Whiskey Sournotes

Minneapolis Star Tribune
The Rocket
Pulse of the Twin Cities

3/7/99 Minneapolis Star Tribune, review by Tom Surowicz

"Even in these post-Monica days, it's still possible to make roots-rock fans blush, and the Whiskey Sournotes do it every time. They're scurrilous, crude, rude, lewd, and proud of it. They're also often hilariously funny, surprisingly tuneful and lovably charming --so long as your parents or your children aren't in earshot. Bandleader Leggo Lambe writes ridiculous but unforgettable songs about one taboo topic after another: "Hardcore Porn", "Me and the Animals" and "High Colonic" which comes complete with a Bela Lugosi impersonation. Shameless but harmless, Lambe's in the great, albeit small, tradition of Root Boy Slim, Mojo Nixon and Country Dick Montana, who put as high a premium on low humor as they do on pop hooks."

4/5/99 The Rocket, review by Joseph Josephes

"There they were: A Bill Murray look-alike wearing a sportscoat with no shirt beneath. A guitarist in similar fashion, topped with a giant novelty cowboy hat. An obese bass player wearing absolutely nothing except the lid of a Domino�s Pizza box draped over his naughty bits. A drum machine which, although not strangely or inappropriately dressed, still looked like the most deviant drum machine in the world. They were the Whiskey Sour Notes, and on that night in 1993, they played many of their greatest hits, like "My Dog�s Vagina (Is a Good, Good Thing)", "God I Hate You, Jesus Christ!", "Beat Me, Hurt Me, Bite Me, and Get the Fuck Out" and so on. You know, real crowd pleasing music � a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll, but a little more diseased. Six years, countless gigs, and several line-up changes later, the Whiskey Sour Notes have finally released their debut album. Whether or not the average listener likes or dislikes Gold Vol II, it�s practically impossible to forget. How many albums can you say that about these days? Take the crowd pleasing opening, "I Shit My Pants" (as in "�when I think of losing you"). It�s pee-pee poo-poo music of the highest order. It takes a certain cleverness to pull off songs like "I Fucked Your Mama" and "Hardcore Porn". More importantly, it takes a golden set of pipes to make it sound legit, and frontman Leggo Lambe has the bourbon-soaked soul to pull it off. You don�t believe me? See if you can listen to "High Colonic" without slipping under the spell of its "Too much blood in my stool" bridge. Or test the waters of the grizzly "Hardcore Porn" or the much-more-clever-than-it-sounds "Sexual Intercourse Polka". This may not be the stuff church revivals are made of, but for those of us who�ll take Jack over Jesus, Gold Vol. II is the answer to OUR prayers."

6/24/99 Pulse of the Twin Cities "The Whiskey Sournotes Sex, Butts, And Rock & Roll" by Tom Hallett

The room is dark, smoky, and hot. The crowd, mostly nubile young females, is collectively on the edge of their seats, gazing worshipfully towards the stage, and a palpable scent of sexual tension fills the air of Seventh Street Entry. Are they squealing with delight and frustration for the cutesy pop of girlie-fave Ben Lee? The pseudo-studliness of Evan Dando, or the punky nihilism of Nashville Pussy? No, the object of their desire is none other than Leggo Lambe, a huge, sweating hulk of a man whose scalp is brutally forcing his follicles to retreat towards the back of his skull. As Leggo stalks the stage in a near-maniacal trance, the words he’s belting out waft over the audience — “..I fucked your mama! Way back ‘fore you was born...we did it missionary, sometimes the positions varied...I fucked your mama...don’t look so sad...’cuz she fucked your dad!”

The girls don’t gasp and run for the door — on the contrary, as they learn the chorus to the song, they sway faster and sing along — their grins widening and their hair matting with sweat as they gyrate hypnotically along with Leggo and the tight, lounge/rock stylings of The Whiskey Sournotes. Hotshot guitarist Dana “Donut” Mjelde, bassist Peter “Peetie Wheetie” Lindner, and skinman Kenneth “Strongarm” Devoe provide the scathing axework and solid bottom end that transforms their stout, 30-something leader into a whirling dervish of Morrison-esque sensuality. The vibe in the room builds to a fever pitch as they run through their standards — “I Shit My Pants,” “The Sexual Intercourse Polka,” “Hardcore Porn,” “Poopy Butt Dog,” and “High Colonic” being some of the crowd’s favorites.

