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| Let The Fury Fly! |
| band: Cletus Romp |
| Album: Broke Tooth |
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Cletus Romp
"Broke Tooth"
Let the Fury Fly!
"I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's. But behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth."
~ Flannery O'Connor
"We have a few old mouth-to-mouth tales, we exhume from old trunks and boxes and drawers letters without salutation or signature, in which men and women who once lived and breathed are now merely initials or nicknames out of some now incomprehensible affection which sound to us like Sanskrit or Chocktaw; we see dimly people, the people in whose living blood and seed we ourselves lay dormant and waiting, in this shadowy attenuation of time possessing now heroic proportions, performing their acts of simple passion and simple violence, impervious to time and inexplicable..."
- From Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
"If you'll gather 'round me, children, a story I will tell
'Bout Pretty Boy Floyd, an Outlaw, Oklahoma knew him well. . . .
Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen."
~ From The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd by Woody Guthrie
CHARACTER IN ACTION AND CLETUS ROMP
Cletus Romp has had the songs to sucker punch an audience for a couple of years but this new configuration of the band makes their essential and powerful storytelling a visceral force on stage and on record. Derek Stinson writes a narrative in every song as vital and brutal as a kick to the teeth. His songs are so blunt and honest he may have stumbled on the first step toward redemption. His character Cletus is a train wreck of an anti-hero so dead bang honest he might have been voted into his high school yearbook as the boy "Most Likely to Confess to a Capital Crime." Derek's professed intention when writing a song for Cletus is to "Step up and let the fury fly," but when the fur hits the fan he has created an alter ego with practical implications and philosophical repercussions built like a tumble down mobile home in the trailer park where Frederich Nietzsche, Flannery O'Conner and William Faulkner park their rigs. As an artist, Mr. Stinson lives by day in the fortress of ethical and blunt honesty and by night with a pen or a mic in his hand by the wayward wisdom of his dark side called Cletus.
Mr. Romp lives in the stench and squalor of the subconscious swampland our souls would like to forget. Derek's anti-hero and moniker for the band is a character descended from Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, The Sound and the Fury and Flannery O'Conner's parables of inhumanity and discarded salvation swimming in moral decay. As with O'Connor "most people think of these stories as hard hopeless and brutal." Derek's rhythmic poetry hides it's rhyme internally like the prize in a box of Cracker Jacks as securely as he embeds the gospel of honesty in these stories where the road not taken when two roads diverge has the better claim. Cletus is the man we secretly admire with each retelling as we roll our eyes and repeat his legend as a cautionary tale at family picnics. He is our best excuse for courting safety over integrity. He is a flesh and blood man of action, a vigilante, and the realization of the action figure we thought we were as children watching Westerns with singing bad guys. Cletus Romp is the fabled Old West vagrant and migrant outlaw dispensing poetic justice with pigheaded passion along the road to These United States. That TUS in Cletus is us cock sure rebels out to fix the world with a tire iron, smart bomb, misguided missile, assault rifle or collaterally damaging payload. We have uniforms to clothe these heroes with numbers on their dog tags or prison stripes. When one of these punks goes rogue, we have a Robin Hood, Pretty Boy Floyd or Zorro at best, but that same passionate certainty from our least-favorite, familial nightmare is Cletus. Cletus has heroic courage when he's drunk and disorderly, but he's mostly just a dangerous man with a "good idea" and belly full of brew anywhere near a shotgun, rock, matchbook, tire iron, shovel, or sharp stick. He's the bad seed and the poor relation and why we have laws and why we secretly regret the consequences, courts, and punishment for crimes of passion. He is an sad, ironic fact of life. He is us.
THE STORY OF DEREK AND THE DOG
Derek's relationship with Cletus began with a song. That's all he was meant to be. Later the band was named for the character and Romp took physical form in Derek as the physical presence of the action figure cut from Stinson's vital dark side. Mysterious things started happening. Derek named this EP "Broke Tooth" as the consequence of songs meant to kick the listener in the mouth. He developed an impacted wisdom tooth before the songs were recorded. But that's another story. This is the story of Derek (and Cletus!) and the dog.
