Rainy-day dudes

Two Gallants stop and tarry for a while to talk

By Kimberly Chun

› kimberly@sfbg.com

There's an otherworldly quality to Two Gallants — it starts with their James Joyce–inspired name and runs through their shambling and heartfelt nouveau murder ballads and country blues–brushed folk songs. Damp, scruffy, and resembling forlorn pups left out in the rain, vocalist-guitarist-harmonica player Adam Stephens and drummer-vocalist Tyson Vogel shuffle into Zeitgeist for a quick interview, looking as wary as two strangers in a strange land rather than born-and-bred San Franciscans reared in the Presidio and Pacific Heights who had their beginnings as 16th Street BART station buskers. That sense of connect-disconnect is evident on their recently released second album, What the Toll Tells, their first for Saddle Creek and a recording that sways from the infectious, rusticated pirate-punk of "Steady Rollin' " to the graceful troubadour folk of "Some Slender Rest" to the gradual, sprawling build of "Threnody in Minor B" — sometimes all within the same song (e.g., the alternately electric/acoustic, thrash/folk "16th St. Dozens"). Though the two can be tongue-tied, "What the Toll Tells" does say quite a bit about a pair that has journeyed far from scrappy CD-R origins three years ago to win rapturous praise from hard-sell pubs like NME and Vice and session spots with BBC Radio 1 host Steve Lamacq but is determined to keep honest with intimate, last-minute shows at, say, Edinburgh Castle. Stephens and Vogel have done their homework and hit the road, but that doesn't mean they don't have their fun: Stephens kicked off the interview by relating the time they fired off bottle rockets in a hotel atrium at last year's SXSW. "I think it was all those giant signs going through New Mexico that were just calling to us to buy up shitloads of fireworks to burn down Austin," Stephens chuckled.

SFBG Why are duos so prevalent these days?

TYSON VOGEL I've thought a little bit about how there are more two-piece or nontraditional formats to groups. This is a big generalization, but I kind of see that music has come to a point where if it doesn't look at itself, it's going to be mostly repeating itself over and over again — at least on the mainstream. In the '80s, with the hair metal bands, those came from the underground; in the '90s, Seattle was the same thing. And there really hasn't been anything like that since. To an extent, the idea of nontraditional formats of a band — sometimes those come out because not much has changed and people are a little more focused on the idea of being truthful to their own music. People are being creative and putting their music across differently and honestly.

We thought for a while about getting a bassist or other members, but it just didn't feel right. At the moment this is just a good point for us — it's honest.

SFBG You've become so successful — is it hard to keep it real at this point?

ADAM STEPHENS It's important to us. I think the only thing that's hard to keep real is being at home. We don't get to play the same shows we used to play, as many house shows. We're also gone so much now, we're not as much a part of the scene as we used to be. Because we're never here.

SFBG You know what they say, you can stop anytime you want.

AS I know, but then what are we going to do with ourselves? I think it would kind of blow. *