These guys are the perfect amalgamation of Lucero and the Drive By Truckers and if you are fan of our bands Drag the River and Tim Barry, these guys might become your new favorite band. Jon Snodgrass from Drag the River told me that I would love Two Cow Garage. He had their manager, Chris Flint, send me a copy of their upcoming album, III, and when I got it I could not stop listening to it. The band put out the record themselves and I had agreed to distribute it. After listening to the album nearly 1,000 times, I asked the band if I could adopt them. Kind of a weird thought, but I love this band and record so much, I wanted to be involved any way I could. Please take some time to get yourself acquainted with this band and you will see why we had to add them to our family.
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Listen to the entire album, III, by Two Cow Garage
Two Cow Garage Bio:
“There’s a guitar, that’s leaning on my wall, the instrument of my ultimate downfall. And notebooks scattered all over my floor. Six hundred pages all filled with regrets, and hundreds of songs that ain’t finished yet. And a job application getting harder to ignore,” sings guitarist/vocalist Micah Schnabel on “No Shame”, one of thirteen new songs on Columbus, Ohio-based rock outfit Two Cow Garage’s new album, “III” (Shelterhouse), set for release in April 2007.
“It was winter and we had been just hanging around town for awhile. I was in a pretty black place and rent was due, and the bills were piling up. The thought was just how long do you keep going on chasing the dream,” recalls Schnabel on writing “No Shame”. “The job application line is just the thought that maybe its time to walk away. Time to make music a hobby and get a real job. But the guitar on the wall line is the truth. This is all I know how to do and all I am willing to do. I would rather be a homeless songwriter than financially comfortable doing anything else.”
Though he can happily say that now, there was a time when even Schnabel himself wasn’t sure if he would be happier actually making money and doing something else, as is evident on “Should’ve California,” a song that find s him thinking to himself while he sings, “I should’ve gone to college and made a lot of money… I should’ve been smarter… I think I should have moved west, like my brother… I shouldn’t spend all my time in these basement bars with this rock ‘n’ roll band”.
Even bassist Shane Sweeney has had his share of doubts. On “Now I Know”, Sweeney considers giving up his bass and getting a day job, confronting his thoughts by singing, “I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do with my life… and my anger’s like a fever like a knife to a vein, and now I know that won’t change”.
Rounded out by drummer Dustin Harigle, Two Cow Garage have been putting hundreds of thousands of miles on their van since 2001, when their debut, “Please Turn The Gas Back On” came out in 2003 on Shelterhouse Records.
Followed by 2004’s “The Wall Against our Back”, these three guys (sometimes four, including additional guitarist/lawyer/manager Chris Flint), have been doing nothing but sleeping on floors, eating fast food, and playing smoky bars day-in and day-out for the past six and a half years, before they were even legal to drink in most states.
“III” is the sound of a band maturing, growing up, and realizing they’re not teenagers anymore, and that life has two roads they can take, either continuing to play rock ‘n’ roll and follow their heart. Or turn music into a hobby and get day jobs, settle down, and grow older in a way society deems more stable.
The pressures of life, the pursuit of happiness, and the soul searching come together here. Two Cow Garage lives it, writes about it, and turns it into therapy for themselves - and others - all while they continue to do what they do best: rock.
“Touring is what I do. Playing songs in a different town every night is all I ever wanted. That is home for me,” states Schnabel, without hesitation. “When I’m not on the road, that is being away from home. We’ve been doing about 200 shows a year since I was 19 or 20 years old. It’s just what I do.”
“Touring is just a part of the whole thing,” adds Sweeney. “That being said it’s not the touring that’s tough, it’s the being home. I prefer to be on tour, seeing other places and meeting new people. It’s fodder for storytelling. My love of doing it keeps me going on the road.” “And Pall Malls,” Sweeney says laughing.
Harigle enjoys the same sentiments, stating, “A bad day on the road will always be better than a good day at home.”
So, what do you do when a job application is staring you in the face, your friends start to settle down, get married, and buy homes, and your relationships continue to fail?
Two Cow Garage pondered this and their only logical answer was: write a lot of songs, get it out of you, and then go entertain others with your songs.
