Things I'd Rather Be Doing - 3.12.2007

Monday Interview: Matthew Grimm

Matthew Grimm is a man with strong convictions who is not at all afraid to convey them to any and all in the most strident way possible. Lucky for us, he has a knack for couching those convictions in blazingly rocking, insistently catchy songs.

I first got to know Grimm, an Eastern Iowa native, when I was working for a daily paper up the road from Iowa City and he was fronting the Hangdogs. The band, a spunky little roots rock combo based in New York City, was touring, and he was looking for some coverage from the local press. I obliged, and we became acquainted. The band toured again, we talked more, and when Grimm moved back to Iowa to be closer to his family, we kept in touch.

Along the way he shed the ’Dogs, took some tentative steps toward establishing a solo career, and finally found his footing fronting a new group, the Red Smear. While his work with the Hangdogs always had a left-leaning political undercurrent – the group’s last disc was the Henry Wallace homage Wallace ’48 – he jumped fully into the deep end of the pool with this new combo, writing his most pointed and direct songs yet.

The results were issued last year on the self-released Dawn’s Early Apocalypse. I’ve always contended that those who complain about the man not recognizing the quality of their music simply fail to realize that their music isn’t very good. Grimm turns that idea on its head. He has a long list of labels who passed on this disc, and that’s a head-scratcher, as this Pete Anderson-produced gem is full of solid, slightly twangy rock ’n’ roll songs that are instantly engaging while still having something to say. Perhaps it is that last descriptor that tells the tale.

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE.

AmericanaUK
A voice of dissent from the mean streets of, er, Iowa.
by Patrick Wilkins
Feb 1, 2007
Matthew Grimm was formerly the leader of New York’s Hangdogs, but has scuttled out of the Big Apple to darkest Iowa for the making of this record, his first since the dissolution of the band. It’s generally in the territory of a hard drinking, foul mouthed (check out track 10 with caution!), angry ex punker playing country rock. Some production and playing duties are handled by Pete Anderson, best known for his association with Dwight Yoakam, a further clue to the direction of the record. It’s also fair to say Matthew Grimm is less than happy with the current US administration, and considers himself something of a thorn in the side of all things Dubya, the press release even claims the band’s phone calls and e-mails are monitored by government bodies, the album artwork reflects this ‘danger to national security’ position with a prominent ‘Quarantined Material’ stamp. In addition the band website has a highly amusing ‘hate mail’ section! After that lead in, the music sounds a little less threatening than you might expect, Grimm’s voice is reminiscent of a rawer Michael Stipe, and some of the backing calls to mind REM too, particularly on ‘Armies Of The Lost’. The styles range from such southern jangly rock, to folky Dylan/Guthrie protest singer, to out and out stompers, so if that sounds like a description of a less twangy Steve Earle, that’s about right. Overall it’s an enjoyable and mostly uptempo romp well played by a bunch of old stagers who know their way around.

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
Waging Peace
“Stop the War: Words and Music”
By Michael Gillespie
January/February 2007
JUST TWO DAYS before the mid-term elections—and perhaps for the first time since the Vietnam War—Iowa musicians and anti-war activists joined forces at a Nov. 4 event, at the Ritual Cafe in Des Moines, called “Stop the War: Words and Music” to bring protest music to the forefront of the anti-war movement in Iowa.

“Brian Joens, a local musician here in Des Moines, had the idea for this concert,” said event organizer and activist Jamie Woodson. “We’re here to express our discontent with our government’s policies and the war in Iraq.”

Des Moines-based guitarist and singer-songwriter Brad Roth led off the evening with a mix of songs including traditional anti-war ballads. Frank Cordaro, a leader in the Catholic Worker community, then spoke about the history and principles of Catholic Worker activism. Warning against the dangers of empire building, Cordaro castigated the architects of America’s war in Iraq. “If the truth meant anything at all,” he said, “we wouldn’t have got in the war in the first place.”

Iowa native Matthew Grimm’s band, Matthew Grimm and the Red Smear, has a new CD titled “Dawn’s Early Apocalypse.” Grimm described the war in Iraq as “a war of privilege and fiat, rather than the schoolbook notions that we were taught about our republic, which is a government answerable to its people. It is a war of the privileged against the weak, and it is a war for the profits of the privileged.”

Joens, who plays guitar and writes his own songs, says he sees a larger role for music in Iowa’s anti-war movement. Saying he sees the “Stop the War: Words and Music” event as a beginning, Joens explained modestly, “I just wanted to make a start.”

