Nowhere Band News

Honestly, it’s the most commonly-asked question asked of people in bands. And how do you answer it, really?  Even if you didn’t run into the dancing-about-architecture problem that leads people into lame attempts to answer by naming similar bands (by the way, my one regret about this strip is that nobody says that the ‘Boys sound “like Exile on Main Street-era Stones,”  which is a claim I’ve heard from about 90% of guitar-based bands that have ever existed), you get real trouble from the fact that  each person usually has a wildly different take on the band’s sound, with no hope of objectivity. It’s a mess.

If I didn’t drop the Exiled Stones quote, it’s because I wanted Aaron to instead use a more local universal landmark.  While it used to be worse (I swear to god every single person I talked to in a keyboardless low-level Minneapolis band in the 90s thought they  sounded like the Replacements), the ‘Mats still cast a mighty long shadow up here, and the self-comparison rate must still be over 50%.

Dan is sort of paraphrasing my pat description of Derailleur’s sound, by the way; and Aaron’s first bit about the honey is based on an old line of Grant’s about how you can’t taste our sweet honey without getting stung.  I’m not even entirely sure what he was talking about, but it’s a good line.

So, I can’t remember what the official theme song was to Octopussy, but I think we can all agree that it didn’t rock hard enough.  If it did, I’d remember it, right? Fortunately, Derailleur’s on the case.  As part of our Bond Themes project, we’ve recorded a new Octopussy theme; a rough mix of it can be heard here.

And, although this is a Derailleur song through and through, this is also more or less what I picture The Awesome Boys as sounding like, except without the backing vocals.

Continuing a (sort of disturbing) trend of ahead-of-schedule comics, I present Nowhere #22, which lays out Josh’s take on how the music scene actually functions.

As always, while this isn’t directly autobiographical (my shitty post-college job wasn’t a temp job, and I answered phones rather than stuffing envelopes), this is a pretty accurate summation of both my job-selection thought process and how I thought the music scene worked. I really didn’t think I’d be working more than 6 months before I was either writing for a living or making money off of Red Hay’s record contract. And I really did sort of have a “plan” worked out where if the right things happened, I could replace John Stirratt as Wilco’s bass player. This was, of course, before Stiratt’s strange Rasputin-like tendency to stay in Jeff Tweedy’s good graces while Wilco’s other roster slots rotated like the Timberwolves in garbage time.

So, all else being equal, I guess Josh would have a better shot at infiltrating Low than I would’ve infiltrating Wilco.

If you’re in the mood for a new comic, we’ve got one for you:  Nowhere #21, contrasting how Josh and Dan feel about sharing the other half of their lives with their respective coworkers.

As for me, I’ve been in both places.  When I was younger, I tended towards the Dan position– clearly, anyone who worked in the offices I worked in just wasn’t cool enough to be coming to any of my shows.  These days, I skew pretty strongly towards Josh; the more people who follow Derailleur, the better (it helps, I guess, that I’ve been working in progressively cooler places as time’s gone on). That’s tempered slightly by the whole Midwestern “oh my god, I can’t try to bring attention to myself!” urge, which is pretty strong in me.  But that’s a pretty ridiculous urge, best stomped on.

The MPR Nowhere Band profile ran earlier today.  My mind’s still sort of blown.  I guess I’ve arrived (and I guess I talk really fast– and Jesus, is my accent really that thick?). I loved hearing the story; when the Derailleur drumbeat kicked off, I just about started levitating… I love it that it closes with a very new (and very, very weird/sloppy) Derailleur track about Octopussy.

The other guy interviewed is Bill Tuomala, who runs the excellent Exiled on Main Street (both ‘zine and blog).  If you have time to spend online, his place is a good spot to spend it.

(my only regret with the story is that none of the clips from when Chris came to the Derailleur practice space and interviewed the rest of Derailleur made it into the final cut; but time limits are time limits)

Oh, and the next comic’ll be up by Wednesday.

We’re back! This week, a quick look at all the places Jon’s amp has been before it wound up in his possession.

This is something that’s always fascinated me– amps especially seem to linger for decades, and I always wonder what all of the backstory is with my used stuff. I bought a couple of my guitars new, but most of the guitars and all of my current amp fleet were around for quite a while before they came to me, and god only know how they got there.

The backstory for Jon’s Twin is, of course, mostly fictional, but one bit– the “‘doped and cherried’ as part of the Rainbow Music amp rental fleet, where it was used by Angus Young” is at least a real bit of sales palaver attached to my friend Grant’s Twin.

After getting laughed at by Rebecca, I can’t bring myself to use the Item! Item! Item! format anymore.  So now we get em-dashes.

-I’m back from Miami (pictures here, if you’re into that), and finished my Uptown Girl Presents story while on the road.  Nowhere #20 is going really quickly, and should be posted by the end of the week.  Probably by the middle of the week, even.

-The latest word from MPR is that the Nowhere Band piece will run at the end of this week or early next.  I’ll post more when I know more, and believe me, I’ll be linking to the online archive of it.

-It occurred to me today that I never wrote anything about Jim Walsh’s Replacements book, All Over but the Shouting.   I really need to, because that book kicked off about as many trains of thought as the Schulz bio did.  But I’m tired and it’s late, so let’s consider Walsh and the Replacements as members of the “coming attractions” list.

As usual, I’m way better about working on comics offline and thinking, “hey, I should post this to the newsblog” than I am about actually posting things to the newsblog.  Which means that I have a backlog of news, and will be releasing actual comics before too long.

Item!  The McSweeney’s audiobook recording is done, and turned out to be a ton of fun to do.  I felt like a big weirdo, standing on the Washington Avenue Bridge with a recording setup, reading out loud about COBRA.  But hey, you gots to suffer for art.

When the audio download’s ready, I’ll link to it.

Item! Just this morning, I finished inking the guest story I’m doing for Bob Lipski’s Uptown Girl Presents. It’s not a Nowhere strip, but it’s very similar, and the Awesome Boys do make a cameo.  I’ll be traveling for the rest of the week, and finishing the digital part of that comic while I’m on the go (and I’m not sure when the comic would appear here, if ever– certainly not until after Bob’s book has actually been on the stands for a while), and then production will resume on Nowhere.  Strip #20 should be out and about by, say, March 15 (beware!).

Item! I spent a really fun hour and a half yesterday talking to Minnesota Public Radio’s Chris Roberts about Nowhere Band (and, to some extent, Derailleur). It was a cool, cool session, and it sounds like the piece will air on this Friday’s Word of Mouth broadcast (naturally, I’ll be out of town for this).  Should also be available online, eventually, and I will of course post the appropriate links when they’re available.

OK, that’s it.