Photo by Paul Beaty
Long before the current movement of diversity and independence in country music that has given acts such as Blackberry Smoke and Jason Isbell No. 1 albums without much in the way of commercial country radio play, there were The Waco Brothers.
At the time of their mid-1990s inception, country was experiencing the juggernaut of Garth Brooks’ popularity. While Brooks and others incorporated elements of ’70s singer-songwriter folk pop and ’80s glam metal to transform their genre for a heretofore-unprecedented growth spurt of popularity, The Wacos were part of the rumblings of a rootsy reaction. The English band with which frontman Jon Langford had amassed a cult following and copious critical praise, The Mekons, had morphed from post-punk angularity to old-timey acoustic rambunctiousness. Forming The Waco Brothers in Chicago was like Langford’s taking cues from his American musical influences and turning it into an aural parallel to the famous picture of Johnny Cash flipping the bird—only Langford was saying “Screw you!” to the state of a genre he wanted to reclaim from those he perceived as wolves at Nashville’s gates.
The common press descriptor of the Wacos’ sounding like Cash meeting The Clash remains true, as the group played their second tour date behind their especially bracing latest album, Going Down In History, at Kochanski’s Concertina Beer Hall Saturday. Looking at their own history of more than two decades in retrospect and in their present iteration, it’s fair to say that Langford and his mates were never so much interested in taking country back to the mountains of Appalachia, nor the dance halls of Bakersfield, but infusing a kind of rock ’n’ roll energy into a sound Langford already heard as rebellious. In one quip between songs, he recounted standing up for the punk credibility of late country crooner Ferlin Husky to an interviewer earlier that day, leaving Langford’s interlocutor speechless.
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With two guitars, bass and drums supplemented by Tracey Dear’s fiercely strummed mandolin, the Wacos could have at times been mistaken for a raucously bluesy punk band with a sometimes-residual country element, comprised of guys in their 30s-50s. That, however, is a wonderful thing, as their country component bolstered the punk, ’70s Rolling Stones and ’60s mod (they remade The Small Faces’ “All or Nothing” for Going Down and assayed it furiously at Kochanski’s) mixture they proffered. A mournful country impulse comes out lyrically, though, in new numbers such as the “D.I.Y.B.O.B.” and “Lucky Fool,” the former being one of several numbers sung by guitarist Dean Schlabowske.
Another wrinkle Langford has added to traditional country aesthetics is an explicitly leftist political slant. Maybe the irony of playing a club where a poster supporting Bob Donovan’s mayoral bid hangs in the window was lost on him, but he and his fellow Wacos’ brand of socialism came off amiably, best expressed in the rousing organized labor affirmation, “Plenty Tough-Union Made” which he prefaced with an aside about Illinois’ Governor Bruce Rauner. A joke about Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and the U.S. expatriate singer sharing his name who has become a revered musical presence in England got scattered chuckles; receiving a heartier response was Langford’s explanation of how the word “trump” in northern stretches of his homeland is slang for flatulence.
Encores including a ferocious turn on Lonesome Bob’s “Do You Think About Me?,” wherein Langford and Schlabowske gave each other noogies during one chorus, closed a show that provided another blow against the fraternity of lunk-headed bros and miscast electronica meddlers the country music powers that be continue to promulgate. That The Waco Brothers rock out more rousingly than many in striking those blows makes them that much more intriguing.
