Bigmouth Strikes Again:
James Fouty — guitar, Elliott Gottloeb — drums & keyboard, Chris Hoke — guitar, Caleb Smith — bass
“If you really want the scene in your backyard, you have to support it,” lamented the proprietor of the local dive bar slash original music venue as he closed for good the joint where Bigmouth Strikes Again had made its first live recordings. He was moving the bar forty minutes south from Harrisburg, Pa., a city with a simultaneously struggling and striving arts scene, to York, Pa., a city striving and struggling to be more like its neighbor to the north. Just a year earlier, one member of the band had made exactly the opposite move, trying to escape the city that the band Live famously dubbed “Shit Towne.” Still, Bigmouth Strikes Again is doing its best to support the scenes in both cities with sincere instrumental post rock that flows pensively like the river connecting them, occasionally overflowing its banks.
It’s honest music that comes from an honest place. A place where “the scene” is small enough that it has never doubled over under its own weight and become something sarcastic and desperate, never lost its “joie de vivre”—the title of the final song on the band’s debut album, Ascender/Descender. In fact, song titles can tell you just about all you need to know about the band members themselves. They are “Teachers and Designers.” The guitarists, Jim and Chris, went to the same graphic design school (albeit not at the same time). The drummer, Elliott, teaches high school math and the bassist, Caleb, is a film and video teacher. They pull inspiration from everywhere: music, design, films, poetry, life, and—even though the songs themselves have no lyrics—books, like Dave Eggers’ “You Shall Know Our Velocity,” also the title of the album’s opening track.
Despite the fact that it has quickly matured and a found a like-minded audience, Bigmouth Strikes Again is still in its infancy. And how do you write a biography for a baby? There is conception—the moment when passion leads to action and action leads to the first spark of life, so small that it can go undetected for weeks or months. There is birth—when the startled being is suddenly, painfully naked in front a crowd of strange smiles. There is growth—when the eyes and ears and hands and feet learn to talk to each other, when the group becomes an individual, the individual becomes a person, and the light of personality begins to shine through.
Conception is difficult to pinpoint. It could have been before they even knew each other, somewhere between teenage revolt and adult pacification. It could have been when Chris and Jim first met in York and started to talk about books, music, art, and all the things you weren’t supposed to talk about in a town that manufactures dumbbells and Harleys. It could have been when Elliott, the wheeling-dealing drummer transplanted from a Maryland beach town, was able to wrangle them all into a session. Or when Chris struck the first simple notes of “Breaker Morant,” or when Jim laid a few shimmering chords over the top, or when Caleb added his savvy bass playing and knack for composition to the mix.
Regardless of where it was conceived, Bigmouth Strikes Again was born in a basement wood shop some time in the spring of 2007, before an audience of dusty old power tools and jagged-toothed saw blades. Elliott’s garage was jammed too full of musical equipment in various stages of sale or purchase to fit actual musicians. The first songs were crafted, reworked, and ultimately scrapped. They decided to try something a little more organic, a little less measured. What started with basic repetitive riffs became layered and dynamic arrangements that could last fifteen minutes or more. So they refined the songs like blocks of wood on a lathe, gently grinding away the rough edges until each had its own shape, yet all seemed to work together.
The first songs the group posted were recorded in the dive bar that’s now boarded up, complete with clinking glasses and drunken chatter in the background. From there, it was a performance at a private drinking club, an alternative fair, a college music space, an art gallery, and another dive bar out in Pittsburgh, a city known either as the “Steel City” or the “City of Bridges,” depending on whom you ask. Live performance became the heart of the music, listening carefully while reading each other’s eyes and ears and hands and feet until they learned to move as a single organism.
The music builds hypnotically until Jim is facing away from the audience and frantically feeling for the notes, curled around his guitar as though it were a black hole sucking his whole body down into the pickups, through the coiled cables on the floor, and out through the PA system in tiny pieces floating overhead like Wonkavision. Now he’s kneeling, twisting knobs in between strums, right hand rapidly working the strings like a jigsaw, glasses falling to the floor where they’re temporarily ignored.
This is the scene. Ascender/Decender was recorded in the same way, all live with no overdubbing, at Claycreek Recording Studio in December 2007. Each album package will be hand made and one of a kind. There are more shows to play and books to read and soon a new art space across the train tracks to support. But, at this moment, Bigmouth Strikes Again is happy to just be alive and kicking, “a toddler in a room full of new guests.”
Our [first] album is available for sale! We currently have two options available:
1) For $5 USD, we will send the purchaser a confirmation email with a link to the .ZIP file containing MP3s of all six album tracks. (You will need an appropriate program to unzip these files.) Please make a note when checking out with our shopping cart in the "Special Instructions" section if there is a different email address you would like us to send the files to.
To purchase the digital version, use this button:
2) For $10 USD (including shipping), we will mail the purchaser the tangible version of our album, as well as send the aforementioned .ZIP files as a thank you! Each disc is hand-stamped, and the sleeves are hand-cut with each having a unique hand-drawn design on it -- no two are alike! Please verify your shipping address when sending your payment -- your item will ship 1-2 business days after purchase.
**We apologize, but this option is currently available to only those residing in the USA -- we are working to have an international option available soon!**
To purchase a tangible copy, including shipping, use this button:
We also have shirts for sale! Each is hand-screened on an Old-Navy brand t-shirt and all prices include shipping and handling anywhere in the USA. Our styles and colours change each time we print more, so check back for more options and sizes!
Wow, that's funny. You are still the most amazing band that I have EVER come across. Seeing you live is still my NUMBER ONE favorite performance of all time-- out of metal, acoustic, classical, terrible reggae... you've topped everything
You guys make beautiful music and we're honored to have shared the stage with you. Thank you, take care, and let's keep in touch and do something again soon - NV
Diggin your guys sounds. We should try to play a show sometime, either with my solo stuff or my other band the blahs...myspace. com/theblahsband. check it.
