Rust Belt Angst: Two Cow Garage and "Sweet Saint Me"

It was a Monday night. It's a hard sell. Relegated to the small back bar of a larger venue, about 30 people put down the $10 cover to see Two Cow Garage.

Finding bands at their beginnings is one of the joys of live music. Seeing them in their raw state and then watching them file, shave and shape down into something that makes sense. The workshop is always more interesting than the museum. The first time somebody experiences a finished work, it begins to die. And it dies a little more with every new viewer.

Two Cow Garage at a show in NC from brand new kind of photography

But Two Cow Garage is not a block of stone in search of a pile of dust. They've been at this for the better part of a decade and just released their fifth album. It's time for someone to let them out of the workshop. Because if you don't, the shavings start to overtake the product and the block is whittled down to a nub. It's great for the select few who got to see the process, but it doesn't work out too well for the block.

Their new album, "Sweet Saint Me," is very good. In a fair and God-fearing world, "Lydia" would be pouring out of radios. It's a song made to be an A-side single. The second best song, "Lucy and the Butcher Knife" is a quirky story song that was made to be a cultishly beloved B-side. The album alternates from orgran-juiced, double lead vocal jump rock to stripped-down, single voice in a room with an unelectric instrument. But from the first time I heard a Two Cow Garage album, I knew this was a band that needed to be seen live. Something wasn't translating from the studio. Like the other albums, "Sweet Saint Me" is very good. The live Two Cow Garage experience, however, is amazing.

"We really appreciate yall coming out tonight. We were in Alabama last night and, well, we're just really happy to be here. Thanks again for coming."

I'm not sure what happened the night before in Jacksonville, Alabama. But for what could not have been much more than the cost of the gas to get to the next show, a grateful rock band took the stage and put on a big Saturday night show in a shitty back room on a Monday. They ran through most of the new album with a vengence, drilling the unfamiliar songs into your head so deep you wonder if they hadn't been there all along. They obliged shouted requests for songs from the crowd and made songs from the back catalogue of my iPod stand up like they had a life of their own. A Replacements cover closed things out on the perfect night of music for a frustrated Fall.

Walking out of the show, the first temptation is to describe them as raw, and that's mostly due to Micah Schnabel's voice. It's all gaps and crackles and strained threads popping out of a V-neck collar and working a clenched jaw. The stage antics are erratic and the instruments swing and shake sometimes with the beat and sometimes exactly offbeat. If there's a "look" of the band, it's like a animated ball of laundry that was wadded under the back seat of a conversion van.

But raw is lazy. The obvious surface parts are raw. The full sound, the full experience is not. This is a mature rock band that puts out a sound that is exactly what it is meant to be. Shane Sweeney slaps the bass like a Stax session player and sings like a truck driver on the 35th hour of a 36-hour haul, too tired for anything but hard, weary truth. When Sweeney's bass and voice meet Micah's, it's tar finding the gaps in gravel and everything else just rolls on top of it. It's those moments when the two come together that Two Cow Garage really finds its sound. It's something that shows up more in the shows than the albums.

I'm not somebody who dislikes genres on their face. It can be helpful to have a mental context for something, and thoughtful genre assignments can provide that. But let's not try to drill too deep or over-think things just to avoid the obvious. Two Cow Garage is not Alt Country, and I don't think they fit into the newly fashionable "Cowpunk" label either. There's not much twang to this music outside of the livestock in their name, the sideburns on Shane's face and their occasional use of a cowbell. It's rust belt angst with the literacy to be able to express it. It's just straight forward rock and roll, and beautifully so.

There are a handful of bands that I will openly proselytize for, bands you may not know, but you should. Bands that, in a fair and just world of meritocracy, would be packing out five-figure venues and filling the airwaves. Glossary, The Felice Brothers, The Dexateens, Blue Mountain...and now Two Cow Garage is proudly on that list. If they come by, pardon the sawdust and the inconvienent show time, and go be saved.