Extraordinary average Joes
By Joe Nickell
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Oblio Joes have declined opportunities to make it big; instead they've embraced each other and Missoula
Preview: The Oblio Joes celebrate the release of their new CD, "Swallow the Moon," in a performance at the Ritz on Saturday, March 6. Volumen and 1090 Club also will perform.
In the front room, the band lept around in the corner, smashing and thrashing through songs that were sometimes hard to parse into discernable lyrics and chords, overloading a pair of speakers that looked like they might have come from someone's '80s-era home stereo system.
Hipsters in their 20s and 30s stood around the room, staring at the band, bobbing their heads and sometimes mouthing lyrics to songs they'd heard before.
In the back room, folks stood around drinking P.B.R. from cans that someone had brought, occasionally perusing the stacks of tattered paperbacks and oddball art that lined the walls, lining up for a turn in the building's only bathroom.
It was your typical rock 'n' roll house party with the Oblio Joes. It might have happened back in 1994, or '95, back in the day, when the Obes were the most surprisingly brilliant new blossom in the Garden City's riotous musical seedbed.
But this particular party took place two weeks ago, at the Area 5 Gallery on South First West, where the Oblio Joes were celebrating the 10-year anniversary of their first full-length album, "All Ages Show."
A lot has changed since the original release of "All Ages Show."
Heck, a lot changed on that very night, a decade ago, when the original, cassette-only release hit the streets of Missoula.
That was, after all, the night that the old Roxy Theater burned down. Since then, the Roxy has been rebuilt, reopened, closed, and reopened again as the International Wildlife Film Festival's headquarters.
Countless waves of Missoula underground bands have come and gone since then. Honky Sausage changed its name to Fireballs of Freedom, and then moved to Portland. The Skoidats came and went. Volumen, Sasshole, the Hellgate Stranglers and many others came and stayed. No-Fi Soul Rebellion came, and is now planning to leave.
Ten years in band years is like 50 in marriage, or 100 in human years, or 20 in dog years. It's a very long time to stick around. Especially for a band that has never had a major hit record, a band that doesn't really even make much money playing gigs or selling CDs on its Web site, a band full of employed, married average Joes. Some of them even have kids.
So what has kept the Oblio Joes together while countless other Missoula bands have broken up? And what has kept the rest of the world from recognizing the brilliance of their music?
I bought a bottle of bourbon, and asked them over to my house to find out.
First, some objective facts.
The Oblio Joes formed in 1993, out of the still-smouldering ashes of the Flannelles, an ill-fated R&B band that featured (among others) John Brownell and Stu Simonson on guitars and Dan Strachan on drums.
Within weeks after the Flannelles broke up, Brownell, Simonson and Strachan formed the Oblio Joes, which took its name from the central character in Harry Nilsson's acid-inspired 1971 concept album, "The Point."
At the time, the three musicians lived together in a house they affectionately refer to as the Pink House (three guesses why they call it that). They practiced in the cellar of the house - a tiny, damp space accessed through a trap-door in the floor.
Back then, a steady stream of Missoula's young musicians would show up at the Pink House for all-night jam sessions in the basement, fueled by Pabst Blue Ribbon party-packs.
It was a heady time of camaraderie and creativity, a time when bands appeared and disappeared in a matter of weeks.
Yet despite all the carefree cross-pollination between the various bands and musicians of the time, the Oblio Joes began to coalesce as a band around the songwriting of John Brownell and a single band rule: "You can't tell other people to play something a certain way," recalls Brownell.
After awhile, the Obes started appearing at house parties around town, often splitting time with local bands Humpy and Shades of Reality (both now long defunct). Somewhere along the way, they started to play with Tor Dahl, who was then the bassist in Happy Breath, a band that also featured Dan Strachan.
In the early days of the Obes, Strachan couldn't afford a drum set (like all the members of the Oblio Joes, he is a former guitarist), so he whacked on a set consisting of a snare drum, a cheap pair of hi-hat cymbals, and a Ludwig drum case.
"My right arm just got huge because I had to beat the hell out of the drum case in order for anybody to hear it," recalls Strachan. "I looked like a half-Popeye."
But Strachan eventually put together a proper drumset, and the Obes eventually got enough material together to record "All Ages Show" in the basement of the Pink House.
"A lot of that music came out of just jamming together in those long sessions," recalls Brownell. "Songs like 'In Love and Insane,' or 'Into the Sun,' those were songs that just kind of fell together."
Even after they had their first record under their belts, the Oblio Joes didn't necessarily seem like the kind of band that would outlast others in the scene.
Sure, their camaraderie was obvious to anyone who hung out with them. And sure, they had some great songs.
They even had a few groupies, who would show up at every gig, and sing along with Brownell.
But a lot of bands had their fans, and some even had some good tunes.
The Oblio Joes had something else.
Briefly, some subjective observations.
Since its founding, the Oblio Joes have played music that combines pop songwriting with punk spirit.
The typical Obes song begins with a melody that you're just sure you've heard before, even the first time you hear it.
That's the pop part.
The melody is set to oddball lyrics, sung by a guy who definitely wouldn't have gotten past his audition for "American Idol." And the song is dressed out in a simple, no-frills instrumental arrangement, often played more than a little bit sloppy.
That's the punk part.
If that sounds even the least bit awful, then you don't know the unique charms of the Oblio Joes.
