The LAST CALL BRAWLERS first got together in the fall of 1999. The line-up was very different back then. Justin Valdez played guitar and sang (bad mistake), Eric Eulberg played lead, Mike Franklin on up-right, and Robert "the robot" Pike on drums. After a few practices, we had our first gig at a skate demo. Mike and Robert left, which forced Eric to move to the up-right bass, and Steve Howell came in on drums. But we still struggled to find our sound. Marty Moreno soon came in as our singer. We met Marty while he was selling oranges on a street corner one day. He was singing songs to get people's attention and we asked him to join the band. Since then, the line-up has been the same except for a few times when "Mighty" Joel Ford stepped in to play drums. Then, in 2006, (a different Joel) Joel "Papa Bear" Dunst became the newest Brawler on drums. We put out “Pointing Fingers” with Joel (our best album to date) in 2008 on our own record label. Then, we recorded “..With Rice And Beans On The Side”, (a Tejano E.P. to be released on 7” vinyl and online in 2009) with Joel towards the end of that year. The song “Dump Run” is the first release from that E.P., and can be heard here on this page. We were mostly influenced by rockabilly, Gene Vincent, Johnny Burnett, etc, etc, etc. when we first started playing. Then we met the 440's from PA and they took us out on our first nation-wide tour. We toured for a month. When we came back to Tucson, we recorded our first full-length album, which was inspired by our travels on tour. While on the road, we met Ben and Lisa in Ohio. They run the posh little label and zine called Rock-N-Roll Purgatory and they also helped to put out our first album. They have remained good friends to the Last Call Brawlers ever since. Since those first days of getting together in Justin's garage, we've worked in a shit load of styles and influences into our music. The Last Call Brawlers don’t give a fuck about scenesters or hipsters and we don't care how big your cuffs are. We don’t write songs that fit into any category: good tunes are good tunes!! We are heavily inspired by old school punk, traditional rockabilly, neo-rockabilly, surf, psychobilly, hardcore, country, and blues. Why limit yourself? If you like The Last Call Brawlers, Thank you. If you don’t, we don’t care.
FIGHTING WORDS: Last year's winners of the TAMMIES award for Best Roots-Rock act, the Last Call Brawlers, are releasing a new album this week, and with it comes the requisite CD release party.
The self-released, self-titled disc, the band's second, shows just how far they've come in recent months, likely due in no small part to a month-long tour with the 440s last fall. (The triumphs and tribulations of touring as a largely unknown band will usually either bring a band closer together or drive them apart, but it pretty much always guarantees they'll be a hell of a lot tighter musically when they get back home.) Following the tour, the band headed into WaveLab to record the new platter and, in turn, to document the group's (sorta) new direction.
When they began playing around town a few years back, the Brawlers were pretty much a straight-up rockabilly band, albeit a bit harder than those with religious reverence for its purist traditions; with Last Call Brawlers, they've graduated to full-blown psychobilly. Boasting more in common these days with the Cramps and the Reverend Horton Heat than with Charlie Feathers or even, say, the Stray Cats, the Brawlers have integrated surf-reverb guitar, the occasional skronky sax or blues harp, and devil 'n' zombie references into their tunes, which are almost uniformly played--in the spirit of punk rock--at breakneck speed; still, they haven't veered so far from their roots-rock, er, roots that it sounds out of place when, at the end of "El Diablo," they reference the guitar refrain from Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues."
By STEPHEN SEIGEL (Tucson Weekly)
"Blasting Punked-Up Rockabilly - raw, frantic, and rockin' as hell!"
– Howard Raucous (RAUCOUS RECORDS)
"A genuinely fresh take on an old sound... And forget about El-Vez, crooner Marty Muerto is the real Mexican Elvis" - (Utter Trash Magazine)
Pretty run-of-the-mill psychobilly here, leaning more towards the traditional end of the spectrum and sporting a little gloom around the edges.
–Jimmy Alvarado (RAZORCAKE MAGAZINE)
"First time I saw The Last Call Brawlers I remember thinking who are these guys and where did they come from. They combined punk, rockabilly, and surf into their very own blend and style of music. I highly recommend catching a live show"
-Julie Robinson (AUSTIN DECLINE MAGAZINE)
“Last Call Brawlers is four piece rockin band from Arizona. Their style is kind of mixture of rock'n'roll, rockabilly, blues and punk rock. 10 original songs here. These guys really know their stuff, and they can rock like crazy! Marty Muerto on vocals is awesome, Justin Valdez on guitar can really play that thing, strong bass slappin' from Eric Generic and rockin' drums from Stephen Howell. Hidden track here is Joe Bennet's "Rocket". This is just great rock'n'roll music, they rock when it needed. But they can slow down things too when that is needed. Last Call Brawlers understands the meaning of good songs too!!”
