Welcome to Bad Luck City

Down in Denver, all I did was die.
-Jack Kerouac

One of the most original and interesting bands to emerge on the independent circuit in recent years is Denver, Colorado’s Bad Luck City---a sextet of remarkably skilled musicians and visionary artists, whose sound is a dark, haunting, and somber combination of strings, percussion, guitar, and deep, whispery vocals. They are certainly a band unlike any other. And together they have created an extraordinary soundscape thick with mood and meaning, carried forth on a down-tempo, lo-fi vessel through the northwest, traveling routes across desolate nighttime highways, ending in the dark alleys and dim barrooms of America.   

“Adelaide,” Bad Luck City’s 2008 nine-song release, is a collection of brilliant compositions from start to finish. Eight of the nine songs are originals, while one, the first song on the album, is a cover of Lee Hazelwood’s “The Night Before.” The rest of the songs follow a cohesive path through a wilderness of clapboard shacks and leafless trees, of mad poems and nicotine-stained corridors, of bizarre locales and varying emotionality. If I were forced to choose a favorite song on the record, it would probably be "The Widow Francis Colver." Then again, I am also quite fond of "Bones," "Suspect," and "The Girls of St. Magdalene's Parish." Be that as it may, "Stealth" is undoubtedly the heaviest and most savage piece of music on the record, with male/female vocals and lyrics to match. And the last track, "Suffer the Day," seems like a cathartic piece at first, but then ultimately reveals itself as the continued suffering brought about by a ill-fated love affair, surrounded by shadows, drenched in whiskey, and all of the thoughts and feelings that plague one during and after. It even ends with the words: ...I could feel the weight of your body in my hands, I could feel your heat and smell your skin, and for a brief moment we were together, but the fire was quick, and the shadow was dark, and this is a sad song.  

At the time “Adelaide” was recorded, Bad Luck City’s lineup consisted of: Yessit Arocho (bass), Gregor Kammerer (guitar), Dameon Merkl (vocals), Kelly O’Dea (violin), Joshua M. Perry (guitar), and Andrew Warner (drums). According to the album’s liner notes, however, it would seem that they have since taken on a new bassist---Jeremy Ziehe. In fact, I have since struck up a correspondence with Jeremy in regards to Bad Luck City and this article. And it was he, Jeremy, who forwarded the interview questions to each of the band members.
 

One of the first questions I asked the band in our interview was not so much a question at all but a request for introductions. The following is what I got in return…

Dameon (vocals): gambler, drunk, lover, bibliophile.
Andrew (percussion): painter, drunk, card-player, avid video game disciple.
Greg (guitar): recordist.
Kelly (violin): violinist.
Josh (guitar): drunk (drunker than Andrew and Dameon put together!), tech geek, engineering student, terrible communicator, narcissist and hapless romantic.
Jeremy (bass): liquor enthusiast, truck driver, word inventor.

Unlike other interviews I've done over the years, this first part was not met with a series of short biographies, but rather a series of concise summarizations of their characters. Different, indeed. Effective, to be sure. I mean, even with a few words, each was able to paint a picture of the individual he (or she) is and the extent to which he (or she) is willing to reveal himself (or herself). And that is enough.   

Bad Luck City's music is not easily inserted into a recognizable musical category. So, instead of trying to invent a term for their music, I went to them with the question...

"Obviously," I said, "you pretty much defy every conceivable genre out there in the music world today. One can do little other than insert you into the very broad independent category. Technically, your music is neither straight-up rock nor gothic. And although there's a slight bluesy element to your songs, it definitely isn't blues either. What would you call it, if anything…other than just music, of course?" 

Leisure Noir, Dameon called it.

Bad Luck City attempted blues with another lineup, conceded Jeremy.

Stylistically and thematically, Bad Luck City is both bold and inventive, endlessly daring and creative. And I have said as much to them in our recent interview. 

"Clearly," I said, "your songs are thematically linked by dark, seedy imagery, the more indulgent and depraved side of the human condition, and issues and situations not excessively touched on by a lot of today's bands and singer/songwriters, such as:  heartrending memories of failed love affairs, lost innocence, demon hunters, drunkards, Catholicism and first kisses, general doom and decay, disturbing yet gripping narratives, personal stories, dead widows, and sad songs of remembrance.  Please elaborate, if you would, on your lyrical subject matter, Dameon, and how it inspired you to write such profound and melancholy songs?"

In our songwriting process, began Dameon, the band works on the musical arrangement of a song first. Then, once all of the parts and changes are nailed down, I tackle the words. I generally don't even think about subject matter until the music is finalized. Bad Luck City writes some very dark and powerful music, so I let the emotions of the songs direct subject matter and overall mood. 

