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Punctum:
Inertia
RACHEL ASKED ME
to go on tour with her. We don't even know each other that well,
but I must have that look that says I will be handy tuning acoustic
guitars in the unbearable heat and humidity of a mosquito-soup house
show in Middle America. –I had to pass. "I have stuff
to do," I said. What stuff? Sitting on my bed a few weeks later
trying to avoid cleaning up the mess that's built up around me,
I regret not going. I'm itching to travel, but my lottery tickets
have not been cooperating. Good shows happened last month: Soddamn
Inssein, Friends Forever, Viki and Mammal, all of which made me
happy. It was on the off nights that I felt like I was just going
out to leave my house, to have somewhere to go.
I met Rachel Jacobs on
the day I left New York for good. She didn't see me at my best,
but we got in touch again, and I offered to let her crash at my
house. Rachel was in the middle of a national tour. She'd done the
United States once already and was just finishing college –
way ahead of me on both counts. She is young and can say things
like "I love DIY" and not sound sarcastic, a trick I have
yet to master. I do love DIY, though – no, really, I totally
do.
She played a house show
with David Dondero in North Oakland, one that had nice barbecued
food and attentive punks sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor.
I'd been hearing a bunch about Dondero, though his records hadn't
done much for me. Live he was humble and mumbly, plucking
the stripped-down acoustic guitar with a clunky rhythm. Semiautobiographical
tales of drinking and wandering came fast and flawed, but flaws
are charming. He grinned whenever he fucked up or forgot a part
and trudged on, ever the underdog.
I like my memory of that
night a little more than I like Dondero's The Transient
(Future Farmer, out Oct. 7), which has more rocking, full-band numbers.
I prefer his songs that sound like a guy alone with his thoughts.
There's plenty of the "skinny indie white boy blues" he
admits to copping on "Living and the Dead," but there's
a keen self-awareness at work, and he owns up to resorting to an
"easy rhyme to fill these moments of your time." He's
self-deprecating enough to title one of his albums The Pity Party.
The cowpunk angle he
must've picked up while drumming for Pensacola, Florida's This Bike
Is a Pipe Bomb is fully evident on The Transient,
but I have to emphasize that neither band sounds like Wilco. Dondero
is too unpolished to be invited to the No Depression party, even
if his upcoming full-length includes pretty violins and pristine
production values brought by Saddle Creek honcho Mike Mogis. I listen
intently to it on headphones in an air-conditioned basement
on some fancy Mac, wishing I was outside instead, getting high on
the blacktop fumes wafting up through the vagabond imagery. Few
things are so shudderingly lovely as the sideswipe of "The
Stars Are My Chandelier" and the goofy fruit shout-out of "Less
than the Air."
People are always comparing
Dondero to bushy-tailed Conor Oberst, or vice versa, but watching
him, I start thinking about Paul Westerberg, or even Billy Bragg
and his one-man revolution shtick, only it's not really a shtick
if you're living it, right? Westerberg, think what you will of "Dyslexic
Heart," had the whole epic loser-grandiose drunk thing down
to a science, and it provides a blueprint for what Dondero is doing.
That seems like a weird thing to aspire to these days, when the
scruffy Replacements are so antithetical to the clean-cut All American
Rejects. How can those guys possibly be "rejects"? They
all look like jocky Jared Letos.
When I think of an all-American
reject, Dondero comes to mind. A traveler stuck by default in towns
where his truck beaks down, he isn't caught up in the nostalgia
of musical Americana. He's the guy who gets to be "authentic,"
the Kevin Costner of Bull Durham, while Oberst is the Tim
Robbins character who gets the glory – and the girl –
even if Oberst does sing backup on The Transient.
It seems possible for
Dondero to become more things to more people. But I think what stops
that from happening is this idea that we wouldn't want to hear songs
about his success and stability. We need hobo punk rockers to warn
our children about, object lessons to keep them on the straight
and narrow path. I'm sure even the All American Rejects have a retirement
plan.
Dondero had to leave
the Oakland house show early, hustling over to his bartending job
in the Mission District. He told the crowd he's not drinking anymore.
The next day Rachel and I parted after lunch. They don't have real
burritos where she's from, not good ones anyway, and I wondered
what I was sticking around for. I know what burritos taste like.
I wanted to watch Oakland shrink in the mirror.
E-mail George Chen
at punctum@sfbg.com.
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