Brent Amaker and the Rodeo and the Whiskey wild and artfully audacious "Murdered In the Streets" (Official Video)

"murdered in the streets by your smile // wanted by the FBI // you stood right over me // and watched me die..." 

Whiskey wild and artfully audacious, "Murdered In the Streets", by the inescapably odd Seattle based mind blowing band Brent Amaker & the Rodeo, is like a theme song for a Quentin Tarantino / Stephen Chow western in an alternate universe. I, in a past review, described the bands aesthetic like this:

"Like a bizarro amalgam of Frankie Laine, Johnny Cash, Johnny Horton, Wall of Vodoo and a character created by Will Ferrell, Brent Amaker & the Rodeo manage to walk a tight rope of self parody and stylized art rock. You will chuckle wryly (if you are one who chuckles) one moment and, the next, be blown away by the artful musicality and turn your head sonics."

AND I stand by this description. Their songs are pure escapism, a stiff drink to help you forget whatever ails you and in these fucked up times there is a lot to dip your spirit straight to Hell everywhere you look. The intrepid leader / frontman Brent Amaker who (as press notes indicate) is "a tangle of contradictions, a whiskey-soaked country western singer who’s also a licensed insurance agent by day" says this about the band's aesthetic:

“When we tour Texas, they’re like, ‘What are you?’” Amaker says. “We’re cowboys, living the spirit of the West. We’re not really playing country music, but we’re playing cowboy music. ‘Western performance art’ is what I like to say.”

I am digging the waaay heavy Mariachi influences that lend even further authenticity rattling off the section of lyrics in Espanol. The shuffling drum beat, piercing horns, strings, galloping guitar strums and rebellious bravado is all you need and want for what might be called 'Murder Opera'. 

LINER NOTES (excerpted / bracketed):

[Amaker revels in cross-cultural jubilation on "Vaquero", out this Friday September 12th release via Rodeo Corp Ltd. It's a freewheeling new album that fuses his Western performance art with authentic mariachi backing, recorded last year across several trips to Mexico City. Pre-save the album here.

Named after the Mexican term for cowboy (which is to say the original cowboy, dating back to the 1500s), Vaquero came as a result of Amaker’s long-running friendships with Mexican musicians, who periodically stay at his home when they tour in Seattle. One day, his friend Miguel Servin, a veteran of Mexico City’s vibrant music community who owns a studio of his own, suggested that Amaker come down and make a Rodeo record there. The songwriter pondered the idea and had just one condition.

Today, Amaker and his collaborators share the album's final single, "Murdered In The Streets," which prefaces the boisterous mariachi energy of the record at large. The music video's neon cowboy stylings only heighten the experience.]


-Robb Donker Curtius

THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM 

https://twitter.com/brentamaker

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5K6tuSWKrqumHNCtMERQLX

https://www.instagram.com/brentamaker/

https://www.facebook.com/brentamaker



Brent Amaker knows he’s a tangle of contradictions. What do you expect from a whiskey-soaked country western singer who’s also a licensed insurance agent by day?

Since forming his Seattle-based outfit Brent Amaker and the Rodeo in 2005, Amaker has reveled in an idiosyncratic style that doesn’t fit into preordained categories. He’s a country singer whose band is known for dressing in matching black cowboy outfits, yet Amaker is more inspired by art-rock icons than the usual country mainstays. A Seattleite since 1997, he’s a Southerner by birth, yet Southern crowds are frequently puzzled by his ambitious stage show.

Now, two years after the album Philaphobia was released, Amaker revels in cross-cultural jubilation on Vaquero, announced today for a September 12th release via Rodeo Corp Ltd. It's a freewheeling new album that fuses his Western performance art with authentic Mariachi backing, recorded last year across several trips to Mexico City. They will be playing an album release show ahead of the release on August 23rd in Seattle at Baba Yaga, along with Silverio.

Named after the Mexican term for cowboy (which is to say the original cowboy, dating back to the 1500s), Vaquero came as a result of Amaker’s long-running friendships with Mexican musicians, who periodically stay at his home when they tour in Seattle. One day, his friend Miguel Servin, a veteran of Mexico City’s vibrant music community who owns a studio of his own, suggested that Amaker come down and make a Rodeo record there. The songwriter pondered the idea and had just one condition.

The album is announced alongside the new single "I Need Love," with a colorful new video. On it, trilling Mariachi horns augment Amaker’s jaunty musings on love, loss, and boundaries: an eternal conundrum.

“The theme of the song is, I need a lot of space,” Amaker explains. “I need to be free. But then I need love and I don’t know where that fits in with everything else.” The track’s reference to canine companionship is a nod to the singer’s own beloved Chihuahua, Frida, who died last year at the age of 21. Following her death, Amaker mourned so hard he went on a bender, fell, and broke five ribs. Eventually, he adopted a new puppy, Julia Lime, who appears in the song’s video.

Amaker remembers asking Servin, “Can you get me Mariachi? If I’m gonna record a record in Mexico City, it’s gotta be a Mexican record.” Servin responded in the affirmative and true to his word, he recruited a band in the most old-school possible fashion: by visiting Plaza Garibaldi, a hole-in-the-wall bar where Mariachi groups perform and go from table to table, handing out business cards and looking for gigs.

“We would watch each band go by and try to listen to them for technical ability,” Amaker recalls. “I don’t have as good an ear as Miguel does. I’d be like, ‘Hey, I like that one, good energy!’ He’d say, ‘Yeah, but they’re not as in tune as this group over here.’ We finally found the one. They were really well-prepared. It was pretty amazing—these are classically trained musicians even though the Mariachi sound is kinda sloppy, you know? It’s almost sometimes intentionally out of tune.”

After two recording sessions in Mexico, where the Mariachi crew revamped his songs with horns, strings, and Spanish gang vocals, Amaker took the basic tracks back to the States and had his Rodeo bandmates do some overdubs. “It’s a very specific thing the Rodeo does, and the little treatments here and there is what gives it its sound,” he notes; the Rodeo’s drummer, for instance, performed on the tracks and contributed his “typical shuffle thing that he does.”

Crucially, at a fraught moment of ICE raids and anti-immigrant fervor, Amaker notes that Vaquero was made almost entirely in Mexico, with Mexican producers, engineers, studio staff, and, of course, Mexican musicians; aside from a few overdubs, only the mixing process, which was handled by Mexican-American Rodeo guitarist Johnny Nails, took place in the States. It’s a proud work of international cooperation between disparate musical cultures.

And speaking of disparate musical cultures, Brent Amaker and the Rodeo have toured far and wide, performing everywhere from Europe to the Capitol Hill Block Party to a maximum-security prison in Belgium, where a riot nearly broke out at the end of the gig. Listeners may also encounter their music in needle-drop form: The group’s music has been noted for its evocative, cinematic textures and has been featured in television shows such as Weeds, Big Little Lies, Californication, and others.

“I think our music is intentionally cinematic,” Amaker says. “I like to write with a theme, and I like to shape my songwriting with visions.”

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