Lordy, Save Me: Legendary Shack Shakers and O'Death at 31st Street Pub

One part Southern nostalgia, three parts punk energy and two parts genuine showmanship made up the stacked bill of last night’s Legendary Shack Shakers, O’Death and The Red Western show at the 31st Street Pub.

The pub supposes itself as the place in Pittsburgh for cutting edge rock, but is music cutting edge if it smacks of, say, Alabama in the 1930’s? The bands, as well as the 75 people in the crowd, would say yes. And so would I. The music may’ve been more crazed-tent-revival than avant-garde Brooklyn art-punk, and the feverishly energetic assault on the crowd’s bodies and ears did feel a lot like a spiritual reckoning, but there was nothing old or rehashed about the show.

Pittsburgh’s The Red Western opened with some amped up songwriter-country put to a punk beat, and front woman Lauren DeLorenze rocked like a spunkier version of Silver Jew Cassie Berman.


O’Death, Southern macabre enthusiasts from Brooklyn, looked more like a maudlin group of college philosophy majors than a country-revival band, but looks proved deceiving. Lead singer Greg Jamie’s creaking voice (think Isaac Brock singing Johnny Cash) crawled through the songs, exploding in psych-ward hysterics when the music called for it, but never left his calm, almost possessed countenance.

Jamie played the perfect foil for the rest of the band, who played like madmen dancing, stomping and shaking around him like the hurricane to which he was the foreboding eye. O’Death plays music with the same unsettling, jittery quality as, to pull this card twice, Modest Mouse at that band’s most wild and flailing.

The songs are about being lost at sea or buried or dead, all sang over caffeinated funeral dirge music of acoustic guitar, bass, banjo and the occasional ukulele.

And if you’ve never seen someone shred on the ukulele, you’re missing out.

Here's O'Death's sublimely creepy "Low Tide."



The set’s high point was “Down to Rest” — about, you guessed it, burial — which actually got the crowd stomping, and one poor soul attempting a solo mosh pit.

Speaking of souls, O’Death like to air theirs out. The band plays like they’ve got the devil inside them and they want him gone — faces contort, bodies shake and voices quiver. It’s no surprise the music could be the soundtrack to the drunken after party of a Southern gentleman.

That is, the Southern gentleman who shared the bill.

“We’re lucky to be on this tour with the Shack Shakers,” Jamie said. “They’re dicks, though. Really mean people.”
Who says there can’t be humor after the funeral?

The Legendary Shack Shakers’ biggest claim to critical fame has been Jello Biafra’s call that singer J. D. Wilkes is the “last great Rock and Roll frontman.”

Well, maybe not the last, but he’s certainly a leader of a dying breed.

Whereas O’Death could DJ your next funeral, The Shack Shakers could own your county fare. Wilkes dresses like a carney, with giant horn-rimmed glasses (held around his head with an elastic strap) and striped pants. He’s wire thin. His voice, hollered into a 50’s-era microphone, sounds like he should be saying “Step riiiight up!” through a loudspeaker, and he may be downright insane.

Here's a peak at the madness, in a song about "Chicken, chickens and poultry," topics criminally underrepresented in rock:


The Shakers played like they wanted to level 31st Street to its foundation — Mark Robertson’s bass is a standup and thunderously tears across the room and the double-bass drum drilling comes right out of a Slayer song.

But the centerpiece of the show is Wilkes, a front man I’ve never seen the likes of before.

As he stripped much of his clothing off, Wilkes grabbed the audience members and shook them, spit into the crowd (more up-and-over than at anyone) and playfully smacked people in the head. He jumped around, bent in all sorts of athletic ways and often put his fists up, ready to brawl.

But that’s the point — the band’s rockabilly gone insane thrashing is meant to get the crowd moving, moving away from the notion of “I’m in a club in Pittsburgh” and towards “My spirit is being exorcized by the sublime power of Rock’n’roll,” as well as moving physically — for such a small, unpacked club, bodies jumped and stomped and swung around limbs and heads.

The band’s groove was undeniable — thick, syrupy chugging rhythm churning under fast rockabilly guitar and punched-in-the-face bass lines.

The Legendary Shack Shakers play at the altar of Southern gothic. They are the energy you picture in a 1930’s tent revival, with ladies in summer dresses holding fans screaming about the power of the Lord, oh Jesus, please save me.

