On the Firing Range with Gunfight

Posted on 22. Jun, 2009 by Administrator in Music

by Devoe Yates

With their own special brand of beer-soaked post-country jams, Gunfight! has carved out a unique niche in the current realm of indie music. Hailing from Brooklyn, the fourtet has recently risen to the forefront of the underground New York music scene with their wailing heart wrenching tunes about the painful proddings of love and the beer it makes you drink sometimes. Their hyper charged songs seem to plow through you like a steam locomotive speeding out of control, having left its tracks behind some time ago. Their new EP, Hide Your Empties, dropped on April 14th, and it seemed high time to hunt the boys down for some good ole fashioned shooting practice.

Since you can’t even hold a handgun in New York without a permit, the band meet me on a shady street in the entrails of Philadelphia, the scene of a recent murder over an iPod, no less. The chaps are more than a bit hungover from their concert the night before, their hair is still asleep in a catatonic state and beer seems to be oozing from their pores like tiny tears. The boys are known for their rowdy balls-to-the-wall live shows that have crowds getting sweaty and kicking up their cowboy boots for a whole new type of honky tonk, and at the same time, their on stage antics have begun to gather a lore of their own, from band members peeing in the corner and climbing ladders between songs, to busting through windows in houses and playing with glass shards in their backs, to destroying furniture and even walls, there seems to be no domestication on their horizon.

But while they’re known for their raucous live shows, they all seem a bit reticent about the building we’re about to enter, The Philadelphia Archery and Gun Club. This will in fact, be their first time firing bullets and getting an inkling as to just what a gunfight might just be all about.

It’s decided we’ll take a pit stop for some hangover food before the madness begins, and we journey over to a nearby greasy spoon for some grub. It’s here that we take some time to find out what Gunfight! is all about.

The band is comprised of the bearded and shaggy Drew (lead singer, guitar), mustached Bill (lead guitar), lanky Tony (bass), and the brooding Dominic (drums). They began the band back in their college days at Emerson College in Boston, and after finding some notoriety in the Boston scene playing basement shows with punk and indie bands—including an early incarnation of what later became the Vivian Girls and a crack-smoking Finnish punk band—they made their way to New York City, where they’ve set up shop for the past year and a half. Over some bacon and biscuits, I ask the chaps how their post-country sound came about.

Drew: In college, a friend of mine threw a party and she was playing some old country music, some Hank Williams, and I said, “You have to make me a mix of this.” And she did, and I still have that mix.

Tony: Yeah, I think we both started to encounter country music at the same time, and we started experimenting with that sound.

Bill: I was never really into country until Drew introduced me to some of it. From my perspective, I was always kind of into post-punk stuff, like Wire and Gang of Four, I like sort of angular guitar playing, and Drew, when we started writing music together, was really getting into country, and we thought it would be interesting to marry the sort of indie, post-punk sound with the real rootsy country stuff.

Drew: It took six months to a year for it to really materialize. Back then it didn’t really have much form, it’d be like one song sort of had a country influence, and then all the other songs sound kind of like Strokes rip offs (laughs).

Bill: Yeah, that’s true.

Drew: And then slowly that drifted away and we focused on this sound. It’s interesting, when we were on tour, we would play in front of a crowd that didn’t know what country was, and yet they would immediately understand the influence of country in the music. But whenever we played in front of a crowd that knew what country music was, they were like, “I don’t hear it.” (laughter). And that’s kind of what it is, we don’t play country music, we play post-country. It has influences here and there, but it’s very loosely connected to older country.

Tony: Mainly the feel of it.

Drew: Most of our songs are about Americana, the new Americana. That in turn is derived from an earlier sense of what it is to be an American, which is the country roots, and how that plays into our persona today, and whether we know where that path comes from or not. I feel like…it’s arguable that we have no right playing music that is influenced by country music, coming from where we come from. The cultures that we come from have nothing to do with southern culture or country music, but yet we incorporate it into our music.

Tony: We don’t come from any of those cultures, but there’s a running concept through a lot of our songs that kinda runs parallel to that, and that’s this idea that we’re all from small towns. It’s this idea of being in touch with small town roots, even though they were northeastern small towns. We’ve shifted from that small town background to living in the city and we’re adjusting to city life. It’s an adjustment, and it also holds a lot of potential.

Drew: I think even the idea of our disassociation with southern culture is why we play that kind of music. Because we don’t have a direct link to that culture, we incorporate that into our music.

h: Where did the band name come from?

