“Music: it takes you on a journey that you never expected to go on.”
I cannot recall where I first heard the above quote but I do know when. On May 9th, 2015 I jotted down these words into my iPhone Notes and it’s about the truest statement I’ve heard in some time. Although we’re not quite in The Jetsons or even Marty McFly’s version of 2015, we are absolutely in the future, certainly in a technological sense, and the way we acquire and consume music is a perfect example of that. The sheer accessibility of being able to hear any song, by any band, at any given time simply by pushing a button on a screen that is attached to us at all times is a reality. Spotify has made Musical ADHD an actual thing (okay, not a thing found in medical journals but trust me…it’s a thing). Because music is so readily available and because of the sheer volume of bands that exist today it makes it very hard to stumble across something that is unfamiliar territory to our ears. But then, just like that, a band with a name that sounds nothing like a band name at all can roll through like a tumbleweed and change everything you thought you knew about music. So on this, a day of thanks, I am thankful to Slim Cessna’s Auto Club.
Slim Cessna’s Auto Club have been around for a good twenty years but they had never crossed my radar until just last year. I can actually remember the exact moment when I first heard them. It was Thanksgiving and I had a full day of dog walks ahead of me. While my clients were off with their families stuffing themselves silly with cranberry sauce and screaming at the television for their team to SCORE!!, I was driving from house to house walking dogs and in between I was desperately searching Spotify for albums that I could make it through listening to more than just two songs. This band with the confusing name was constantly popping up in the “Related artists” section when I would listen to 16 Horsepower and Wovenhand so on my way to walk JoJo the Jack Russell I gave them a shot. At the time the only two albums that Spotify had available was their self-titled debut from 1995 and their live album from 2005, Jesus Let Me Down. In most cases a live album is not the greatest way to experience a band for the first time, especially not to a music nerd such as myself who considers albums and their sequencing to be sacred territory. But Slim Cessna’s Auto Club is a band like no other and their live album is the perfect way to get acquainted with them.
For the next two weeks I listened to that live album as if it were my job. I was intrigued, confused and mystified by the performance captured on that recording. They are storytellers and have songs about murder, redemption and religion. It is clear that this band takes what they do quite seriously but, refreshingly, they do not take themselves too seriously. They have fast songs, slow songs, old timey country songs, gospel songs, dark songs and songs that make you want to get up and dance. I will stop here, as trying to describe their music would be a futile endeavor. I still cannot figure out how to put their music into words and besides- it’s out there in the world so it’s the listener’s job to figure it out. It wasn’t long after hearing Jesus Let Me Down that I decided I needed to hear more so I hopped on Discogs and purchased a copy of their album from 2008, Cipher. If I wasn’t already obsessed enough (I was) this album put me over the top. It is a masterpiece from start to finish and is a desert island album for me. This, then, began my mission to track down and consume every piece of music that this band had put out. Technology made acquiring their albums relatively easy but I knew that this was a band that I needed to experience live and luckily I would not have to wait long to do so.
On May 28, 2015 The Auto Club rolled into The Mercury Lounge in New York City. It was just six months, almost to the day, after I had first heard them but it seemed like I had been waiting a lifetime to see them. Their live show is unlike anything I have ever seen before. After 20 years of obsessive show-going, while it’s probably an impossible task to nail down the best show I’ve ever seen, this one is certainly in my Top 3 of all-time. Unlike the shows that I’m used to going to where everyone looks like…well…me, the crowd that turned out to see this one of a kind band was one of the most diverse groups of people that I have ever been around. And the beautiful thing was that once the music started the crowd, filled with folks young and old and from all different walks of life, became one. And, yes, I’m well aware of how incredibly lame that sounds. Never have I seen a band captivate a crowd the way that The Auto Club did. People clapped, danced, sang along and moved out of the way when singers Slim Cessna and Munly Munly would decide to venture into the crowd…which was quite often. Everyone seemed to be having the time of their lives and, just like that, the way in which I experienced live music was completely transformed.
In the year since discovering Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, on top of their amazing discography, I have also been turned onto other great works of art coming out of their home city of Denver. Benjamin Whitmer is an author who I was first exposed to when The Auto Club launched their new website last summer. As soon as I got to the end of the bio he had written for them I ordered a copy of his most recent novel, Cry Father, which was hands down my favorite book that I read last year. His first novel, Pike, was also a very good read and I’m three quarters of the way through Satan is Real, The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers which is one of the best memoirs I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading that Whitmer co-wrote with Charlie Louvin. Another great artist that I was exposed to is a photographer named Gary Isaacs who does a ton of work with Slim Cessna’s Auto Club and all of their many side projects. I’ve spent many nights on his website just looking through all of his amazing photographs. Hell, I even have a framed print of his hanging on my wall that gets more compliments than just about anything else that we have in our house.
Part of me is saddened by the fact that I’m only now discovering this band, twenty plus years into their existence, as I think of all the shows I’ve missed and the anticipation of all of these great album releases. But the optimist in me realizes that the Ryan of his teens and twenties wasn’t ready for this music. If I had heard Slim and Co. back in the mid-nineties or the first decade of the 2000s I would’ve shrugged it off half a song in and went back to my favorite bands who were screaming their heads off and whose live shows resembled riots to the uninitiated (and sometimes even to the initiated). But since last Thanksgiving, much like this new binge-watching phenomenon that Netflix has instilled upon us, I’ve been enjoying catching up on so many great albums by a band who has changed the way I hear, see and feel music. For me 2015 was The Year of Slim. And with talks of a new album on its way next year, and with every intention to fly to Denver for its album release show, well I don’t foresee having to think of a new nickname for 2016.
Suburban Bourbon 