Custom Built Magazine (Finland)
“The Last Call Brawlers ble dannet en varm oktoberkveld i 1999, i den ørkentørre ødemarka kjent som Tucson, Arizona. Siden da har denne firerbanden levert en frisk blanding av rockabilly, blues, punk og surf uten å ta hensyn til de forskjellige sjangrenes regler og musikalske grenser. Dette er bandets andre fulltidsalbum (det første, Huffin & Puffin kom i 2002) og inneholder elleve egenkomponerte låter. Mye takket være trommis Stephen Howell frambringer the Last Call Brawlers et forbilledlig øs. I tillegg vokser noen av melodiene som kjemper etter noen runder i spilleren. Svært fengende, og noen av låtene vil med tiden vekke følelser slik enkelte låter gjør når du er på byen og plutselig hører ei låt du har digga fælt og man blir øm i sinnet. For eksempel She's Got It og Nothing New som er superenergisk og superfengende surf-punk-pop, og den steintøffe og fuzzete garasjelåta, Los Muertos Rock, med svært fengende melodi. Låta har innlagt halvfort rockabilly midttema, "mange" gitarsoloer og dunkende trommer hele veien. Mange av låtene har popete og feiende flotte 60's akkordrekker backet av dunkende ståbass og energisk trommespill. The Last Call Brawlers spiller ikke like fort hele tida. Det roes litt ned på El Diablo, en låt som kan karakteriseres som vokalsurf med et slags ska-surf arrangement på verset, mens Bo Diddley svever over rocker'n No Regrets, og steintøft blir det på Don't Come Back - the Carburetors møter surf-pop. Man kan godt summere opp albumet som energisk surf med sang.” ROCK Magazine (Norway)
“The Tucson, Arizona, based Last Call Brawlers kick ass on this 11-song album. The furious “She’s Got It” is a punk and surf blend, “Los Muertos Rock” a wild psychobilly, “How Blue” a hard rocking swing with mean guitar and roaring saxophone. “No Regrets” has a “Diddley-beat” and turns into a fast neo-rockabilly. “Dirt Dog” has a blues rock feel to it. Most of the remaining tracks (all originals except for the hidden bonus, a driving 50’s rockabilly) are over the top fast – punked out roots rock in overdrive.”
– (GMB, Blue Suede News)
The Last Call Brawlers chose the middle slot, opening with the dramatic rolling drums and shredding guitar intro of "No Regrets." Revved-up covers of the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" and Dave Alvin's "Crazy Baby" followed, but it was to be a night of fresh meat, with the Brawlers spotlighting their upcoming CD, Pointing Fingers (release party on Feb. 23 at The Hut), and debuting a few tunes so new they didn't get recorded in time for inclusion.
The Brawlers' strong suit is their diversity, something all too uncommon in this genre: They'll jump from a traditional rockabilly number to the cow-punk romp of Fingers' "Want You to Know," or pop the cherry off the hilarious new tune "Monstros de Gailetas," coming close to the Norteño punk first mined by The Weird Lovemakers. (live show 1/11/08)---James Hudson Tucson Weekly. (live show 1/11/08)
Unless they managed to sneak one past us, it's been almost five years since the release of the Last Call Brawlers' last, self-titled CD. The Tucson band began life as a loud/fast straight-up rockabilly outfit, but by the time of that 2003 release, they had morphed into full-on psychobilly, embracing the devils 'n' zombies imagery that accompanies it, while adding surf-guitar elements into the mix. On their brand-spankin'-new album, Pointing Fingers (2008, Los Muertos), they've taken things one step further: Last Call Brawlers are now basically a punk-rock band with roots in the rootsy stuff.
If that self-titled album invited comparisons to the Cramps and Reverend Horton Heat, the new one sounds an awful lot like early Social Distortion, while avoiding the sound-alike curse. Most of the songs come at you at breakneck speed and feature choruses that are written to be chanted along with by fans. Singer Marty Muerto's voice occasionally recalls Glenn Danzig's, with equal swagger, even if it's less ominous-sounding and far more versatile. It's a voice that was made for this stuff.
There are still songs, such as "Smitty" and "Voodoo Doll," that trade in more trad-rockabilly tropes and include the reverb guitar you'd expect (guitarist Justin "Exxon" Valdez is on fire throughout the album, and the rhythm section--bassist Eric Eulogy and drummer Joel "Papa Bear" Dunst--have no problem keeping up); but the norm here is tracks like "Wasted on You" and "Pointing Fingers," which wouldn't have sounded out of place on an early-'80s American hard-core compilation. None of this seems like an accident, as the Brawlers even pay homage to that era via a cover of Dead Kennedys' "Police Truck." Mark another fine album on your Last Call Brawlers scoresheets, one that again seems like a natural progression from their previous release.
By: Stephen Seigel,
The Tucson Weekly
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My new record just came out this week on I-Tunes and CD Baby. I have included a video talking about the record, hope you enjoy it! Please leave us some feedback to let us know what you think! Thanks for your support.
-Ray Stephenson
PS: This album would make a great stocking stuffer ;)
Listen to Batching It's debut album "Homage" in it's entirety before it is released! CD out in January 2010! Featuring songs by NOFX, Skankin' Pickle, Swingin' Utters, Pearl Jam, Rancid, Lagwagon, Metallica, Sublime, No Use For a Name, Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, No Doubt, The Descendents, Less Than Jake and Operation Ivy!
Listen to Batching It's debut album "Homage" in it's entirety before it is released! CD out in January 2010! Featuring songs by NOFX, Skankin' Pickle, Swingin' Utters, Pearl Jam, Rancid, Lagwagon, Metallica, Sublime, No Use For a Name, Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, No Doubt, The Descendents, Less Than Jake and Operation Ivy!
Hi we have just posted a new track titled "Oracles Song Of Unceasing
Wrath" Please take a min to give it a listen and let us know what you
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