Also appearing were hip-hop artist Aeon Grey and singer-songwriter Andy Fleming, front man for the popular Des Moines roots rock band Brother Trucker.

TWANGVILLE.com
Mayer’s Picks from 2006: The Songs
Nothing to Say/Kill the Poor, Matthew Grimm Grimm is one of the sharpest lyricists around, equally adept with a semi-love song (“And If I was a better man I’d take the time to try to see what it is that makes me worthy of what you see in me.”) as he is with his political rants (“Mall of america, pristine and sterilized. And woe to those who can’t afford the price.”) Best of all, Grimm writes heartland rockers like no other.

THE NEW YORK POST
Playlist by Mary Huhn
Oct. 27, 2006
Matthew Grimm and the Red Smear are back again from Iowa, where the lovable lefty continues to write and rock after leaving the Hangdogs behind in our fair city.
Grimm and company perform at the Rodeo Bar (375 Third Ave.; [212] 683-6500) and you can expect another Hangdogs roots 'n' rock reunion - which was so wonderful earlier this year that Playlist went home and played "Hey Janeane" and "I'd Call to Say I Love You (But I Don't No More)" all weekend.
It's a crowded house, so get there early (myspace.redsmear).

The Pitch (Kansas City) Aug 24, 2006
By Mike Warren
Iowa City native Matt Grimm hates a lot of things — HMOs, corporate music and sterile suburbia, for starters. (He shares both rage and a song title, "Kill the Poor," with the Dead Kennedys.) Still, with echoes of his last band, the Hangdogs (potent but less angry roots rockers), still lingering, his protests march down dusty rural roads. Even while promoting frantic sexual activity (something he doesn't hate) as a way to get through the day, Grimm suggests consummation in abandoned picnic areas, just off the blue highways. In a death-defying feat of linguistics, Grimm's Red Smear tag winds up working as both a roadkill-possum reference and a defiant leftist banner waving in the Midwestern breeze.

DOWN WITH TYRANNY July 22, 2006
If you haven't heard of Matthew Grimm and The Red Smear, you're missing a great band, sort of a cross between the Clash and Wilco. They're Iowa's best rock'n'roll band-- intense, melodic and political . . .

AllMusic.com, June 30, 2006
Review by Greg Prato
Nowadays, it seems like there's more and more rockers that can't make up their mind if they're roots rockers or punk rockers. And Matthew Grimm is certainly one of these gentlemen. Formerly the frontman of the obscure New York act the Hangdogs, Grimm relocated to the state best known for spawning Slipknot and John Wayne -- Iowa -- and got to work on his solo debut. But Grimm doesn't go at it alone on 2006's ‘Dawn's Early Apocalypse', as he receives aid from renowned roots rock producer Pete Anderson (who has worked with everyone from Dwight Yoakam to the Meat Puppets), and a supporting cast of musicians that have also worked with varied acts. Judging from the lyrics and album cover, it takes little time to realize that Grimm is a proud American, yet is not content with the country's current state. The album's true opener, "Kill the Poor," is not a cover of the infamous Dead Kennedys song of the same name, but rather a pop-punk original that sounds not too far removed from the Warped Tour set. But Grimm proves that he's no one-trick pony, as evidenced by the rootsy "Slut," country-ish "St. Booze," and the bare bones rocker "Honea Path." Think Ryan Adams and the Jayhawks, and you're not far off from ‘Dawn's Early Apocalypse.'

IOWA CITY PRESS-CITIZEN Thursday, June 22, 2006
Grimm Reality
Raised in Iowa's Cedar County, iconoclastic singer/songwriter Matthew Grimm cut his musical teeth with New York City's The Hangdogs. A gnarly, alt-rock/country crew of contrary left-fielders, The 'Dogs released five wonderful discs in between gin-soaked tours before family concerns brought Grimm back to the Midwest.

Produced last year by Pete Anderson (Dwight Yoakam), "Dawn's Early Apocalypse" finds Grimm continuing to apply his earnest, reedy voice, rapier wit, unsinkable tunefulness and -- be forewarned -- longshoreman's vocabulary to his work with his new mates, the Red Smear.

By no means subtle, the singer swings -- sometimes wildly -- at hypocrisy ("Christian"), social negligence/injustice ("Kill the Poor"), teenage peer cruelty ("Slut"), vapid pop culture, shameless marketing ploys, alcohol, splintered notions of patriotism ("Armies of the Lost") and, on the incongruously peppy "Hey, Hitler!," a New World Order gone terribly wrong.