Don’t, however, let the song titles fool you. Though cheap bodily function shots are the band’s stock in trade, the messages in the songs run far deeper — “I Fucked Your Mama” isn’t as horrific as it sounds when the listener gleans that it’s actually the hilarious tale of a Texas good ole boy informing his child about the birds and the bees. “I Shit My Pants” is a desperate plea from a lover who fears rejection- “...darling, you say goodbye/and then, I shit my pants...” Even “Poopy Butt Dog,” a recounting of the sanitary deficiencies of a puppy, contains an underlying theme of morality (Leggo Lambe has BEEN the poopy butt dog himself, and he’s not afraid to admit it) and a brief anti-drug message. Longtime fans who recall Lambe’s days stumbling around the stage in a drunken lather, mocking Eric “Devil In A Blues Suit” Clapton’s lame radio staple “Wonderful Tonight” (Charmingly retitled “The Donkey Song”) are in for a pleasant surprise. Like nearly everything about them, the band’s very name is a twist — they’re all clean and sober, preferring to get high on the vibes from their audiences and send those vibes back with a snap, crackle, pop, and a lewd wink. Their first official release on San Francisco’s Pervertidora label, (www.pervertidora.com) “Gold Vol. 2,” is a treasure trove of witticisms, self-criticisms, and in-your-face rock and roll, combining tunes written as long as ten years ago with a smattering of newer material. Lambe is the creative force behind the Sournotes, and though their rep was built with a veritable revolving door lineup, (including former members bassist Heath Cole, guitarist “Danny Drool,” and drummer “Butch.”) the latest, and most powerful incarnation of this legendary band is the tightest, most effective machine to back him to date. The album boasts backing help from a slew of local rock luminaries, including Myrna Byrd, Patti Dryja, Ross Steinberg, Martin Dodge, and Reverend Timothy “Big Daddy” Anderson, who all provide such varied touches as sweet gospel-style vocals, nasty hardcore moans, and driving backbeats.

Lambe, a New Mexico-via-Lincoln, NE transplant, has been plugging (no pun intended) away at his sex-n-anally oriented style of lounge-rock for nearly two decades, and his travels and personal travails have played no small part in forming the charmingly twisted persona he’s become. “I really loved the Beatles as a kid,” he recalls. (A fact that’s evidenced by his introduction to the song “Don’t Be Dependent On Me,” wherein he proclaims, “...I wrote this next song for the Beatles, and they turned it down, so I killed John Lennon!”) Though his verbage is harsh and his references akin to those of fifth-grade playground humor, Leggo is in actuality nothing more than a big, sad-eyed, musically-possessed bear of a man who would probably rather shit blood than hurt another living creature. He explains his influences with an air of pained self-realization and refreshing candor; “I think it was alot of running around when I was young. Lots of drugs and lots of ‘the life.’ I discovered at an early age that if you could play “Kansas City” on a guitar and get with a little band, that you could get free beer on a Friday night.”

The free beer and the early, animalistic punk atmosphere in Lincoln is where Lambe first began to gather the tidbits of cynicism and crude carnality which inhabit his current repertoire. “I left home at an early age, and was just kind of subjected to all the shit that’s out there in the world. I think that’s where I got so bent! (laughs in an odd, high-pitched squeal) “That’s where I saw the real world, and it’s hard to write love songs and cute stuff after you’ve slept in some of these places with some of these people. I think it’s important for young people to have a place they belong, and a group of friends, and that’s just something I never really had.” He’s quick (maybe too quick) to place the blame for his youthful meanderings squarely on his own broad shoulders, though. “It was my own bad decisions. I really loved drugs and I really loved booze, and that didn’t always manifest itself in the right decisions.” His physical size, combined with an ultra-sensitive inner core, also contributed heavily (again, no pun intended) to the pain he tried to smoke out and drown with dope and liquor. “I’m so big.” he laments. “I remember when I was in school, I was always the biggest kid, always really clumsy. I didn’t have any interest in sports and coming from a little town...” he trails off, perhaps recalling some of the cruel taunts and moronic teasing he received in those early days, but then continues forcefully, “I’ve never been a mean guy! I just really love, love, love, laughter. I really love making people laugh, I know that sounds...well, I don’t know how that sounds, but I really love it and have my whole life. So here I was spending all these valuable years when I should’ve been in tech school learning how to weld, playing music and stuff — I just thought there was nowhere else I could fit in.”

He fit in even better once he formed a partnership with ace punk guitarist Dan Belik, (Mannequin Bed) and the two began to polish and perform what are now Whiskey Sournote “classics.” Dan was a fabulous guitar player,” he recalls fondly, “and a person who I just loved to make laugh. He was cynical like me, and we just hated all music, hated everything! This was in the ’80s, when it was cool to hate.” he clarifies, with a good-natured smirk. “I call it the ‘I Did This, I Did That’ period of my life. (laughs) We wrote 25 songs in three months, including “I Shit My Pants,” “I Dig Love,” and “I Fucked Your Mama,” — all the swingier ones. We did a lot of gigs at the Zoo Bar in Lincoln, where we were bigshots.” Belik eventually got a choice, high-paying gig with another band, and Lambe formed the original Whiskey Sournotes. After an acrimonious divorce and a slow dive into the bottom of a bottle, Leggo recalls the night he realized, onstage, that his life was going nowhere fast. “We were opening for the Beat Farmers, and I’d been drinking every day, eight or ten beers in the afternoon like everybody else, and I was onstage playing when I realized that I had nowhere to go after the show — I was homeless!”