Derek witnessed a 150 lb. Mastiff in the act, biting the throat of a small pet dog lead by an elderly neighbor on the street where they lived. Derek is an animal lover but he could not stand by and watch the carnage. "There comes a time when you see the right thing to do and you just go!" A full grown Mastiff doesn't listen to reason with his teeth sunk deep into the throat of pet, and his "master" was all of 10 and couldn't do more than tug the choke chain, sob irresponsibly, and watch. "It killed me that there were people watching from their porches." Derek's boot taught that menacing dog a lesson repeatedly kicking the big dog in the face while his boy owner watched in horror. I asked the songwriter if that was Cletus or Derek kicking the dog, and he answers "Both." It was the right thing to do but "blood lust took over."
That is a brutal story of right action in the face of a moral dilemma. The civilized part of my brain wants to ignore the story as the exception proving the rule, but that's a true story worthy of telling for what it says about daily life in an extreme moment. Derek was conflicted by the brutality and passion he had felt. Adrenalin has helped in the justification of his actions, but he had done right. Derek stepped up and took violent action without hesitation in a distasteful and dangerous real-life calamity. Cletus is that part of Derek which has lost his manners in the meat grinder of circumstance. Derek has built of himself an ethical man who respects person, privacy and property in his life and his heart. As a boy his grandfather's watch was stolen from him in grade school, which formed a motivating force against his dishonesty and theft because "I don't want anyone ever to feel like I did that day!" In this story, that dog had gone over the line and was no longer worthy of empathy. Derek and Cletus did an ugly, vicious, brutal and thoroughly good thing by stomping the face of that mongrel and saving that pet underdog from death. Any residual hint of a moral dilemma evaporated when that elderly neighbor knocked at the door to gave Derek the news her puppy was alive and recovering at the vet. She thanked Mr. Stinson for saving the life of her dog. It isn't the story we want to hear that changes our world, but the one we can't forget. Derek's songs demand that we find the courage to act, with discretion as the better part of valor, and the wisdom to respect the dark side.
THE BAND
The opening beat of song and this album sounds like Adam is beating his drumkit in a high school gym just before a pep rally, just before some redneck dropout grabs the mic as a prank to piss off the crowd. Mike's to the metal born rock 'n' roll guitar doubles as an assault weapon and fly swatter. He plays it precise enough to tell the story with the force and subtlety of a chain saw. Mike's decisions on the guitar when the roads diverged in the woods for this band have made "all the difference." Mark plays the bowed acoustic bass as though that machine could kill folkies the way he saws that thing. He's playing something like the "Baby Elephant Walk" at the start of "Goliath's House." Mark is a professional musician capable of jazz on the upright, but he is encouraged to "saw that thing in half" playing with a bow in this band. CR also has a trained and sane bass player in Tim who provides the cheery and enthusiastic audience contact, plays R&B bass lines on the electric, and sings the tenor in the backing vocals. The mild mannered Derek Stinson, computer geek, transforms into a common deadbeat monster in the character in Cletus Romp. Derek's lyrics are driven by rhythm, but Cletus tends to steer the story down the front lawns on trash day just to see that he's remembered. Derek's technique when writing a song as Cletus? "Just step up and let the fury fly!"
THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!
It's worthy of mention that all this is as entertaining as a train wreck in concert. I don't know where the hell it comes from, but Cletus Romp delivers joy from someplace in the gut like a shut-in boy allowed outside for once to play. With the powerful, focused sound of metal without the balderdash, bass-line R&B tinged and trailer-park country, Cletus is the bar band of choice for all living characters from William Faulkner novels, and common listeners alike.
If that don't sound like a fun ride, you can get back on that horse with no name and prance your uppity ass into the sunset. Cletus Romp is a band to watch.
Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.