Ranging from acrid sarcasm to a palpable sense of heartbreak and loss, "...Apocalypse" is not an easy ride, nor was it intended to be.

Still, the hits far outnumber the misses, and Grimm merits serious props for his commitment and audacity. —Jim Musser

SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS, MAY 12, 2006
Night After Night
When it comes to using lyrics and Web-site writings to take on right-wing politicians, the religious right, the mainstream media and others who raise his ire, Grimm has few peers. Smart and literate (a dangerous combination), Grimm also knows how to rock and twang with abandon -- an even more dangerous combination. The former leader of the New York City country band the Hangdogs, based in Iowa, Grimm and the Red Smear are on their first tour of Texas behind a raw and rowdy CD, "Dawn's Early Apocalypse." With songs such as "Kill the Poor," "St. Booze," "Armies of the Lost," "Hey, Hitler!" and others whose titles won't fly in the mainstream media, Grimm and the Smear, former Hangdogs Mick Hargreaves (bass) and Dave Stengel (drums) plus Matt Azzarto (lead guitar), stage a frontal assault on the status quo -- and do so with backbeat that won't quit.

NEVADA SAGEBRUSH, MAY 9, 2006
Angry rock hates most of society, supports socialism
By Nick Coltrain
Fighting "the man," advocating lower classes and a celebration of the finer things, like sex and booze, accurately describes Matthew Grimm and the Red Smear's first album "Dawn's Early Apocalypse," a 38-minute excursion into angry Marxist ideologies.

Track names such as "Slut" and "Hey, Hitler" immediately give the listener an idea of what to expect before they play the CD and the lyrics don't disappoint in this regard.

The surprise comes when instead of hearing roaring guitars and yelling voices, a steady rhythm of country-styled vocals pours from the speakers. Even the harder and faster tracks are more like Counting Crows than Dead Kennedys.

While the not-quite-rock-and-not-quite-country method doesn't get Grimm's point across better than the more atypical outright-rage method used with punk rock, it does separate Grimm from the herd.

The sound can draw in anyone without worries of offending them but when they hear the satirical opening "Kill the Poor" saying genocide of the lower classes is the only path to a utopia, a few of the stauncher conservatives may choose to leave the room.

Like with most bands to the left of Jimmy Carter, the music doesn't push the songs, the message does. Grimm sings about battles lost to the upper-class and a lower-class depression caused by trickle-down economics.

And he blames everything from the news media to police officers, to the rich and the politicians - typical cannon fodder for left-wing rage.

The message is solid throughout the disc but actual song quality varies. He throws in an anti-love love song that's just boring and the final track "Thanks" contains about six minutes of silence.

Furthermore, the message isn't strong enough to push a musically unexciting CD. Every song starts to sound like bragging about how anti-everything Grimm is, which damages how long a CD remains listenable.

In the end, the most redeeming quality of the CD is how it breaks the stereotype of what messages are associated with what sounds to finally do something new.

If you can find this independent release and you agree with resigned Marxists ideologies, it will make an interesting addition to your collection, but don't expect to listen to it every day.

IOWA CITY PRESS-CITIZEN Thursday, April 13, 2006
Stanhope to paint The Mill blue
Comics, musicians to share stage
Jim Musser
Music Beat
OK, I know stand-up comedy is not music, but as one of the most demanding and difficult avenues in the entertainment world, stand-up requires a similar artist-audience chemistry while depending on a jazz-like sense of timing, dynamic range, command of material and use of space to succeed.

Comics and musicians have shared stages and tours since well before the days of vaudeville, and this Saturday evening, The Mill will offer a superb, blue-tinged pairing as flinty, acerbic rockers Matthew Grimm & The Red Smear open for high-octane, below-the-belt comic Doug Stanhope.

Like most in his field, Stanhope has taken a long route to his current, highly-visible standing in the comedy community. Known for a blistering wit, raunchy, anything-goes subject matter and withering commentaries on society, pop culture and politics, the comedian began his career in 1990, but labored in relative obscurity until the past five or six years or so.

He's been co-host of the second incarnation of Comedy Central's bawdy, testosterone-soaked send-up, "The Man Show," can be seen shamelessly huckstering the "pseudo-porn for the sexually crippled" (his description) "Girls Gone Wild" video series on late-night cable and has appeared on "The Howard Stern Show," "Comedy Central Presents," "Premium Blend," "The Jerry Springer Show" and even "Fox News with Greta Van Sustern."