Bill: Drew and I were on IM together and-

Drew: Don’t talk about IM!

Tony: Well, these are modern times and all.

Bill: You were watching James Bond and you IM-ed me “Gunfight!”

Drew: Well, there was a scene in From Russia with Love where they’re in a gypsy camp, and then all of a sudden everybody’s just shooting each other. It goes from Belly Dancing to GUNFIGHT!

Bill: It seemed kinda fitting for the sound we were going for.

h: Tell me about the new EP.

Drew: We’ve been living in Brooklyn for a year now, so that’s influenced us. But the whole thing is recorded live, and the only place that we were able to do that, was in my dad’s driveway upstate, because there wasn’t enough room in the house or garage. We really didn’t want to isolate everything individually, we wanted to have the sound of it being live.

Tony: And we wanted to see what it sounded like outside.

Drew: So, we recorded it outside, but you can’t really tell.

Bill: Well the first version of “Empties” that we recorded had crickets on the end.

Drew: There’s also a lawnmower on one of the vocal tracks.

h: Did the neighbors get pissed off at all?

Tony: They came over actually!

Drew: One of the neighbors, this old guy who works as a volunteer fireman, comes and over and he says, “I just wanna let you know, I really like your band. I used to play the horn (laughter).”

Tony: There was also that one day where that guy kept using the buzzsaw, your next door neighbor. Every time we’d hit record, he’d start up. I think he was waiting for it, I think he was trying to get on the track.

Bill: My buzzsaw’s going in there!

Dominic: I played the buzzsaw on that new Gunfight EP! Hear that buzzsaw?

Drew: We recorded it over about four or five days, and then mixed for a couple of more. When we were done with it, we were already kind of associated with BNS Session, this Brooklyn record label and collective, and they took care of putting out. They’d already had some success with a band we play with, Werewolves.

Tony: But The Soundscapes were the first ones to introduce us to BNS.

h: I’ve heard that there is weird brotherhood between some of these underground Brooklyn bands.

Tony: We’re friends with a lot of BNS bands, Werewolves, Fun Machine, the Soundscapes, Quiet Loudly. Any connection that one band makes, just goes right over to the next band. So any kind of groundwork that gets laid by the Soundscapes or the Werewolves or us, gets transferred to the other 4 or 5 bands in our circle. We share our resources.

Drew: We see these people every weekend at different shows.

Tony: If two of the bands from that circle happen to be playing on the same night, either everyone will try and go to both shows or there will be a major indecision over who’s going to go to which show, so a lot of it is that same group of people going to see each other play. And the bands all go to see each other too.

Dominic: We’re all each other’s biggest fans.

h: So there’s no beef between the bands, or jealousy even, if one band is doing better than another?

Tony: No beef!

Drew: Every time one of our bands does well, it helps out the other bands.

Tony: A lot of the people between the bands are really good friends, so usually if somebody gets some break, usually everyone’s pretty genuinely happy for them. Even if it doesn’t mean some benefit to their band by association, we’re usually just really proud of each other.

h: Do you guys have groupies?

Bill: No.
Tony: We’re not very good at that.

Bill: When we were on tour, none of us got any action, except for the girl we brought with us. She’d come along with us to write an article about the tour, and she’s the only one that got to hook up with anybody, the girl who’s supposed to be interviewing us.

Tony: Well she didn’t want to sleep on the floor with the rest of us. So she just made out with some dude to sleep in his bed.

Bill: The rest of us were getting drunk and passing out on somebody’s floor or like on our friends’ deck in Chicago. And not meeting any ladies. There was one girl in Nashville, after a show, who kinda wanted to hang out with me, but we had to go to Kentucky.

Drew: She came out of a van with these neo-Nazis.

Bill: Were they really neo-Nazi’s? I didn’t seem them…

The plates of food dessimated, it’s now time to head to the gun range. Upon entry, two long glass cases lead through the store, showcasing all kinds of guns for sale, from the pink ladies special, to some weird Michael Bay type grenade launcher thing with about five different handles. Our chaperone for the afternoon, Kenny, is quite amused by the presence of these gun virgins. He is a large man in his grey years and takes great delight in showing us a knife that has a groove built into it to make it easier to pull from a human head without allowing a path for airflow, as the suction makes the knife a difficult thing to remove.

