The Bad Livers were an American band from

Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...

, United States, whose inventive musical style defied attempts to categorize them according to existing genres.McLeese, Don. "Musical Mayhem: Bill Monroe, Metallica inspire Bad Livers' High-Speed Style" ''

The Austin American-Statesman The ''Austin American-Statesman'' is the major daily newspaper for Austin, the capital city of Texas. It is owned by Gannett. The paper prints Associated Press, ''New York Times'', ''The Washington Post'', and ''Los Angeles Times'' international ...

'' March 7, 1991.Alden, Grant
"Bad Livers: Deconstruction of the Labels"
'' No Depression'' #8. March–April 1997. Retrieved December 21, 2012 Their influences included bluegrass, folk, punk, and other musical styles. The original lineup, formed in 1990, included Danny Barnes on

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

and

resonator guitar A resonator guitar or resophonic guitar is an acoustic guitar that produces sound by conducting string vibrations through the bridge to one or more spun metal cones (resonators), instead of to the guitar's sounding board (top). Resonator gui ...

Mark Rubin Mark Harrison Rubin (born October 24, 1985) is a former American football safety. He was signed by the St. Louis Rams as an undrafted free agent in 2009. He played college football at Penn State. Early years A four-year starter at wide receive ...

upright bass The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox addit ...

and

tuba The tuba (; ) is the lowest-pitched musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, the sound is produced by lip vibrationa buzzinto a mouthpiece. It first appeared in the mid-19th century, making it one of the ne ...

, and Ralph White III on

fiddle A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, th ...

and

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

. Barnes composed the majority of the group's original songs.Nitchie, Donald. "Interview with Danny Barnes". ''

Banjo Newsletter ''Banjo Newsletter'' (BNL"Major milestone for Banjo NewsLett ...

''. August 1995. 6-11. When White left the group at the end of 1996, he was briefly replaced by Bob Grant on

mandolin A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...

and guitar. Barnes and Rubin then continued to perform and record as a duo until unofficially dissolving the band in 2000. The band has neither toured nor recorded since then, but Barnes and Rubin have played a few live shows with Grant in 2008, 2009, and 2014. The Bad Livers' music has often been cited for its influence on other groups,Staff
"Phantom Power & Spiritual Benefits: The Return of the Bad Livers"
''

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'' February 14, 1997. Retrieved December 21, 2012 creating what ''

'' described as "an impressive legacy". '' The Stranger'' credited them with "revitalizing roots music", and, according to the ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...

'', "The Bad Livers helped open the way for old-time and bluegrass bands of today".

History

The Bad Livers formed in 1990, when Barnes "came up with this idea that it would be great to have a small-format acoustic band that could play different kinds of music t avirtuoso level, where they could play any kind of music".Morris, Chris "Banjo Widens Its Horizons" ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

'' October 10, 1998. p. 52. He began playing with Rubin and White,Hernández, Raoul
"Complete Freedom: Danny Barnes".
''

'' November 5, 1999. Retrieved December 21, 2012. and the trio adopted the name Bad Livers in the summer of 1990. They began playing frequently in Austin, including a weekly set at the Saxon Pub. A typical set in 1991 included a wide variety of styles and periods of music, as Rubin later explained: "We were doing

Mississippi John Hurt John Smith Hurt (March 8, 1893 – November 2, 1966), better known as Mississippi John Hurt, was an American country blues singer and guitarist. Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, Hurt taught himself to play the guitar around the age of nine. He wo ...

gospel Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...

tunes,

Captain Beefheart Don Van Vliet (; born Don Glen Vliet; January 15, 1941 – December 17, 2010) was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist best known by the stage name Captain Beefheart. Conducting a rotating ensemble known as Th ...

—anything, really, but it was

Motörhead Motörhead () were an English rock band formed in London in 1975 by Lemmy (lead vocals, bass), Larry Wallis (guitar) and Lucas Fox (drums). Lemmy was also the primary songwriter and only constant member. The band are often considered a precu ...

or the

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that caught on."Riemenschneider, Chris. "Bad Livers transplant: Austin band is doing nicely after music-saving procedure". ''

''. February 13, 1997. Imprecise descriptions of the Bad Livers' music abounded: "thrash-grass", "acoustic bluegrass with a punk death wish",Staff
"Critics' picks"
''

Houston Chronicle The ''Houston Chronicle'' is the largest daily newspaper in Houston, Texas, United States. , it is the third-largest newspaper by Sunday circulation in the United States, behind only ''The New York Times'' and the ''Los Angeles Times''. With it ...

