If subject matter were to count as much as curse words do to whomever decides what albums receive parental warning stickers, records by the Milwaukee country band Honky Tonkitis might be a shoe-in for its imprimatur of mature content. Says band leader John Steffes of the music that inspired his act—who have been reemerging on the city’s club circuit after a bit of a hiatus—“Honky-tonk records of the 1950s and 1960s were adult records, basically 45s, that were supposed to be confined to the jukeboxes of bars. They weren’t supposed to be shared with children, and they weren’t going to get much radio airplay. They were songs about drinking and cheating and divorce and heartbreak. Not very happy subject matter, but the music was usually upbeat with lyrics that were brilliant and sarcastic and depressing and painfully honest.”
It was Steffes’ own experience as a youngster with songs about subject matter beyond his years that got him started on his path to appreciating such lyrics. “I’d grown up hearing country radio my Dad listened to,” Steffes recalls, “but it was the mainstream type. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I rediscovered these old honky-tonk tunes that used to just sneak in a little bit on mainstream country radio. The Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn stuff led me further off the path to the Buck Owens and Carl Smith and Don Gibson tunes to the honky-tonk sounds of Charlie Walker and Bob Gallion and Eddie Noack.”
After a long musical history encompassing the hardcore punk of Necromantix, FS Camels’ poppier rock and Take My Face’s progressive rock leanings, Steffes began the band as an outlet for some originals he’d been writing. Aficionados of the kind of hardcore country the quintet specializes in may know the forlorn Carl Butler ode from which Steffes derived the combo’s name. The band’s high concept has confounded some, however. “With a name like Honky Tonkitis, I felt like people would have a good feel for what we were,” Steffes shares. “It’s honky-tonk, it’s in the damn name, for God’s sake. No confusion in labeling. Until I realized that many of them would misread our name as ‘Honky Tonk It Is’ or ‘Honky Tonka Truck’ or ‘Honky Tonk Tits’ or whatever. Kinda Freudian. You see what you want to see.”
‘Booze-filled Extravaganzas on the High Wire’
What an audience at a Honky Tonkitis show sees is often seen through the goggles provided by beer and more potent beverages. That includes the band’s vision, too. “Most Honky Tonkitis shows are booze-filled extravaganzas on the high wire without a net,” Steffes says. “We’re like a bunch of drunken Wallendas tripping towards our next drink.” Considering Steffes’ previous experience, it’s unsurprising that he would draw an inebriated punk rock parallel, too. “On a good day,” he says, “I’d want to be compared to the live show of The Replacements. On a bad day, Replacements fans would kick our ass. There is a lot of give-and-take with the crowd, especially if they’re giving us drinks. We welcome hecklers, we drink with everyone, and we’ve been knocked off the stage by drunken dancers.” Audio of one of those last-named incidents can be heard on Honky Tonkitis’ website as well.
Reckless as that description of any given Honky Tonkitis show may appear, Steffes is actually a responsible adult, and some of those responsibilities are what led to the band’s break a while back. “We took time off for me to go back to school to get my Montessori education certification,” he explains. “That was followed by a year’s worth of teaching and then my pursuing my master’s in Montessori education. In between, there’s the whole work and marriage and family life thing to navigate. Over that time, we were playing gigs here or there but nothing very intense.”
Their schedule is intensifying, though, as Steffes, drummer Kurt Weber, fiddle player Larry Gerd, lap steel player Bill McRobets and guitarist Bruce Dean refocus. The fourth Honky Tonkitis album is “about 75%,” Steffes relates, which should be good news for listeners who have enjoyed prior offerings such as You Drink and Drive Me Crazy and Deep End of the Bottle. For all the rowdy fun that their shows can be, Steffes prefers the studio. “As much as we enjoy playing live, it’s more fun to record and release original music, whatever the format. I like to think that, just like me, some guy out there 40 years from now will hear one of our songs through his anal psychic projection brainwave and be intrigued enough to hunt down our old albums and pull us all out of cryostasis to play a few songs at his mom’s birthday party.”
Honky Tonkitis’ founder credits Milwaukee for letting his band flourish. “Milwaukee is blessed with great bars, great musicians, great fans and great beer,” he says. “Milwaukee audiences just want to hear music and enjoy themselves while they drink. Milwaukeeans appreciate unique music and are happy to keep coming back.”
But Steffes doesn’t want his troupe to be considered so unique as to be labeled alt country, Americana or anything else but “straight-up honky-tonk,” he says. “Any other labeling is just confusing—mostly to me.”
Honky Tonkitis play Friday, Jan. 12 at Kochanski’s Concertina Beer Hall, 1920 S. 37th St., at 9 p.m.