An invite from a friend in Minneapolis gave Lambe the out he so desperately needed, and after an initial peek, he decided the Twin Cities was his spiritual and musical base. “A guy named Jeff Cole, a famous tattoo artist, invited me up in the summer of ’94,” he says, his pleasantly raspy voice mellowing at the memory, “and some tapes of ours had been circulating. So Glen Mattson (drummer for the Glenrustles) asked me to come up and play at the Entry. Billy Batson (then sound-man at the Entry, now lead singer of the Mofos) was like my personal welcome wagon. I loved being here with all the oddballs and the gay people — I felt like I was somewhere where I could walk around and be myself.” Leggo’s first years in Minneapolis, though not as debased as the Lincoln fiasco, eventually brought him to treatment and an irreparable rift with the members of his band. And though he doesn’t feel comfortable commenting on the details of his parting with the original Sournotes, he’s quick to send props out to them — “Everybody I’ve ever worked with, I’ve learned something from. And hopefully, they’ve learned something from me. These guys, though (the current lineup, which has come together over the past year), I’m just really delighted with — it’s a motherfucking COMPANY, and we go in the joint and we play!”

After nearly losing it all in Lincoln and struggling to fit into a new community in Minneapolis, Leggo has finally reached his creative and personal (he’s happily remarried, a factoid that goes a long way towards explaining his knack for connecting with a female audience) niche, a place where he feels at ease enough to both spew his rancor and share his doubts and fears. “I had this weird bout with encephalitis awhile back,” he says suddenly, “and while I’m laying in this fucking hospital bed for eight days, I’m thinking, ‘I don’t know what it’s going to take, but I’ve got this urgency, I’ve got to go do what’s gotta be done with the Whiskey Sournotes, and finish that off.’ Later I went through treatment, and now when I get up there, I really love it. I’m just a guy who really, really loves it!”

Leggo isn’t content to rest on his laurels and reap the benefits of a survivor with a great back catalog, however. His goal is still world domination — and if that means using his steel-trap mind to warp and re-style his self-described “...silliness...and sophomoric nature...” in order to get his music out to a wider audience, then that’s what he’ll do. “We’re doing a little EP now,” he says excitedly, “We’re actually redoing ‘Me And The Animals,’ (The most melodic and heart-rending of the 17 songs on “Gold, Vol. 2”) “and a few others, eight songs in all, and it will be entitled ‘Degraded Again,’ featuring our new hit single, ‘Degraded Again.’ We’re working with Brian Herb over at Mother Of All Music, producing it with him. We’ll also be having some real All-Stars come in and do some parts. I’m just so stoked! Ernie Batson’s gonna come in and play guitar, Dana Thompson (The Hotheads) is going to be singing, and Jimmy Kennedy (The Hotheads) is going to do some keyboards. How do you feel when you have people like that willing to jump on it? You feel like a king!”

All in all, Leggo Lambe and his merry band of Sournotes only have one overriding musical goal, and that is to entertain their adoring fans and garner new ones at each and every gig. “The Sournotes, we really celebrate sexuality.” emphasizes Lambe, “We really celebrate debauchery too, but we don’t live it (anymore.) It’s kind of like the difference between being a doctor and playing one on TV!” (laughs) As for projecting their own sobriety on their audiences, Lambe is more than clear on the subject. “Hey, man, I love anything that makes people feel good, I love it all. I can’t use it, but I don’t have a thing in the world against it. The only thing I’m an advocate for is making people laugh, and that’s what I try to do today. I don’t want to get too cocky, because in a year or so, I could be laying in the fucking gutter!”

With the sweet, oversized humor of a Belushi and the twisted lyrical stylings of a Beefheart, Lambe has managed to endear himself to an amazingly diverse crowd, and it’s obvious in speaking to him that even he is a bit taken aback by the overwhelming popularity of the Sournotes. “I’m blessed, what can I say? The people who really get turned on by us, besides goofy-ass writers (jab duly noted, Mr. Lambe) and music-heads, are really the girls. And I think one of the reasons the girls love us is because though we are vulgar, it’s vulgarity done in a meaningful way, an acceptable way. Girls like us, and musicians like us. The only ones who don’t like us are these kind of sports-oriented, Stratocaster-playin’, hair-kinda guys. I think we get them intimidated. There are a few other people who don’t like us as well, but we haven’t been able to figure out why.” (laughs devilishly) And does he have any sage advice for others who may be following his bloody trail through the foxholes and ditches of rock and roll? “All you gotta do, is just not die — that’s all you gotta do!”