ACOUSTIC ANARCHY:

A BRIEF EXPLORATION OF FOLK PUNK + THE LABEL THAT MADE IT A GENRE

Despite how many times I may have nodded off in my “Intro to Art Theory” course, there were a few statements my professor repeated that managed to burrow their way into my sleeping subconscious.  Aside from the phrase “I have managed exhibitions at four major institutions,” the other one that comes to mind is the old mantra that “everything old is new again.”

Art perpetually imitates itself, time after time, and his current examples made sense: many recent films, songs, and even video games are harking back to ‘80s technologies to imitate a more straightforward artistic process, but with a newfound self-awareness (i.e. the film Super 8, the band Twin Shadow, the video game Fez, etc.).

This same anachronistic resurrection took place in the 1990s, as well, but from a less obvious era.  Punk was declared, for the umpteenth time, dead.  So, too, was the cultural relevance of Folk music.  Together, however… well, that’s a different story.

Punk, like so many other iconic institutions heralded as a zeitgeist, had run itself stagnant after its initial boom.  It rode the momentum of its shock value as far as it would take it, and the scene came to precarious point where it either had to legitimize itself as something complex and worth maintaining or die an overdosed death in the process.

Some bands, like Blink 182, NOFX, and Propaghandi walked a playful path, evolving their humorous, entendre-laden songs into what is now known as “Skate Punk.”  Others, like Green Day and The Offspring, would see the financial potential of a more approachable aesthetic, and would shift their technique into a chimera called “Pop Punk.”  A few, however, looked to another dying genre, Folk, for inspiration.  From this stemmed a whole scene that resisted definition and went through a gauntlet of titles: cowpunk, acoustic punk, alt-country, and many others, until settling on an elegant, albeit obvious, moniker: Folk Punk.

To discuss the growth of this niche genre, I interviewed three of its underground icons: David “Spoonboy” Combs, Chris Johnston (better known by his stage name, Chris Clavin) from the band Ghost Mice, and Terry Johnson, the lead singer and bassist of This Bike is a Pipe Bomb.  Some are more influenced by traditional folk music (Ghost Mice performs with only an acoustic guitar, a fiddle, and a ukulele) while others more a hair more modern (the only non-electric instrument that TBIAPB uses is a harmonica).  However, all three have released albums that have been definitive examples of Folk Punk, even if some of these artists no longer consider themselves as current contributors to the genre.

FROM HUMBLE (AND HUNGOVER) BEGINNINGS

To start off each interview, I asked for their greatest influences, and they all had one band in common near the top of their lists: The Pogues.  Though Folk Punk did not come into its own until the late ‘90s, its seeds were planted by this group over a decade earlier. The Pogues, formed by singer Shane MacGowan in 1982, infused traditionally depressing Irish lyricism with a hard-and-fast timescale inspired by punk rock and American blues.

The group’s first two albums were had a harsh lo-fi sound, following the work of MacGowan’s previous band, The Nips.  However, in their third album, If I Should Fall from the Grace of God, The Pogues found an earnest, alternative identity in American and English folk music.  Chris Johnston, of Ghost Mice, commented: “Before that it seemed like they were goofing around, singing about silly shit – but standard shit.  They were good, just sort of juvenile.  On this album, though, the sound grew up a lot and they sort of wrote something timeless and relatable. This music wasn’t just about parties and comedowns – it was about people.”

The general public took note of this change in tone; the single from that album, “Fairytale of New York,” raced to #1 on the Irish charts and #2 in Britain. Its blue-collar lyrics and raw-and-rough vocals were reminiscent of Child ballads – a collection of ancient English and Irish folk songs known to many a British patriot – and its heritage enchanted UK listeners with a swell of nostalgic nationalism, albeit with a friendly “fuck you” disposition.

The song was later voted as the 84th Best Song of All Time by BBC Radio 2 listeners in their “Sold on Song” top 100 poll. Even with the band’s success, people still did not know how to define them (as their genre did not exist yet), leading many to dismiss them as an ephemeral novelty.  MacGowan left the band in 1992 due to alcoholism (in classic Folk fashion) and many say that the rest of their work was unfortunately eclipsed by that one successful, infectious single.

