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New album Professional in stores now!
One of the most frustrating things for a band, especially its songwriters, can be trying to not force the inspiration when writing songs. Sometimes you can spend an eternity waiting for inspiration to hit or for something to happen. For the Scotch Greens, that something was their collaboration with producer/guitarist Ted Hutt (Flogging Molly, Tim Easton, MXPX).
When the Idaho-bred, temperature-raising band went in to cut four tracks for a new E.P. a few years ago, Hutt added a much needed outside perspective, and frontman/singer/guitarist Zander Cox soon began to find himself able to express himself in a more concise way than ever before. Before he and his bandmates knew it, what was originally planned as four tracks had grown to 6, then 8, and eventually all 11 tracks that form their official debut album, Professional.
The follow-up to a couple of low-budget indie releases and a live album, Professional takes pot shots at the rat race, the working stiff and city dwellers in songs like The City Is Poison, the title track and Drinking by the River. And it finds Cox, the bands lyricist, almost subconsciously at times (and just downright blatantly at others), longing for the simple life he knew growing up in Idaho. (The band has roots in both Idaho where Cox and guitarist Wes Walsworth recently returned and San Diego, home to bassist C.J. Cnossen and drummer Luke Kristensen; banjo/resonator/mandolinist Dustin Welch comes from Nashville).
A meld of decades-old traditional music and vein-popping punk, the Scotch Greens sound is rooted in the wide array of music imbibed by Cox and Walsworth in their hometown in central Idaho, a valley town where they burned countless hours and brain cells getting shit-faced to records by everyone from the Misfits, Social Distortion, TSOL and Fear to Johnny Cash, Hank Snow and Hank Williams Sr. Having lived across the street from one another as kids, both formed their own punk bands in high school.
In the late 90s, they joined with another set of friends/neighbors/musicians in Cnossen and Kristensen and relocated to San Diego, bumming around for a while and crashing with friends before landing days jobs. Walsworth even built guitars for Taylor while refining their brand of punk, rock, bluegrass and roots. Playing its first gig at a chicken farm (seriously), the band quickly graduated to more high profile gigs at The Crow Bar and Casbah, and began honing and evolving its sound with the introduction of banjo and mandolin. "The goal was to take the real traditional shit and just pump it up," says Cox.
"Back then we were real western punk," he says. "We had a more surf guitar kind of thing happening, but it was pretty much western punk, and making a show out of it which is what we’re into, going to shows, and getting rowdy. And the bluegrass thing worked its way in over time."
Eager to record, the band hit the studio not long after, issuing its debut disc, the jam-heavy Draw! (Hairball8 Records), in 2000. Full of post-high school songs inspired by the bands travels and life in San Diego, the disc spawned the free-booze anthem and fan fave Hot as Texas. Distributed by Cargo Music, the disc was nominated for Best Rock Album and Album of the Year at the San Diego Music Awards.
Two years later, the Scotch Greens cut O.C. 6.16.02, another project that unexpectedly spilled into an album. "We were recording it for KUCI, the college radio station at UC Irvine, and we just liked it, so Russ’ cousin had a small label called Accident Prone and he put it out," says Cox, noting that the album featured a few tracks that have only now been finished with Professional.
In 2003, the band issued a limited-edition, split-seven-inch with The Irish Brothers. The next year they paid tribute to The Man in Black with a cover of There You Go, issued on the 2004 Hairball8 Records comp Dear Johnny... A Tribute to Cash.
After hooking up with friends/admirers the Street Dogs who signed the Scotch Greens to their DRT imprint, Brass Tacks, the band went in to cut the original four songs that morphed into The Professional. "It’s our first real record, as far as we’re concerned," says Cox, stressing the importance of Hutts direction. "He’s a badass guitar player. Every one of us, he taught us so much. For me, he just gave me an entirely different way of looking at things. We never had that outside perspective before, we never had someone who would go so deep into the songs. People would give us feedback, but he would see what we trying to get at, and help us get it out."
The album touches on the political (Throw It Back) and the sociological in songs like The City is Poison: ’Its sort of about that urban/business/city environment versus old timey, drinking-in-the-woods kind of shit. Its sort of about the duality of that and how you sort of find yourself in different situations.’
While Hutt triggered a flowing of inspiration, the recording process was long, as the band scrapped together cash to cut tracks. "It was kind of a weird time," says Cox. "Joe Strummer, Joey Ramone and Johnny Cash all died while we were making this record, and we were always kind of moving, going to L.A., recording, or whatever. There’s a song about John Wayne’s parasitic twin. I dont know where that one came from. I went to high school with his grandson, so maybe thats what inspired that."
However scattered the inspiration, the music is focused on the band’s mission to continue to seamlessly meld old and new. "The old sounds are just as important to me as the new ones," Cox says, summing it all up. "At the end of the day, this is all folk music anyway, as far as Im concerned."
Update 1/30/08
After over eight years together and countless shows, Scotch Greens officially called it quits in the Spring of 2007. Since then, different members have been working on projects with friends and with each other. Below are links to current up-and-running projects. Stay tuned for more information on a new project produced by Ted Hutt with members of Scotch Greens. Check the Scotch Greens website as well for additional info.
Scotch Greens
Dustin Welch & the House Band
The Midnight Choir (CJ Cnossen & Luke Kristensen)
The Drowning Men (Nato Bardeen)
