Download: Pete Berwick's Early Days

Pete Berwick & the Generics - Live At the Kmart 1981 (Shotgun Records)

Americana pioneer Pete Berwick recently released two obscure recordings from his shadowy past and they provide a valuable glimpse into his foundational roots. Live At the Kmart 1981 is his punk rock EP, and not all that surprising, really, as Pete has always displayed a bit o’ punk attitude on his shit-kickin’ country-rock albums like The Damage Is Done and Just Another Day In Hell. The Generics were a short-lived but hard playing outfit that banged around the Midwest for three years circa 1981-1984. 

The six songs here don’t so much as caress your cerebellum as carom off your gray matter with a short, sharp shock. The sound sucks – definitely an audience or off-stage recording – with all the sonic artifacts that implies. But the songs are fast-paced, bristling with energy, and showcase an underlying melody that bursts out of the bootleg-quality taping with a reckless fervor. Two tracks, “I Wanna Be With You” and “There She Goes Again,” received regional college radio airplay and the EP overall is highly recommended for fans of late ‘70s/early ‘80s American punk…plus, it’s cheap!

Buy from Bandcamp: The Generics  

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Pete Berwick & Interstate - Poster Above the Urinal 1987 (Shotgun Records)

Fast forward a few years and Berwick – who would soon be haunting the side streets and dive clubs of Nashville – is fronting a more traditional rock ‘n’ roll outfit in his Chicago hometown, albeit one that veers dangerously onto cowpunk turf. Another audience recording, ten tracks, nine originals, and a wonderful cover of the Stones’ heroin ode, “Dead Flowers,” makes for a nice, tidy collection. 

The sound is marginally better than on the Generics EP, but still bootleg in quality – which does nothing to diminish the intoxicating cheap thrills that Berwick and his band Interstate serve up with Poster Above the Urinal 1987. The punkish edge is still obvious on songs like “Wild Ones” which, at six-minutes-plus, is adorned with too much cool Duane Eddy-styled guitar licks, wildass harmonica, and explosive drumbeats to be mistaken for Green Day or the Descendents.     
    
“Ain’t Good Enough” amps it up even further with a machinegun rhythm that Berwick’s vocals dance atop while the satirical “American Family” brings the twang with skewed humor and a stripped-down, ramshackle country sound built on aggressive guitar strum and harmonica. Berwick’s lyrics reveal his uncanny songwriting skills and dark sense of humor, skills that would only get sharper through the years. The last few songs on Poster Above the Urinal 1987 get increasingly twangier, with “She’ll Never Know” standing out in the crowd for its Dylanesque fervor and blue collar poetry and “White Lines” is just a solid hard rock jam with raging harmonica and chiming guitars underlining the lyrics. 

As for the aforementioned cover of “Dead Flowers” – which is really more of a Gram Parsons song than true Jagger/Richards composition (IYKYK) – Berwick’s drawled vox and nuanced fretwork wrap the song’s dark-hued lyrics in a blanket of pathos and a doomed Hank Williams vibe. Poster Above the Urinal 1987 provides a roadmap for Berwick’s eventual Nashville sojourn while documenting his evolution from young punk to seasoned roots-rocker, Berwick one of the most criminally-overlooked talents in the increasingly stodgy Americana sphere.

Buy from Bandcamp: Pete Berwick & Interstate

Album Review: Pete Berwick's The Damage Is Done (2023)

A multi-talented man of the media – singer, songwriter, actor, and novelist Pete Berwick comes to his ‘Outlaw County’ credentials honestly, the Chicago native serving his time in Purgatory (i.e. Nashville) during the Music City’s late ‘80s/early ’90s indie rock boom. Berwick was a man without a country in many ways, however, as the major labels’ narrow vision only saw room for two Gnashville twang-bangers (Jason & the Scorchers, Webb Wilder), completely ignoring Berwick’s songwriting skills and onstage charisma. Not that those other guys were undeserving of their big-league status, but there should have been one more artist on that alt-country Mount Rushmore circa 1990 or so…

