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Hangdogs R.I.P.

Filed under: Imported

The Hangdogs, one of my favorite country-rock groups of recent years, have called it quits, at least temporarily. (The good news is that the bilious, hilarious Hangdoggerel newsletter will continue.)

I first became aware of the 'Dogs when I was an intern at New York Press in the mid-90's. The band's drummer, Kevin Baier, preceded me as an unpaid laborer at the paper and was then overseeing the personal ads. The Hangdogs had just self-released (or were about to anyway) their remarkable debut EP, Same Old Story and were gigging regularly at the Rodeo Bar and the Mercury Lounge.

In their decade or so of existence, the band released five albums and recorded at least two songs that will forever be on my personal permanent playlist. "Monopoly on the Blues" is the heartbreaking tale of the death of lead singer and chief songwriter Matthew Grimm's hometown of Stanwood, Iowa. The song's lyrics encapsulate the fate of so many small Midwestern towns with stark precision:

And the Legionaires come around Wednesday nights since the Legion Hall burnt down
And we hear about their wives and wars and buy em a couple rounds
And on Friday nights the farmer's sit and bitch about the drought
They been bitching here forever, now they're talkin 'bout selling out

"Hey, Janeane" is a different monster altogether. Ostensibly a peon to the actress (it opens with Garofolo cackling), it's really about grim disillusionment with the world--a omnipresent theme for the 'Dogs. This line pretty much sums up their world view: "Well I realized you were the girl of my dreams, or close enough, when I realized that neither of us had a dream left to speak of." Grimm delivers the vocals with sneering, nasally aplomb, while Baier and crackerjack guitarist Automatic Slim lay down a rollicking backdrop. 

In recent years, the Hangdogs have become more stridently political. (One of my favorite pieces of clothing is a Nader t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan "I lived through an era of 'unparalleled prosperity' and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" that the 'Dogs pedaled at shows during the 2000 campaign.) Their most recent album, Wallace '48, was named in honor of the late vice president and Progressive Party standard bearer. (I did a Q&A with Grimm last year when the album came out.)

Grimm has returned to Iowa to deal with "family issues." He's playing some solo shows locally and writing new material. In fact, when I emailed him to see if he had any plans to play the Twin Cities (for now, the answer is no) Grimm requested some advice on naming a recent song.

I just wrote a song whose refrain is

"We'll fuck fuck fuck till the dawn's early apocalypse"

do i call the song "Fuck Fuck Fuck" or "Dawn's Early Apocalypse"?

Posted by Paul Demko at April 21, 2004 8:24 PM

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