Take album opener “Come Back to Shelby” for instance. When Schnabel sings, “You’re ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Me, Jack and Diane”, you know where he’s coming from. As he explains it, “I’m bad with women. When I fuck up, I write songs about how they’re fucked up to make myself feel better.”
Then there is “Epitaph”, another self-reflecting number that made Schnabel and his band really take a look at their rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.
“It’s about coming to the realization that we’re never going to be as big as I dream,” he says, somewhat defeated, but not disheartened. “It’s also about getting older and having to set more realistic goals”.
Driven by Two Cow Garage’s trademark assault of guitar, drums, and bass, Schnabel’s scruffy voice as real and raw as they come, a dash of roots-rock turns this guitar-driven number into a melodic sing-along that will find you sharing in the band’s misery - all while smiling.
Want a happy-go-lucky bar-rock song with a good melody and a hook to it?
“Now I Know”, written by bassist Sweeney, will remind you of the good ol’ times of rock ‘n’ roll. But, if you pay attention to the lyrics, you’ll know the song is anything but happy.
“It’s about a specific instance where I questioned whether or not I wanted to be in Two Cow anymore. I was very angry and the whole song is pretty reactionary,” recalls Sweeney. “I really just wanted to explode but at the same time I was so incredibly disappointed I wanted to hide away and just give up. Seeing as how neither one of those would have been very reasonable I wrote a song about it.”
And, as much soul-searching and heartache that went into the album, the record isn’t without it’s depressing-for-a-different-reason songs, including the mid-tempo Southern rocker “The Great Gravitron Massacre,” a song about an actual carnival accident that happened on the main street of Schnabel’s old hometown.
Or The Replacements-post-punk of “Camo Jacket”, a song that finds Schnabel repeating the line, “I don’t want to, but I will”.
“How many men will do or say anything to get a woman to sleep with them?” asks Schnabel rhetorically. “Fluorescent light valentines. They’ll even take the ugly one if it’s late and they’re drunk enough. You know, ‘I don’t want to, but I will’, that kind of attitude.”
They even have a political song with “Gape And Shudder”, a head-on rocker that get quiet when the line, “they’ll try to sell you the line you’re free” comes on, before reality sets in and another heavy dose of rock hits you square in the chest.
“It’s about how the U.S. government has used our own fear as a tactic to dismantle our civil liberties. It’s also about how there is such an importance placed on making and sustaining money. As if you’re not a good person because you don’t have a plasma screen T.V.,” Sweeney says with anger. “It’s Ludicrous.”
The haunting “Arson”, which starts off with the line, “we used to set shit on fire, back when we were kids”, is a late-night, dark alley 1000 miles away from home put to music. With a sparse guitar and Schnabel’s voice starting off the song before the whole band comes in nearly a minute and a half later, this song will have you in tears.
“We use to put pipe bombs together and blow up TVs and refrigerators on Saturday afternoons,” Schnabel explains. “If a wick was fucked up you could blow your hands off. A bet you can’t afford to lose.”
How is the band feeling now that the record is done? And, more importantly, how do they feel about the record? Was it a cathartic experience?
“I am very proud of the whole record,” says Schnabel. “We really just opened up and stopped writing the songs we were supposed to write, and began writing the songs we wanted to write. If I had to pick one though, ‘No Shame’ was a pretty big lyrical step for me. I tried to keep it pretty short.”
“I think lyrically there is a lot of angst on this record, so in some way we had to have channeled that energy into the music,” Sweeney explains. “From a songwriting aspect, I love the juxtaposition of tragic lyrics with a light melody and there is quite a bit of that on this record. We put everything we have at that moment into this record, creatively, emotionally, and physically. There’s never any holding back, especially not on this record”.
Echoing a statement that has kept the band going, “I would rather be a homeless songwriter than financially comfortable doing anything else,” now that the record is done Two Cow Garage - Micah Schnabel, Shane Sweeney, and Dustin Harigle - will continue touring relentlessly in support of “III”, putting another hundred thousand plus miles on their van, as they cross this nation (and Europe, too!) doing the only thing they know how to do.
Suburban Home Records
