Gallants in the face of adversity

It's been a bad week for the San Francisco folk-punk duo Two Gallants. On the first day of their tour, their car broke down in Chico, Calif., en route to a show in Portland, Ore. Two Gallants - childhood friends Adam Stephens (voice, guitar) and Tyson Vogel (drums) - had to rent a U-Haul truck to lug their gear to the club. The next day, on their way to a show in Vancouver, the pair were stopped at the Canadian border, where they were initially refused entry.

"They didn't like our style, I guess," muses Stephens over the phone from a tour stop in Seattle a day later. (Two Gallants play the Middle East Downstairs next Friday.) "But we tried it again and they let us in the second time. We went back to a different entrance point."

Two Gallants should be used to unforeseen circumstances on the road. Since the duo's inception five years ago playing local house parties and public transportation terminals, they have logged thousands of miles and hundreds of shows - including nearly 200 abroad last year alone - and are no strangers to encountering trouble along the way. As bad as this first week has been, for instance, it's nothing compared to what went down at a club in Houston in October of last year - Friday the 13th to be exact.

During the show, a police officer jumped on stage and ordered Two Gallants to stop playing due to an alleged noise complaint, and a melee ensued that culminated in Vogel's arrest (charges were later dropped, according to Stephens, who fled the club when faced with his own arrest). Accounts by eyewitnesses, the bands on the bill, and police differed concerning the chain of events. Badly shaken, Two Gallants considered taking legal action against the police.

"When it first happened, we were in such shock that anything like that could ever take place," says Stephens. "But after all we had to go through and all the money we had to spend, it kind of sucked us dry in a way because it made the whole legal process seem pretty futile." Stephens adds that even though Vogel's case was dropped, the Canadian authorities at the border knew about his arrest, which remains on record.

If you hadn't heard their earlier efforts, you might be tempted to think that the dour desperation and sustained sense of agitation that suffuses the duo's self-titled new album has to do with their troubled times. But no, the raw, restless yearning and strangled yelp of Stephens's serrated voice, and the duo's jaggedly spare instrumentation, have long been staples of Two Gallants' approach. There are no police officers jumping onto stages or lurking in the shadows of "Two Gallants," which came out this week on the Saddle Creek label.

Instead, the duo's crackpot crock-pot of antediluvian folk, rustic Americana, and Dylan-inspired imagery laid atop stripped-to-the-bone punk revels in dark and timeless thoughts and themes: loss, abandonment, regret, betrayal, revenge. The phenomenally acid-tongued narrator of "Despite What You've Been Told" is both bitterly contemptuous and self-loathing. "Fly Low Carrion Crow," a rueful hymn to penance, finds Stephens crippled with remorse "for the things I've done no one else should know." The song is as brutally sad as it is starkly beautiful. Almost always on the new album, someone is leaving or has left, and there is someone - usually the singer and lyricist Stephens - lamenting their absence and longing for their return.

"With us traveling so much, it's pretty much impossible to maintain any real relationship with anyone except for the people who are in your band, or in the van with you," says Stephens. "So a lot of the recurring themes I can see are about departure and having to leave something behind. That's the way our lives have been recently."

Stephens and Vogel, who grew up together in San Francisco, have been friends since they were both 5 years old and have made music together since they were 12. Their professional partnership put a dramatic new twist on an old alliance.

"Our friendship has definitely changed because we have this mission we're both on, and this thing we're focused around," Stephens says. "In some ways, it makes it hard to maintain the simplicity of just hanging out and enjoying each other's company. But I think we've been pretty fortunate so far, to be able to stick together and not murder each other."

BITS & PIECES. Tonight Kings of Leon and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club share a bill at the Orpheum Theatre. John Vanderslice is at the Middle East Upstairs. Tarbox Ramblers are at Johnny D's. Tomorrow We're All Gonna Die is at O'Brien's. The Break Mission host a CD-release party at T.T. the Bear's. Max Heinegg hosts a CD-release party at the Lizard Lounge. The Scorpions are at the Orpheum. Sunday Dropkick Murphys are at Avalon. Jose Gonzalez is at the Paradise. Slow Century is at Great Scott. Mountain Goats headline the Middle East Downstairs. Wednesday Apollo Sunshine is at the Paradise. Great Lake Swimmers are at the Middle East Upstairs.