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Article published Aug 17, 2007 NO TIME TO WASTE: Drams rise from the ashes of still-smoldering Slobberbone
By Steve Wildsmith of The Daily Times Staff
You’ve got to hand it to Drams front man Brent Best — he doesn’t waste any time.
The weekend his old band, alt-country faves Slobberbone, called it quits, Best was already assembling the skeleton of his next project. Calling up old friend Keith Killoren from Denton, Texas, roots-rock outfit Budapest One, he put together The Drams.
“The last Slobberbone tour gone done on a Saturday or Sunday night,” Killoren told The Daily Times this week. “The next day we practiced, and we went down to Austin two days later to play the South By Southwest festival. It was a quick turnaround. The bed wasn’t cold yet, as they say.”
Of course, two other members of Slobberbone made the leap along with Best to The Drams, and Killoren brought his old Budapest One bandmate, Chad Stockslager, both of whom had recorded the last Budapest One album at Best’s home studio. The guys weren’t strangers to each other; in fact, as part of the thriving music scene in Denton, there was more than a passing familiarity among the musicians who suddenly found themselves thrown together as The Drams.
“I’d been living in Denton since 1997, and I met Brent the first couple of days I moved there,” Killoren said. “We became fast friends because we had mutual musical tastes. He found out I was a Yankee coming down South from Wisconsin, so we talked about the whole Minneapolis scene — Husker Du, The Jayhawks, the Replacements. From there, we opened for Slobberbone quite a few times.
“Plus, Denton’s a pretty cool musical community, and a lot of the bands support each other. Pretty much every Tuesday, all the guys in bands were hanging out at the same clubs, drinking beer and chatting. It’s kind of a tight-knit community.”
Slobberbone grew out of that community in 1994, when Best and bandmates Jess Barr on guitar and Tony Harper on drums hooked up with bassist Brian Lane. The band rode a wave of Americana popularity in the late 1990s, catching the attention of modern horror fiction master Stephen King, who gave the band a shout-out in his novel “Black House,” co-written with Peter Straub. Slobberbone recorded five albums, starting with 1994’s “Crow Pot Pie” and ending with 2002’s “Slippage,” before Best decided to rebuild his musical partnerships.
“Around the time Slobberbone was shutting down, Chad and I ended up doing the last and unheard Budapest One album with Brent at his studio,” Killoren said. “We were just hanging out and having a good time, and around that time, Brent was asked to do a solo show at South By Southwest. He wound up being sandwiched between two full bands on the schedule, though, and if you’ve ever been to South By Southwest, you know it’s quite a racket of people.
“Every club is packed with people chatting, exchanging business cards, looking at their cell phones — it’s hard for a singer-songwriter to play to that kind of crowd. Brent decided he might as well put a band together, so he asked Chad and I to join up.”
Best played the pair songs he had already written, material that would make up the bulk of The Drams’ 2006 debut album, “Jubilee Dive.” If anything, Best’s new material takes what was best of Slobberbone and amplifies it. There’s a power to the album’s 14 tracks that sound like a joyful celebration of life, music and all things in between. Best’s vocals have never sounded better, and despite similarities to Jay Farrar of Son Volt, his enthusiasm makes Farrar sound like a sleep-slurry gutter drunk. Propelled by a tight instrumental interplay, songs like “Hummalong,” “Unhinged,” “September’s High” and “You Won’t Forget” zip along like a soaring fighter jet at the hands of a pilot inspired to open the throttle by the expansive beauty of hundreds of miles of blue sky unrolling before him.
“In changing from Slobberbone to The Drams, Brent changed everything,” Killoren said. “He’s the main songwriter, which kind of dictates everything, but it’s still a lot of fun. If you listen to ‘Slippage,’ the last Slobberbone album, you can tell, instrumentation-wise, he was moving beyond straight guitar rock. And with Chad as an accomplished piano player, Brent was able to actualize his songs in a different way.”
It’s a testament to the skills of Killoren and Stockslager that the pair listened to Best’s demos of the new songs and learned them in time for the SXSW gig. The performance went off without a hitch, and The Drams started getting additional offers. Best decided he liked what his songs sounded like with the new musicians at his back, and Killoren enjoyed the camaraderie that came with being a touring musician.
“When I was in Budapest One, it wasn’t quite a family,” he said. “We went through eight different drummers, and we never had a solid lineup. There was never really a brotherhood there, and I always wanted to tour, but some of the guys had family responsibilities and couldn’t do it.
“When you tour, you become so much closer to the guys you’re playing with. Something gels, and if you’re in a van with five guys, packed to the gills, you either become best friends or enemies; there’s no in-between. Luckily, we all get along famously, and every night’s a hoot. We load up from a gig and ride back to the hotel usually laughing our asses off at something bizarre that’s happened, usually involving Chad.”
Stockslager, according to Killoren, is the court jester of The Drams. He recalls a particular incident during the band’s recent swing through Colorado that involved high-altitude oxygen deprivation, a shot of whiskey and a girl standing a little too close to Stockslager when he sprayed vomit like a geyser.
“People warned us that with the high altitude, if you’re drinking you have to have a glass of water and drink less because your blood is thinner,” Killoren said, laughing. “Of course, Chad didn’t listen, and they had fed us this wonderful mushroom-with-pasta meal. Two hours later, Chad threw up, straight up into the air and evidently on some girl. He also got it all over his shirt, and having my camera handy, I had to stop and take a picture.”
Now, Stockslager gets a tongue-in-cheek warning from his bandmates before the first drink of the night is thrown down the hatch — “Chad, don’t throw up on any girls tonight,” Killoren says gravely before bursting into laughter.