Pete Berwick’s The Damage Is Done

Berwick returned to the Windy City and, undeterred by trends, continued to tread the boards with an impressive catalog of releases that includes bona fide country-rock shit-kickers like Just Another Day In Hell and Ain’t No Train Outta Nashville. For his seventh album, The Damage Is Done, Berwick returned to Nashville (or nearby Tullahoma, actually…) and turned the clock back to his 1980s cowpunk roots. Although it has its more traditional country moments – as “traditional” as a born ‘n’ raised rebel like Berwick can get, anyway – much of The Damage Is Done is an unhinged, unbridled, and utterly brilliant rock ‘n’ roll album. The first couple of songs on the album, “She Ain’t Got Me” and “Finger Down My Throat,” burn with the anger and white-phosphorus energy of anything Black Flag or the Dead Kennedys every cranked out, true blue “cowpunk” with the emphasis on “punk,” and we’re all the better for it.

After all, who needs another treacly Music Row release with safe-as-milk lyrics penned by committee; passive, inoffensive production; and music straight from the 1970s performed by aging session drones? Berwick has pulled off a keen trick, indeed, recording a contemporary country album that captures the piss ‘n’ vinegar spirit of early Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings while still managing to channel more righteous anger and angst than a dozen generic SoCal punk rock poseurs. Berwick’s lyrical skills still shine through on songs like the bluesy blue-collar anthems “Time Clock On the Wall” or “Don’t Know How,” but it’s when he truly cuts loose with the evangelical fervor of songs like “You’ll Get Used To It” or the monster title track the that the creative venom shotguns out of your speakers like a firehose.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Berwick’s voice has aged into a dangerous weapon, his raw, whiskey-gutted vocals imbuing each performance with pain and penitence you only earn through decades of hard-won experience. Ashley Argo’s backing vocals provide a sweet counterpoint to Berwick’s sandpaper vox, and Charlie Bonnet III’s flamethrower guitar licks rage through the mix like molten metallic slag. Multi-instrumentalist (and album engineer) Dave Summers picks up the slack with bass, drums, keyboards, and some guitar, and the entire quartet displays an enormous musical chemistry throughout The Damage Is Done, delivering what was needed to support Berwick’s unique vision and performances. As such, Pete Berwick has delivered another career tour de force with The Damage Is Done. If you like your country music with a little rock ‘n’ roll edge, or you like your rock music with a little country twang, you’ll find a lot to like in The Damage Is Done. Grade: A   BUY!

Short Rounds: Pete Berwick, Big Star, Ted Drozdowski, Walter Trout & Watermelon Slim (2019)

New album releases in 150 words or less…

Pete Berwick – Island (Shotgun Records)
Second-generation country outlaw Pete Berwick made his bones playing the honky-tonks and juke-joints that existed on the fringes of late 20th century Nashville. Berwick’s intelligent wordplay has always been his strength and previous albums like Ain’t No Train Outta Nashville show that he could rock a bit as well. Island is a departure for Berwick, a collection of mostly-introspective, insightful mid-tempo tunes that lean more country than rock, more blues than folk. You can’t argue with the results, songs like “Anyway” and “Island” speaking to the heartbreak of love and loneliness while “The Streets of Pasadena” is country tear-jerker worthy of George or Merle. “One Setback At A Time” gallops by comparison, the song a statement of defiance set to a lush soundtrack that would make it a hit single in a more enlightened era. Island is Berwick’s most melodic and mature album yet, a masterwork from a unique craftsman. Grade: A+   BUY! 

Big Star – Live On WLIR (Omnivore Recordings)
After the release of 1974’s sophomore effort Radio City, power-pop pioneers Big Star sojourned to Ultrasonic Studios in Long Island, NY to record this live-in-the-studio radio broadcast. Although this performance was previously released by RykoDisc as Live, it’s been out-of-print for the better part of a quarter-century until rescued by the good folks at Omnivore. Working from the original studio session tapes, the often-bootlegged performance captured by Live On WLIR displays all the rawness and immediacy of the radio broadcast but provided a modern-sounding sonic clean-up. The then-new line-up of Alex Chilton, John Lightman, and Jody Stephens crank out an energetic 14-song set that includes “September Gurls,” “Mod Lang,” “Thirteen,” and “I’m In Love With A Girl,” classic tunes upon which the Big Star mythology would later be built. If you’re a fan of Big Star and/or power-pop and don’t have Live On WLIR, what are you waiting for? Grade: A   BUY! 

