THEY AIN’T DEAD YET Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers
Dec 21, 2011
With a new, definitive live album just out, it's time to take a fresh look at one of America's greatest (and Springsteen-approved) rock ‘n' roll institutions.
BY REV. KEITH GORDON
It must suck to be you, because if you've never witnessed the power and the glory that is a live performance by Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers, then you haven't really walked on the wild side! The Reverend remembers one memorable Houserockers performance in Nashville back around '95, Joey G and the boys bum rushing the Music City, rolling into town for a live radio broadcast from a local speakeasy that may have blown out a few transistors down at Radio Lightning.
The five-man gang was crammed onto a corner stage so damn small that it's doubtful you could park a Mini-Cooper in the middle and still have room to climb out. It looked like the inside of a clown car, but there was nothing funny about the destruction that the Houserockers leveled upon Nashville that weeknight. With a grand total of three people in the club who had the foggiest notion of who they were watching perform, and another 100 or so that were there to get a cheap drunk on, Grushecky and the Houserockers performed like they thought they were damn rock stars and, on that night, they were indeed the greatest rock 'n' roll outfit on the planet.
When the unseen walls of the stage became too restrictive, Joe jumped on top of our front-of-the-stage table and laid down a solo on the Stones' "Gimme Shelter" that was so bad-ass that it would have had Keith Richards hiding beneath his bed sheets for months. Knocking down two hour-plus long sets, the audience may not have known who the band was coming in, but they sure as hell knew who they were by the end of the night...and that's always been the unspoken mantra of the Houserockers wherever they play live - come in hard and heavy, or don't go onstage at all.
Perhaps the last true believers in rock 'n' roll as salvation, Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers are lifers, working day jobs and howling at the moon in clubs at night. It's somehow fitting that the only significant personnel change experienced by the band since its formation out of the ashes of the Iron City Houserockers back in 1988, almost a quarter-century ago, was waiting for Grushecky's son Johnny to grow old enough to join the band.
The core of the Houserockers - singer, songwriter, and guitarist Grushecky, bassist Art Nardini (who's been by Joe's side since the early 1970s), drummer Joffo Simmons, and keyboardist Joe Pelesky - has developed an unparalleled chemistry over the course of two-and-a-half decades and better than a half-dozen studio albums. Still, aside from furtively-traded bootleg tapes, this most independent of indie-rock bands (they haven't had a real label deal in 15 years) had only been captured live on disc once before now, on 1999's excellent Down The Road Apiece Live.
The band's new We're Not Dead Yet (Schoolhouse Records; available at Grushecky's website) ups the ante with two CDs and twenty-one songs, only three of which duplicate songs from Down The Road Apiece Live, and most of which are long-time staples of the Houserockers' live set. Recorded at the New Hazlett Theater in the band's Pittsburgh hometown during a two-night stand back in September, We're Not Dead Yet mixes material from the Houserockers' fleeting, late-1980s/early-1990s major label era albums like 1991's Swimming With The Sharks and 1995's American Babylon with tunes from indie releases that you've likely never heard of like 2009's East Carson Street or the 2006 Grushecky-solo-album-in-name-only A Good Life.
More interesting to we few long-time Grushecky fanatics, though, are the brain-numbing morsels of Iron City Houserockers' material to be found on We're Not Dead Yet, from the defiant title track (more about which later) to long-lost-and-left-for-dead gems like "Pumping Iron," "Have A Good Time...But Get Out Alive," "Junior's Bar," and their jaunty cover of "Hideaway." But first We're Not Dead Yet opens with the title track from East Carson Street, a pensive mid-tempo rocker that, lyrically, covers more heavy emotional turf in three minutes or so than Joe's bud Bruce has managed over the course of his last three albums. The guitars sparkles, the sentiments ring true, and the claustrophobic wall of sound behind Grushecky's literally explodes out of your speakers by the second verse.
By the time that the band rocks its way into "American Babylon," the title track from the album of the same name, they have the punters hanging off the rafters. The song's "troubled by these days and times" lyrical theme is reinforced by a fierce soundtrack that is reveals a slightly funkier rhythmic groove via Joffo than on the original album. Grushecky's vocals snarl and growl like a caged beast, and the societal turmoil expressed by the lyrics is, sadly, as real today as it was sixteen years ago when Joe wrote the song. Grushecky isn't all doom-and-gloom, however, and songs like "I'm Not Sleeping" (co-written with Springsteen) and "Coming Home" display the full range of Grushecky's enormous songwriting skills, the master story-teller delivering tales that speak positively to the human condition and capture the listener's imagination.
Looking at the signed album cover hanging on my wall, Rock and Real really should have been a smash hit back in the day, and the band's stellar remembrance of it here features shimmering guitars, hard-hitting drums, and an undeniable bass line that muscles in behind Grushecky's romantic plea. "I Always Knew" is an often-forgotten gem from the songwriter's deep, rich catalog of songs, a muscular rocker with uncompromising spirit, percussive drums, washes of guitar, and a heavy rhythm that combines a hard rock heartbeat with a bit of Memphis soul.
