The Hentchmen
Thurs July 4 at Pho Bang (Re-bar), $6.
w/The Fall-Outs, The Hunches
Fri July 5 at Chop Suey, $8.
Over the past two decades, Detroit has become a gold mine for music fans with a purist rock ‘n’ roll aesthetic. It’s home to a bunch of no-frills bands who make the kinda music that could’ve easily come crackling out of Grandma’s record player in her heyday, except now it’s being made by people a third of Grandpa’s age. Starting with the bare essentials of the Gories, the Motor City has produced a number of fine rock acts in recent years–the Dirtbombs, the Demolition Doll Rods, the Detroit Cobras, the White Stripes, and the Hentchmen. These bands have their unique niches in rock ‘n’ roll, but the underlying tie that binds them together is that they’d rather modernize the work of understated past heroes than screw around with more pretentious musical concepts.
The Hentchmen have been an important part of the new Detroit rock city since they started playing together in 1992. Throughout the ’90s, they split their time between Ann Arbor and Detroit, building up a cultish fan base. “We just started for the love of garage music,” explains organist/ vocalist Johnny Volare (the last names are transitory) with a slight Michigan accent. “We listened to Chuck Berry and we weren’t really good at our instruments, but that wasn’t really the point.”
Before the Hentchmen, Volare, guitarist Tim V. Eight (the hot-rod specialist of the trio), and drummer Mike Audi were playing in a ska band, but some vintage gear turned Volare around. “I got an old Farfisa because I wanted an old organ for the band, and I also found a Vox Jaguar. It wasn’t until I got the organs that I started hearing them in older music–like ? & the Mysterians and Paul Revere & the Raiders. That kind of turned me on to the whole ’60s thing.”
It was more than a couple of mint instruments, though, that turned the Hentchmen around from rock steady to rock ‘n’ roll. The ’60s music they crave and emulate has a certain simplicity and straightforwardness in its nature that the Hentchmen bring out in their songs about girls, arcades, and rock ‘n’ roll cancer. When asked what draws him to older acts, Volare admits, “It’s the energy and the frame of mind. From a songwriter’s perspective, it seems like [bands in earlier decades] were in a better place. They were singing about girls and cars and rock ‘n’ roll, and that was more of the way of life back in the ’60s.”
The Hentchmen released four LPs on Norton Records and 16 EPs and singles on labels like Get Hip and Estrus, all of which sound like slightly muffled, good-time relics from another generation. Their songs blend harmonicas and organs over simple guitar rhythms, with Volare’s charmingly bratty vocals giving the songs an extra little kick. Their 1998 Italy Records single, “Some Other Guy”/”Psycho Daisies,” features a pudgy-faced, new-wave-looking Jack White (of the White Stripes) on bass. “We wrote, ‘Featuring Jack White,’ on the back [of the single] and I swear to god that at the time, we just put it there almost as a joke, featuring this person that no one is ever gonna know. Now [his fame] is quite incredible.”
Hopefully all the undying love for the White Stripes will spread to other deserving Detroit acts like the Hentchmen. Volare says the attention on the blues-rock duo has already increased the amount of Detroit-bound business travel from overseas. “Because of this whole White Stripes hype, people from England have been coming over here a lot to check out bands. This guy Martin-something, who has something to do with the hiphop scene in London, he’s now out here researching garage bands. He saw us and wanted us to do demos with this [producer] Al Sutton in town, so we did those. Now we have to see if he’ll want to do an album.”
Whether or not Mr. Martin gets the Hentchmen a Peel session, the band is still a worthy act to check out, especially if you’re a fan of other contemporary acts like the Forty-Fives and the Dukes of Hamburg. The trio’s musical peers and influences are further reaching than their current residence, and Volare even admits that an old Seattle garage act that’s sharing their bill helped shape his current musical style. “The Fall-Outs were a big influence on us,” he says. “They never took off big, but they put out several records, and when we first started out, they were one of the current bands of that time that we thought were doing a really good thing.”