After a quick course in how to hold and operate a gun, he takes us up to the range to shoot some 9mm shots at paper targets—you get the choice of the picture of the standard shadowy figure or that of a gun toting muscle man. The crowd assembled down the line are your typical variety of gun enthusiasts, the mustached and the thugs, but there’s also a sorority type girl who’s brought her personal gun, her pink Bessie, out for a Saturday stroll.

Kenny readies the rounds and offers up the 9mm to its first taker. The boys all stand quiet and far away, waiting to see who has the balls to go first. Ravage the stage as they might, this seems dangerous territory. Dominic steps forward, takes the reins, and fires away, cleanly busting a couple of hearts and a couple of headshots before retiring back to the line. One by one, they each make their mark on distant targets, and when the next turn comes around, Drew shakes his head and stands down. He’s done, head hung, confiding, “This is just too violent.”

Another round passes and a big gun is brought out, a SWAT team type rifle, and Tony volunteers to take the first swing. He journeys to the line and empties the rifle on the target with decent accuracy. Kenny stares at him, then imparts, “Man, you just shot all the bullets you guys had allotted. That’s a very special gun and that ammo is expensive!” Tony is a bit dismayed that’s he’s been selfish with the rounds, but the rest of the guys don’t seem too disappointed that gun time is over. It is with this moment that Kenny nimbly pulls a revolver from a shoulder holster and fires all six shots through the target’s head in less then 3 seconds. “How about that?” he giggles. The boys stand in shock. “Alright boys, I gotta run to work, let’s get you out of here.” And by the time he’s finished saying this, he’s already reloaded the gun with a spare chamber hidden in a shoulder holster. “Off to bodyguard,” he explains, and we journey back down to the lobby to pay.

Everyone seems a bit shell shocked by the experience, and we journey to a nearby watering hole to do a post mortem. It’s a dark bar, but the evening’s already jumping with a constant stream of scraggly locals. There is a lull of quiet, and then—

Drew: It’s a lot of violence.

Tony: The sound…you can really feel what it would be like to be shot. When we got in there, I didn’t really have a concept of what guns were like. I mean I obviously knew that guns can shoot bullets and that bullets can kill people. I knew that. But when we walked in there and I heard the sound of it, I really understood, they really fucking kill people. It made me a little bit nervous, I kind of imagined what it would be like to be shot.

Bill: It definitely brought home what it would be like to be in front of a gun.

Tony: Now I’m sure I don’t ever want to get shot (laughter).

Bill: Yeah, before that he always thought it might be kinda fun, as long as he didn’t die (laughter).

Tony: Yeah, I definitely don’t want to get shot anywhere, even in like the earlobe. That being said, I think I was pretty comfortable firing the gun. I guess I’m alright being on that side of the gun.

Dominic: I liked it, I thought Tony liked it too. I saw his posture change, I saw this big smile on his face (Sylvester Stallone grunting noise here). I thought it was great. You shot the big gun.

Bill: Yeah you wasted all the ammo.

Tony: I didn’t know that that was all the ammo.

Dominic: We could’ve all had a shot with that gun. This guy wasted the clip.

Tony: Well I was nervous about leaving it still loaded on the counter. I just wanted to get rid of all the bullets before I set it down (laughter). Just didn’t want it to kill anybody.

Bill: I like your thought process there.

Tony: I think the most interesting thing was just seeing the gun culture and how people really inhabit it. It’s just completely different. A lot of them just love their guns, and you can kinda tell they don’t wanna shoot somebody, but they certainly wouldn’t be bummed out if they were in a situation where they had to use their gun in self defense. Because you know they just love that shit.

Dominic: They all fit right in. Except for that one girl.

Bill: If you live in Philly, you gotta defend yourself, I guess.

h: Well, is there anything else?

The table is quiet.

Bill: Dominic, you have anything? You’ve been pretty quiet this whole time.

Dominic: Sorry, there’s too much ass walking in and out of this place.

Bill, Tony, Drew: You’re in the bone zone! (laughter)

And so it goes. Each man has his realm, the stage or perhaps the gun range, and he rules it as his own. But sometimes the two worlds of ass-kicking don’t always cross paths. Some have said that the guitar is a modern man’s pistol in many way, and maybe that’s true. Music does have a power all its own, a power that a bullet can never know. For a fresh shot of Gunfight!, hit up their MySpace, hunt them down for a live thrashing in New York, or find their Hide Your Empties EP in a real record store or on iTunes.

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On the Firing Range with Gunfight

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