Throw in guest slots on various celebrity roasts and an unforgettable turn in Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza's landmark, over-the-top documentary "The Aristocrats" (about the "world's dirtiest joke") in 2005, and you should be getting the picture here: Stanhope's brand of humor is not for the timid or easily offended, and, once heard, his language and graphic imagery cannot be scrubbed from your brain pan without the long, dedicated help of highly-paid professionals.

Matthew Grimm & The Red Smear have just completed their first disc ("Dawn's Early Apocalypse" on Grimm Reality Records), and it's due in stores within the next month or so. Like Grimm's several discs with NYC's The Hangdogs, The Red Smear delivers powerhouse rock 'n' pop with an aggressive, far-left political stance mixed with ribald, beer-snorking broadsides at socio-cultural targets.

Not surprisingly, Grimm and Stanhope are old friends and mutual admirers. They'll take their turns rounding up and slaughtering sacred cows beginning at 9 p.m. ($8/$10 ages 19-20).

PULSE OF THE TWIN CITIES, NOV 2, 2005
’round the dial: Grimm-lock Smash
by Tom Hallett
I went to a Halloween party the other night—a tossed-off affair thrown by a friendly, albeit terrifying-looking gaggle of thrash metal kids, Goth rejects and fire-obsessed social misfits—and boy, did I get an eyeful! There were bloody Living Dead Girls, seven-foot tall hunchbacks with shrunken heads, demonically possessed, sex-obsessed Catholic school chicks, half of the Village People (I couldn’t tell whether they were supposed to be the living or the dead half), a backwater Elvis, three Killer Klownz, an evil jester, an escaped convict replete with ball and chain, what could only have been two members of Gwar and some crazy bastard dressed as a priest who super-glued two five-inch high deer horns to his forehead. Me, I just wore the wristband I’d gotten at a previous night’s rock show and claimed to be an escaped mental patient. Not a real stretch, at any rate. But the most over-the-top, frightening, stomach-churning outfit at that party wasn’t a movie monster, or an outlaw, or a fool, or a rock star, or a madman, or a twisted religious icon—it was a caricature of a man who embodies all of those distinct personas and more, and yet is the most fearsome of all precisely because he possesses the rare quality of playing many roles while having no apparent personality or actual persona of his own.

I’m talking, of course, about the guy wearing the natty three-piece suit (was the mustard stain on the tie deliberate? If so, stroke of genius, man!) and the George W. Bush mask.

Time and again, as the evening wore on, I caught myself physically jumping—spilling precious beer down the front of my shirt—and shaking my head as I’d catch sight of that faux lil’ Geo schlumping his merry way around the fringes of the party. Like his namesake, he had an astute knack for a social gaffe (roundly—and loudly—castigating the Catholic religion for pagan-like practices while winking at one of the hollow-eyed hotties in school girl outfits), reneging on deals made (sample line: “Well, why should I throw in on the joint when everybody else already has? I’ll roll one of mine later!”) and stirring up trouble where he could’ve just as easily made peace (“Hey Bob! Snagglepuss just stole your beer! Heh! Heh!”). But it was mostly the face, man—that face reminding me at every turn, every corner-of-the-eye glimpse, every twist of the neck, that we were only temporarily hiding from real Fear with our night of ha-ha haunting.

Maybe that’s why, when I got home late that night, I spent two solid hours listening to a 45-minute album by some relative unknown from Iowa. And maybe that’s why I felt an urgent need to get up the next morning and check out every non-Right Wing news source so I could to get a handle on the current fall-out affecting the real George’s house of cards in D.C. Now that the momentary distraction of Halloween is over, it’s time to get down to the dirty task of unmasking some of the shadowy, money-hungry wolves who’ve been systematically draining this country of hope, light and love and filling it back up at an alarming rate with fear, darkness and hatred.

And maybe that’s why I think it’s important that voices like that cat from Iowa’s be given the chance to shout their ideals and beliefs just as loudly and emphatically as those spin-doctors in silk suits are. So in the interests of fair play and equal time, here’s a voice you should have the opportunity to hear, and an album that should be allowed to breathe, and speak, and ring out like the very bells of freedom those soul-snatchers at the top are so eager to muffle with terror level reports, fear-mongering news stories and ridiculous platitudes. Take it away, Brother Grimm...

