Music

Drag the River Plays Missoula, Whitefish and Bozeman

By Nate Schweber, 8-28-06

Drag the River, from Ft. Collins, CO, is the best damned alt. country, roots-rock, Americana, band in the world.

I'm serious.

The drums shuffle better than a veteran poker dealer in Reno. The bass has one-two'ed more than a broken pair of cowboy boots. The steel guitar learned to weep from the willow tree that John R. Cash taught to Cry, Cry, Cry.

But it's the two-pack habit vocals from singers Jon Snodgrass and Chad Price, who harmonize like corrupt Everly Brothers, that deliver DTR's unique sock to the solar plexus. Those harmonies, which come off as almost noir in
their degenerate perfection, conjure up country music at it's spookiest, saddest, best -- past X, before Emmylou and Gram, all the way back to the Louvin Brothers.

Then the lyrics hit, packing blood vessel-constricting imagery, like this whopper from the track "Mr. Crews," off DTR's new record It's Crazy.

Her naked body makes you feel the pain
Like rattler venom runnin‚ through your veins
I've never seen this kind of beauty before
Mud, blood, lost love, liquor, guns, whores

All of which can be absorbed through any of DTR's 10 releases, including 7-inchers and a couple live shots. To see the band make their stand on a barroom stage is to inhabit one of their songs. Stand awash in a song about a brutalized heart, then look up to see Jon Snodgrass, looking ornery like Grizzly Adams with his beard, long locks and savage expression, muscling it out onstage. Or dance to a song about god, a road trip, a girlfriend, and see Chad Price -- who resembles Jerusalem-era Steve Earle when bearded, a portly Elvis Costello when shaved (this band is synergistic like that) -- hollering it out next to Snodgrass. Turn around and gaze through the low lights at the whiskey bottles, the barstools and the other characters from DTR's songs as played by the bar patrons that populate this band's every show across the nation on their relentless touring regime. At Siberia in New York City, a dingy, single-bulb lit basement in Hells' Kitchen that the band loves to play (despite being well capable of packing other, "nicer" clubs), you'll see me. In Missoula, at the Other Side, you'll see Rachel, a tall blonde who guzzles double bourbons at Charley B's or nurses beers at the Union Club on weekday afternoons. Within minutes of meeting recently, after I stopped in Charley's for parking meter change (to visit New West's new downtown office!), Rachel and I yowled the refrain from DTR's "Medicine." (This band is synergistic like that.)

She's cranky when she's sober
So sweet when she's wasted
When I quench my thirst with her waters
It's the sweetest thing I have ever tasted.

What is perhaps most special about Drag The River is the fact that you didn't see them on CMT. Or MTV. You didn't read about them in Rolling Stone (although you might have read about them in the Onion). You sure didn't hear them on Clear Channel Radio. Snodgrass and Price, two recovering punk rockers (Armchair Martian and ALL respectively) whose first demos were bootlegged so much that DTR was forced into being, get by on word of mouth, and unbelievable music. It's a charge to see $75-nosebleed-seat worthy music for six bucks, as tickets are selling for at the Other Side (for tonight's (August 28th) show). And it's a charge to walk away with a Secret. How goddamn good these guys are. The price of admission buys you stock in Drag the River. You own a part of them, a bigger part than you own of Wilco and Golden Smog, or Whiskeytown and Ryan Adams, definitely more than Willie and Waylon. And that feels cool.

That feeling can manifest itself in fanatical fandom, like Rachel. Or inspiration, like me. Not to shamelessly plug my band the New Heathens but anybody who has heard our first record, Heathens Like Me, and also Drag the River (OK, that Venn Diagram includes, um...me) knows the debt I owe to them is obvious, maybe illegal.

Drag the River could affect you the same way. This band is synergistic like that.

Drag the River plays tonight (August 28th) at the Other Side in Missoula then moves up to Whitefish for a show at Flanagan's Central Tuesday, August 29 and at the Filling Station in Bozeman the next day, August 30. Click here for a full tour schedule and ticket information.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.