Next, I asked the band how the name---Bad Luck City---came about?

The name is taken from a R.L. Burnside song of the same name, Dameon answered.

It is too rare these days that we happen upon such unique and intriguing artistic endeavors, particularly bands and singer/songwriters whose music suggests that which is apart from the norm, that which exists outside of the mainstream...or rather, whose music affords us brief glimpses of strange and wonderful places and wild experiences so unlike our own.  It's not just the subject matter, though; it's the way its delivered it to the listeners.  But those things are still part of this City Earth in which we live and breathe, and therefore we are able to relate to them on either a detached level or a personal level, as things we have knowledge of, perhaps things we find interesting, maybe even things we are moving  toward in our own lives, but things still relevant to the big picture, so to speak, from the firmament to the sewers, from the city to the country, from the rooftops to the streets, and everything in between.  Equally rare is when the music is powerful and original enough to actually transport us, the listeners, to those other places, while at the same time making us feel what it intends for us to feel.

Along those lines, I asked BLC...

"Now, I honestly cannot compare you to too many bands and singer/songwriters that I know of. Of course, I hear some similarities between you and Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Pete & the Tar Gang, and Dwid Hellion's Roses Never Fade. Truth be told, you stand alone in sound more than any other band I've ever experienced, or close to it. Was that one of your main objectives when beginning Bad Luck City, or did it simply happen by chance? In other words, was your sound a deliberate creation of collective contribution, or was it simply one of those wonderful blunders of human trial and error?"

It seems to me, said Josh, that Bad Luck City has always been about down tempo songs with a bluesy, gutsy sort of feel that tends to rest comfortably on the melancholy side of things, though in a way that is exciting and moves the listener in ways that said listener might not be aware they are inherently affected by. The sound has changed and evolved over time to the place where it is now.

"What affect has the Denver, Colorado scene had on your music? (To clarify, I don't strictly mean the music scene in Denver but rather the entire city and all it consists of)," was the next question I asked the band.

An odd isolation is what I get from Denver, Jeremy replied. Denver has served as an incubator for a lot of good music.

After listening to the "Adelaide" album in its entirety a few times, it was becoming evident to me that it was one of their collective goals to return music to an art form, shattering the novelty molds after which so much of today's music has been fashioned and mass produced. In fact, that seems to be the goal of many independent artists. And we have entered a new age of music, during which the music industry as we've known it for so many years is crumbling apart to rest in pieces among the general public, rather than in the hands of corporate suits of Big Business all seated atop the hierarchal pyramid of the social order. Again, music is played for the sake of music. Elvis is dead; the Beatles are finished. Music can now be found for free download on the web. One can attend a show to see one's favorite band for a few measly dollars. It's a revolution, and Bad Luck City are a part of it.  

We will not waste our time trying to come up with bands and singer/songwriters to compare Bad Luck City to.  That is pointless, not to mention incredibly difficult. Instead, I will describe their sound with the imagery their songs imply (to me). Ghostly tendrils of cigarette smoke drifting upward across the ceiling and through the half-light of a dying bulb. A near empty bottle of whiskey on an otherwise bare table.  Dirty statuary on stoops and rooftops, with chipped features and hairline fractures running through them.  Dusty shelves in ramshackle homesteads beyond the city limits in the wastelands of America. Business suits. A young couple kissing down at the waterfront, while the pitch-black cityscape stands silhouetted against the moonlit horizon. Seedy barrooms. Coffins. Gambling houses full of card sharks and cheats, cut-throats and a small handful of the perpetually unlucky. Stretches of highway in the approaching dusk, bathed in the fading fire of day, a Halloween-orange, with long, brown, dried-up weeds blowing in the breeze. Daytime ghettos and nighttime forests. Roadside motels and dingy coffee houses. Dog-eared paperback novels on old, half-forgotten racks in the mothball aisles of a Thrift Store. The long, drowsy nods of junkies with heavy-lidded eyes, with clumsy fingers itching at their arms and faces. Black-and-white photographs. Record players. Snowfall. Gunshots. Catholic churches. Graveyards. The desert. Grandfather clocks. The black-feathered birds that flock to the steeples of every Saint-something church across the country. Criminal sophistication. Indulgence. And the sleepless thoughts that run through one's head in the wide-awake early morning hours. And a number of other things.      

According to Greg, the band is now working on a five song release that they should start recording the second week in February, and hopefully another four or five song EP in September or November, as well as a couple of small tours (provided they can work out all the details). Now, I know Philadelphia is quite a ways from Denver, but I still hope they find their way here to the Northeast. I would certainly be in attendance. 

Welcome to Bad Luck City! 

 

*All photos, except graphics, by Doug Beam.