Slim Cessna’s Auto Club Live!

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club
Abbey Pub, Chicago
Saturday, March 11, 2007

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club might be powered by God. On the other hand, they very well could be possessed by the Devil. More than likely, both have a stake in this band’s souls.

Putting a finger on Slim Cessna’s Auto Club’s dogma is just as hard as putting one on their style. While their lineup of two vocalists (Cessna and Munly Munly), a drummer (Ordy Garrison), a guitarist/banjo player (Dwight Pentacost), an upright bassist (Shane Trost), and a pedal steel/keyboard player (John Rumley) seemed traditional enough, the Denver collective are not a run-of-the-mill country band. As if former Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra would sign anything “ordinary” to his Alternative Tentacles label, let alone a straightforward country act. No sir, as SCAC proved during their most recent Chicago stop, classifications were worthless when it came to songs like “32 Mouths Gone Dry” and “Pine Box.” Alt-country might be the most convenient but Auto Club’s rock elements weren’t terribly obvious (Pentacost spent most of his time playing banjo, not guitar). Their ties to Biafra and the punk’s intensity of their live show (Cessna and Munly pushed, pulled, and provoked each other all night) hint at underlying punk influences, but calling them cow punk downplays the ability and competence, they have for ancestral country, bluegrass, and gospel.

Gospel? For who, exactly? During “Cranston” Munly and Cessna, with the stagelights gleaming off his gold tooth, warned the citizens of one ne’er do well town “festering with murderers and whores “to “learn their bible well.” Later, during a feedback-laden romp through “Jesus Is My Body,” the towering Cessna stalked the stage, as he did all night, like a bible-belt preacher (Cessna’s dad was in fact a Baptist preacher), the crowded Abby floor his congregation. He even put his hand (the right; his left was wrapped in some sort of bandage) over one front-row fan’s forehead in attempt to heal him. It must have been unsuccessful because later that same fan was surely sinning by passing a lit cigarette to Cessna, who thankfully took a drag.

If, like is suspected, the band’s rigorous religion is coated with irony, they never let anyone in on the joke. Maybe their penchant for those things dark and evil was their wink of the eye, though. And there was definitely plenty of darkness to be found in songs like “Hold My Head,” where a mysterious figure approaches a town with promises of glory in exchange for everyone’s children, and crowd-favorite “This Is How We Do Things In The Country.” Cessna introduced that tune, about a man who kills a woman (because of her crossed eyes) and buries her in a grave so shallow her body ends up washing into town, as a story of “good country people like Munly.” And like Munly, a rail-thin, shadowy, pail figure with eyes as dark as they are sunken, the song was wonderfully creepy, not to mention the epitome – like Deliverance – of why backwoods types scare the holy bejesus out of us city folk.

Maybe the band’s music didn’t side completely with good or evil, the Devil or God. Maybe, it represented the tug-o-war, within all of us, the two sides are constantly engaged in. Salvation and sin; redemption and damnation. Maybe next time we’ll ignore all of this and simply enjoy what have to be one of the best live country/gothic/bluegrass/gospel/whatever bands today.

– Trevor Fisher

Category: Live Reviews, Weekly