Matthew Grimm & The Red Smear
Dawn’s Early Apocalypse
2005
Self-Released

Like the venerable yarn spinners who share his last name, Matthew Grimm utilizes common, everyday situations to bolster the effectiveness of his personal tales of terror and injustice in a world that’s already become horrific enough to no longer need fairy tales. The erstwhile Hangdogs front man focuses on social inequality, political subterfuge and general apathy as his main antagonists, while Joe and Jane Sixpack, their kids, and the few teachers, cops and politicos left who might harbor a modicum of decency stand as weary, bloodied protagonists.

Grimm has relocated from New York to his native Iowa, where he’s put together a growling, hungry beast of a band (Eric Straumanis on bass, Jason Berge on guitar and Matt Winegardner on drums) and amped up his former country-rock groove into an angry, punk-y melange of spitting guitars, throbbing bass and pounding, martial rhythms. One might assume that finding a sympathetic audience for political rants, social battle cries, and economic doom-spouting would be an easier row to hoe in the Big Apple, but Grimm, to his credit, realized what so many preachers and would-be holy men haven’t—that there’s no real point in preaching to the converted.

Dawn’s Early Apocalypse, while not entirely consisting of such subject matter (there is the it’s-almost-a-love-song, Phil Spector-ish “Slut,” with swooning, sweet-talkin’ lines like “You’re a slut, so what of it/ School days end, and none of them mean shit.” Ditto “Nothing To Say,” which finds Grimm pouring his heart out to his beloved via proclamations like “You know all those pretty words you waited for ... You won’t hear them from me/ I’m insensitive, surly, full of liquor, wings and rage.”), generally builds its base on those confrontational blocks.

Kicking off with the infectious, jangly “Kill The Poor,” Grimm lets it be known right out of the gate where he stands on the current state of the union: “So you wear the vestments of ill-gotten legacy/ Bankrolled by CEOs, endowed by Christian destiny/ Give us empty words and flags to rally round/ But the rest of it don’t seem to trickle down ... Kill the poor ...” This track is so righteous, so on-the-money, and so in-your-face, that it’s no wonder this guy can’t find a label (even, as his press kit so astutely points out, among the so-called “leftist, indie labels” of this country) with the cojones to put it out. Shame, shame, shame. Hello, Steve Earle, what were you saying about “The Revolution Starts Now”? Ahem.

“Honea Path” documents a little-known, small-town strike from days bygone, and calls to task both the industrialists who chewed up and spit out the poor and barely educated workers as well as the unions who used them to gain power and prestige along the way: “Way down here in the land of cotton/ We once dared to dream of fair work for fair pay/ But our brothers they shot us and history forgot us/ So look away, Dixieland, look away.” A working-class anthem every bit as powerful as Uncle Tupelo’s rendition of “Coalminers,” this cut not only captures the pain and suffering of a lost moment in American history, but also points to Grimm’s knowledge of, and dedication to, the causes he believes in.

There’s no cutting corners here, no namby-pamby sparing of PC feelings, no slack for the lords of injustice and the purveyors of hatred, intolerance and greed. “Hey Hitler” is an open letter to the late mass-murderer himself, as Grimm sarcastically thanks him out of the side of his mouth: “Hey Hitler ... if there’s a Hell you’re burning like a million white-hot suns/ But take some balm in PR people, country clubs and patriots with guns.” “Armies Of The Lost” takes to task the cops, news reporters and lackadaisical parents of today; “One To Grow On” is directed at the lost offspring of those aforementioned, spin-blinded citizens: “Your parents might try but are mostly wrong/ Make stuff up as they go along/ You shouldn’t even trust this song/ ’Cause everything I know is wrong.”

“St. Booze” calls upon the numbing spirits to provide relief from the here and now, and is the closest thing here to the old Hangdogs groove on this raucous collection. Over a weeping roadhouse shuffle, Grimm laments the state of the world while trying to coax some respite out of a bottle: “St. Booze, we come unto thy altar humble/ Bearing sorrow sin, and nothing left to lose/ Bless this water into beer, wash away our pain and fear/ And deliver us from here, St. Booze.”

