Garage has little interest in being idle
Thomas Wolfe said you can't go home again, but if he had uttered those words to the members of upstart country-punk trio Two Cow Garage, they probably would have shrugged their shoulders and asked him why anyone would want to.
Then, as they've done just about every day for the past two years (they've got 332,000 miles on the odometer to prove it) the Columbus, Ohio, outfit would have pointed its van in the direction of the next gig and stepped on the gas.
''For the first time in two years, we were home for two months and it was miserable," says singer-guitarist Micah Schnabel. ''You get used to one lifestyle, and it's hard to come home and change everything -- 10 o'clock at night and you're still pacing the floor." The band plays Harpers Ferry on Monday.
''Pretty much our life is on the road. When we took two months off, I had to get a day job, and that shocked me into reality real quick. I thought, 'I'm not built for the 9-to-5, man.' It was pretty awful. I would rather be in Mobile, Alabama, and play for four people a night than to have to wake up here and have to go to work."
Even if they wanted to, it's unlikely Schnabel or his mates in Two Cow Garage -- drummer Dustin Harigle and bassist Shane Sweeney -- would be able to get day jobs any time soon, which suits them just fine. The band's in the midst of a US club tour to promote its raggedly terrific self-released new album, ''The Wall Against Our Back," which is being distributed through Redeye U.S.A. (and is also available at www.twocowgarage.com). The disc follows the trio's 2002 debut, ''Please Turn the Gas Back On," which, despite being self-released with no outside promotion, spent eight months as a top 10 seller at the American-roots-music mail order website Miles of Music.
The new CD, produced by Brent Best of the raucous country-rock anarchists Slobberbone and engineered by Matt Pence of the noise-pop subversives Centro-Matic, does a great job of capturing TCG's brash, go-for-broke live performances.
Schnabel sings nothing like he talks, and what comes out over the microphone is a half-hoarse holler that's equal parts desperation and celebration, sort of like a liquored-up Steve Earle -- that is, if Earle were still getting liquored up. And revved-up hillbilly-punk ravers such as ''Make It Out Alive" and ''135" will do little to quell Uncle Tupelo comparisons. Like the group's past tour mates the Drive-By Truckers and Marah, TCG likes its rock raw and loud.
Schnabel, 22, formed TCG three years ago with Harigle, 23; they both grew up in the small Ohio farming town of Bucyrus and played in a cover band together in high school. While everybody around them was listening to a steady diet of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, the fledgling musicians were smitten by underground Ohio bands such as the short-lived Big Back Forty and singer-songwriter Tim Easton's old band, the Haynes Boys.
''These were guys that were writing songs about where we grew up," says Schnabel, whose band even covers ''Hillbilly," a song written by former Big Back Forty songwriter Sean Beal. ''That appealed to us a lot more than 'Dark Side of the Moon.' "
Two Cow Garage, it seems, would rather drive to the dark side of the moon for a gig than listen to it. Given the members' wanderlust and thirst for uncharted territories, they just might get there.
