Ring the Alarm

In a recent article headlined “Garage Band Actually Believes There Is a ‘Terre Haute Sound,'” The Onion lampoons Midwest-based bands that overstate their “scenes.” The fictional Weebles play an unappealing blend of synth-pop, rockabilly and melodic punk; other outfits specialize in raunchy riot-grrrl rock or “grindcore ballads.” The Weebles’ singer is unable to name an area act that wouldn’t be part of the Terre Haute sound (the existence of which he attributes to the late, lamented trio Larry Byrds). “Bottom line,” the Weebles’ singer summarizes, “we all just like to rock.”

The phrase Kansas City sound has long been a staple in the local music community’s vocabulary. But the words have actual meaning, both at home and on a national level. Validated by its duration (almost a dozen years) and its coherence (scores of musicians have roamed strikingly similar terrain), the KC sound involves erratic jackhammer rhythms, abrupt time-signature switches, hazy, hallucinogenic melodies and dual-guitar walls of sound. In an insecure city, it offers a constant reminder of what local artists can contribute.

Hometown imitators of the city’s most famous recent exports (Puddle of Mudd, Get Up Kids) resist regionalization by fitting into larger musical movements, such as regrungitation and sensitive, sweater-guy power-pop. Meanwhile, unfazed by the music’s only modest commercial potential and lack of next-big-thing buzz, the active purveyors of the KC sound haven’t changed their spaced-out, stagger-paced tunes.

Most observers nominate Shiner as the sound’s torch keeper, with good reason. That venerable quartet has chronicled its sparkling chaos on several nationally distributed discs, inspired convincing clones (do the members of Minneapolis’ Houston have belly buttons?) and toured Japan (home of the KC-sound-circa-1928-aping Kansas City Jazz Band).

However, there were other, earlier pioneers. Acts such as Giant’s Chair and Boys’ Life own stakes, but these now-defunct groups are nothing but a thin copy-of-a-copy cassette for today’s younger scenesters. Dirtnap, a band formed in 1991, ranks as the oldest active delegate, and its latest album, Long Songs for Short-Term Friends, captures the sound’s essence with its collapsing guitars, hit-and-recoil interactive leads and skittering drumbeats.

On this follow-up to 1997’s Below the Speed of Sound, Dirtnap has reduced the technical difficulty of its compositions. Its songs were once impenetrable mazes, blocking every melody that attempted to escape with an abrupt compositional overhaul, but now they’re straight, albeit speed-bump-studded, roads. Similarly, on its most recent records, Shiner has translated its largely illegible sonic scrawlings into a more accessible language. The resulting convergence of the groups’ sounds has not been lost on observers. In a post on local music forum the Zone, one critic listed Dirtnap as one of ten “guilty parties” that have “ripped off Shiner to the point of ridiculousness,” branding it “Dow Nap,” in reference to departed Shiner drummer Tim Dow.

But labeling Dirtnap a Shiner rip-off is akin to attending a Stooges reunion show and saying, “These guys are Hives wanna-bes.”

“It’s frustrating to be lumped into a certain category when you’re trying to push your own envelopes,” Dirtnap singer and guitarist Billy Smith says. “I used to get mad about it, but now I realize that some people need that to figure out what we’re doing.”

By now, though, it’s Dirtnap that should be a point of reference. For more than ten years, the group has maintained its core trio of Smith, drummer Pete Laporte and bassist Steve Vandeven; it added multi-instrumentalist Wade Williamson in 1996. Not only did other local bands follow Dirtnap’s lead by adding a keyboardist/second-guitarist to the mix; they’ve copied the blueprint exactly — at least three other groups have tapped Williamson to play the same role.

Dirtnap, which has performed mostly erratically over the course of its career and has served a stint in Chicago, has been a secondary touchstone, one of those groups that more-popular bands listen to while crafting their tunes.

Now, however, Dirtnap has resurfaced as a primary resource. (It plays next at the Brick on Friday, December 13.) The Larry Byrds left behind only an out-of-print single that’s said to fetch up to $2.99 in Terre Haute’s cut-out bins, but the originators of the KC sound still connect concertgoers to the primordial origins of the city’s psychedelic sludge.