THE FOUNDING FATHER (AND MOTHER)

From The Pogues’ ashes rose a vibrant social sinew, solidifying the skeleton of the fragile genre MacGowan had inspired.  The most heavily influenced were other Irish artists, forming groups like Flogging Molly, Blood or Whiskey, and Dropkick Murphys.  This hyper-specific style of music went on to become its own subgenre of the existing Folk Punk subgenre, and was labeled “Celtic Punk.”

Across the pond, however, American fans of the fallen Pogues thought their approach could be carried beyond the boundaries of its Gaelic roots and melded into a distinctly American sound.  Chris Johnston – more widely known by his stage name, Chris Claven – planned to just that, with all the earnestness and dirtiness that made the style so appealing.

Johnston formed the record label Plan-It-X in 1992, under the mantra “If it ain’t cheap, it ain’t punk.”  Johnston and his friends’ bands (The Ted Dancin’ Machine, Instinct, The Latch Key Kids) recorded and sold cassettes for a dollar… even though they cost a dollar to make.

“We were a non-profit tape label,” he stated proudly, before admitting that they didn’t really have a choice in the matter.  “No one really would buy our stuff otherwise,” Johnston laughed, “It was hard to be punk in Georgetown, Indiana. Not really the epicenter for the scene.”

The label was practically a matter of happenstance, in itself.  After Johnston and his friends recorded their first cassette, they found themselves scrambling to create some sort of cover art for it at Kinko’s.  His friend and co-founder, Samantha Jane Dorsett, was dead-set on putting art on both the front and back of the cassettes to make them feel a little more “legit.”  Johnston suggested that they brand them with a proxy record label, as well.  Dorsett loved the idea and proposed the name “Planet X.”

“You see,” Johnston explained, “Sam swore that way back when, she was kidnapped by aliens for two years and held captive on another planet, called Planet X.  Don’t ask.”  I took his warning as a casual turn of phrase and inquired further, but he preferred if I didn’t press the topic: “Look,” he locked eyes with me, “Sam was awesome.  Amazing.  She made us what we were.”  

There was a melancholy reverie in his voice – I later learned that she had recently passed away.

“Anyways, we just dug the name,” he shrugged.  So, they decided to “spell it weird” to avoid potential copyright issues, and – just like that – “Plan-It-X” was forged on a whim.

This accidental label began to gain a modest amount of notoriety as they put out more cassettes and booked higher profile performances.  “We all sucked, and about twenty people would come to the early shows,” chuckled Johnston, “and we got sick of dubbing tapes, like everyone does after awhile.”

Their label was humble, almost to a fault: they were losing more money than they making – that was, until later that year when Dorsett was awarded a respectable sum in scholarship funding.

Of course, being crew of punk-minded pals, there was no way that money was going to be spent on school supplies, so when discussing their investment opportunities (“scum beer and acid being pretty attractive choices,” Johnston admitted), the idea of releasing a proper 7” record came up.  After some deliberation, Dorsett agreed with the idea, and the two recorded the album Operation: Chris Clavin – and with it, Johnston’s stage name was set in stone.

“Sam, God bless her, fronted the money for the entire printing process.  It was totally worth it, but Jesus, those 7-inchers were hard to sell.”  After a series of shows, a few favors, and more personal discounts than they’d like to admit, they miraculously managed to sell the whole stock.  For a small local band selling music of a then-nonexistent genre out of the back of their truck, the numbers were pretty impressive.

After that initial victory, they decided the time was right to make a full length CD.  They were a good deal cheaper to produce than cassettes, so the people behind Plan-It-X decided that more should be offered to level the cost margin: “First off, they were five bucks instead of ten, ‘cause ten would just be bullshit.  We threw in two stickers instead of just one, as well as a patch.  And we wanted a shitload of songs on there because, to be honest, they weren’t of the best recording quality, so we tried to compensate with a pretty crazy quantity.”

After undertaking the challenge to sell this comparatively enormous stock of CDs, Johnston realized that they would have to step outside of their home counties if they wanted to clear out inventory and legitimately spread their sound.

“We packed up our stuff and went on tour, taking a thousand CDs with us.”  Touring was different back then, however: without internet access, they had no way to get out word of their performances en masse.  Something as simple as finding venues to play at was a challenge, too, as their main marketing strategy involved flipping through phone books and cold-calling club owners.