Two vintage Iron City Houserockers tunes finish up disc one, "Pumping Iron" a strutting, Southern rock-styled rocker with serpentine guitars twisting themselves into knots, a propulsive rhythm, and a bit of twang in Grushecky's Steel City brogue, the song itself a story wrapped up in a metaphor, hidden behind an ode to Pittsburgh's mean streets. Introduced by Joe as "the closest we ever came to having a hit record," the obscure Fred & the Fredettes early-rock classic "Hideaway" sounds all the world like a Houserockers original, with Grushecky's yearning vocals, trembling twin guitars, blistering drumbeats, and an overall innocence that is lacking from much of today's rock 'n' roll.
Another vintage track, "Swimming with the Sharks," kicks off disc two with an chaotic din, drums crashing and guitars ringing as the band launches right into the unbridled rocker. Grushecky's low-slung vocals are driven by a locomotive rhythm, the band's backing harmonies add to the gang-fight vibe, and rather than clubbing you over the head, the guitars hit your ears like a stiletto slid between the ribs. Grushecky gets the crowd involved with some shouts and handclaps, rolls into a stream-of-consciousness rant that quotes John Lee Hooker, and finishes big with a razor-blade-on-eardrums guitar solo that performs an aural exorcism and chases all those evil thoughts of cheesy pop music right out of your pretty lil' head.
By contrast, "Everything's Gonna Work Out Right" is a mid-tempo romantic affirmation of life and love that offers some Little Stevie Forbert-styled harmonica blasts, Simmons' energetic, high-in-the-mix drums, and Grushecky's gravel-throated but charming vocals. Another East Carson Street track, "Chasing Shadows," pretty much sums up Grushecky's life-is-grand philosophy, delivering a positive (and wise) message hidden inside a crash-and-bang rock 'n' roll soundtrack brimming over with laser-sharp guitars (I swear that one solo reminds me of Duane Eddy), jackhammer drumbeats, and an overall joyous noise that will have you tapping your feet in spite of yourself.
"Dark and Bloody Ground" is one of the best of Grushecky's recent Springsteen collaborations, a historical story-song with disturbing lyrics that hit your brain like a pointy stick. The smothering instrumentation swirls like a rampaging tornado behind Grushecky's blue-hued vocals, guitars conflicting with the drums, voices shouting out in the darkness, the powerful message reminding us that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Another Bruce co-write, the award-winning "Code of Silence," is slighter in nature, but only slightly 'cause the instruments still collide like exploding stars, Grushecky's vocals strain to rise above the stunning fretwork, which itself rises with the drums to a malevolent crescendo of noise and fury.
A couple of the Rev's favorite Iron City Houserockers songs are reprised to good effect. "Have a Good Time...But Get Out Alive" was a sort of motto for my biker buddies and myself back in the 1980s, a street-smart tale of youthful energy and stupidity with whip-smart lyrics and a blustery backdrop of loud-and-proud guitars, bass, and drums. On the I.C Houserockers' sophomore album, "Junior's Bar" is prefaced by the wonderfully melancholy "Old Man's Bar"; delivered here, it's a joyous ode to freedom sans context, but it still rocks like a house on fire.
The song's bittersweet angst is barely hidden behind Grushecky's deceptively forlorn vocals and the bouncy instrumentation, the idea of that place where everybody knows your name a fleeting notion once they "kill the neon lights." It's an unrecognized rock 'n' roll classic with more brains and brawn that anything you'll hear on the radio these days. We're Not Dead Yet closes out with "A Good Life," from the album of the same name, and this album's title track comes from the aforementioned I.C. Houserockers' second effort.
The former is a delightful celebration of the seemingly mundane treasures in our life - kids, pets, a loving wife - that we too often take for granted. It's every bit as defiant as "We're Not Dead Yet," a working class credo that states authoritatively that you can be happy where you are. The latter song, "We're Not Dead Yet," is sort of like the Black Knight in the Monty Python movie, a spit in the eye at everybody who would conspire to keep us down, keep us broke, keep us unhappy and strapped to the yoke. Grushecky spits out the lyrics with punkish intensity and speed, barely heard above the gathering stormfront as he shouts "don't count us out, we're not dead yet!"
The twin father/son guitars strike your ears like rigid black lightning, the cascading drumbeats bounce around your brain like thunderclaps, the throbbing bass floods your senses, and only the keyboards offer a semblance of sanity. This is rock 'n' roll as redemption, rock music as catharsis, rocking just for the hell of it, and a snarling, grinning, gnashingly defiant message that was written long before anybody ever thought of the "1%" or occupying anything, a primal howl up from the streets from those of us down in the gutters, the bars, the back alleys of America wondering where our slice of the damn pie is going to come from. In Grushecky's hands, however, the song says "we've already won, because we're STILL here!" It's rock 'n' roll as survival, and nobody has done it so well, or for so long, as Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers.
Grushecky and his bandmates are blue collar rockers who may never hit the top of the charts, or be noticed much at all by the unwashed masses mindlessly chasing after the next American Idol winner. They don't demand your respect so much as they earn it every time they walk out on the stage. We're Not Dead Yet is the definitive live document of this underrated band, and if you're looking for some old-school rock 'n' roll cheap thrills that will rattle the plaster off your walls and won't make you cringe in embarrassment, look no further than Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers.
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