''. December 24, 1992. Retrieved December 22, 2012. "something called 'contemporary bluegrass,'" and "acoustic-metal-bluegrass",Armstrong, Gene. "Pop band Overwhelming Colorfast on bill with a unique hip-hop duo". ''

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''. May 27, 1994. 2E. although these same sources would cite the band as "much-lauded" and note that "the musicians can really play". The recurrence of the term bluegrass, however bizarrely it was modified, along with counter-assessments of them as "good, faithful traditionalists" who "preserve the spirit as well as the technique of old-timey folk music", created a generic perplexity that led Austin country legend

Don Walser Donald Ray Walser (September 14, 1934 – September 20, 2006) was an American country music singer. He was known as a unique, award-winning yodeling "Texas country music legend." Music career Walser was born in Brownfield, Texas and raised i ...

to observe that the only question he couldn't answer was what kind of music the Bad Livers played. Barnes insisted that the Bad Livers were not a bluegrass band, but had created an original sound: "This isn't bluegrass and it isn't this or that. It's Bad Liver music. We end up making our own thing." Barnes' original compositions were featured on their first album, ''Delusions of Banjer'', released in 1992 on

Quarterstick Records Quarterstick Records is a sublabel of Touch and Go Records. Artists *Bad Livers *Calexico * DK3 *Dead Child *June of 44 *Kepone *The Mekons * Mi Ami *Peter Móren (of Peter, Bjorn and John) *Mule *Naked Raygun *Tara Jane O'Neil *Pegboy *Phono-Co ...

and produced by

Paul Leary Paul Leary Walthall (born May 7, 1957), known as Paul Leary, is an American musician and music producer from Austin, Texas, best known as the lead guitarist and occasional lead vocalist for the American rock band Butthole Surfers. He is also the ...

of the

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. The album was praised for "Barnes's strong material, as well as the group's tight musical interaction". Barnes credited the latter with improving the former: "The musical telepathy is really good. I can sort of tailor-make a song to the guys' playing, make the song fit what they're doing, since I write most of the material." Rubin claimed that they had decided to incorporate the accordion and tuba into the band to counteract their growing popularity, but to no avail: their audience continued to widen and more critics saw beyond the gimmicky descriptions to the band's innovation and skill. ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' described them as "truly great", ''

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'' praised their "serious musicianship" and Barnes' "soulful, urgent lead vocals", while ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...

'' admired their "striking blend of virtuoso flash and poignant simplicity". Don McLeese of the ''

Austin American-Statesman The ''Austin American-Statesman'' is the major daily newspaper for Austin, the capital city of Texas. It is owned by Gannett. The paper prints Associated Press, ''New York Times'', ''The Washington Post'', and ''Los Angeles Times'' internation ...

'' twice described the Bad Livers as "Austin's best band" and raved of one live show: "The uncommon telepathy enjoyed by Danny Barnes, Mark Rubin and Ralph White makes the band's frenetic acoustic interplay sound like the work of a six-armed, multistringed monster." Barnes was voted "Best Player of Any Other Instrument" for the banjo at the Austin Music Awards in 1991 and 1992, and the Bad Livers were voted "Best None of the Above" for four consecutive years from 1991 to 1994. The Bad Livers' second album, '' Horses in the Mines'', was produced by Barnes and released on Quarterstick in 1994. In his review, McLeese admired them as "a band drawing from the wellspring of tradition to create something fresh, vital and original". ''

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'' found that the record "sounded quite authentic—almost as if it had long held a place in the Library of Congress". Raoul Hernández poetically concurred, saying that the record sounded "like a bunch of skeletons cackling into the sole microphone that dangles from the outhouse ceiling". The Bad Livers spent 1995 and 1996 touring and working on side projects as well as looking for a new label to release their next album. Finally the band signed a three-album deal with

Sugar Hill Records Sugar Hill Records is an American bluegrass and Americana record label. It was founded in Durham, North Carolina in 1978 by Barry Poss and David Freeman, the owner of County Records and Rebel Records. Poss acquired full control of Sugar Hil ...

