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Slim Cessna: The cow-town sound |
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Written by Glenn BurnSilver
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Thursday, 28 December 2006 |
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There’s a nostalgic lure of Denver’s cow-town past full of ghosts, gunshots, soapbox preachers, red light districts, saloons and, of course, cows — and all the mayhem that’s associated with a burgeoning city on the edge of the western frontier.
But it also is rather eerie how these images flourish in many Denver bands. Country music is one thing, but band’s like 16 Horsepower, Munly and the Lee Lewis Harlots, and Slim Cessna’s Auto Club take it one step farther, back beyond campfire sing-a-longs to a hauntingly gothic place where the old west comes alive in it’s darkest form.
For Cessna, performing country music was a vision grown from childhood. “I don’t have any idea of why that may be. But, I’ve never been very ambitious in other things quite honestly,” he said during a phone interview, although he may never quite have intended or expected it to sound as dark, mysterious and psychedelic as it does.
“It’s a conglomeration of all these crazy imputes and lyrically it’s not just me, it’s coming from a lot of different places, and different people with different backgrounds and that’s what makes it what it is essentially,” he explained. “I think that just the fact that we were able to establish that … we can do whatever we want. Sometimes it hurts us because we are all over the map, but it allows the song to have a life of its own.”
That means creating a musical montage where old and new country smacks of a dash of punk and modern spunk for Gold Rush romps and dark, Old World ballads. But it’s the lyrical depth and imagery that weaves these twangy tales beyond the average country song, or perhaps those of any other country band, old or new.
Auto Club songs touch on flying machines and speechifying pilots, government attempts at mass vaccination, men with old red canes, Bible tent revivals, and a cast of fictional characters as dark and wide as the old streets of Denver’s cow-town legacy
“I don’t think I am a very good story teller and when you hear us telling good stories, I think that is the result of having (Jay) Munly in the band, who is an amazing storyteller,” he said. “I think I have a certain gift for making words rhyme and Munly has a great gift for telling stories. I think together we are able to make some really good music.”
Son of a preacher man
Slim Cessna grew up the son of Baptist preacher. And while some of his songs with the Auto Club have a fire and brimstone feel, this he said is not the result of his father’s profession.
“My father is a preacher, but that (fire and brimstone approach) is a little exaggerated,” he said. “My father is a very down to earth mellow person. He really has nothing to do with that type of television evangelism. It’s funny, because lot of people think that’s what my background is like. I’ve never been exposed to anything like that.”
Dialing: Nashville’s not on the line
While Slim Cessna’s Auto Club certainly has country leanings, they don’t exactly lean close enough to the mainstream for those Nashville slickers to take notice.
“Certainly it’s not like we want to starve our families. We do understand our place. It’s not mass appeal music — we’re a niche genre band,” Cessna said. “When people see our live shows they tend to appeal to more people that our records do. It’s hard to get it to our place. I know we could make it work within that framework and bring it to a wider audience, but the truth of it is bigger labels have never really been interested in us.”
TO GO
Slim Cessna’s Auto Club
Doors 8 p.m.; show 9 p.m.
Friday, Dec. 29
Aggie Theatre
204 S. College Ave., Fort Collins
$10
482.8300
With Munly and the Lee Lewis Harlots | Only registered users can write comments.
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