FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Pup Tent Spreads Big Top for Day of the Dead at the Surf Club Live!
Washington, DC – October 28, 2008 -- this Saturday night November 1st, in one of metro DC's best and best-kept-secret venues, three unique bands of veterans join forces to celebrate the birthday of a prominent Washington artist/musician and the Day of the Dead. Not as far as you think from all points in the Metro area is a gem of a club, the historic Chick Hall's Surf Club, now under the ownership of James Byrum, and renamed Surf Club Live! Great sound system, big dance floor, a horseshoe bar and pool tables to boot, the quiet and good-natured proprietor, "JB" is heroically dedicated to keeping live music on the Surf Club stage. Once you come out, it is certain to become a favorite destination. For more on the past and recent history of the Surf Club, plus an idea of the extensive and ambitious offerings only slightly off the beaten path of the Capital Beltway, see www.myspace.com//surfclublive
Hosting the event, in honor of band leader Phil Duarte's birthday, is Pup Tent, a trio of innovative DC musicians who formed the current group three years ago, after a recording project morphed into a rock band proper.
With drummer Ben Azzara and bassist Ted Watts, guitarist/songwriter/vocalist Duarte lays down what might be the most intelligent entertainment to grace a DC stage since the Mothers. Rooted in improvisational jazz, garage rock, punk, glam and a host of other influences, Pup Tent delivers an unlikely but cohesive amalgam of wholly original songs, from the wry satire of "Safe" to the haunting intimacy of "Watching You."
Duarte, in addition to being a visual artist of considerable talent, has rocked and skronked DC bands since the early 80's, including Guilt Combo, Nuclear Crayons, Tony Perkins and the Psychotics, Donut Safari, and Girl Train. He also hosted Food for Thought's infamous open mic night for 13 years, making him the regions longest-standing, patient and crackpot MC, thank you very much.
Ted Watt's history includes a "boatload of bands" hailing from Richmond to DC: the Burnt Ernies, Girl Train, DT and the Shakes, Disco Inferno and Skelp, among others. He and Duarte share a long history of basement jamming, and have finally come together on the public stage for the first time in Pup Tent. Watts unleashes his potent songwriting and vocal talents on numbers ranging from the wildly infectious "Chupacabra" to the futuristic "Human Resourceful".
Ben Azzara has a massive resume, having played for Delta 72, Junction, the Sarrah Azzara Band, and Dischord's Capital City Dusters (with Jesse Quitslund and Alec Bourgeois). What Duarte says of Azzara and Pup Tent: "He brings not just rock chops to the table, but like all three of us, a long and deep relationship with improvisational music rooted in jazz, reflected in past and present work with the DC Improvisors Collective." www.myspace.com/philduartespuptent and/or http://www.sonicbids.com/puptent
Garage-psych super group Ottley! is another unique trio, comprised of three DC luminaries of DC rock, Marshall Keith, Martha Hull and Bob Berberich. Consisting only of drums, vocals, and baritone guitar, this collaboration produces an uncanny but compelling mix of hypnotic but hard-driving psychedelic meditations, semi-pop anthems, punkish rave-ups, and heart-wrenching dreamscapes.
Keith and Hull last worked together in the original Slickee Boys, which Keith is best known for, as a founding member and the guitarist who created those soaring, unforgettable leads which so characterized the classic Slickee sound. He brings an equally cerebral but very new approach to Ottley! With his dual bass/guitar duties and the different direction he has taken in his songwriting. His Matter and Light regularly inspires tears in his audience. In his solo incarnation, Marshall pursues his lifelong love of very strange experimental one-man projects, written, played, recorded and produced by M. Keith, and he remains, of course, a Slickee Boy extraordinaire.