Whether it's a 10-year-old classic like "Into the Sun," or a brilliant new gem like "Captain of the Moon," these guys have a knack for assembling songs that you want to sing along with, the first time you hear them, even though you don't yet know the words.
And before you dismiss them as a band riding the punk wave - a wave that crashed ashore more than two decades ago - listen up: These guys are at full swell at this very minute.
They've never sounded so true to themselves and their own peculiar personalities as on their new album, "Swallow the Moon."
It's an album that sounds, at times, like XTC, Weezer, Primus, the Beatles, Ween and Š well, a lot of other great and quirky bands of the past few decades, bands that one would be hard-pressed to pigeonhole as strictly punk acts.
Yet "Swallow the Moon" is ultimately nothing more or less than the Oblio Joes, doing what they do best. It is a great album, both varied and unified, unabashedly brilliant and self-effacingly understated. It is a record that belongs on the shelf of any self-respecting fan of independent, fun-lovin' rock 'n' roll.
A few more facts of note.
In 1999, the band added Ian Smith to the lineup. A former guitarist with The Cleaners and Mrs. Hootenany, Smith was enlisted as a keyboardist in the Obes.
Shortly after they added Smith, the Obes experienced the first challenge to their staying power when Stu Simonson decided to leave Missoula for Olympia, Wash.
Stu returned soon enough, however. The haunting allure of life in Missoula - and life as an Oblio Joe - proved irresistible.
John Fleming is the group's only replacement player: He joined after the band's original bassist, Tor Dahl, moved to Alaska in the summer of 2002.
But Fleming wasn't exactly a stranger to the Oblio Joes, having been a groupie and provider of PBR party-packs for many years.
"He basically joined on the day that Tor left town," says Brownell. "He was a pretty obvious choice."
These days, the band has moved from PBR to Bayern beer, and from the Pink House to separate houses. As of this coming June, all five of the band's members will be married.
Three members have their own children now, and more are on the way.
"One of the weirdest things was when some guy came up to me and said that he used to listen to one of the Obes songs when he was in sixth grade," says Fleming, who brought his own 4-year-old son, O.T., to our interview.
"Now that guy is old enough to drink. That is just so completely weird."
Finally, an admission: It is quite difficult to maintain any pretense of journalistic objectivity when the subject of your inquiry has his arm draped over your shoulder and won't stop talking about how much he loves your pants.
This particular subject is Dan Strachan, drummer of the Oblio Joes. In the two hours that I've known him, he's gone from lurking quietly in the corner of my living room, staring at the paintings, to wrestling with his bandmates, pecking me on the cheek and telling me that I have the greatest pants he's ever seen.
"Those are your happy pants," he declares, slurring only a bit as he swings me around by the shoulder. "Don't ever let anyone take away your happy pants."
Maybe it's the bourbon talking. Probably it's the bourbon talking. Bourbon says things like that.
But hanging out with Strachan, one soon gets the sense that he would probably get this comfortable with his IRS auditor, if given a couple hours.
It's the kind of carefree openness and reckless abandon that hearkens to those heady, slack days of collegiate youth, when everybody partied together every weekend, and there was no sense in holding back or carrying grudges, because those are the baggage of the old and uptight.
Strachan and his bandmates sure don't act old or uptight. (And, to be clear, they're not old: The band's eldest member, John Fleming, recently turned 35. Ian Smith is the band's youngest member, at 27.)
If there's one thing these guys have preserved over their 11-year history, it's the playfulness of a group of close friends who formed a band for the fun of it, and who kept at it for all the right reasons.
Namely, fun.
"If we had pushed it, tried to make it big, there's a good chance we might not have stayed together," says Strachan. "I doubt the pressure would have been easy to deal with."
Not pushing it is also, in all likelihood, a major reason why the Oblio Joes have never hit it big.
They've had their open doors. Musicians who were already aligned with big labels have invited the Obes to send music to their labels. Rave reviews have come from practically every critic who somehow, accidentally, ended up with a copy of an Oblio Joes CD.
But when it came down to it, the effort - and attendant emotional commitment required to bully into the world of professional musicians - never became a big priority.
"There were some points where we could have decided to tour all the time and really take it to the next level," says John Brownell.
"But we didn't. We never really wanted to move away. I guess it was probably also a certain degree of laziness."
Laziness? Perhaps.
Maybe contentedness would be a better word for it.
In a way, the Oblio Joes could be said to have it all. They have a body of great records to spin for their grandkids someday.
They have a core group of adoring fans who show up at every gig, and sing along with every word of every song.
And, not to sound all cheeseball, but they've got each other.
"I'm just so psyched that we're still together," says Brownell. "I would have such a hard time playing with anybody else at this point."
Sitting around my kitchen table, ostensibly carrying out an interview, they hoot and holler and jab at each other, laughing about stories told in half-sentences that only they understand.
Yet, hanging out with these guys, one doesn't feel like an outsider looking in. The in-jokes may not make a lot of sense, but the spirit of goofy, unpretentious friendship that swirls around them has a way of drawing people in.
The bourbon is gone, the brandy almost drained, and Fleming's son, O.T., has been crashed out in my living room for a good two hours. The Obes start to file out the door.
Strachan is the last to leave.
As he walks out my door, he turns and raises an index finger, pointing toward the night sky.
"I love you," he declares. "Actually, I love your pants. Those pants - don't let anyone buy them from you. I will outbid them. OK? Don't forget me, or my love for those pants."
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