On a chilly Saturday night in February, Churchwood holds seemingly effortless sway over a packed house at the Hole in the Wall. The five men who comprise this artful, avant-blues rock quintet have collectively bagged many hours of Hole stage time over the years in multiple bands, but tonight is special. The band summons peak levels of intensity and the thrill-seeking, graybeard-dominated crowd responds in kind.
Garbed in matching white suits from K&G Fashion Superstore that make them resemble low-rent guardian angels, Churchwood unspools a heady barrage of slightly off-kilter, multi-helixed arrangements that speak directly to the pelvic core in a low, throbbing growl. Fists pump the air as vocalist Joe Doerr leads the sing-along cabaret chorus of “Keels Be Damned” from Churchwood’s new album, 2:
I turn the tables and resist the razor’s edge against my wrist
the ship of state has locked its rudders in a tailspin
let the keels be damned, set the sails to wind
While blues is at the heart of Churchwood’s sound, it’s not the kind of blues likely to appeal to guitar god worshippers who value proficiency over empathy or authenticity whores who insist on curating the form in an airtight glass museum case. Race-baiting Southern strategist Lee Atwater would not have hired them to play the elder George Bush’s inauguration party.
Churchwood first took shape in 2008. Guitarist Bill Anderson and bassist Julien Peterson were in Cat Scientist and wanted to keep playing together after that band imploded. Anderson, a longtime Texas Legislative Council staffer by day who previously explored blues-infused punk in Poison 13 and punk-infused blues in Bigfoot Chester, already had a vision for the new band.
“I got on this insane Captain Beefheart jag at work during session when I would just listen to all his albums every night,” Anderson recalls. “It was kind of keeping me sane because I was really hating my job at the time.
“It made me think about what music I love to play the most, which is blues music. But just loving it isn’t enough to make you able to play it. When you’re basically a white guy from the suburbs, you have to do something different with it. Something that comes from yourself.”
Doerr & Anderson in Hand of Glory. (Video by Dave Prewitt.)
When it came time to find a singer, Anderson immediately thought of Doerr, the onetime LeRoi Brothers vocalist who previously played with Anderson in Ballad Shambles and Hand of Glory. Greater D.C. émigré Anderson and St. Louis native Doerr both got to Austin in the mid-Eighties. Doerr’s 1983 journey to town had all the lyrical trappings of a foot-stomping rag.
“I left St. Louis on a midnight train,” Doerr says. “A real midnight train, not a proverbial midnight train. It was on my mom and dad’s 37th wedding anniversary. The train got maybe 40 miles out of St. Louis. I was sleeping and the train derailed in a snowstorm. And there was a real red moon. One of those rare celestial events. So I started having second thoughts about the move.”
When Hand of Glory ended in 1992 with a Halloween show at Hole in the Wall, Doerr turned his energy to writing and poetry. He completed his undergraduate degree at UT. Then Notre Dame offered him a full scholarship. After seven years under the Golden Dome, Doerr received his doctorate. He’s now an English professor at St. Edward’s University.
“As far as I’m concerned, good poetry has to sound good,” Doerr says. “I think American poetry, at this point in its history, is completely devoid of musical aesthetic.
“So when I write, a lot of times, I’ll put the microphone up on my desktop and read back what I’ve written. If it doesn’t sound musically viable to me at all, then I rewrite it. I got into that habit in grad school and the habit stays with me.”
Doerr’s provocative wordsmithing takes center stage on the off-balance choogle, “Weedeye.” Built spontaneously during band practice, the song started with an Anderson riff and took lyrical form when Doerr blurted out, “We don’t have to white or wheat, we already rye!”
An equally surreal litany of verses followed, tied together by the refrain, “We don’t have to anything ‘cept live ‘til we die.” Doerr got that one from his dad.
“My mother would tell him, ‘Jim! You’ve got to get up and get ready! We have to be at the wedding reception in an hour!’ And he would say, ‘I don’t have to do anything except live ‘til I die!’” Doerr recalls. “When you think about it, that’s absolutely true.”
Further evidence of Churchwood’s circle of trust can be found in the guitar interlocution between Anderson and slide specialist Billysteve Korpi. Eschewing the shackles of constant chord changes, the two guitarists twist and turn their way around the root like dueling serpents. According to Korpi, who also plays in the Crack Pipes, most of his back-and-forth with Anderson comes about spontaneously while jamming at practice.
The band’s greatest leap of faith may have been allowing Peterson to switch from bass to drums despite never having played the latter instrument in a band before. Anderson was skeptical, but Peterson was persistent. As it turns out, Peterson’s voracious, slightly behind-the-beat drumming is one of Churchwood’s most distinctive elements.
“I wanted the drums to be different,” Peterson says. “I wanted them to be syncopated and I wanted them to take the music in a different, more proggy direction, I guess.
“I’m not a very technically proficient drummer, but I’ve seen many people play the drums that I don’t think have a mastery of the drums. They’re just very persistent and charismatic behind the drums, you know? I just wanted to do that.”
Holding it all together is Peterson’s bass successor, Adam Kahan. Anderson found Kahan when the two were performing in the Daniel Johnston-inspired musical, Speeding Motorcycle (full disclosure: Kahan and I used to play together in two Seventies soft rock cover bands). The other members of Churchwood describe Kahan as the band’s rock-solid fu
“I'm flattered and a little confused by that,” Kahan says. “I do think I try to simplify my basslines since Bill and Billysteve cover a lot of sonic ground between them. Often I just try to provide something lower-frequency and simple to stay out of their way!”
The most readily noticeable difference between Churchwood’s self-titled debut and 2 is expanded range. Songs like the horn-enhanced “A Message from Firmin Desloge” and the prurient funk of “You Be the Mountain (I’ll Be Mohammad)” build upon the band’s surrealist blues foundation in a way that fosters new avenues for accessibility without compromise.
Churchwood plans to take their show on the road with a mini-tour to Chicago later this year. They also hope to parlay a positive review of their debut in Sweden’s biggest newspaper into a European tour at some point. And even though the paint isn’t dry on 2, Anderson is already thinking about Churchwood’s next album.
“I think we can do four albums before we’re too decrepit.” he deadpans.