bloodshot at 15

By Robbie on September 8, 2009

On Sunday Bloodshot Records, the alternative country independent label of Chicago, presented the Philadelphia installment of its ongoing, multi-city, nationwide series of anniversary shows. These mark 15 years of pushing nasty music to a rarefied customer base, largely via the ever-shakier platform of that beloved fixture of the 1970s and 1980s, the independent record store. 15 years of playing off-brand country may be some kind of accomplishment, but career musicians like us, whose business is based on our personalities and talents, can be light on our feet and quick with our wits in a way that a corporation can't -- if private parties and nightclubs dry up, schoolhouses and streetcorners are still recession-resistant; the need for music is shortly behind food and shelter -- and so I think 15 years' survival as a company selling the stuff is a much more astonishing feat. The venue for Bloodshot's fan-appreciation blowout was World Cafe Live, and there were about a dozen acts, some of which were new to me (Ha Ha Tonka, Cornpone Poo Poo, Limbs on the Freeway, the Grouchy Out-of-Work Federation, Cloris Gloryhole, 18-Foot Policeman, the Boink Sisters, Arse Licqeur, Meshuggeneh on the Mountain, Rosebud Ramblers, Chawmps) and some (the Yayhoos, Bottle Rockets, Waco Brothers) familiar and dear.

I arrived with my flatpicking guitar buddy Robbie Gjersoe to play two short sets, one in the afternoon and one in the early evening. After the disagreeable and tepidly received afternoon set I was about ready to write off the whole thing, and went back to the hotel to read and doze. But the evening went better, and the afternoon started to look in retrospect like the fruits of a weak concept -- music for aged punk rockers on a Sunday afternoon in a midline hotel lounge kind of environment. By nightfall they, and I, were in revived spirits. Highlights:

•  Getting to hang with the brilliant and funny drummer/singer/writer/guitarist/bon vivant Terry Anderson, who remarked that he preferred playing rock and roll to painting houses (his day job) because, while both made people happy, with rock and roll he could "make a lot more of them happier and in a shorter time frame." John Stuart Mill in Jerry Clower's clothes: that kind of thing makes Terry special.

•  Meeting the gentleman named Dexter Romweber, who, with his mouth full of free backstage food and his eyes glazed from no sleep and a lot of driving, told me about getting expelled from Carolina Friends School for dope smoking. I went to Friends, and I can say that it is, or was, in the 1970s, about as hard to get expelled from as Medicare. And, surrounded as it was by thick woods and miles of country roads, as hard to find a discreet spot to smoke a joint as Amsterdam. So my hat is off to Dexter Romweber, who, incidentally, went from the arms of the Quakers into the clutches of the North Carolina public school system, where he was "beaten by black people."

•  Enjoying Gjersoe's nickname ("Anal Night-rate") for the rental car clerk who went to extreme lengths to try to sell me insurance, GPS, and gas.

•  Trying to get away from a dazed middle-aged hippie lady on the stairway at World Cafe, whose spiritual connection with Jimmie Dale Gilmore was so intense as to transfer to his sideman Robbie Gjersoe, and thence to me.

•  Catching Bloodshot's co-head Rob Miller in a rare moment of weakness, in which he executed a most gracious improvised statement about the pleasures of working with me over the last 1/6.66666667th of a century. Back at you in full, Rob me hearty, and looking forward to the next release, whenever that may be.

•  Catching Bloodshot's radio promotion man in a striking verbal moment. "How can I order something to eat?" I asked. "There's a mulatto gentleman upstairs," he began. Mulatto? Would this same gentleman be offering me nourishing stout from a glass-bottom tankard? Or perchance be available after hours to squire me to the talkies, or dance the jitterbug to phonorecords? The thoroughgoing loyalty of Bloodshot employees to our American heritage is heart-warming!

•  Singing "Signed Sealed Delivered" with the Yayhoos, one of the great living no-frills rock and roll bands. And if Cheap Trick were to retire or blow up, I'd go ahead and say "the greatest."

•  Getting paid. Thank you Nan, and thank you Anheuser Busch. Let's not lose sight, amid all this arch and affected blue-collar horseshit, of the essential awesomeness of corporations!

Yrs, R. Fulks

CEO, Boondoggle, Inc.