Wicked
Messengers: The Bio
Click here to Check out tracks from "HeadTwangers Ball"
The idea of a “little ol’ honky-tonk band” from New York City sounds like
an oxymoron, but the truth is that playing ‘alternative country’ in NYC really is
alternative: It’s not widely accepted, picked up from your poor
sharecropper family or heard on the radio. Country music around these parts has
to be something actively sought out - music you’re absolutely driven to learn
about, play and/or listen to.
Now comes Wicked Messengers and their toe-tapping
contribution to the New Americana genre - HeadTwangers Ball. Word
is already spreading about the band, which has opened for Rosie Flores, Sara
Evans, Bill Kirchen & Too Much Fun and Highway 101. As The Twanglers, they
supported artists ranging from Junior Brown and Boozoo Chavis to Beat Farmers
and Blue Chieftains featuring Tim Carroll. HeadTwangers Ball
continues the welcome twist on country tradition that the group, as members of
The Twanglers and 5 Chinese Brothers, sparked with the groundbreaking first Rig
Rock compilation on Diesel Only.
In a Pulse Magazine story (“alt.country Gazette: How No
Depression magazine forged a symbiotic relationship with the alternative
country movement”), Grant Alden (No Depression co-editor/founder) noted
that “the genre began to crystallize as a result of several compilation records
[including] ‘the Rig Rock records…I was suddenly being introduced to all of
these bands that I had never heard of before…It was like, you know, there’s a
world out here.’”
According to Alan Lee Backer
(singer/guitarist/songwriter), “What we do is something we call ‘citybilly,’
developed by cross-pollinating influences from other eras and geographic
regions. Mix some bluegrass, country, rockabilly, Memphis soul and deep-fried
Southern rock with Texas blues and the Southwestern singer-songwriter
tradition…throw in some 60’s rock out of L.A. and San Francisco; add a soupcon
of British Invasion and a dollop of 70s New Wave, cross with L.A. country-rock
(as well as the Bakersfield sound, exemplified by Buck and Merle) and top it
off with some Springsteen, CBGB punk and N.Y. Top 40 and free-form FM radio.”
Backer, who plays mandolin, dobro, lap steel, six-string
bass and harmonica, performed a two-year stint as guitarist/ mandolinist for
Walter Egan (writer/singer of“Magnet and Steel” and the author of “Hearts On
Fire,” recorded by the legendary Gram Parsons). “Two Hearts,” one of Backer’s
own originals was featured in the 1996 film Freeway, starring Reese
Witherspoon and Kiefer Sutherland. Backer’s songs demonstrate a mastery of
witty wordplay, as well as his deep knowledge of rock history and an evolved
melodic sensibility. Consider this verse from one track on HeadTwangers
Ball:
Well, my baby left me for her
latest flame, so hot
You’re right, I’m left, she’s
gone but not forgot
Guess I’ll be headin’ back to Memphis Tennessee
‘Cause she is only T-R-O-U-B-L-E
But I still got this burnin’
love so true,
And all I keep thinkin’ is,“What Would Elvis Do?”
But just when the sly humor
has your guard down, he tries a little tenderness:
When I was young I swam the sea
from here over to France
But before I left I had to teach
the Rockettes how to dance
Then from France I went
to England
for a holiday
And there I spent some time
teachin’ The Beatles how to play
…All these grand adventures,
sure they were lots of fun
But they’re not half as
wonderful as knowin’ you’re my son
Lookin’ back on all those times,
I’ve just got to tell you, kid
You may be the greatest thing
your daddy ever did.
And yes, Virginia,
there ARE other Wicked Messengers, namely:
Charlie Shaw (drums), originally from Durham, North
Carolina, actually does have country in his blood:
his uncle Lauchlin Shaw - from the wonderfully-named Bunnlevel, N.C.
- was an old-time fiddler. Shaw ironically became more Southern in his musical
tastes after moving to New York
(or “Yankeeland,” as he calls it) in the mid-1980s as a member of the Chapel Hill band Mondo Combo.
Sal Rappa (electric bass) graduated Berklee College
of Music in Boston
and also
plays guitar, piano, trumpet and upright bass. Rappa has
taught music to public school kids for fifteen years, proving that he’s a
patient man, and spent four years playing in various road bands – proving that
he’s, well, a patient man. His future was decided the moment he saw Paul
McCartney playing his Hofner violin bass on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Ross Garnick (guitar, backing vocals) is a veteran
musician with a long list of various combos under his hand-tooled belt,
including a Colorado-based country outfit that signed to A&M before
promptly going nowhere. The native New Yorker has since spent most of his time
publishing music magazines and playing with Wicked Messengers, about which he
says: “I can’t think of much else I’d rather be doing.”
Now, go on: slap
Headtwangers Ball on the Victrola (all right, the CD player),
settle in for a spell - and then “Get Outta This House” and go see Wicked
Messengers live for a guaranteed good time. And don’t forget to tip your
waitress.