The Sanguinistas

The Sanguinistas were born of the dissolution of longtime Austin, TX cowpunk mainstays Stickpony. Stickpony’s Brit Jones got real depressed, not so much at the break-up of his band but because he had to quit drinking and smoking after 20+ years of gratuitous and contented indulgence in both. To be honest that would have probably broken up Stickpony anyway. Once he sobered up he realized that he was going to die someday and got really freaked out so he sat down and wrote a bunch of hopeless, depressing, existential songs. They owe a lot to post-punk because he really likes that stuff. He wrote them with pop hooks to leave open an outside chance that someone will buy one and he won't end up living in a cardboard box eating dogfood before his inevitable death. He likes old country too so he threw some of that in there. Thoroughly confused, he asked former Stickpony guitarist Lonesome Dave Fisher to help him out. Lonesome Dave agreed even though he hates post-punk. He then asked Cindy Toth (The Reivers), Shannon Rierson (The Golden Apples) and Thad Swiderski (The Wannabes) to join. They all did, partially because they liked the songs and partially because they were sick of seeing Jones moping around and thought if he got a band together it might cheer him up. He called the new project The Sanguinistas because he thinks it's funny and he's resonably certain there's no other band out there called The Sanguinistas who'll end up suing him. It turns out they rock. They recorded a demo with living legend producer Ron Flynt. They played some gigs, mostly outside Austin because, mysteriously, most of the clubs in Austin won't return any of Jones' emails and it's more fun playing out of town anyway. The gigs in Austin, almost all of which were at Room 710, did remarkably well, further adding to the mystery. Almost a year into it, it looks like The Sanguinistas are going to stick around for a while. Even so, everyone's still waiting for Jones to quit moping around.