Johnston aimed to book sixty shows, eventually pinning down only forty-five… twenty-four of which fell through.  “Some would call that a bad tour, a terrible tour, and it was.  But we loved it.”  Though they only made enough money to self sustain, selling a meager 180 CDs, they managed to make connections and find a small – but incredibly devoted – audience.

While on tour, they met the band The Bananas, who agreed to release their next album under Plan-It-X.  “This was a huge deal,” Johnston explained, glowing with nostalgic exuberance, “because they were the first guys signed to the label had who didn’t go to my high school!”  It took two years for them to record the album, but when the label received it in 1998, it was well worth the wait.  “Forbidden Fruit is a badass album and it was, like, really ‘real.’ If that makes sense.”  As redundant as that may sound, it definitely did.

After that, Johnston took control of Plan-It-X, which Dorsett was had been managing since its inception.  He now had the responsibility of signing new bands, printing new albums, and adamantly defending the five-dollar price point.  “Look at the people who identify themselves as punks.  Like, really do – not this mall punk bullshit but those who are the real thing.  They don’t have a lot of money lying around, so it just didn’t make sense to try and squeeze some extra dollars out of people that couldn’t afford it.  If we don’t live in luxury, that’s fine – the music, the integrity… it’s all we got, really.”

FINDING YOUR INNER FOLK HERO

As running the label became an increasingly complex responsibility, Johnston’s own projects (Ghost Mice, The Devil is Electric, Operation: Chris Clavin, and Captain Chaos) fell by the wayside as newer acts emerged.  Among these were the politically active punk group, This Bike is a Pipe Bomb.  They released their first Plan-It-X album, Dance Party With… in 2001.

“Chris just came up to me after a show in 2000,” remembered TBIAPB’s front man, Terry Johnson.  “We saw each other around at things before, but this was the first time we really ‘talked.’  He just told me how much he liked our energy and I think he was trying to feel out where our priorities lied.  Like what we were trying to make, where we hoped to go with it, that kind of stuff.”  

The two hit it off, and Johnston proposed the possibility of This Bike is a Pipe Bomb signing with his label.  “I thought about it - I mean, we all heard about what Plan-It-X was doing.  It wasn’t like ‘huge,’ but it sounded really fucking cool.  But Fab Records wanted us to do one more with them, and we were already locked in.  And they were great [at Fab Records], too, so we didn’t want to just abandon them.”  Johnston gave Terry his card, and they didn’t see each other again until about a year later.

After releasing a 7” with Arkam Records, a sister label to Fab, the members of TBIAPB were considering their next move.  “I totally forgot about the Plan-It-X thing, actually,” Terry admitted.  In fact, it was complete happenstance that their paths crossed again.  “I actually found that card that Chris [Johnston] gave me way back, and figured: ‘fuck it.’  I gave him a call, and he was still down with everything.  So, literally, the next week we were on our way to their studio.”

While recording, Johnston let the band stay in his basement.  They began recording Dance Party With…, but something wasn’t quite clicking.  “We knew about half the songs we wanted on there, but we needed to fill out the final 4 or 5, y’know?  But we didn’t want them to be just ‘filler’ either.”  Terry figured if they were ever going to reinvent themselves, now would be the time, when signing to a new label and everything.

“I actually remember Chris [Johnston] blasting [The Pogues’] ‘Dirty Old Town’ when he was cooking and shouting along to it.  It ended up getting stuck in our heads that week and just staying there.  That song was just so dirty and honest… Real unpolished, but we all related to it.”

So, inadvertently influenced by the genre’s frontrunner, TBIAPB began an internal campaign to “roughen up” their focus into something that – like the song “Dirty Old Town” – could simultaneously be a love letter and a call to action.

Following the completion of that album and brief tour, they went on to release their most successful album, Front Seat Solidarity, in 2002 with Plan-It-X.  This time, their sound was cemented, and they were much more confident in their niche.  

“Folk Punk was something real now, and we knew that at this point.  I mean, we were it.  We decided to talk more about politics and shit in the world that was making us so fucking mad.  It was like a ‘bigger’ album.”  This album called attention to the farcical belief that we lived in a “post-racial society” with songs referencing '60s civil rights sentiments, like in “The Argument” (And 40 years ago it took the National Guard/ To let the black kids in public schools) and “This is What I Want” (This is what I want,/ Black kids and white kids sharing all the songs that their grandmamma taught ‘em).

