Olympia, WA's Tight Bro's From Way Back When rock. Not in that devil-horns-in-the-air, antique-Whitesnake-shirt-across-the-chest style that snickers all the way to the bottom-shelf bourbon, but with a more honest, compressed-to-explode-upon-impact kind of rock 'n' soul energy. Imagine jamming the MC5, Ike & Tina, Black Flag and old Aerosmith all into one sold-out club, cranking the heat till the sweat runs down the walls and commanding everyone to dance and make some noise until the walls blow out. That's the Tight Bro's: a little bit of soul, a little bit of rock, a little r&b, some proto-metal aggression. Add a piece of, as guitarist Jon "Quitty" Quittner says, "Little Richard's ass," and what you have is a loud, intense, dizzying performance that induces arena rock-sized seizures with a punk DIY grind. They make as much noise as possible while keeping a tight grip on the groove. "You can expect to dance like you've never danced before," says Jared Warren, the Tight Bro's main vocalist. "Wear two pairs of underwear," he adds, "'cause we're gonna blow them both off."
I caught up with Quitty at his day job?working for K Records?so he could fill me in on why the Tight Bro's are not an AC/DC cover band, why Ted Nugent is The Man and what the origins were of his "Hessian Obsession."
The Tight Bro's have such a great sense of humor [anybody can see this in the last tour's "Complaint Log" on www.killrockstars.com]. I know the music you write is serious, but I hope you guys do more projects like this to exploit your smart-ass side.
Well, thanks. It's sort of a struggle because we're naturally goofballs together but we don't want the music to be perceived as funny. Everyone watching us knows we're having a good time. Rock 'n' roll is entertainment, but for it to come off like we're fucking around?it's not a joke at all.
I know you've had problems with people thinking your music is this sarcastic, ironic thing when it's not. It's like any time a band gets loud and heavy it's gotta be some kind of mock statement.
It's a product of indie and punk rock people deciding that they like Manowar?so now anything that reminds them of old hair metal days has to be funny. We're not trying to be a hair band and you wouldn't think we'd be forced to defend ourselves against that all the time, but maybe that's just part of being in the Northwest. There's this one all-girl AC/DC cover band in Seattle that's not at all related to anything we're doing, and we get asked to play with them all the time. I don't want to associate with the [cover band scene] and I wish I didn't have to bring it up all the time because it makes us seem humorless. People are like, you think you're so fucking high and mighty, you don't want to play with Hell's Belles. It's not because we think we're hot shit, it's that you can't put us in that [genre] hole you want us to be in.
Maybe you're going to have to keep facing this until more people get that just because music is loud, bold and sweaty that doesn't mean it's tongue in cheek.
It's a weird little dichotomy. I remember even trying to find people to play this music with was hard as hell 'cause I was like, look, I want to play rock 'n' roll. And that means I like Little Richard and I don't want to differentiate it from punk. I wanted to have the fury of the punk rock that I grew up on (the Stooges, the Ramones, the Cramps) and a beat that makes your ass move.
It seems like there's also a trend with some rock bands (the Toilet Boys, the Unband) that reaches back to older, louder arena rock acts for inspiration, as well as the usual punk suspects.
Yeah, for me I guess that was Judas Priest. And the thing that people revere about metal now?or think is so funny?is not the same thing that I got out of it. The metal heyday was in the early 80s?not in the late 80s or early 90s. I have nothing in common with Poison or Warrant and I never liked or respected any of those bands?but those early bands not only had great charisma, they wrote great songs. The metal that people like now, like Korn or Sevendust, those bands don't write songs. It's just a bunch of really low riffing and a guy grunting. [Laughs] The power of the music then and how loud it was and how much skill it took, and the fact that they also were great songwriters, that appeals to me.
What were your ideas for forming this band?
It was a lot more basic than it is now. I moved to Olympia in 1991 and rock was not smiled upon back then. It was really different because people didn't really talk about their rock background?it was like punk credentials or nothing. So when I wanted to play music that had Little Richard's ass in it, people didn't relate. Everybody that I knew here was still into Fugazi. So I couldn't find a way to do it until I ended up in Behead the Prophet with Dave [Harvey, Tight Bro's other guitarist]. That band didn't really satisfy me, though, so I told him that I wanted to start a rock 'n' roll band and we hooked up.
You were also putting out a zine called Hessian Obsession?
It was a zine that I started putting out in '93 and it was sort of double-pronged. Half of it was about growing up a young hessian and half was about hessians in general?laughing at my background and laughing at them. That would be kind of stupid now, but at that time nobody wanted to talk about their metal background.
And now everyone walks around with their $45 Dokken t-shirts...
I know. I can't imagine anyone paying $45 for that... I got rid of all my metal shirts long ago and what I had left I sold on eBay. Now I'm getting around to selling my indie rock shirts.
What was the one concert that made you be, like, man I'm picking up a guitar and I'm gonna learn how to play?
Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins will tell you the same thing: Ted Nugent. I saw him and I was like, 'Oh Jesus, I've gotta do that.' I saw him in '82. He was even kind of past it then. Now he's known for being a complete cock and talking out of his ass, but you can't take anything away from his performances in his heyday. The guy was, at least in the presentation of his music, as punk rock as they get. He felt it and he ran around like a motherfucker. He was completely insane. He was the greatest. The only punk act that could even compare at that level was Bad Brains.
Speaking of wailing guitars, I wanted to ask you about the Tight Bro's attempt to get the guitar solo back out there...
I didn't even realize we had solos till we recorded Lend You a Hand, but like two-thirds of the songs on the album have a point where Dave and I play solos at the same time?just because it sounds crazy, not so we can show off. It's just part of trying to create a frenzy. Solos are just a traditional way of trying to express something and make Jared shut up for a second. [Laughs]
Is there an overall Tight Bro's philosophy to playing live?
We're there for everybody to have a good time and I really don't like it if people get selfish and think they can get drunk and act like a jackass and squash the littler people up front. I know that makes me sound like a hippie but that's truly what I believe. That's funny for me to say as someone who's punched people in the back of the head for continually unplugging my guitar, but that's the ideal. [Laughs]
The Tight Bro's From Way Back When play Sat., Sept. 15, at Northsix, 66 N.6th St. (betw. Kent & Wythe Aves.), Williamsburg, 718-599-5103, as part of the CMJ Music Marathon (cmj.com); and with C Average and Cherry Valence on Mon., Sept. 17, at Brownies, 169 Ave. A (betw. 10th & 11th Sts.), 420-8392.