“Thanks” could be an alternate-universe Drive-By Truckers tune; a bitter, dead-tired response to those über-patriots who claim that this country is in the shape it is because of the current generation, and not the actions of those who came before: “Don’t get me wrong/ I know you done your time/ From Inchon to Khe Sanh to the Quaker Oats line ... so with this beer hoisted, allow me to offer some gratitude long overdue ... Thanks for the culture of thought sanitized/ By Christians and bigots and Reaganites/ Thanks for your silence as witch hunts and red squads/ Dragged down your neighbors like dogs/ Thanks for the Cold War and COINTELPRO/ For Vietnam, nukes and talk radio ... Thanks for abandoning all you taught/ About fair play and freedom of speech and of thought/ For this world of shit/W e inherit from stewards/ Who couldn’t be bothered to think for themselves.”

Grimm doesn’t pretend to offer a passel of solutions to the problems he points out on this record. For that—and some of his finer rants—you should surf over to RedSmear.com and check out the band’s official site. There, you can read some of the incredible hate mail his views have garnered from so-called “real Americans,” as well as his own insightful replies, and pick up copies of this record, homegrown art and mp3s.

Me, I’m gonna play the hell outta this stuff, stick it on mix CDs, blast it on my radio program, rock the tavern on my weekly DJ night and force every hard-working, beer-guzzling, non-voting dumbass friend I have to listen to every word of it. Until I hear stuff like this rammed down my ear-holes as fervently and repetitively as I currently do “patriotic” pabulum like Toby Keith, Pat Robertson and Bill O’ Fucking Reilly, I’ll consider it my duty as a proud, practicing, rock ‘n’ roll preachin’ American to present the other side of the coin. One who has the right to decide which side of an issue I’m on without being called a traitor. One who has the right to share those views with others, both those who agree and those who don’t. And one who won’t be remembered as just standing idly by as the disciples of the almighty dollar and the dogs of war lapped up the last remnants of freedom, truth and integrity this country had left.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you all with a word from a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool American, the late, great Bill Hicks: “I think the puppet on the Right shares my beliefs! I think the puppet on the Left is more to my liking! Hey, wait a minute! There’s one guy holding up both puppets! Shut up! Go back to bed, America, your government is in control!” Until we meet again — make your own damn news.

THE DES MOINES REGISTER, TWANGFEST PREVIEW, JULY 14 2005
Matthew Grimm & the Red Smear
"Dawn's Early Apocalypse"
(self-released)
***
The best songs from this Iowa City-based crew, such as "Kill the Poor" and "Hey, Hitler!" (an insanely catchy cautionary tale that would make Steve Earle smile), marry leftist rants to gutsy roots rock.

PLAYBACK ST. LOUIS, TWANGFEST PREVIEW, JUNE 2005
By Bryan Hollerbach

Twangfest, Friday, June 10, Duck Room
Matthew Grimm & The Red Smear. With song titles like "Kill the Poor," "Slut," and "Hey, Hitler!" and a press kit one page of which focuses solely, if jocularly, on disclaimers, Dawn’s Early Apocalypse might tempt the unwary to picture its creators, Matthew Grimm & The Red Smear, as latter-day punks, long on attitude and short on polish—an assessment both entirely right and entirely wrong. ’Tude certainly permeates the ten-track disc in question, currently extant only as a pre-master advance CD, but it scarcely qualifies as a DIY goof. An Iowa City resident who previously co-founded New York roots rockers The Hangdogs, Grimm sounds something like Michael Stipe and writes electric lyrics by turns gloriously polemical and profane. ("I’m not as cute as the other guys," he assures an interlocutor on the hilariously prurient track that provides the disc’s title, "but I know my way around your thighs.") The Red Smear, meanwhile, constitutes a mutable cast of thugs and hooligans intent on aural vandalism. The smart money’s on this act as the festival’s sleeper.

PLAYBACK Q&A with MATTHEW, JUNE 2005 In one of those cheap ironies so beloved of music writers and other parasites, Matt Grimm once fronted a New York foursome named The Hangdogs even though there’s absolutely nothing hangdog (in the sense of "sheepish") about his music. Now relocated from the Big Apple to Iowa City, Grimm’s leading a musical collective called The Red Smear and shopping an impressively angry and assured ten-track disc entitled Dawn’s Early Apocalypse.

How would you describe working with a master musician like Pete Anderson, who co-produced Dawn’s Early Apocalypse and who will take the stage at T9 with Moot Davis and The Cool Deal two sets after yours?

