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Straight from the swamp
Hillcore heroes The Dagg Nabbit Stubbs
By Dean Bonzani
Published on 07/30/2009
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Those delicious little devils: (Clockwise from top left) Mike Bivona. Sam Hardwig, Jeff Ruoss and Narikp Ott.
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The Dagg Nabbit Stubbs have a sound as crunchy as a plate of hot hush puppies. As a matter of fact, when these four transplants from Swampwater, Ga., tear loose, they steam just like delicious, deep-fried cornballs.
“We’ve been getting described in culinary terms a lot lately,” says lead singer Sweetwater Jones (Nariko Ott), when I interviewed a corn husk and oil-soaked, rag-filled potato sack with a crude rendition of his face drawn on it with Sharpie marker recently. “Our unique brand of Hillcore music seems to naturally inspire food-related imagery.”
While Swampwater’s native sons enjoy a mild popularity in their hometown (population: 214 … saaaaahh-lute!), they’ve found a wildly enthusiastic response in the Phoenix area, and in the north Phoenix suburb known affectionately as “Flagstaff,” where they’ve played several times now.
Maybe it’s their penchant for wearing denim overalls on stage that strikes such a chord with their Arizona fans, or the way lead guitarist “Chapped Lips” Monroe (Mike Bivona) conjures up shades of Angus Young, Clark Vogeler and Ivan from Tiny Masters of Today with his searing man-riffs. Maybe it’s Sweetwater’s leonine mane of Slash-like (look the word up— it was actually added to Webster’s this year) hair and vocal delivery that sounds like a cross between Peter Case and Iggy Pop. No, wait—not Iggy so much as that guy from Faster Pussycat. Yes, that’s totally it. Or it just could be that the powerhouse rhythm section of lead bassist Hotskins Mahoney (Jeff Ruoss) and lead drummer Tigris “The Tiger” Euphrates Jackson (Sam Hardwig) simply pummels local audiences into a state of compliancy and bliss.
In any case, The Stubbs are on a rocket ride to stardom, whether their small town sensibilities can handle it or not.
Their debut album, Hot Garbage, with its oddly familiar fish-themed cover art, was recently voted “Best Album Reviewed” by the Phoenix New Times, and Danny Birch of radiovagabond.com said of the album, “I haven’t gotten a chance to listen to it yet. Besides, my genre is ‘Americana,’ whatever the heck that means.”
The band was also recently nominated for the New Time’s “Best of Phoenix” contest in the “Best Hard Rock Band 2009” category, alongside none other than IWatchedHerDie. While some readers will quibble over the fact that IWatchedHerDie’s bassist is from Flagstaff, and every member of The Stubbs is from Swampwater, what they’ll have a rougher time reconciling is the nearly identical sounds of the two bands. That’s going to make the voting extremely difficult. It’ll be a shame if one band wins just because their overalls and bowler hats are scruffier than the other’s, or they have scarier “Demon-trapped-in-a-mayonnaise-jar” vocals. In all fairness, IWatchedHerDie sports some very natty denim and produce convincing raptor shrieks, but their banjo tracks are just … tinny sounding. No offense to the producer.
The limelight that they’d hoped to find themselves in since boldly moving to the Valley from the humid confines of Swampwater is proving to be something of a challenge to the members of The Dagg Nabbit Stubbs. The big city, a brand new album and the incessant touring and fame are all taking their toll on these lifelong friends.
“Some TVs have gotten thrown out of hotel windows since we got famous,” recounts the potato-sack version of Sweetwater. “And there was an incident with a mudshark …”
Does the band regret packing up their meager belongings—including a vintage Gibson SG that once belonged to Eric Clapton’s gardener—and moving to a city that commonly boasts midday temperatures that rival the surface of Mercury’s only to find rabid popularity and boundless opportunities?
“Hell no!” confides the corn-husk Sweetwater. “When the cement factory closed down and the tavern that we played in—Laverne’s—burnt to the ground, we had to take out of there. We were runnin’ peanut liquor in Monroe’s AMC Pacer with the 350-cube Corvette engine he stole from Frank Willis, but that wasn’t keepin’ us in strings and Bud Lite. Tigris was spending all day in his undershorts watching ‘Thundercats’ on video. We had to get out of there. We were headed for L.A., but the Pacer blew a head gasket in Avondale. Destiny, my man, destiny.”
If there’s a supernatural overtone to The Dagg Nabbit Stubbs, it’s only blindingly obvious in their songs, which unfailingly refer to the Devil, who apparently, depending on who you’re talking to about the whole matter, is engaged in a struggle with God over people’s souls and wants to drag them down to Sheol, where there will be much gnashing of teeth.
“Yeeeah, the Devil thing …” said the incredibly poor-quality mockup of singer Sweetwater. “We were really, really, really, really, really drunk on Everclear and 100 percent organic apple juice one night when we met Beelzebub at a square dance club called The Crossroads. And we don’t even square dance! He offered us a case of Michelob dark, a subscription to World of Warcraft and a record contract in exchange for our immortal souls. So … hello … you figure it out.”
All references to the personification of Satan as the adversary of the Abrahamic God—who may well have an origin in the Zoroastrian Daeva—aside, these four raccoon-eating, lye-soap making, moonshine-swilling, cousin-marrying Hellbilly rockers have turned out a righteous debut album full of viral hooks, vicious guitar and truly exceptional lyrics. “Devilin’ Under The Influence (DUI)” has one of the best opening lines since Smashing Pumpkins’ “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” for example. That, and they’re somehow handsome in a Hollywood kind of way. Not so much a George Clooney way, but more of a Billy Bob Thornton kind of way.
Mix equal parts Soggy Bottom Boys, Bush’s “Sixteen Stone” and Nashville Pussy and … well, it won’t exactly be the oft-celebrated genius of The Dagg Nabbit Stubbs, but holy hell it would go great with Jack-In-The-Box tacos and PBR.
The Dagg Nabbit Stubbs will perform Fri, July 31 at the Monte V, 100 N. San Francisco, at 9 p.m. To find out more, call 774-2403 or check out www.daggnabbitstubbs.com.
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