Danger Ahead

“My best friend Heather doesn’t believe that I was really in a band,” says Andy Morton. Oh, silly girl, Morton was in a band and that band was Danger Bob, arguably the Kansas City/Lawrence scene’s biggest local draw, or at least the biggest one that played around here regularly.

Danger Bob played its final show at The Bottleneck on July 31, 1999, but Morton finally will have another chance to prove his membership to his dubious friend when the guitarist/vocalist joins vocalist Karl Michelbach, bass player Jason Lovell and drummer Kenny Gall for a pair of reunion shows this weekend. The four members haven’t even been in a room together since that aforementioned date, which means Danger Bob’s seven-year-plus journey, which has involved the consumption of three vans, ten amps, approximately nine guitars, pre-Gall drummer Chris Bulgren (who is now in another reformed local band, The Bubble Boys), two Klammy nominations for Band of the Year and entirely too many beers and Jagermeister shots, resumes exactly where it left off.

Danger Bob left behind four full-length albums and a holiday EP called For Unlawful Christmas Knowledge, all of which overflowed with punky power-pop hooks and running commentary on disposable culture icons such as Dig Dug, Pretty in Pink, The X-Files and MTV’s twin beasts The Real World and Road Rules. When not making clever references to pop-culture touchstones, Danger Bob wrote songs for the eternally lovesick teenager in everyone, singing about girls (who almost always were named Molly) and even penning a tune from the perspective of a dead guy who turned out much better than anyone could have expected. The band rocked with authority and also happened to be funny, standing in contrast to countless groups of funny guys who only occasionally managed to rock. It all started with Danger Bob’s debut cassette-only release, The Joshua Tree. The double-cassette that followed, Le Pop Shoppe, became Danger Bob’s debut CD. Its third release, MegaVega$, managed to land at number seven on the Pitch‘s list of the best local records of the ’90s.

That honor notwithstanding, Danger Bob’s members are most proud of their swan song, Girls of the Big Twelve, perhaps because so much went into that disc. “The recording was brutal, every night for over three weeks for six to eight hours,” Morton recalls. “It became a situation where if your presence wasn’t required, your presence wasn’t wanted. Kenny and Jason took it very well, and it was a great time for Karl and myself to get to know each other creatively again, although Jason showing up and drinking all of our liquor never helped matters either. Looking back, it was probably a snotty way to go about things, but once everybody heard what we had created, there didn’t seem to be any hard feelings. That album really showed the different approaches we had to songwriting, and the pisser is that not a lot of people got to hear it because we broke up a month after it was released. We got the album we wanted, though, so it’s hard to crybaby too much.”

Despite those fine results, it was painfully obvious by the time of Big Twelve‘s release that Danger Bob’s members were headed in separate directions. “As devoted as we all were to Danger Bob, I wish we would have been even more persistent and unified, especially as far as record labels go,” Michelbach declares. “Still, we definitely made our mark, or stain as it were, and I am damn proud of that. If you would have asked about a reunion show a year ago, I would’ve told you to go to hell. In fact, I think I did tell Andy to go to hell. Sorry, buddy. Like a sourpuss teenager, I guess I was still fighting for some independence.”

Michelbach started working toward that independence when he left Lawrence in September 1999, living in San Francisco and Minneapolis before settling on his current residence in Flagstaff, Arizona. There he works for Smokey Amps, where he makes those cigarette-pack-shaped amps that all the rock stars dig. He’s also been making the commute to Kansas City to work on a new project with Big Twelve‘s producer, Jason Hall. “I don’t write about poop and titties anymore, but I think I’ve kept the humor and the hooks,” he says, at once acknowledging a generalization that earned The Bob a few uptight and pretentious detractors and also inadvertently referencing “The Hook,” a song that led fans to hold their hands high and curl their fingers in a hook-like fashion when the group played it live.

“While Danger Bob was in full swing, Andy was writing the rockers, and I was writing the pop songs,” Michelbach remembers, noting that his solo style isn’t the traditional guitar, bass and drums, but a combination of drum loops, live drums, a variety of bass players, musical saw and just about anything else he wants. Michelbach also has plans for another new ditty. “I plan to write a song entitled, ‘Believe (Do You Believe in Life After Bob?),'” he reveals.

