10w40 are the guys with the brass knuckles waiting for you outside the shady dive where you just gambled away your last paycheck. They're the rum runners with loose teeth and shifty eyes; a rambling, raucous, spitting beast of a band that hitches howling guitars to a rhythm train engineered by the Devil himself—one moment rusted to the tracks of Civil War history or the Bible, the next belching black smoke, crippled truckers and hunting accidents. Shotguns, rye whiskey and sideshow-geek sweethearts spill out sideways while this group of n’er-do-wells manages to leave the audience sucker-punched, pie-eyed and buried under a brick wall of sound. Think Captain Beefheart meets an electrified fistful of Huddie Ledbetter, The Bad Seeds, Pere Ubu and Crazy Horse, and you're about halfway toward understanding why this group shines.
vocals. guitars. horse's teeth. harp.
Jim Orville Swagger celebrated the turn of the millennium with a stint at a maximum-security prison in the midwest—teaching English this time instead of bucking for probation. Drawing from a childhood spent trapping leeches and minnows for his dad’s bait shop—and working the family’s flea market—his narratives spill over with images, characters and experiences broadcast from backwoods America on a crappy a.m. radio. Swagger is also a member of critically acclaimed outfit Captain Yonder, and has recorded albums at Wavelab Studio in Tucson, with Grammy-Award winning Dave Fridmann’s Tarbox Road in New York, and with fellow Minnesotans Sacred Heart (Low). Currently, however, Swagger has been busy building a bomb shelter; stockpiling guns, food and water underneath the neighbor's yard.
drums. accordion. vibraphone. Derek Trost recently relocated to Minneapolis from Portland, Oregon, where he hit with the likes of Tracker, The Danged, Mood Area 52, M. Ward, and members of The Decemberists. After 20 years plying earholes up and down the west coast with everything from shoe-gazing emo epic's to blistering punkabilly or sideways tangos, Derek is back in the midwest, handcuffed to the hood ornament and bringin' 'em in close for the left hook.
electric bass. stand-up bass. Jim Michels has made a career out of a grumbling, iron grip on his slack-tuned 4-string, anchoring countless bands on both sides of the Atlantic in two-plus decades of old-school Minneapolis rock, including blue-black dyed-hair Sonny Vincent's Shotgun Rationale (once confused as the band Skinny Puppy when touring through Milwaukee) with Bob Stinson, Go Great Guns, The Mixers, Three Below with Paul Holland of SupaFuzz, Armed and Hammered with Sam Osteen (Gwar collaborator) and The Fragments.
thank you for the request & compliments. when I'm not at work I'll give you a listen too. if you haven't been to myspace.com/bretjensensongs please add me there too.
