Preview
UNCAS
Saturday, September 11
Ship and Anchor
When you're one of the many bands who refuse to stay safely tucked inside one niche, even a niche as sprawling as the alt-country genre, you're bound to experience a few moments clearly illustrating the obstacles you've created for yourselves. The Uncas have had plenty of those in their three-and-a-half years together, and one of those was so memorable, the Edmonton-based five-piece was compelled to recreate it for their new CD, Sunny Uncas.
Entitled "Grimshaw Jim," it's the monologue of a disgruntled audience member in Grimshaw, a small Alberta town where The Uncas played what bass player-vocalist Futch Uncas refers to as "the worst gig of our careers."
"In the small towns they come out and sometimes they seem to think it's going to be an Alan Jackson cover band," laments Uncas, setting the background for his "Grimshaw Jim" story. "This guy comes up and from the neck up he looks like the Marlboro Man – big moustache, cowboy hat, gruff-looking guy. Neck down, he's wearing a pink tank-top, cut-off jeans cut really, really short and cowboy boots. And he says (now affecting a deep drawl) 'Hey boys, play me a two-step.'"
Suffice to say, despite The Uncas channeling their winding, psychedelic country down into the traditionally acceptable realm of Hank Williams covers, the gentleman and many others were not pleased with the response to this request. A long-winded complaint, accompanied by general heckling from audience members, followed. "People were cheering when the jukebox came back on," says Uncas, laughing.
So it goes, when you're a band that messes with musical norms in towns where such things are not taken lightly. And despite all their instincts being spot-on, writing bastardized country music stuffed with long jams that ultimately yield one of the better live shows in Alberta's current roots scene – not to mention a CD that deserves plenty of airplay – The Uncas haven't exactly made conquest of the current country-music scene easy for themselves. As the Grimshaw experience indicates, not everyone is ready for what one friend of the band describes as "hippie country."
"The hippie part, I'd say yes as far as the music goes," says Uncas. "But we don't sing about peace and love. Sometimes we even refer to it as funk-try."
Then of course, there's the band's name, only recently shortened from the original: The Uncas’ Old Boys. It conjures images of beer-swilling, bubba-type sycophants under the tutelage of some redneck patriarch. Only the beer-swilling part is accurate, says Uncas, and the politically-correct set need to know that "Uncas" is not short for the term "Uncle's."
"Uncas is the town we're from," explains Futch, who shares the same last name with singer-guitarist Sook Uncas, "and it also means crooked in Latin." Well, you can't blame the audience for not understanding that. Who in the hell has ever heard of Uncas, Alberta? With several weeks of CD-release tour under their belts and a well-honed stage show just about to hit Calgary, you can bet more people will have heard of the band than their hometown. |
Copyright ©2004 FFWD. All rights reserved.