For a spell, it seemed as if life after Bob for Morton might not include music. At the time, he and Lovell were playing together in Star 80, a cover band cash cow, but a grind nevertheless. “After the Star 80 gig imploded, I put my guitar away for well over a year,” Morton recalls. “Didn’t even touch it. I swore that I’d never start a band again because it took too much out of me. I was no longer interested in driving four hours to play for $50 and sleep on a stranger’s floor. I’ve grown to love my bed too much. Playing in bands had gotten too difficult. I was sick all the time, and I destroyed a long-term relationship with a great person by constantly being away from home. I lost my band, I lost my long-time girlfriend and I lost my dogs. It was a devastating period.”

But even though he wasn’t out playing the guitar, Morton was still on the stage, going the Regis Philbin route to local Lawrence celebrity by hosting Trivia Smackdown at The Bottleneck in the interim, asking questions that ranged from Jeopardy-style academic queries to trivial pursuits such as nü metal knowledge. Even with all that he’s learned, Morton’s now thinking about heading back to school. “Jason graduated this year (from Washburn University), and I figure that if a bass player can get a degree, I can, too,” he theorizes. “If it doesn’t pan out, I’m going to learn to paint like Thomas Kinkade. That shit makes money, yo.”

When Star 80 folded for Lovell, a.k.a. Dr. Love, he also took a leave of absence from the stage, with the exception of a February show with The Bubble Boys. “After twelve years in different bands with constant practices and shows, I started to view music as a chore and not a gift,” he says. “The only way to get over this was to take a year or so off.”

After abusing drums in Danger Bob for so long, Kenny Gall, known to many as Kenny G! during the band’s run, didn’t miss a beat when deciding what was up for him next. He actually had stepped out from behind the kit and picked up a guitar before the group even broke up, joining The Playthings, then a Lawrence band that relocated to Austin, Texas, in late 1999. It was a move he thinks Danger Bob should have made itself for purposes of rocketing to the elusive Big Time.

“No offense to the KC/Lawrence scene, past or present, but we should have moved to a bigger market in about ’95 or ’96 before we got burned out,” he admits. “We were set on making it, but commitments to girlfriends and wives kept some of us from cutting the cord, so to speak. I was more guilty of this than anyone. I was the most adamant about not leaving, and, ironically, I was the first to move out of town.”

Even if Danger Bob’s members hadn’t been faithful to their commitments, they might not have been able to decide on a new destination, Gall suggests. “Most of the band liked the idea of Minneapolis for a while, but I refused, due to their average January temperature of eleven degrees. I suggested Austin, surprise, but the summer temperatures here scared the other three guys. I like it hot,” he says. “I tell you one thing though, I sure hear a lot of bands on the radio these days who sound exactly like Danger Bob, and if I could get the other three down here I would start over with them in a heartbeat. There are literally thousands of bands down here, but Danger Bob would blow 95 percent of them off the stage.”

Gall’s band The Playthings, a wacky marriage between The Velvet Underground and new wave, has done well for itself in Austin, too, racking up some major kudos for its EP Demo Mode. It’s also backed up astrological crooner Harvey Sid Fisher two years in a row at South by Southwest, and the band has just completed its first music video. Gall’s work ethic apparently has increased with the heat he’s encountering in his new home, because besides working as a freelance photographer for a number of magazines and newspapers, he’s starting up another band, this one doing the surf and punk thing. Lest anyone think Gall might be rusty at his old instrument, however, he says fear not. “I still play the drums constantly even though I’m a guitar player in The Playthings,” he says, “so I feel confident in my ability to rock your balls off.”

All of Danger Bob’s members share Gall’s confidence and enthusiasm. “We will come back to the scene of the crime and plunder anything we left behind,” Michelbach promises. “Hopefully, we won’t be caught with our pants down.” Or, for that matter, be burned to a crisp. “I’m trying to come up with a relatively safe way to set Karl on fire,” Morton says. Gall, too, expects madness of one sort or another. “Complete inebriation, annihilation and orgasm. We are prepared to blow your minds. People will be naked. Some may die. We enjoy the blood.”

While the spectacle of these shows is sure to be enjoyable on its own merits, some fans who became friends with each other through repeated encounters at Danger Bob concerts (and not in that icky hippie way, either) hope that this reunion will be permanent, or at least as permanent as this sort of thing can be. As of yet, there’s no indication. Taunts Michelbach, “I’ll talk to you after the shows.”