Six cowboys dressed in black are on a plane bound for Belgium.
They’re in a band from Seattle called Brent Amaker & the Rodeo, and
they’re traveling 6,000 miles to play country music to Europeans. They
keep their black Stetson hats on for the entire flight.
Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean at 38,000 feet, Brent
Amaker—the tall, gruff-spoken bandleader originally from
Oklahoma—is anxious. He needs to get some sleep, but he’s worried
about the band’s first gig. It’s at an outdoor venue in Beerse,
Belgium, and they’re supposed to play for three hours straight. Their
only record, last year’s self-titled debut, clocks in at 24
minutes.
Despite the Valium and red wine, Amaker is wide-awake. It’s 6:02
a.m., Seattle time. He writes in his journal to settle his nerves:
Jesus Christ! I hate trying to sleep on airplanes. It’s going to
be a long one today in full Rodeo attire. We have to take four trains,
carrying our gear, and find our tour manager. I wrote six new songs for
the first show, so we’ll be able to pull it off. They’ll have no choice
but to love us.
The Rodeo’s brand of spaghetti-western music is a mean-cowboy act,
but it’s no put-on. As Amaker admits, the Rodeo might not have the best
take on country music, but it’s their take. “Old-time country filtered
through the minds of some guys who have been playing in rock bands,” he
says. Reverbed guitar twang and clip-clop rhythms underpin Amaker’s
low-register cattle call. Most of the songs are in G, the
quintessential country key and a definite homage to Johnny Cash.
For the last couple years, European DJs and press have been
requesting music from Amaker; they find their way to the Rodeo through
MySpace. Noting the interest, he applied to Berlin’s Popkomm Festival
via the online booking service Sonicbids earlier this year. The Rodeo
were picked as one of four bands from the U.S. to get a 1,000-Euro
travel allowance and play Popkomm—a huge, multi-day festival
featuring mostly pop, electro, and dance music—at the end of
September. The rest of the tour—seven dates through Belgium,
Holland, and Germany—came together around Popkomm, after a
Belgian booking agency called Surfing Airlines took an interest in the
Rodeo. Surfing Airlines is infatuated with American Americana bands
like Amaker, Ruby Dee and the Snakehandlers, and the Black Crabs, all
from Seattle. They agreed to provide the band with a house,
transportation, meals, and a full back-line, including vintage Fender
gear.
Seems like what we’re doing might be right for the European
market, Amaker writes. They want Americana and we plan on
giving it to them.
And they do. After 30-some hours of planes, trains, and vans, their
first show—the three-hour gig at an outdoor bar near a
canal—starts out rough, but ends well.
It’s cold out and the first two hours are grim. The crowd is
either over 50 or under 12, more interested in frites than country
music, and very European. By which I mean musty, kind, proud of their
local beer, and getting drunk on it.
Eventually, the strong Belgian beer works up the Rodeo and wears
down the locals. Everyone’s loving the music and trying to sing along.
Trays of whiskey—which will become a theme during this European
vacation—emerge. The gig achieves a proper ending. The band drive
back to their house in the Belgian countryside, polish off a case of
Duvel beer, and pass out.
The next night, in Tilburg, Netherlands, the scene is even
better.
A half-dozen guys are dressed in all-black Rodeo outfits. People
have actually been gearing up for this show. In a big smoky club in a
Dutch city we’ve never heard of, some guy comes up to me and says,
“Brent Amaker! We drink!” We start the show with “Sissy New Age Cowboy”
and the crowd is singing along. Singing a-fucking-long!
Thanks to MySpace, they know the lyrics: “The highlights in your
hair are a dead giveaway/You’re not singing country music/You keep
singin’ pop songs and takin’ photo ops/ you’re a sissy new-age cowboy
country fuck!”
The band whips up a serious lather live, drinking and heckling
onstage, encouraging drinking and heckling from the crowd. After more
trays of whiskey and the end of the set, a girl asks guitarist Louis
O’Callaghan if she can try on his Stetson. He obliges; she runs out the
door with it. The band is stunned.
Our music is for real, Amaker writes, but we need our
hats. Don’t mess with the hats.
Averting near disaster, one of the Dutch cowboys lets O’Callaghan
buy his hat—a black Stetson knockoff purchased online—for
20 Euros.
The next day, it’s on to Berlin for the big festival. Half of the
band, including Amaker, is sick and medicating with foul-tasting
European cough drops and other foreign stuff.
Some of the guys are treating their symptoms with little bottles
of mysterious brown liquor from the truck stops. They don’t know what
it is. I think they’re just happy it doesn’t taste like licorice. About
60 percent of everything here tastes like licorice.
Amaker & the Rodeo are the only cowboys at Popkomm. They are the
only cowboys in Berlin, for that matter. They’ve been wearing the same
outfits the entire trip and things are getting crusty, but the
Europeans are still enamored with the men in black.
This is a place where a cowboy can make a splash. We get
“yee-haw”ed everywhere we go. People either love us or ignore us. Not a
bad way to operate.
After a minor scare over a missed sound check (blame that strong
Belgian beer), Amaker reschedules at the club, a rock ‘n’ roll bar
called Aufsturz. A German sound check is unlike anything I’ve
experienced, even in good Seattle clubs. Soundman Jens was asking
Curtis [Andreen, drummer] which particular frequencies he’d
like to emphasize in his kick-drum sound. Hell yeah. Some German
MySpace fans arrive in Rodeo gear. This is not something I’m going to
get tired of anytime soon.
The show starts and the cowboys roll. They’re feeling the music,
O’Callaghan spooling out a psychedelic guitar solo that wows the crowd
while bassist Sugar McGuinn keeps the beat slow and steady. Like an
inverse Borat, Amaker has brought the exaggerated heart of America into
an alien place, and that place has embraced it.
After the show, I hear again and again, “We were just going to
listen to the first
song and go, but then we stayed for one more,
and one more….”
The Popkomm organizers love the Rodeo’s set and
afterward whisk
them away to VIP rooms and more trays of whiskey. Amaker is introduced
to European booking agents and label reps. Plans to return are
discussed.
I could get used to flying at this altitude. These people said
some shit that I won’t even repeat here, because no one will believe
it. Even I’m not a big enough asshole to toot my horn that loud. Plus,
I don’t want to jinx shit.
The last night of the tour is back in rural Belgium. The band is
beat and sagging, the partying and the schmoozing and the sickness
catching up to them: You know what a balloon looks a couple days
after you blow it up? Amaker drinks half a dozen Duvel beers to
cut through the haze as the band gets into stern-faced character. The
venue is almost empty.
Just as we’re about to lose heart, the club fills with what I
can only describe as Belgian rednecks. Smoke is thick, dudes are
sweaty, and the beer is flying. One fan in particular is way too drunk.
He keeps trying to get me to sing “Bad Moon Rising.” In any language,
this guy is an asshole. Then he jumps onto the stage and starts singing
in Flemish through my mic. I give him a minute to goof off then I push
him back toward the crowd. Honest, I barely nudge the guy. But he slips
on the beer-covered stage and flies off like a cartoon. He bounces up
and lunges back at me but Curtis and Mason [Lowe, lead guitarist] are right in his face. The music stops. It’s fucking tense. I’m
going through the worst-case scenario in my mind (six dudes in a tiny
Belgian jail) when someone yells, “Ah, iss no problem. Eees a facking
dronk!” A quick “1, 2, 3, 4!” from Sugar and we’re back on track. 
