It’s not unheard of for a Red Cloud show to erupt into a volcano of bloody, weepy chaos. The Denver band exists sonically in a lawless province where crab grass sprouts
from the cracked concrete, rusted bullet holes adorn wilting street signs and abandoned tractors sit idly between the corn and squash.
And it’s that way because they made it that way.
Neil Young is familiar with this desolate territory. So is Ian MacKaye. And it’s that intentional fusion – of Crazy Horse and Dischord Records bands such as Fugazi and Lungfish – that best describes the furious music of Red Cloud, which takes its name from a small township in Nebraska known in certain circles as the setting for half of Willa Cather’s 12 novels. But singer Ross Etherton, who neighs and kicks and rattles his way through each Red Cloud show with the guitar as his hoe, knows Red Cloud as the land where his grandfather lived.
“You can only write so much about yourself,” Etherton said over his second Pabst Blue Ribbon at the Paris Wine Bar. “The songs that are written directly about me and my family are painful. They’re still painful to sing.”
A typical Red Cloud set might open with a rager about a coonskin cap and move directly into a searing ballad about alienation. And as Etherton is moving into the realm of third-person storytelling, he and his band are discovering a heavier, darker, more introspective region that is as varied as each band member’s background.
“I love personal revelatory songs, but I don’t want to cry the whole time,” Etherton said. “We’re getting better at encompassing the human experience.”
The band is now officially called Red Cloud West because a Christian rapper had the name Red Cloud before they did. Nothing else has changed.
The band, which will release its new darker EP “Dragonland” with a show at the Larimer Lounge tonight, is a strong part of a growing if unstructured Colorado collective that shares philosophies, influences and pasts. And while many of the members from this group of new Western songwriters are friends, their sounds are increasingly disparate.
“Red Cloud reminds me of Planes Mistaken for Stars more than any other band I can think of,” said Stephen Copeland, who books Bender’s Tavern. “I saw them playing a show at Bender’s to 20 people, and (guitarist) Jason Heller walked away with a bloody head because he cut himself open. He cared so much about what he was putting out that it didn’t matter there wasn’t anybody there.”
Jeff Davenport, who hosts Radio 1190’s “Local Shakedown” and plays bass in the band d. biddle, sees comparisons to his own band and Planes, not to mention Porlolo, Ghost Buffalo, Bad Weather California, Dang Head, Out on Bail, Git Some and Handsome Bobby.
“They all share a certain sense of conviction,” Davenport said. “There’s a level of sincerity that kind of says, ‘This is for real,’ and it comes out. And a lot of people here respond to that. The conviction and sincerity in the music doesn’t always make for a full room, but people respond to it more.”
Etherton is a native of Grand Island, and his Nebraska roots run deeper than those of Heller, who never lived in the same place for more than six months before he and his wanderlust-stricken family finally settled in Colorado after he turned 13 in 1985. Bass player Neil Keener moved here from Chicago a few years ago, and drummer Andrew Warner was born and raised in Colorado, having graduated from Holy Family High School and worked at Paris on the Platte coffeehouse for more than a dozen years. Etherton has worked at the same coffee shop, on and off, for nine years.
The four friends easily discuss the merits of Guns N’ Roses’ epic “Appetite for Destruction” and Shudder to Think’s unflinching originality, and they go back-and-forth on what is considered “old Jawbreaker” (referring to the punk-pop trio) and the likelihood of recording with Don Zientara of Dischord Records/
Inner Ear Studio fame. Keener mentions that the Oak Ridge Boys on 45 RPM makes for a faithful Dolly Parton impression, and Heller admits he likes Kid Rock as a country singer.
Their shared fervor exemplifies so many surrounding simpatico musicians.
“People feel the music out here – they’re not just going out and getting drunk,” said Keener, who plays in four other bands and says he was inspired to join the band because of Etherton’s and Heller’s shared obsession over Neil Young and Lungfish.
Ross’ lyrics on the new “Fists Rain Down” tell the story of the red tattoo on his left arm: The state of Nebraska with a star and the word “home,” where Grand Island sits just to the east of center.
“I was raised in the lap (a pit) of dirt and dust and mud/And I grew up in a house built by my father’s hands/That small town still runs thick through my blood/It rolls and reels with the dirt and the mud.”
The lyrics change nightly, as does the music. But the passion doesn’t. The band prefers small warehouse shows and house parties because of the intimacy – later a Paris co-worker brings Etherton and Warner pictures of a recent house party Red Cloud played with Seraphim Shock, revealing pictures of a Wild Turkey-fed Heller on his back amid party balloons – but they feel the show, no matter the room or situation.
While they’re often labeled as alt-country – “I hate country music,” Keener said, “I despise it” – it’s the easy way out.
“I hope that people could come and see us and tell that we used to go to hardcore shows and punk shows and that we used to play in hardcore bands,” said Heller, inspiring Keener – who plays in Git Some – to say, “Used to?”
Regardless of the music’s occasional twang, the band’s severe, punk-rock past still shines brightly. When they last toured earlier this year, Heller unintentionally flung a mic stand back into Etherton’s mouth, splitting his lip open and knocking half his front-
right tooth out during the middle of a show in Phoenix. Etherton, who was quite inebriated, reveled in the lyric to the song that followed: “It kicks out the teeth.” And right after their set, both Etherton and Heller passed out in the van.
Suddenly the conversation subtly kicks back to something Heller said earlier about one of the many ’90s emo bands that changed him forever: “It’s as if every time they sing it, they’re reconnecting with what they felt when they wrote it.” Red Cloud is now one of those bands – feeling the pain and the happiness and acting as a conduit for its fans to run the emotional gamut with them.
“This is the new punk, because punk’s been so played out and commercialized,” Radio 1190’s Davenport said of what he and his friends call noise folk, “and it’s great that you can still find that energy in a completely different medium.”
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-820-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
Red Cloud West
NOISE FOLK|Larimer Lounge, 2721 Larimer St.; 9 tonight with I Can Lick Any (expletive) in the House, Black Lamb, Handsome Bobby| $6at the door
