Photo via Summerfest
BoDeans
It’s easy to argue that no two Milwaukee bands have done more to put Milwaukee on the musical map over the past four decades than the BoDeans and the Violent Femmes. So it’s fitting that each will play Summerfest this year, albeit on separate weekends.
Both bands hit the big time around the same time, on the same record label (Slash) and with lead singers who possessed endearing nasally voices. The Femme’s self-titled 1983 debut, a quirky folk-punk amalgam recorded in Lake Geneva, went on to become a cult classic with such hormone- and angst-ridden cuts as “Blister in the Sun,” “Kiss Off” and “Add It Up.” The notoriously pretentious Pitchfork.com even named it the 36th best album of the Eighties.
Three years later, along came the BoDeans’ 1986 debut, Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams. A barnstorming record of feisty heartland rock produced by T-Bone Burnett, the album was packed with songs that defined the band’s sound: “Fadeaway,” “She’s A Runaway,” “Still the Night,” “Angels,” “Misery.” By the following year, the BoDeans were opening for U2 on The Joshua Tree Tour and seemingly headed for bigger things.
The Femmes and the BoDeans inevitably lost momentum—and members—yet each band kept touring, and over the past three years they both released new albums.
The Femmes actually disbanded for a few years, when bassist Brian Ritchie sued vocalist and guitarist Gordan Gano, seeking half ownership of the band’s music and access to royalties. Since reforming in 2013, the band has released two albums, including 2019’s Hotel Last Resort. Founding drummer Victor DeLorenzo hasn’t played with the Femmes for nearly a decade, and John Sparrow from The Danglers now occupies the drum stool. The trio also morphed into a quartet, thanks to the undeniable presence of multi-instrumentalist Blaise Garza, who is more than two decades younger than Gano and Ritchie.
The BoDeans formed when guitarists and singers Kurt Neumann and Sam Llanas met at Waukesha South High School. Along with longtime bassist Bob Griffin, they continued to release a series of albums with memorable singles that radio nevertheless ignored until 1993’s “Closer to Free” peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 as the theme song to the TV series Party of Five.
Llanas left the band in 2011, right around the time the BoDeans released their 10th album, Indigo Dreams. Neumann carried on with a rotating lineup of musicians, releasing three more albums between 2012 and 2017. In 2018, Neumann and his then 26-year-old stepdaughter accused Llanas of molesting her as a child, which Llanas denied. Neumann released 2020 Vision in late 2020, a collection of 22 BoDeans songs (plus The Police’s “King of Pain”) that he recorded alone during the pandemic, and the BoDeans played one of the first gigs at the revamped American Family Insurance Amphitheater, opening for Little Big Town in August 2021 with the incomparable Kenny Aronoff on drums. The band will release its 15th album on June 24, mysteriously titled 4 the last time.
The Violent Femmes and the BoDeans can be considered elder statesmen of Milwaukee rock, and they’ll probably keep going until they can’t. But that doesn’t mean you should skip seeing them play in the backyard of their youth.
