Metro Pulse/Music/BR5-49

Comment
on this story

What:
BR549 with Robinella and the CC String Band (benefit for Knox Heritage)

When:
Friday, Aug. 24 at 8 p.m.

Where:
Bijou Theatre

Cost:
$17.50/$20

BR5-49 keeps on honky-tonkin'

by John Sewell

The old genre-classification game provides an endless source of grist for the music press, and a vicious cycle is repeated, ad infinitum. Once a new, "hip" subgenre has been established, it seems like all the new bands queue up to join in. Unfortunately—for the bands and for the music itself—the endless sorting and tagging (and the subsequent shedding of tags in favor of newer, more marketable ones) often results in good bands getting left behind once a trend dies.

The somewhat nebulous Americana/insurgent country niche has never been wildly popular, so there probably hasn't been quite as much bandwagon jumping as with other recent musical permutations. Nonetheless, the Americana tag can sometimes become an albatross.

Nashville-based BR549 was one of the first bands to emerge just as the term alternative country began to get thrown around in the press. From the beginning, the band was known as neo-traditionalist. But the band never exactly fit in anywhere.

With around six years under their belts as an established act, BR549 has acquired handfuls of fans across the board: from college radio, television appearances, rock radio, country radio, CMT and (of course) from touring, touring and more touring. The band is known in many camps, but their refusal (or inability) to stick to any particular style has made for a marketer's nightmare.

But unlike most unclassifiable bands, BR549 rode out the record-label rollercoasters and survived. After four albums on Arista Records, the band jumped ship and signed with Lucky Dog/Sony Music. With the release of This Is BR549, the band is back with a vengeance, producing a hybrid of country, rockabilly and traditional music that flat-out rocks.

"With the new record, we're sort of consciously trying to get out of the pigeonhole of being just a retro thing," says vocalist/guitarist Gary Bennett. "We feel like we've always kind of put our own twist on the thing where we weren't just copying old '50s songs or trying to sound just like old bands or anything like that. Now, we are sort of consciously trying to step away from that [niche] some I guess."

Though This Is BR549 is by no means a stylistic about-face for the band, they do veer closer to rock 'n' roll than ever before, albeit with a decidedly country twang. On songs like "Too Lazy To work, Too Nervous To Steal" and "The Price Of Love," the band comes out blazing, sounding something like latter-day Jason & The Scorchers. Of course, they're still capable of tears-in-your-beer bawlers like "A Little Good News." After all, country music begat rockabilly begat rock'n'roll—or something like that. And BR549 crosses those borders effortlessly.

"I guess you could say we might've veered more toward rock with the new album," says Bennett. "But really, it's always been there. If you listen to any of our old records you'll find that on there if you really listen for it. I think what's really brought that on is that we've done so much in the rock world in the last few years. We've been playing rock clubs and opening for The Black Crowes, Bob Dylan and Brian Setzer. So it just kind of gives you more of an edge."

With the edge, there has been a bit of backlash from pockets of fans who would prefer BR549 stick to their earlier, more traditional sound. But Bennett says that the band will continue to evolve however they see fit.

"We were just over in Germany and there's this certain faction of rockabilly people that were really pissed off about a few songs on the new record," says Bennett. "You know, we're not just this one thing those people want us to be. I mean, we've never really been any one thing in particular anyway. But the new record really does push it for us. We're modern and we're progressive in a lot of ways. And we want to emphasize that.

"It was just a couple of guys in Germany," continues Bennett. "I was walking to the bus and these rockabilly guys—younger than me with leather jackets and their hair slicked back, lost in the '50s or what they perceived to be the '50s—they said, 'you have lost your way.' They said something about our music being harder and they didn't like that.

"So I was telling these guys—hey, besides that old country stuff we've been exposed to a lot of things in our lives and naturally it's gonna influence what you play and how you feel, whether it's the Beatles, The Eagles or whatever. And they said, 'That's unfortunate.' And I was like, screw you. I mean, you guys are just lost in this little hole and you should open up your minds a bit."

With the new album and new label, BR549 is gearing up for a hectic year. Sony is giving the band a big promotional push, and hopes are high. It's as if the band has a clean slate to start anew—which means the wild fun and fatigue of constant touring. But as long as the band's fan base continues to grow, they have no intention of slowing down or turning down.

"Our audience is just everybody," says Bennett. "It's old people and young people, punk rockers and truck drivers, college girls.... It's just everybody. We don't have just your basic Tim McGraw kind of country audience. The rock crowd just seems to be open-minded. I mean, the fans of The Black Crowes and Dylan are really just music lovers and they'll listen to anything. I think that the true country audience—what we would call the true country audience—they're open-minded like that too."