What, once you get past the starry-eyed, holy-shit aspects? I get a sense Pete does what he wants these days and has earned the privilege, and he knows everybody he needs to get good work done per any particular project, so there was really a no-pressure, no-bullshit environment. He tells stories like a pro and laughed at my darkest jokes. And don’t get me wrong, I worked my ass off, but he was all about "having fun" doing it. Plus, we both know NBA ball pretty exhaustively, so my deer-in-headlights shit dissipated pretty easily. I had some well-formed ideas about most of the arrangements and the overall sound, and Pete and Peter Lubin, who co-produced and is my—well, he’s not really my manager, per se, since I don’t pay him ’cause you can’t get blood from an exsanguinated corpse, but we keep calling him "this guy I know"—these guys translated what was in my head fluently into orchestration and technology. And where particular songs were a little less shaped, Pete might hear them in a way I didn’t and say, "Try this," and, bang, wow, the "creative process" works. Go fucking figure. About as rewarding two weeks, in terms of ideas, learning, and overall output, as I’ve ever experienced.

"I still write better hooks than most of the cockblockers actually making a living at this crap," notes your press kit. Based on Dawn’s Early Apocalypse, that seems an accurate (if immodest) proposition. That said, who would you name as your main influences as a songwriter—and why?

Well, first, thanks for lying to mitigate my assholery. Second, Bill Hicks and Doug Stanhope probably inspired me more than anyone to just call bullshit on bullshit—quit trying to play nice inside the lines of a conventional wisdom that is inevitably, deliberately fucked and wrong—but they’re comedians, so it doesn’t really get to the "hook" thing. So, third, I guess I’d say Dave Alvin, Mike Ness, Kay Hanley and Mike Eisenstein, Jim Weatherly, I don’t know, hell, I even got wood over a couple Good Charlotte songs. Why? Fuck, who knows? Influence is all a barrel of monkeys, who knows which ones you’re gonna draw out with this particular song as it comes out of your hungover brain. Dave Alvin wrote heartrending, smart lyrics set to just absolutely the perfect chord progressions for each mood or story. Mike Ness wrote simple chord progressions, sometimes simplistic lyrics, but delivered them like a pissed-off mailman with a rage carbine, which made the songs perfect. Hanley and Eisenstein wrote dazzling hooks and arranged them all with this utterly disarming combo of punk and pop. I like that because, while Letters to Cleo didn’t really break big, they did well enough to keep this notion of pop-rock alive, not pop that’s rocky, but rock that’s popular, at least relatively. Even more so with Ness today, that amazing Social D record that came out last year. People today need a few cuss words laced into a wall of big fat distorted guitars, the same way they need to get drunk on a regular basis, to fuck up their notions about polite society and let them see that a better world is right here if they’d only stop listening to assholes in suits.

What specifically inspired "Honea Path," a lovely, poignant song about long-standing labor-management clashes in the South, which both complements and counterpoises the more raucous "Kill the Poor"?

That’s a real story. Honea Path, S.C., is there on the map—which I heard somewhere, and I don’t remember where anymore, but you can’t swing a dead cat in my apartment without hitting some book or documentary full of godawful stories of people trying to improve their lives and getting fucked for it. To which point, it also gave me a subtle entrée into the notion of the institutional rebel and the cultural primacy still given that odious fucking Stars and Bars flag. Wee-hoo, ain’t I a rebel, hooting it up at Toby Keith, telling everybody to conform or die, or fighting for states’ rights, notably the right of states to be run by a feudal master race who treat me only slightly less like a serf than my darker-skinned neighbor. Same thing in the Jim Crow days, same thing to a degree today, all these linguistic, quasi-legalistic tools to keep the lower classes squabbling amongst each other for the kibble from the manor house instead of getting together burning the fucking thing to the ground. No such thing as a "rebel" giving unquestioning fealty to the Man, which is the story of Honea Path and a lot of textile towns in the South. What happened was, when they passed the Wagner Act, some union people went into the South and tried to organize all these sweatshops, which appealed to a lot of people because they were working in fucking sweatshops. The Chiquola Mills workers in Honea Path joined the big General Textile Strike in 1934, and the company brought in goons and scabs. But this is a little town, so these people more often than not know the people whose jobs they’re taking and who they’re pointing guns at, and in some cases were related. The flare-up was an old story. Somebody sees a gun on the pickets, somebody shoots, and it’s all the workers’ fault—but of course, when the smoke clears, there’s seven dead on the union side. And how I heard the story, what made it a song for me, was that people from the same families, who’d been on different sides or whose parents or grandparents had, still don’t speak to each other even living in the same little town. All over whether or not somebody gets an eight-hour day and a buck more an hour.