Triggers: This Year's Model of Costello-Influenced Bands

At only 35 minutes long, Pittsburgh power-poppers' Triggers' new disc Smoke Show is a quick and undeniably fun listen. But, seriously, with hooks this huge, you can safely leave the record on repeat for more than a few run-throughs. Elvis Costello-swagger-pop hasn't sounded this good since, well, Elvis Costello did it. Here's an interview Gravity Rides Everything did with the band in it's basement practice space.


Practicing on Monday night in preparation for the band’s upcoming gig at the 31st Street Pub, Triggers’ beer bottle filled, poster-adorned Squirrel Hill basement/communal house is completely filled with the band’s propulsive, Costello-on-caffeine rock. But don’t call the neighbors just yet. These are some hospitable boys.

“Do you need earplugs?” asked keyboardist and vocalist Brett Zoric. “I think we have some paper towels you can use.”

Thanks, but no thanks.

Zoric , all arms and legs with thick, black-rimmed glasses, sits behind his dual keyboards. Triggers launch into its catchiest song, “Anyone at Anytime,” beginning with Zoric’s barroom shuffle on the keys. Guitarist/vocalist Adam Rousseau’s jagged riff cuts through the keyboard and launches the band, along with drummer Rich ‘Woody’ Kawood and bassist Joe Kasler into the hyper-catchy song, a mix of Weezer’s crunchy guitars, Maroon 5’s white boy soul vocals and a swagger that’s all their own.

The song ends. Silence.

Zoric cracks a grin and says, “This is usually the part where someone yells ‘you suck!’”

That wry humor is, at least in part, responsible for Triggers existing in the first place. Back in 2005, Kawood and Rousseau were, ahem, asked to exit their former band The You. Conveniently, Zoric and Kasler similarly took a bow from their band Monarch.

“We were kind of the rejects of different bands,” said Rousseau.

“I would always say ‘that drummer and bass player [Rousseau played bass] are awesome’ Apparently, they said the same thing about us. Finally we said we should probably just play together,” said Zoric. “Then we all held hands.”

By the end of that year, Triggers had self-recorded its first EP and began playing around town at local mainstays like Club Café and eventually Brillobox. For the band’s debut album, Smoke Show, released just last year, it was time to bring in some outside help — enter producer John Hiler (Liz Phair, Duncan Sheik). But hearing criticism and actually listening to it were two different things.

“There’s a leap of faith you’ve got to take with a producer. Because he might suggest something, but if you wanted it that way, in a sense, you would’ve written it that way. In the end, you either trust him or you don’t,” said Zoric.

Triggers decided to trust Hiler. The result is 35 minutes of super slick party rock that would make The Cars smile wide and make Elvis Costello lower is glasses to look a bit closer. Zoric’s synthesizer lines trade thumping melodies with Rousseau’s guitar, while Kasler and Kawood are a driving rhythmic force — that is, a force that’ll drive you to the dance floor. Throw in the oft-gang shouted ‘whoa’s and ‘hey’s and you’ve got a power-pop punch in the gut.

But with full time day jobs all, recording a full-length was no easy task.

“During preproduction, we would come home from work at six, then we’d work from then until two in the morning, then get up for work the next day,” said Zoric, who works in real estate. “The good news is, it didn’t let us f**k around.”
For the actual recording, though, the band blissfully took off work to devote necessary attention to the music.

“A lot of bands at our level end up taking months or years [to record] because everyone is working and it’s hard to get studio time,” said Rousseau. “But we took off work, scraped together every penny we had and made this thing in a couple weeks, just banged it out.”

A handful of thousands of dollars later (manager Phil Pierre estimated, “somewhere between 10…and 30 thousand.” Rousseau added, “The key is not to think about it.”), Smoke Show hit local shelves and saw the band begin touring more than ever. But while booking shows has proved fairly simple, the band understands that economic woes, as well as hunger pangs, can dissuade a listener from checking out any band.

“We know what it’s like to put out five bucks for a show. That’s time sitting at a job you hate. Any time someone puts out that five bucks, that’s responsibility for us,” said Zoric. “From the time they come in the door, it’s our job to make sure that person doesn’t think ‘I wish I’d kept that and gone to McDonald’s.’ And that’s a choice. You can eat a foot long sub, or you can walk down the street and see us. It’s our job to make sure people continue to walk down the street.”