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'."
Written by Paul Pearson