, which had more experience than Quarterstick at "selling banjo records". Their first album for the label, ''Hogs on the Highway'', was released along with the information that White had decided to leave the band. It was announced that he was to be replaced by Bob Grant, though Grant's tenure with the band did not last long.Langer, Andy
"Against the Grain: Mark Rubin"
''

'' November 5, 1999. Retrieved December 21, 2012. Both White and Grant appeared on ''Hogs on the Highway'', which received enthusiastic reviews from ''

Sing Out! ''Sing Out!'' was a quarterly journal of folk music and folk songs that was published from May 1950 through spring 2014. It was originally based in New York City, with a national circulation of approximately 10,000 by 1960. Background ''Sing Out ...

'', praising Barnes' "quirky and inventive" original songs, and the ''Old-Time Herald'', admiring the "considerable skill" with which Barnes crafted his lyrics. The ''Austin American-Statesman'' agreed that Barnes was "an entirely underrated songwriter" as well as a "banjo wizard", while ''The Washington Post'' lauded his "timeless, deadpan voice". ''

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'' was appreciative of the "beautifully controlled ambience" of the entire album. Shortly after the album's release, Barnes moved from Austin to Port Hadlock,

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

, though he and Rubin continued to work closely together on the score for the

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film ''

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'' as well as the Bad Livers' next album. Although the soundtrack was admired by ''

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'' and ''

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'' as well as the Austin papers, the film did not fare well at the box office, and the soundtrack album did not sell well. The Bad Livers' second album for Sugar Hill, ''Industry and Thrift'', was released in September 1998 with only Barnes and Rubin credited as members of the band,Bad Livers. ''Industry and Thrift''.

, 1998. though the album features various guest musicians, including members of Rubin's side project, Rubinchik’s Orkestyr, who are featured on the track "A Yid Ist Geboren inz Oklahoma". The album garnered positive reviews, and the ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...

'' selected it as the best bluegrass album of 1998, while ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'' of London admired its "genuine originality". ''Industry and Thrift'' did not receive as much attention from the press as ''Hogs on the Highway'' had, however, and as Barnes lamented, the album "fell off the face of the earth". The Bad Livers' final album, ''Blood and Mood'', was released in February 2000 and featured, as ''The Austin Chronicle'' noted with astonishment: "''Electric'' punk rock, sample-based tunes with drum tracks, and a shocking scarcity of juiced-up banjo playing". ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'' named it "the leftfield album of the week" and found that it "brims with enthusiastic ideas", while ''The Washington Post'' was puzzled but invigorated by a live show supporting the album, concluding that it had been "Fascinating. Even refreshing". Although it left '' No Depression'' depressed, Daniel Wolff found the album to be uniquely evocative of a "rural eccentricity"Wolff, Daniel. "Bad Livers: ''Blood and Mood'' (Review)". ''Rock & Rap Confidential''. April 2000. 2. that had not yet been extinguished and formed a kind of continuum with punk and old-time country: "Either the Bad Livers pick up where 'I Wish I Were a Mole in the Ground' left off, or Bascom Lunsford discovered the punk aesthetic in the 1920s." ''Blood and Mood'' did not sell well,Lieck, Ken
"Dancing about Architecture"
''

'' June 16, 2000. Retrieved December 21, 2012. and by the summer of 2000 the Bad Livers appeared to be "over for good". The Bad Livers were inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame in 2007.The Austin Chronicle
Retrieved December 22, 2012.

Discography

* ''Dust on the Bible'' (1991, self-released cassette/1994, Quarterstick cassette-only re-release/1999, Quarterstick CD re-release) * ''Lust for Life/Jeffro's Dream'' (1991, Fist Puppet vinyl 7" single) * ''The Golden Years'' (1992, Quarterstick vinyl EP) * ''Delusions of Banjer'' (1992, Quarterstick vinyl LP, CD and cassette) * '' Horses in the Mines'' (1994, Quarterstick vinyl LP, CD and cassette) * ''Hogs on the Highway'' (1997, Sugar Hill CD) * ''Industry and Thrift'' (1998, Sugar Hill CD) * ''The Newton Boys'' (Soundtrack) (1998,

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

CD) * ''Blood and Mood'' (2000, Sugar Hill CD) * ''The Ridgetop Sessions'' (2000, Lumpydisc CD)

References

External links

Danny Barnes Official Website

Mark Rubin Official Website

Ralph White Official Website
{{Authority control American musical trios Musical groups from Austin, Texas Country music groups from Texas American folk musical groups American bluegrass music groups American experimental musical groups Musical groups established in 1990 Musical groups disestablished in 2000 1990 establishments in Texas