Chicago is known for many things. One of them is the long-held title of “the home of the blues.”
But some veteran Windy City bands have taken the city’s famous musical mark and expanded it to include other genres, not by way of a pander or a ploy, but rather a sincere, and albeit successful, attempt to create an original yet familiar sound.
One of those bands is the interestingly named Trickshooter Social Club.
With an impressive new album – perfectly titled American Experiment – and a smoking new single, “Boxcar Racer,” under its belt, TSSC has more than just eight band members contributing to an entertaining and genre-bending 12-track album; it has boundless energy, authenticity, grit, and a story to tell.
“The album opener, ‘Boxcar Racer,’ is from out back, in the garage,” says vocalist and guitarist Steven Simoncic says. “It’s loud, loose, hungry and angry.” We have to agree.
In fact, the song kicks off the album with a smoking start. One of the elements – besides it being a solid garage rock song that can go up against the best – that we like most about the single is the lyrics themselves.
To simply read them – without the benefit of hearing the song itself first – is to discover that the lyrics almost read like a rap song:
The savior was wearing glitter;
The dust of a thousand sinners;
Through my skin,
And in my veins.
Simoncic was immediately understanding of how such a thought could occur to the lyric reader: “Lyrically we not only wanted to tell a story but also to have a real rhythm and flow to the lyrics themselves. So I’m thrilled to hear that any connection to rap could have come out of a reading of the lyrics.”
The band picked one of the album’s standout tracks for the first single off of the album. That said, there are a bunch to choose from, and we suspect for the folks that truly give this album a listen, just about anyone that loves rock, folk, blues, pop, punk, will surely discover a favorite track or two.
That said, the pure garage rock brute-force that hits with the lead-off single is only amplified, and so wonderfully sustained, by the grit and angst of the two follow-up tracks.
The album’s second track, “If I Could,” is yet another garage rocking romp, and appropriately followed up by the rip-roaring “Duck and Run.”
Those three first songs should give Midwestern garage rock lovers some solace. Yes, indeed, there are still some largely unsung heroes of the art form right in their own backyard.
That said, it’s clear as one listens to the album that there is more than rock and roll at work.
Steven Simoncic (vocals, guitar); Larry Liss (guitars, vocals); Chris Bartley (keyboards): Chris Ellison (drums): Maggie Mitchell (vocals); Beltran DelCampo (fiddle); Ruth Margraff (accordion)
TSSC does not just knock down walls with its garage rocking verve; rather, the experience band members, yes, all eight of them, expand their musical palette, and talents, to show that their American Experiment is for real – original; organic; unpretentious; and truly encompassing of the many other musical forms and styles that make the American experiment truly unique.
In fact, it’s hard to tell that the same band that rips out garage rock like found here is the same outfit that produced songs like the lovely and mellow folk/country song, “Carry Me Home,” featuring the vocals of Maggie Mitchell.
“‘Carry Me Home,'” Simoncic says, “is a redemption song; a song about loss and trying to get back to something meaningful and real in life afterward.”
As with many of the tracks on the album, this song is lyrically rich and illuminating: “Whiskey, tango, alpha-dog/I showed the broad side of my jaw/Hero Romeo…/A fraud with a chance…/We could sway, even if we couldn’t dance.”
The song is also one of the various tracks on the album that highlights the band’s diverse musical skills and flexibility: rocking hard one song; switching it up and chillin’ for some down-home roots music time on another.
One can imagine while listening to American Experiment that a Trickshooter Social Club concert must be a real roar of a show (and it is).
Other back-to-back tracks that remind us of a specific sound are “Hotel Nowhere” and “Time To Get Out,” which have an 80’s rockabilly tinge that is hard to escape. This listener’s brain digs into its own musical archive/Shazam-like comparative machine and comes up with a cross of George Thorogood and The Stray Cats.
And yet the album can sound like something slightly different, comparison-wise, on later spins. This is a mark of a good album for anyone who has listened to thousands of albums over many years. It’s familiar and yet it also continues to surprise and to show its true self.
And this release, which one just knows was in the works for a long time, manages to fully live up to its name; it is America, and more specifically, the heartland, in 12 tracks; a song bio of musical influences, and stories, from and of the midwest. Americana with a riveting vein of punk garage rock that makes it all the more inviting and homegrown.
“We wanted to create an album that reflects the beauty and volatility of the American experiment as we are all living it,” says Simoncic.
“For us, this idea of America as an experiment – not a place, but an idea that is constantly forming and changing and evolving – was pretty powerful,” he adds.
“We tried to capture a bit of the beauty and the absurdity; the violence and the madness; and the grace and the dignity of the time and place we’re living in. Each song attempts to tell a small part of the story of the ‘American experiment’ we are all a part of.”
“We tried to do justice to American musical traditions and forms we love from folk and punk to rock and blues to country,” Simoncic says. “We wanted this album to emulate the American musical experiment as much as is possible to demonstrate in just 12 tracks.”
And, it was only right that the album ends with the song, “Rolling Blue Lights,” which “serves as a moment of rest,” he adds, “an absolution and a benediction at the end of our story.”
The band members, in addition to Simoncic and Mitchell, include Larry Liss; James McNaughton; Chris Bartley; Chris Ellison, Beltran Del Campo, and Ruth Margraff.
You can stream and buy the album in support of the band on Trickshooter Social Club’s Bandcamp page.