Ted Drozdowski – Coyote Motel (Dolly Sez Woof Records)
Nashville-by-way-of-Boston blues guitarist Ted Drozdowski steps aside from his regular band the Scissormen to explore the outer edge of Americana with Coyote Motel. Not surprisingly, given his status as a well-respected music journalist, Drozdowski is a superb, if underrated lyricist and his intelligent story-songs here are accompanied by apt, imaginative music and wickedly effective six-string play. The based-on-a-true-story “Still Among the Living” benefits from Drozdowski’s devastating fretwork, somber vocals, and an overall ominous vibe. The “whimsical” apocalyptic tale “Los Alamos” is deceptively poetic with a maddening riff. The heartfelt “My Friend” is a powerful tribute to R&B great “Mighty” Sam McClain while the anti-racism ode “Jimmy Brown” is an artistic maelstrom, roaring with a punkish fury. Altogether, Coyote Motel is a hell of a lot of fun, a near-perfect fusion of blues, country, rock, and folkish elements that shouldn’t work but instead sounds like Drozdowski invented the entire Americana genre. Grade: A   BUY!

Walter Trout – Survivor Blues (Provogue Music)
Contemporary blues artists stand on the shoulders of giants, and the great Walter Trout pays tribute to some of these legendary talents with Survivor Blues. Not your run-of-the-mill covers album with predictable results, the guitarist digs deep into blues history to unearth long-hidden gems by often-overlooked talents like Sunnyland Slim, Luther Johnson, and J.B. Lenoir, among others, each performance provided Trout’s unique creative spin. Trout inhabits Chicago bluesman Jimmy Dawkins’ “Me, My Guitar, and the Blues” with soaring solos while Floyd Lee’s “Red Sun” is a potent blues-rock stomp with classic rock riffs. Guitarist Robbie Krieger of the Doors sits in on Mississippi Fred McDowell’s country-blues classic “Goin’ Down To the River,” providing elegant solos above Trout’s hypnotic riffs. The twelve tracks chosen by Trout for Survivor Blues serve as a primer for the genre, each performance imbued with the passion and sincerity that has long been the guitarist’s trademark. Grade: A   BUY!

Check out the Reverend’s interview with Walter Trout on the Rock and Roll Globe website!

Watermelon Slim – Church of the Blues (Northern Blues Music)
Erudite singer/songwriter Watermelon Slim worships at the Church of the Blues, delivering his typically droll brand of roots-rock and traditional blues music with whip-smart lyrics and no little insight. Slim is fronting a trio here, but he’s joined in the studio by a wealth of musical talent including legendary guitarists Bob Margolin and Joe Louis Walker and soul-blues singer John Nemeth. The results are stunning, Slim layering his half-spoken, half-sung Okie drawl and greasy slide-guitar atop original tracks like the topical “Charlottesville (Blues For My Nation),” “Too Much Alcohol,” and “Post Modern Blues” as well as covering gems from legends like Muddy Waters, Allen Toussaint, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and Howlin’ Wolf. Church of the Blues provides the listener with an entertaining, spiritual experience that rocks like a tent revival, Watermelon Slim a true believer preaching the power of the blues. Grade: A   BUY!

Previously on That Devil Music.com:
Short Rounds, January 2019: Badfinger, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Billy Bremner, Dave Davies & Midnight Oil
Short Rounds, December 2018: Doug Deming, Tom Guerra, Handsome Jack, Tom Morello, NRBQ & Unicorn
Short Rounds, November 2018: Joe Bonamassa, Peter Holsapple & Alex Chilton, Winston Jarrett, Permanent Green Light, The Posies & Rolling River Royalty