Western hardcore

Honkeyball make gunfighter music

by Carly Carioli

I have some weird theories about hardcore as (among other things) folk art. I could bore you with a diatribe on how hardcore mirrors the blues and country music in terms of its simplicity and its socio-musical function, how its arguments about authenticity ("keeping it real") can be read as an attempt to wring legitimacy and identity out of the stone-cold monotony of white, suburban, working-/middle-class life, and how all of this plays into why I think Boston's Honkeyball are an excellent band. But that would take all the fun out of it. Suffice to say that if Allston had an O.K. Corral, Honkeyball would be the house band; and if you're planning to shoot a neo-Western anytime soon, their new album, Onetime (Wonderdrug), wouldn't be a bad choice for the soundtrack.

Honkeyball retain vestiges of hardcore -- in the trust-no-one individualism-gone-awry sentiment of "So Called Friends," and in their bedrock heaviness -- but they're well on their way to something larger. Partly it's the way they twist and layer things, little melodic/textural accents and agile intros that tweak the music's inherent velocity. The opener, "The Sheep Will Shear," fades in with the lulling crash of waves against the shore, and when a rush of guitars swallows it up, the riff itself speaks less of violence than of dread, melancholy, yearning. "Hank's Been Drinking" is drunk itself, guitars careering through waves of swooning, slide-warped nausea. "Curb Trick" opens with a sharp jolt of dirty-jazz-tinged rockabilly, then slams hard and heavy, like a trick out of John Zorn's Naked City playbook.

But buried beneath their metallic exterior lies a honky-tonk heart. When they're not talking about Wild West gunslingers and old-time saloons, they're taking on Bruce Lee (Asian action flicks being the equivalent of American Westerns) and modern-day mob outlaws (In "Rollin' with the Assassin," they cop Ray Liotta's infamous GoodFellas line: "Fuck you -- pay me!").

"It's just 'cause I'm a wanna-be," chuckles singer/guitarist/lyricist George Tsiaras over beers at the Silhouette Lounge in Allston. "Every time I've seen Westerns and stuff I've just been like, `Aw, man, I fuckin' love cowboys, man.' " That much was evident in the lyrics to "Kemosabi," the first track off their 1995 debut, Honkeyball, where Tsiaras described the heat of the sun just risen, the smell of tobacco, and horses. "I've always written lyrics with a story in mind," says Tsiaras, who's quick to confess he's no street hood and gets embarrassed when I mention a show last year when he came out dressed as if he'd just gotten out of prison. "I kinda make little movies [in my head] while I'm writing. I've always wanted to write a movie, do something like that."

In describing the bar brawl in Albuquerque that inspired "Goldenwest Saloon" he says, "I thought we were in a movie. I was looking for the cameras, man. There was so many good scenes -- chairs breaking, guys with pool sticks breaking 'em over each other's necks."

But unlike rote gangsta tales, Tsiaras's songs display a feel for narrative development, focusing on the moments just before, or just after -- withholding information like a crime novelist. On Onetime's "Her Cheatin' Heart" the story unfolds slowly, as a guy cruising down the highway complains of heartache. Only later do you get to see the empty revolver lying on the seat next to him.

"That whole song is like an updated country-western song, like a `somebody did somebody wrong' song," says bassist Claude Yama. The kicker, "Where oh where will they bury my baby/Where I don't know, but I do know I'll be gone," reminds me a bit of Son House's "Death Letter," where he comes home to find his woman laid out on the coolin' board, then just packs his bags and leaves. In "Sheep Will Shear" Tsiaras sees "Hellhounds on your trail, boy," recasting that old blues dread as fear of lockstep autocracy -- only now the devil's hounds are wearing jackboots.

Although drummer Eric O'Brien listens to Robert Johnson and Yama digs Elmore James, George sheepishly admits he got the idea from the 1986 flick Crossroads, in which Ralph Macchio goes up against Steve Vai in a guitar-solo duel for the soul of a Robert Johnson surrogate. What's more, their "The Ballad of John Wesley Harding" is neither a Dylan cover nor inspired by it: it's a pastoral instrumental inspired by a Time-Life book infomercial. But along with the closing instrumental -- "Sleeps with Fishes," a serene, placid reprieve that fades back into the sound of waves -- that ballad is the only thing here suggesting redemption. Which is something Tsiaras's killers and outlaws never find.

Honkeyball play an 18-plus CD-release party at the Middle East downstairs this Saturday, March 22. Call 864-EAST.