The Bottle Rockets Find Bluer Skies

Somewhere deep down—not always hidden, but rarely emphasized—St. Louis Americana rockers, The Bottle Rockets, have a gentle, sensitive side.

Fans of the band’s 10-year run can point to songs like “Kerosene,” “Welfare Music,” and “Smokin’ 100’s Alone,” as signs of the band’s artistic depth and maturity. But even more likely, they remember beer-fueled shows where those songs were over-shadowed by guitar-slinging rockers like “Radar Gun,” “Indianapolis,” and “The Bar’s On Fire,” as well as the occasional Neil Young & Crazy Horse or Lynyrd Skynyrd cover when it came time for the encore.

But just before their Halloween show at Blueberry Hill’s Duck Room, The Bottle Rockets sit down over plates of chili mac and wings to talk about the gentle shift of emphasis on the band’s new disc, Blue Sky.

“Let’s face it,” says Brian Henneman, the Rockets’ often-colorful singer-guitarist, “we’re getting older.”

By 2000, the band had grown tired of the indie-level grind of record, tour, and repeat. Critically acclaimed discs and affiliations with Uncle Tupelo (Henneman once toured as their guitar tech, and for a while they shared management) failed to pay off.

The band’s brief hiatus—taken to care for ailing parents and recover physically and financially from constant touring—was interrupted for the Doug Sahm tribute, Songs of Sahm, released on Bloodshot in 2001.

A year back on the road promoting the record forced the band to confront some pressing realities. The tour led to the departure of second guitarist Tom Parr. “We’d all gone through some changes,” says Henneman of the time off, “but when Tom came back he was leaving behind a secure paycheck, and the music was becoming a real pain in his ass. This is no kind of life if you want to be sure you’re going to have that mortgage check every month. So, as dates kept getting added to the tour, he just cracked.”

It was an ugly split, with talk of a backstage fistfight and other unseemly behavior. The Bottle Rockets finished the tour as a trio, then replaced Parr with guitarist and multi-instrumentalist John Horton. The band met Horton while doing a set of outlaw country covers (Willie, Waylon, and Merle Haggard) during its monthly hometown gig at Frederick’s Music Lounge.

As a result of the changes and challenges the Rockets have recently faced, the songs on Blue Sky are closer to the ground, dealing with working construction, taking care of romantic relationships, and coping with grief.

“We hadn’t been touring,” says Henneman, “all we had been doing was the more mundane, real-life everyday stuff, which was nice to get back to in the songs. When you’re just traveling from town to town playing every night, pretty soon you’re writing about ‘moving on, moving on from town to town.’ You know, ‘never gonna slow down.’ [Laughs]. It’s hard to be in touch with anything real when that’s all you’re doing.”

Henneman says he was listening to a lot of Lucinda Williams while recording Blue Sky and the stripped-down song focus came naturally. Also, after recording with Warren Haynes (Gov’t Mule, The Allman Brothers Band) and Michael Barbiero on the band’s 1999 album Brand New Year, Henneman admits, “The approach [to Blue Sky] was almost minimalistic; most of the basic tracks were cut with acoustic guitar. After that Brand New Year record, I figured I’d gotten all my lead guitar ya-ya’s out of my system.”

The Rockets credit Haynes—whose wife, Stefani Scamardo, manages the band—for resurrecting their recording career. Hearing the new songs and being a longtime fan, he offered to finance the project and pitch it to labels. Henneman sees the guitarist as sort of a gift from above, “St. Warren,” he calls him.

On Blue Sky, working class songs, written with collaborator Scott Taylor (“Lucky Break,” “Man of Constant Anxiety”), shine the brightest. The Rockets claim to have done their share of off-season construction work.

“Making music’s just not that hard compared to sanding drywall,” Henneman says. Horton adds, “It takes about the same skills, but there’s a lot more satisfaction in making music.”

“The thing is,” says drummer Mark Ortmann, “we would be making music somewhere else if not in The Bottle Rockets. This is who we are; it’s what we do.”

Occasionally one hears of Steve Earle playing the Rockets’ “I’ll Be Coming Around” live, but it’s almost shocking that a song like the band’s “Welfare Music” hasn’t been covered by some rising country artist. “As much as I love ‘Smokin’ 100’s Alone,’” says Ortmann, “[“Welfare Music] is my favorite Bottle Rockets’ song. I think it’s just too brutally honest for Nashville country.”

Sipping iced teas, these externally gruff and rowdy rockers laugh as they converse about tunes on the new record—a song that describes thorny relationships (“Men & Women”). One that draws its primary insight from Popeye the Sailor Man (“Cartoon Wisdom”), another that explores the feelings people experience when they lose a parent (“Mom & Dad”) and “Baggage Claim,” a reflection on how changes in airport security can stifle romance.

And then there’s “Pretty Little Angie,” a lusty little number about teenage jail-bait. “In it’s own strange way, that fits in there too,” suggests Henneman. “It’s a celebration of life,” says Ortmann, to laughter around the table. “It’s like this,” Henneman continues, “you’re having your quiet, grown-up, sensitive, intimate moment inside your house, you look out your back door, and that’s what’s going on. And it’s like, ‘well, well, well…’ It just goes to show that even the tenderest moment has a pervert behind it.”