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THE SPORTS & MUSIC CONNECTION |  |
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THE SPANDEX THAT WOULD NOT DIE! by
Shelly Harris
“We’re easy going
guys,” grins Hedder’s
green-haired, hyper-kinetic drummer Dave
(“Is it too early to get a shot of Jaeger?”) Steffen,
sitting at a cocktail table along with the rest of the band during an afternoon
soundcheck at Chicago Heights’ Oasis One-Sixty concert club.
Whew! It’s probably a very good thing Steffen lets me know ––
even if he is a being a bit facetious. Right
from the outset, Hedder prove to be nearly as nice as they are rough ‘n’
tough and in-your-face live. Something
that may not be readily presumed, since the band’s debut album, Ventilate, prominently
features ominous cover art of a metal plate shot up with multiple bullet holes.
One might get the notion from the outset that these Rockford natives (by
way of Austin, Texas) might hanker to “ventilate” in other ways besides with
music. And sure enough you would be
correct. You might be well advised to duck when you see these hombres coming, since they’re the first band I’ve come across outside of Nugent territory who admit that they like guns –– a lot! At least to the extent that their sport of choice is skeet and target shooting and hunting.
Although none of them admits a passion for other sports, and claim that
the barbecue and beer is the only real highlight of other live sporting events
–– Steffen and Matt Roberts (the band’s intense and charismatic
vocalist/guitarist), in particular, both light up when describing the fine art
–– and fun –– of shooting at things.
Even if it’s just a bunch of clay pigeons, or in Robert’s case, some
real live game.
“Yeah, I really do like to get out and hunt whenever I can,”
elaborates, Roberts, also a former music major at Northwestern University.
“I’ve been hunting since I was a kid.”
The band’s affinity with guns n’ such may have been the only thing
that they had in common with many of the natives when they first relocated to
the Lonestar State from Rockford, IL, eight years ago after playing the local
bar scene as Aunt Flossie.
As Steffen explains it, they wound up choosing Austin (as opposed to
various other music cities) to further their career because... “Well, we were
talking about New York or LA for a long time, but I said to the guys, ‘What
about Austin?’
“We’d read about Austin in Rolling Stone and stuff, and we’d heard
a lot of other bands talking about it, so we just took a vacation down there.
We figured if we went to New York, we’d freeze to death.”
And in Austin they might not be such a little fish in such a very big
pond?
“Yeah,” laughs Roberts, “but it turned out that way in Austin,
too... There’s about 3,000 bands
in Austin!” But the band remained
hungry enough stay on for the long haul, a move that paid off big time when they
won the “Best New Band” award at
the city’s prestigious South By Southwest annual music conference in 2001.
Having already become veteran road warriors with two independent releases
and a significant following on their side, that award ultimately led to plenty
of music business attention and their ultimate signing with fast rising indie
imprint, Gold Circle, an artist-friendly label founded by Gateway’s Norm Waitt.
And, though two of the band members have since relocated back in Rockford
since inking their record deal last year, Austin is still close to their hearts,
despite the fact that they were initially fish out of water in the Southwest,
musically speaking.
“Let me tell you something else about Austin that was good,” Roberts
opines. “People are generally more friendly down there; a little nicer than
they are up north. And Austin’s kind of got it’s own little thing going
where everyone who lives in Austin isn’t from there. They kind of migrate
there is seems, like we did. Most
people think the only thing that’'s there is country [music] or blues, but you
actually can make a good living just playing live down there.
Texas is huge, and there’s so many places and colleges to play.”
“However,” Roberts adds, “the negative side is that it’s a lot
harder to build a draw down there, but that kept us on our toes!
It’s really competitive, and there’s not a ton of heavy bands down
there. Another down side was always
having to listen to that same old southern-fried Stevie Ray Vaughan shit.
Now I like Stevie Ray Vaughan, but they shove it down your throat there
all the time. Stevie Ray Vaughan
and Jimi Hendrix; they killed a good thing!
Anyway, it did take a lot longer for people to warm up to us.
In fact, Hedder also experienced a bit of the never-a-prophet in your own
land syndrome, as guitarist Jason Nelson
allows –– “It’s ironic, because we left the Midwest to get a record
deal, but now we are getting most of our radio air play back here in the
Midwest. So we do love the Midwest.”
In fact, even after eight years in close quarters and pushing it to the
limit on the career front, the camaraderie between these boyhood pals (they met
during their mid-teens) is so evident, that it is like talking to brothers
–– making it difficult to keep the attributions straight, especially when
they talk at once and automatically finish each others thoughts and sentences: Roberts:
“But Texas has been good; we’ve played every honky tonk in Texas.
We’ve been doing over 250 shows a year for eight years...” Nelson: “We had a reputation in Texas for
being road whores. We’ll go play
anywhere at any time, and still drive six hours and go to work the next day if
we have to...” Roberts:
“Fortunately, we don’t have to do that anymore.
This has been our job for a while now. We’ve had perseverance, I’ll
tell you that. But a lot of band’s aren’t willing to do that. What they
don’t realize is, there’s always someone who wants it more than you do.
We’re realistic. We don’t think we’re gonna be huge rock stars, but you
just have to keep trying. Being at ‘the right place at the right time,’
really means that you have to be every place at every time.”
Being the hustlers they are, Hedder has wisely always preferred to keep
its eye on it’s own game. As
Roberts notes, “That’s always what we’ve tried to do. We stay away from
trends and shit like that. We just
kept doing what we did, even though there was a lot of pressure to change our
style, especially down there [Austin], and to change into a ‘jam band’ type
of act.”
But when their Midwestern brand of heavy, industrial strength rock was
initially viewed as the ugly duckling of Austin’s music scene, did they ever
just think of packing it up? “Never,”
states Roberts firmly. “Was it difficult at some times? Yes! Did we have any
intentions of going anywhere? No! Right
now most of us live in Rockford again since getting the record deal, but once
that happens on a national level, it is easy for all of us to get together now
from wherever we’re living. We’re
booked up until the end of summer already.”
Though an edgy air of danger, both lyrically and live, is a big part of
Hedder’s appeal, when Roberts insists on giving me an extra copy of the
band’s CD so that they can write personal inscriptions on it to my son, it
occurs that Steffen’s line about being “easy going guys” is closer to the
real truth. At least until Roberts
adds, with an ominous grin – “Hey, if your son doesn’t like the CD, just
tell him to use it for target practice. You know, he could throw it up in the
air and shoot at it just like a clay pigeon.” Hmmm... No wonder Hedder also has also has another infectiously seething, groan of a song on Ventilate called “Too Many Holes”... |
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