If (in some science fictional scenario) you could split a six-pack with George W. Bush, what would you say to him, given the liberal acerbity of much of the material on Dawn’s Early Apocalypse?

What the hell kind of question is that? What would I say to Stalin during the 1934 purge? "Dude, don’t you think you’re being a little paranoid?" Look, I think most people have chances at real redemption, with their cute little billion-year-old superstitions or just making decent lives out of the shit they’ve been dealt. But once you’ve lied to the world to take up the Ninth Crusade and killed and sanctioned torture in Jesus’ and your capitalist buddies’ names, you’re pretty much past my capacity to forgive, much less gab with diplomatically. You want my tax money to what, now? Oh, to write blank checks to every laissez-faire capitalist cocksucker who wants to ship a boatload of dough off to the Caymans, mainline toxins into the air, make a profit selling $500 doses to a hundred million AIDS victims in Africa, and farm out textile jobs to slave labor in China, and back up your God-given mandate to do so with Joe Shavetail with an AR-15 and nightvision goggles who just wanted a free electronics education? Good plan. Way to not make the world hate the fuck out of us that much more. I mean, I could try that approach. But, see, reason doesn’t speak to dogmatists, because dogma, of its nature, occludes reason. You’re talking about a Harvard MBA who thinks poor people are poor because they’re lazy and who venerates the wealthy when the God he so often invokes explicitly forbade usury and considered wealth a mark of apostasy, so I’m not sure how much actual discourse I might expect from this hypothetical meeting. It’d be like trying to teach a dog physics—well, at least before it’s outlawed.

Inasmuch as your press kit subtly touts your skills with the appetizer, it seems not only fair but advisable to ask this: what’s the secret to making top-notch Buffalo wings?

Love, margarine, and habanero sauce. Which, by the way, is also the secret to a great relationship. Thank you—I’m here all week!

From Wednesday, April 21, 2004's Live Nude Weblog
[via Minneapolis CityPages]
By Paul Demko

Hangdogs R.I.P.
The Hangdogs, one of my favorite country-rock groups of recent years, have called it quits, at least temporarily. (The good news is that the bilious, hilarious Hangdoggerel newsletter will continue.)

I first became aware of the 'Dogs when I was an intern at New York Press in the mid-90's. The band's drummer, Kevin Baier, preceded me as an unpaid laborer at the paper and was then overseeing the personal ads. The Hangdogs had just self-released (or were about to anyway) their remarkable debut EP, Same Old Story and were gigging regularly at the Rodeo Bar and the Mercury Lounge.

In their decade or so of existence, the band released five albums and recorded at least two songs that will forever be on my personal permanent playlist. "Monopoly on the Blues" is the heartbreaking tale of the death of lead singer and chief songwriter Matthew Grimm's hometown of Stanwood, Iowa. The song's lyrics encapsulate the fate of so many small Midwestern towns with stark precision:

And the Legionaires come around Wednesday nights since the Legion Hall burnt down
And we hear about their wives and wars and buy em a couple rounds
And on Friday nights the farmers sit and bitch about the drought
They been bitching here forever, now they're talkin 'bout selling out

"Hey, Janeane" is a different monster altogether. Ostensibly a peon to the actress (it opens with Garofolo cackling), it's really about grim disillusionment with the world--a omnipresent theme for the 'Dogs. This line pretty much sums up their world view: "Well I realized you were the girl of my dreams, or close enough, when I realized that neither of us had a dream left to speak of." Grimm delivers the vocals with sneering, nasally aplomb, while Baier and crackerjack guitarist Automatic Slim lay down a rollicking backdrop.

In recent years, the Hangdogs have become more stridently political. (One of my favorite pieces of clothing is a Nader t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan "I lived through an era of 'unparalleled prosperity' and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" that the 'Dogs pedaled at shows during the 2000 campaign.) Their most recent album, Wallace '48, was named in honor of the late vice president and Progressive Party standard bearer. (I did a Q&A with Grimm last year when the album came out.)

Grimm has returned to Iowa to deal with "family issues." He's playing some solo shows locally and writing new material. In fact, when I emailed him to see if he had any plans to play the Twin Cities (for now, the answer is no) Grimm requested some advice on naming a recent song.

I just wrote a song whose refrain is "We'll fuck fuck fuck till the dawn's early apocalypse"
do i call the song "Fuck Fuck Fuck" or "Dawn's Early Apocalypse"?