The band was more distinctly “Folk” in this album, as well, covering traditional ballads such as “We Shall Not Be Moved.”  This iconic work became one of the poster children of the Folk Punk genre, inspiring future Plan-It-X acts like Defiance, Ohio and Andrew Jackson Jihad.  Terry remembers it warmly: “The genre was real, the music was great, the people were awesome, and the audience was just kept getting bigger.  Good fucking times.”

COMPARTIMENTALIZING “FOLK” AND “PUNK”

Folk Punk was truly legitimate now, and the breadth of its artists exploded across the East Coast: out of Massachusetts came Bread and Roses, in Connecticut were The Can Kickers, and Against Me! was gaining a huge following in Florida.  Both extremes of the Mason-Dixon were representing the scene, but the mid-Atlantic didn’t really have a genre icon of their own.  That was until 2001, when The Max Levine Ensemble worked with Fight the Octopus Records to release Chach, Cops, and Donuts.

David Combs, the lead singer of the band, took a great deal of influence from traditional American folk: “A lot of people said I reminded them of Woody Guthrie, mainly because I sang about social issues, about individuals I’ve met, and how kind of crazy nasal my voice can get sometimes.”  But, like Guthrie, people found his singing technique – often referred to as the “high lonesome style” – charming and, more importantly, incredibly sincere.  Combs did not try to embellish his self-image for his audience, but instead made fun of his frailties and called attention to his dorky demeanor.  Audiences responded.

“People really like the music I make not because it’s crazy polished or well-produced or, I don’t know, even ‘cool.’   [They like it] because they agree with the message I’m trying to get across or they identify with the issues I’m talking about.”

However, the other members of his band preferred to stay focused on the kinetic Punk sound they started with.  Torn over this, Combs created a solo alter ego: Spoonboy.  

“With ‘Spoonboy,’ I’m able to have smaller, more personal songs.  Don’t get me wrong, the band’s amazing, but I guess the solo work I make feels a bit more vulnerable and poignant.”

Combs and Chris Johnston from Plan-It-X became fast friends when meeting on The Max Levine Ensemble’s tour.  Combs discussed his solo ambition, and Johnston was encouraging.  Fast forward a few months later: the two were housemates, and Spoonboy was putting the finishing touches on his first standalone album: I Love You, This is a Robbery.

“With Plan-It-X, I just had so much freedom.” Combs expressed, “They never really told me how to sound, but rather just provide with possible influences.  They never forced anything on me; we all basically were just friends bouncing ideas off one another.  And the most important thing is that they aren’t trying to ‘sell X amount of records,’ because they know that they can’t really make those goals.  It’s not the point.  It’s about making the best music you can and making something that matters to you.”  

“I feel like there’s such a… I don’t know, ‘heritage’ to the scene.  One of my friends called Folk Punk artists ‘electric-acoustic Robin Hoods.’”  Combs laughed, “That’s a bit melodramatic, but, I don’t know, I like it.”

THE CURRENT STATE OF THE SCENE

David “Spoonboy” Combs, like the other Folk Punks I interviewed, is completely enchanted by the music and culture he’s a part of.  These ragtag groups and soft-spoken, oft-swearing artists remind me of a slightly more abrasive take on the Carter Family: collecting their grandparents’ songs and personalizing them to resonate in a new age… albeit an age where it’s appropriate to explicitly mock specific politicians, openly discuss your struggle with drug addictions, and basically say all the things older folk songs did, but without all the the parabolic ambiguity.

The genre Folk Punk provides a perfect venue to do this, where songs that spark sympathy rise above those that are catchy – where an audience is less critical on the quality of a singer’s voice, but rather the honesty of it.  It’s almost a renaissance of modern road poets, and with media outlets like Juno (whose soundtrack was led by genre-darling Kimya Dawson) and Away We Go embracing this music, the movement has only been gaining momentum.

Who knows?  Maybe we’ll see a resurgence of Folk on the Top 40 sooner than later.  Or maybe it will fade back into semi-obscurity as a brief and fiery fad, only to be rediscovered by wandering alien archeologists who’ve traveled from some far-off Planet X… but I suppose some things only Samantha Jane Dorsett and her extraterrestrial acquaintances know for sure.  

Either way, this stepchild to Folk genre, this warm-hearted rapscallion of the DIY scene – Folk Punk – will be sure to leave a unique and charming mark on this country’s musical mosaic.