More bands should study the elegant, almost neoclassically refined career arc of Slobberbone.
The flight path goes like this: Drink beer, play for your friends, take your name from a porch dog's chew toy, tour, rock, tour and, above all else, rock. The Denton, Texas, foursome of songwriter and singer Brent Best, guitarist Jess Barr, drummer Tony Harper and bassist Brian Lane has put together an improbable 10-year run of unhinged, cocksure, strangely poetic country- and punk-influenced rock and roll, with songs that veered from trailer-park noir to apocalyptic warnings.
But since playing what was supposed to be its final show in 2004, the band has recently welcomed back Lane, the tallest bass player in rock and roll, and is picking up where it left off: shredding speakers and Americana preconceptions in any bar that will have them. As for if there's more to be had from the band down the road, well, Best says he isn't so sure just yet.
"I don't know," he says. "Maybe. We try not to plan too much. We're going to tour and see if we like it. That was part and parcel of the headaches of the last year for Slobberbone. Everything had been mapped out for the next two years. That just didn't make a lot of sense for us. We were an of-the-moment band, maybe two months at a time at most. We're not too keen on getting into that situation again."
But we can still hope.
Fort Worth's Telegraph Canyon and Austin's Scott H. Biram round out this all-Texas bill.