~ Flannery O'Connor
THE SONGS
(and excerpts from the lyrics)
1. GOLIATH''S HOUSE
This song has a raunchy charm from the start with that pep rally back beat echoing through the hall and Mike's guitar as caustic as the sound some redneck punk erasing a chalk board with a putty knife. Derek admits to using Biblical imagery to add a sense of mystery to his songs, but that's the theology of Cletus in a nutshell. Goliath is a big man about town with a big house and a big problem when no account Cletus decides to balance the books. Cletus turns his half-baked religiosity into the blood lust common to a destruction derby. The genius of Cletus is the gleeful celebratory clog dance in his misguided passion. He may not call himself a loose cannon, but he's probably slept in one once.
Soak it all down with the kerosene
And set the world on fire with 12-gauge shell
I'm takin' down the house that Goliath built
And the smart money says that it will all come down
2. NO ANGELS
Mike grinds out an dirty sweet jeering figure on the guilt like a gutter version of the riff on "Woodstock" by CSN&Y beating the hippy in those notes to death like an Angel at Altamont. This song sounds like an anthem and reads like a Cajun take on Dylan's backhanded slap songs like "Rolling Stone." I'm struck with the unsentimental poetry in this song each time I listen. Cletus isn't delivering a put down, but some form of unsympathetic empathy in his observing eye.
That woman she ain't got no angels
The burnt husk of a car fire frame
Her face is quiet like a baby in its cradle
Her eyes are dead 'cause she feels no pain
3. SECRET
Cletus has a secret buried in the backyard. Guess knowing where the skeletons are buried has never been a metaphor for Mr. Romp. He never got that far in school. The guitar growls a little like a swamp alligator with the drums playing a rapid march into trouble. Romp is loaded for bear or banker or just plain loaded with a shovel in his hand out to balance the books and dig himself out of debt. This song has the pace of a derailed freight train headed for a school bus with black ice an inch thick on the tracks. Try not to watch or pipe up and growl along with Cletus.
Jeremiah was a cocky man
Heavy handed in everything he did
He came to take what's mine
That's fine, if he likes the taste of a shovel
I was down at the river gigging frogs into the evening
Got a half a dozen floating in a pot at rolling boil
Gonna eat good for a week, no matter how loud the dogs do growl
Let them growl
4. FLOOD
Cletus engages in a neighborhood cleanup after the flood, while inspecting the damage from an Act of God. I asked Derek if Cletus has a bone to pick with God. "No! He don't care." It does seem sometimes that God has less sympathy than Cletus when the floods come or the earth shakes. Cletus helps to clean up what God left unpunished, and in this song he just cleans up the mess. Sometimes God seems like the Boogie Man. If you asked Cletus if he was contemplating the theological Problem of Pain, he'd likely respond: "Nope! Just picking up dead cats."
We stole the wood from the Campbells' old barn
The farm has set empty since the flood took the corn
The rains finally stopped, the rivers back in place
But we're still finding farm cats littered all along the banks
It's cleanup, cleanup, cleanup, cleanup
It's cleanup time and it's long overdue
5. CARNIES
The pairing of Mark's bowed bass and Derek on acoustic add nuance to the mournful march through the carnival of carnage about to happen. This is a waltz to the bone yard with darkness and disgust in every step. No doubt justice should be served cold on the carnival barker. We all answer to a higher power, and Cletus might just be that power for that dog from out of town. He may have made it his concern but this is dirty business left undone.
When the carnies come to town
Keep your eyes on the kids
I remember the barker
I saw what he did
I caught him sniffing 'round the millers back door
The charges didn't stick but I know what I saw
6. JETSKI WITH JESUS
And now for the benediction! Cletus has neglected to assemble himself together like the good book requires. He has been denied privileges for his neglect. No deities were harmed in the writing of this song. Cletus won't be allowed to Jetski with Jesus, but he earned that disgrace the old fashioned way, by not deserving it. Our Lord cannot be faulted for snubbing Mr. Romp, and Cletus knows it.
I guess I never should have skipped on that revival
Now Jesus is wave riding without me
Dating the Preachers daughter was not a good idea
Now Jesus is wave riding without me
They won't let me ride on that jetski with Jesus
Don't know why, it's been an hour since I ate
CLETUS ROMP:
Derek Stinson plays rhythm and vox
Tim Golliher plays electric bass and vox
Adam Brokamp plays drums
Mike Templeton plays lead
Mark Karapondo plays upright bass
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