Hull is known as a versatile but always surprising vocalist, having fronted, in addition to the Slickee Boys, the D.Ceats, the Steady Jobs, the Dynettes, and Tex Rubinowitz's Bad Boys for a rockabilly single of Tex's Feelin' Right Tonight b/w Fujiyama Mama that has passed into roots rock legend. In addition to her unforgettable and always evolving vocals, Hull, who has long been a lyricist of note, emerges as a songwriter in her own right. Her "I Wanna Be You" is a deeply personal journey through the core of motivation, which belies its primitive structure with an unexpected musical poetry. Says Hull, "I am as serious as a heart attack."
Bob Berberich is, without argument, a favorite son of the nation's capital. His career as a singing drummer began 45 years ago, as a 15 year old high school student playing nightly in Georgetown bars. Instinctive and inimitable, Berberich's ability to lay down a groove that is both solid and flexible has made him one of DC's most popular performers. From his earliest days with locals like the Reekers, Bob progressed to the Hangmen, DC's most successful garage band ever, with the local No. 1 single, What a Girl Can't Do, written by Tom Guernsey, and sung by Joe Triplett. Then came his years as drummer and shared lead vocalist with Nils Lofgrens's Grin, also featuring bassist Bob Gordon and guitarist/vocalist Tom Lofgren, in what may be the most popular band to ever emerge from DC. In the mid-70's, Bob joined the Rosslyn Mountain Boys, who created a neo-traditional country sound all their own many years before the current alt-country explosion. In recent years, Bob has played with bands too numerous to count, but which include the Cathy King Band, and the Solid Senders, and recordings with Vernon Taylor, Switchblade, Bourbon Dynasty, etc. etc. etc. These days, Bob and Martha can both be seen in the Rosslyn Mountain Goats, a spin-off of the Boys, at Lonesome Hobo Tuesdays at the Quarry House Tavern. www.myspace.com//ottleygarage
Last, but mostest, are legendary DC rockers, and the pre- and post-punk band with the most staying power, the Beatnik Flies. Dating from the mid- to late 70's, this rock-garage-psychedelic first formed in the 60's-soaked imagination of Joe Dolan, and quickly began to gig in the DC underground. According to Joe: "We've been around DC since, like, the late seventies? We saw a copy of NY ROCKER; I can't remember what year it was, but it had a pictorial (is that how you spell it?) of the New York punk scene. Well, being 4 crazed out hippie folkie musicians, we knew right away that we wanted to be one of those kinds of bands. Only problem- we knew what it looked like, but we didn't know what it sounded like. So we started playing what we thought it should sound like. And here we are still playing, three decades later..." Indeed.
The current lineup is formidable: guitarist/vocalist Joe Dolan may be the most authentic garage-rock frontman to grace a DC band since the Hangmen's Dave Ottley, as he proved at a recent Lonesome Hobo Tuesday, where he blew the crowd's collective mind with a blistering and evocative version of the Fug's classic, I Couldn't Get High – and everyone did. John Stone is simply one of most talented guitarists in town – his high energy, flawless execution and blissful abandon; he takes the Flies to the master level. Kenny Bugg, beloved bassist of long history and experience, lays down a solid but expressive foundation, tough, heavy, and melodic. One cannot imagine any other bassist filling his shoes. Drummer Bidjje Kavanaugh provides the perfect counterpoint, with his rapid-fire Keith Moon-inspired rhythms, and brainy and brooding presence. It is a perfect collaboration.
You have to hear the Beatnik Flies though, to appreciate or "get" what we're talking about. Featured on many compilations throughout the years, the Flies have released two notable albums this decade: 2001's anthology, Psychometalpop--the Lost Cause of the Beatnik Flies and 2007's Drunk on Incense. Favorites include the definitive psychometalpop anthem Sleep, and the Revolver-glam hit, All the Girls Say. And speaking of glam, Beatnik Joe Dolan may just surprise us all this weekend with an alter-ego from another age entirely. After all, the Beatnik Flies all still sport full heads of hair…
See it all Saturday, November 1, 2008 at the Surf Club Live 9pm on.