The Importance Of Being Indolent
By Andy Smetanka
For Oblio Joes, Missoula’s longest-running original band, the less effort the better
In preparing to interview the Oblio Joes, I found myself caving in to nostalgia in the worst way. I dug out the Christmas Break 1993 tape—I think my copy is one of four ever made—and it was all over. On my way to the West Side basement where they still get together twice a week to practice, I rode past a half-dozen places that still seep sepia-tinted Oblio Joes memories of the good old days. The house where I was first overwhelmed by their slackadaisical greatness, second show of theirs I’d ever seen, at a Halloween party, with all of them dressed in black ninja outfits with white face paint and hunter-orange watch caps. The motel with the restaurant next door where three of us worked in the summer of 1993. Other places, too. I thought about old flames and secret thrills and the various scene intrigues of the time, and how none of what had happened in those places in those days had left any trace of itself discernible to anyone who wasn’t following the melancholic ley-lines of nostalgia. It occurred to me that everything looked pretty much the same as it always had.
All of this set the stage for a very melancholic and wistful interview as well. And it was, at that—all the more so, perhaps, because the current gravity of events caused us to reflect on how carefree and contentedly adrift our lives seemed at the time compared to now. Lives that, for the Oblios, now include wives and one young family. Hardly the most talkative bunch even in the most equable of situations (by which I mean conversational situations free of variables like intrusive recording devices), waving a tape recorder in front of them only seemed to make things quieter. We still had some laughs, though. The Oblio Joes are: John Brownell (guitar), Stu Simonson (guitar), Tor Dahl (bass), Ian Smith (guitar and keyboards) and Dan Strachan (drums). Their new album, Sin Tax and Some Antics, is slated for release at a Nov. 8 party at the Blue Heron with opening act Volumen.
MI: What’s the secret to keeping a band together for nine years?
John: Don’t make any effort.
Dan: Very little effort.
MI: Really!
Dan: Well, OK, actually we’ve been trying harder lately.
MI: Considering how long you’ve been around, you’ve still got the lowest profile of probably any band in Missoula. What are you doing with your underground lives?
Dan: We practice twice a week, and that’s more than we ever have—
Stu: Trying to write new songs.
John: —Except in the very beginning, back at the Pink House. It’s like that when you all live together and nobody’s married.
MI: Three married members. That’s another record, of sorts, at least for the “Jay’s bands.” I’d like to go round-robin, here, and get at least a couple of you to recount one golden Oblio moment.
John: All right, well ... there are so many. I’m going to have to go with a show at Jay’s where Stu got so incredibly drunk that we had to put a chair up onstage. And then he started leaning back and toppled over and kept on playing until someone pushed him back up ... in the chair all the while. Then he stumbled into one of the big PA mains offstage, it started toppling and someone had to hold that up. Shortly after that, we showed back up at Jay’s and there was a big railing around the stage. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t to keep the audience off the stage, but to keep Oblio Joes on the stage.
MI: The Corral days! Yes! Remember how the top of the Corral was flat for awhile so you could put a drink on it? And then when one too many got spilled into the monitors they nailed, like, a lodgepole pine or something to it to keep people from putting things on it? [much laughter] How about you, Danny?
Danny: If not a big golden moment, a silver or bronze one would be the first time we played at the Battle of the Bands in Butte and discovered that we got room service, so we called up every half an hour and ordered rounds of scotch on the rocks. We were so shit-faced by the time we went on, and we’d never played for that many people before—at least 500. Just a sea of people. We played really well and everyone was dancing, but the only thing I remember after that is getting second place and one of the metalhead bands we’d given a copy of our single smashed it. John was walking by their door and all of a sudden this record comes flying out and smashes against the wall. That’s probably my favorite Oblios moment. One of ’em, anyway.
MI: Stu?
Stu: Oh, I don’t know.
Dan: You could tell him about the time Ian farted in the shower. [Some embarrassed confusion among bandmates]. You know, that time when he farted in the shower while we were recording vocals.
John: Um, I think it was just the two of you that time, Dan. [Much laughter.]
MI: On a band level, do you guys ever fear that personal developments and outside responsibilities will spell the end of the band?
All: Never.
Dan: I did when John got married, but everything was OK.
John: Stu moving away for awhile was a pretty big deal. But Stu moving back was an even bigger deal. I really think that staying together all this time has had a lot to do with not putting forward so much effort that we get frustrated.
MI: Yes, but when there’s so little effort being put forth, can things like failing to show enough initiative to even show up for practice and so on really be that far behind?
John: I don’t think that would ever become an issue because we have so much fun doing it. We’re just not very goal-oriented. We just like to play together. We don’t have a game plan that we follow. You know, only releasing an album every four years.
MI: Bold move, yeah. Bold move.
Dan: It’s not everyone’s strategy. [laughter] John: But it works for the Oblio Joes! |
