger says. “We started getting our stuff together last August, and we got set up and started to record tracks in October. We got the basic tracks down in a couple weeks and when it came to do overdubs, we had delay after delay. Finally, we got it all together and took it to Peter Jansen, who recorded our demo in October of 2003 and Scott’s King Dinosaur album to mix down. Scott did more guitar tracks, and we had Jon Merithew play some guitar on ‘Alien Harvest’ and ‘Cattle Rustlers,’ and Nerissa came in to lay down some fiddle tracks. Just lining our originals up, I was really happy with the story they told and how well they flowed together.”
The Rodeo Kill Express runs straight into the band’s adopted living room, Olympia’s Brotherhood Tavern, on May 20th. This special CD release party will feature the current core of Rodeo Kill at their peak, and guest appearances by Raymond (who works for the State), Merithew (who is one-half of Olympia’s C Average) and Pearson (who has a side career writing press releases for bands he may or may not have personal history with).
“There have been plenty of times it would have been easier to just call it quits, with all the lineup changes and other issues,” Leisinger muses. “For some reason we just keep going and I think that’s become one of Rodeo Kill’s strengths. It’s given Rodeo Kill a life of its own. We just keep rollin’.”
It’s Outlaw Music—a lonesome train-whistle in the mysterious midnight or the hungry yelp of a wandering coyote. It’s sittin’ on the porch with your boots up on the rail, watching the sky turn red as the sun sets behind the dark, lonesome pines. Slithering swamp music, like some impossibly big reptile crawled out of the muck and sat on your head. Revved-up country—limited only by the highest number on the amplifier’s volume knob. Come for the rocking music, stay for the stories: there are ghosts here—sometimes a whole town full of ‘em. Pick-up trucks race trains and dodge possums at 3 a.m. for no good reason. Couples flee the Northwest for the flatlands of Texas in the hopes of saving their tempestuous, ill-fated relationships. Rodeo Clowns contemplate the meaning of life and love while staring drunken and bleary-eyed into the snorting, horned face of their own mortality. There are strange lights in the sky; little gray men; mutilated livestock. God and Satan make appearances—but, more importantly, so do Johnny, June, Waylon and Hank Williams. Misunderstandings sometimes lead to violent confrontation but could just as easily result in leaving the bar with some girl on your arm, even if you’re not sure of her name. And remember, even if Heaven is in your backyard, Hell’s always only a heartbreak away.
There is dirt and blood in the hard and calloused furrows of Rodeo Kill’s collective palm. The bodies of those who couldn’t survive lie behind them, vultures casting an indifferent eye on their unpicked bones. It’s hard work blazing new trails across uncharted territory…
