Photo by Bill White
Growing up in the 1960s, vocalist Frank Chandek was knocked from his feet by the music that roared from transistor radios. “From ’67-’69, the AM radio played incredible songs by bands that had maybe one hit or were around for only a short time,” he recalls. Some of those songs were later collected on Nuggets, Pebbles and other anthologies of a genre eventually dubbed garage punk. This music provided an inspirational undercurrent for the Ramones-led musical explosion of the late ’70s and remains a touchstone for bands seeking the Neolithic foundations of punk rock.
Chandek’s long-running band, Dr. Chow’s Love Medicine, has remained true to those roots. Their just-released third album, Distant Planet, features a collection of mostly original songs remarkable for packing power and meaning into tightly focused three-minute outbursts—just like those garage hits from half a century ago. Some of the music’s urgency comes from the trio of guitarists on the frontline—Paul “Fly” Lawson, Brian Wensing and Ronnie Bob James—supported by the solid rhythms of bassist Joe Polizzi and drummer Dan Glaser.
To anyone who has paid attention to the Milwaukee music scene, the names of Love Medicine’s members will be familiar from previous bands such as The Greens, The Dummy Club, The Wooldridge Brothers, The Immortal Plants, The Unheard Of and Shinola. Chandek and Lawson readily concede that their band’s name might have unintended connotations of a hippy jam band or some sort of world music funk ensemble. “I make up a new story every time someone asks me about the name,” Lawson explains. Chandek promptly offers a story. “Dr. Chow is a figure we came up with—a sage we go to for relief of our problems.
“The music is therapeutic for us and our audience,” he continues. “Despite the name, we don’t really do love songs, but songs about love gone wrong. Love can have so many complications and our songs put a face on some of those emotions—they give the emotions a sound.”
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Dr. Chow’s Love Medicine was never intended as a career. “We’ve been doing this for the love of music, playing places where we would go, places where we hang out,” Lawson says. Unapologetically raw, their music was never meant for the mainstream or, as Chandek puts it, “the alternatives that are really mainstream.”
And yet, they hope the release of Distant Planet will lead to a few gigs in other cities where band members have friends, family and other ties. “We want this record to take us from being a band people have heard of to a band people have heard,” Lawson says.
Dr. Chow’s Love Medicine perform at 2 p.m., Feb. 14 at Kochanski’s Concertina Beer Hall, 1920 S. 37th St.
