Photo credit: Cary Horton
The Bottle Rockets
You might want to brace yourself for news of significant national or cultural impact when The Bottle Rockets come to town this week at Shank Hall.
In 2003, as The Bottle Rockets rolled into Milwaukee for a performance, the first blasts of the U.S. invasion of Iraq were shown on television. Two years earlier, news of George Harrison’s death circulated as the band played Brew City. Then last year, their fellow Missourian and rock ’n’ roll legend Chuck Berry passed away on a Saturday afternoon in March, just hours before The Bottle Rockets took the stage at Shank Hall.
“There’s something in the cosmos that makes these different big things happen every time we are in Milwaukee,” says lead singer and guitarist Brian Henneman.
But, perhaps expectedly, Henneman, a former roadie for Uncle Tupelo many gas stations ago, is more worried about bad weather hitting than bad news when they play Milwaukee. “We just pray it doesn’t snow,” he says. “If we keep the snow away, everything will be awesome.”
In early October, The Bottle Rockets released Bit Logic on their longtime label Bloodshot Records. It’s their 13th album since their self-titled debut on Minneapolis-based East Side Digital in 1993—25 years ago.
“The numbers are scary,” Henneman says. “You try to just keep working and you won’t notice it’s been 25 years.”
Henneman says the songwriting for Bit Logic, which provides a sterling showcase for the band’s appealing blend of humorous, everyday observations and plainspoken wisdom, occurred over an inspired six to eight months. Untypically for The Bottle Rockets, they booked studio time at St. Louis’s Sawhorse Studios before they had finished writing the songs for the new album.
“We work better with deadlines,” Henneman says. “Otherwise, the outside forces of day-to-day living can make time slip by fast.”
The band also returned to collaborating more on songwriting, after Henneman wrote most of 2015’s South Broadway Athletic Club.
“Saxophone,” bassist Keith Voegele’s co-write with Henneman, is very much an album highlight and the first appearance of the instrument of the same name in a Bottle Rockets song. Drummer and fellow original member Mark Ortmann joined with Henneman to write two songs, the funky title track (“this ain’t no high-tech train wreck”) and touching “Silver Ring,” which ends Bit Logic.
Ortmann’s big drums kick off “Bad Time to Be an Outlaw,” an anthem that combines classic rock, soul and Merle Haggard guitar licks, takes on Carrie Underwood and Thomas Rhett, and offers, “My music’s good but my income sucks.” Henneman says it has quickly become a live favorite with fans.
During a recent slate of shows, The Bottle Rockets were able to pull in all the songs from Bit Logic in their set. The classic country guitar sound of the album allows them to develop a game plan of what Henneman sees as “clean and tight” at the beginning and “dirty and loose” at the end.
“We’re like a plane on a runway that just keeps rolling and rolling and rolling and then it takes off and flies away,” he says.
During writing songs and doing live shows with The Bottle Rockets in 2017, Henneman contributed to the first album of his longtime side project Diesel Island, which also features Ortmann. Henneman says he was like a “studio cat” because he would come back from the road, record a guitar solo on the Diesel Island album and head back on the road.
In addition to The Bottle Rockets and Diesel Island, Henneman also works at a guitar shop.
“In the modern economy, I guess you have to have two or three jobs to make a living. I guess I’ve made it because I make a living doing all musical things,” he says.
“Yay,” Henneman adds.
The Bottle Rockets play at 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 8, at Shank Hall.
