Twenty-five years into a career, the Bottle Rockets aren’t afraid to mix things up, a positive by any measure. With the group’s latest album, Bit Logic, set to release this month, fans will get another opportunity to examine a group that’s unafraid to shift its sound to fit the times.
For the full run of the group’s existence, Brian Henneman has been the its front man. As such, he’s the one usually given the task of talking to fans, journalists, and the generally curious. And, in the case of Bit Logic, he’s going to be asked variants on the question of whether this album has got a theme. After repeated listens to the 12-song record, it feels as if there is, and yet…
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“I think a theme accidentally showed up,” Henneman says, sipping at a mug of coffee and bouncing ideas against one another. “It wasn’t intended. The same things seemed to be on everyone’s mind. I can’t put my finger on the theme. There’s a bunker-like quality to this album. Laying low, you know, doing the things you do to avoid the things you don’t wanna deal with. It’s a little bit of a hideout album. Times are weird, and there’re several things you can do. And one thing you can do effectively is keep things close. That’s kinda the theme. And there’s an old dog learning new tricks vibe to the album, as well.”
In saying this, Henneman points to a couple of different things the group brought to this album, which was finished in May. An example comes with the lyrics, which ride crisp and clear atop the instrumentation. This wasn’t just a recording decision, but one based in songwriting, as well.
“On this album,” Henneman says, “there was a concerted effort to make songs that suited my voice at my age. It was kind of the loose-fitting rule that we imposed on this one. It was self-imposed, and everyone got with the program. No matter how fringe-y this concept might be, if I can’t imagine Kris Kristofferson singing this song in some fashion, then we have to make work to my imagining it. There’s a chance to hear his voice in doing what we’re doing. I didn’t wanna do the pop model. I love melodic pop music—it’s some of my favorite stuff in the world. But I don’t wanna hear me singing it.”
So instead of the barn-burning rockers that were liberally dotted throughout the band’s history, for sure represented on their latest studio albums, the band decided to let their country flag fly. The band’s lengthy history made the transition easier: Drummer Mark Ortman is a founding member, while guitarist John Horton and bassist Keith Voegele joined in 2003 and 2005, respectively.
“Yeah, yeah, it worked really well,” Henneman says. “I’ve got Diesel Island and John’s in Colonel Ford, so we both have our country bands. Mark was a founder of Diesel Island and Keith’s played in all kinds of country bands in Springfield. We all have it in our blood. We made a big effort to make country-approved guitar sounds. Everything’s dry, clean, electric guitar, with no distortion. That’s the hardest thing to get used to. You lose that automatic transmission and now you’re shifting those gears.
“It’s just changed with the sound of the new album,” he says. “Up until now, it was like Keith Richards and Ron Wood. We’d fight it out. If you find a hole, go for it. Now, we’re playing like a country band and each guy makes room for the other. Up until last year, if there was a guitar solo, John would be blasting and I’d step on a pedal, too. Now the other guy’s backing up. It sounds really clean, this country band. It’s a little odd to hear in the Bottle Rockets sound, it’s different. The guitars are not in a catfight anymore.”
Tackling that thought from another angle, Henneman figures that the band’s influences were flipped and “we kinda took the Cheap Trick away and replaced it with more of a Waylon Jennings–type of thing. Every album’s always had at least one country song. And this time we kinda stayed in that place.”
With a band that’s got a catalog as large as the Bottle Rockets, fans will always gravitate to the tracks that captured their fancy when they learned about the group. For Henneman, though, the new album’s going to provide a bulk of their set throughout the next year of touring. He figures on a new cut balanced against an old one, then another new one and so on, with the entire record getting played during headlining-length sets.
That said, he’s come to terms with the fact that the band’s much-loved early stuff is still going to be requested, loudly and often, during their sets.
“It doesn’t matter what you do,” Henneman figures. “We could write a song that cured cancer, and people are gonna want to hear ‘1000 Dollar Car’ at the expense of the song that would cure their cancer. But that’s OK. I’m glad that we’ve made songs that people like. I don’t get tired of it.”
Henneman jokes that the band’s fans have grown with them and sometimes “are just happy to be out of the house” on a Friday night. And the band’s made concessions and adaptations all through the years in order to make it work for band and fans alike.
As noted, the band’s central in their lives, but they maintain actively gigging side projects. They play more house shows than ever, in lieu of clubs. They keep St. Louis dates very light so they’re special. They take no support crew out on the road, preferring to keep a lean, mean, four-man touring unit. They play towns and regions that have been there since the beginning, with bases in the northeast and Midwest and little work out west or in the South. They’ve figured it out.
These are tactics the band’s “learned the hard way,” Henneman says. “In the modern music industry, the way to make money is to figure it out on your own. Don’t take anyone out with you if a guy volunteers to do it for free. They’ll mess up the amount of hotel rooms, and the van seating gets crowded. We take everything in one van, all the equipment and now we’re using smaller amplifiers, which makes sound guys love us a whole lot; my pedal board’s not much bigger than that laptop. It works.”
This new record with a hard-to-define but definitely there theme will be at the center of the Bottle Rockets’ experiences for the next year, at least. And in short bursts or one to two weeks of roadwork, they’ll take Bit Logic out to the world. And, if at all possible, Henneman wants to test out a theory, all these years on. It’s a unique one, just like him.
“Sometimes,” he says, in his amusing, understated style, “we’ll have a day off on the road. The problem is that it’s a quote/unquote ‘travel day,’ so you’re not getting much rest driving 500 miles. We’ve seen everything in the world so many times. Sightseeing? We did that 20 years ago. I still have a dream and we’ve never done it: I wanna leave town without a full tank of gas, just a half-tank, so that we don’t stop at the same gas stations every time.”
Bit Logic, recorded in St. Louis at Sawhorse Studios, engineered by Mario Viele and produced by Eric “Roscoe” Ambel, will be released on Bloodshot Records on Friday, October 12.
