Standing Over By The Record Machine: Wesley & The Boys’ *Rock & Roll Ruined My Life*
Lo-fi trash-punks have a Nashville address, but they bleed Memphis.
Wesley & The Boys, in full roar: (l-r) Ashton Kjelde, Wesley Berryhill, Jonny Ullman, and Caleb Stevens at the rear. (📷 Photographer unknown, taken from https://justsomepunksongs.blogspot.com/)
A veteran ‘Stack reader chided me a year ago: “I know you don’t really write about new bands….”
What the fuck?! How did that happen?! I began this thing three years ago with reviews of The Interrupters and Crisis Actor! But I also loudly announced that, like Mojo Magazine, I was not going to be bound by the race to be up-to-date. I would cover whatever struck my fancy, be it a brand-new garage-punk band’s debut 45 or a Sex Pistols reissue.
Have I become so consumed with covering veterans and writing a punk history book about the ‘70s that I forgot to write about the current stuff grabbing me? Mayhaps… it’s been a few months since I scribbled up Lambrini Girls and Amyl and The Sniffers, hasn’t it?
So that ends today, with a record that sounds like it was tracked in a panic and pressed in someone’s garage…
Wesley & The Boys have been operating on the sleazier, more jagged edges of Nashville for a handful of years, crafting pure Southern garage-punk chaos filtered through tape hiss, broken fuzz pedals, and a backline of busted pawn shop Peavey amps. They’re lo-fi as fuck, and dirtier than a barroom floor. They resemble Teengenerate and The Rip Offs after smoking crack and getting mugged in a Memphis alley by a gang of teenage dirtbags… and LOVING IT!
In fact, they sound more Memphis than Nashville, like Jay Reatard’s cousins screaming into a busted mic, banging on a Silvertone guitar with three strings. Makes sense — they have deep connections with the Bluff City, apparently playing the Lamplighter Lounge frequently, most recently at the What’s For Breakfast festival. Three tracks on their screamin’ Sweet Time Records debut LP Rock & Roll Ruined My Life were in fact cut in four hours at Easley-McCain Recording, where Reatard and Oblivians detonated their garage bombs, and where everyone else from Townes Van Zandt to Lydia Lunch & Rowland S. Howard have tracked.
“We played our very first Memphis show at the Lamplighter with Possums and The Worms," guitarist/producer Jonny Ullman informed see/saw . “The day after, before we had to drive back to Nashville, we recorded all of those songs in four hours. It was quick.”
No wonder they play like Goner alumni! No wonder Rock & Roll Ruined My Life has that blown-out basement feel! These Boys (and girl—bassist Ashton Kjelde is female) clearly grew up on blown speakers and beer-stained linoleum. Even the vocals swagger like the mic was plugged into a Big Muff fuzz box, one someone had poured a PBR into.
And like much of this Goner Records/Rip-Off Records-oid sleaze, the primary topic of leader Wesley Berryhill’s songs is bad livin’: “Full-Time Asshole,” “Jail, Again,” “Ruin My Life,” etc. But he clearly has a few other, less cliched subjects to decorate these two-minute fuzz blasts. Opener “Somebody Help Me” elevates the classic hornrims-and-pocket-protector high school nerd into the sorta societal reject that’s been punk’s target demographic since the first Stooges album: “I’ve got a target on my back, man/Every day that I go to school.” Then Berryhill expresses deep empathy, resolving the verse with, “Who knew kids could be so cruel?”
Is this some of that “egg punk” I’ve been reading about? (Google it or click the hyperlink. And let’s move on.)
Then, there is “Fight On The Internet,” about the very thing that makes me wanna be on Facebook less and less:
Let’s have a fight on the internet
Let’s have a war in the middle of the street
Let’s shake hands and call it disrespect
Let’s let deception be the rhythm of the beat
With a refrain that so firmly taps into the zeitgeist (“The more you know, the less you don’t/the less you know, the more you won’t”), it’s a miracle “Fight On The Internet” hasn’t topped the Hot 100 all summer long!
Rock & Roll Ruined My Life (besides failing to realize the term is “rock ‘n’ roll”) is an album that asks a few questions pertinent to modern life. Like virtually every note sculpted by Jay Reatard, Berryhill’s songs ooze a craftsmanship that belie the crap-fi production and drunk-punk execution. Which immediately feeds into the main question: Why do Wesley & The Boys sound more Memphis than Nashville? They certainly orbit that shit-fi Southern garage-punk gravity hard.
Are these 11 rough-hewn party-punk tracks the harbinger of some sorta punk renaissance in Nashville? A cursory shake of the Magic 8-Ball in Music City’s direction turns up: “Sources say yes.” Sweet Time Records is the brainchild of Ryan Sweeney, a longtime local punk scene vet and drummer with garage power-poppers Cheap Time. Besides Wesley & The Boys, Sweeney’s dropped records by The Sleeveens and Night Talkers, and organized the Sweet By Sweet Time Fest. Jack White’s Third Man Records dropped a fine debut LP from local egg punx Snooper in 2023. Other names that surface include Hans Condor, New Orleans transplants Schizos, The Archaeas and The Shitdels, who off-the-bat have at least earned some sorta award for Best Band Name In History.
So basically, yes. Nashville is capable of a fuckuvalot more than twangy sugar-shaker shit set to chords recycled from an old Journey hit, these days. Wesley & The Boys are just the tip of a filthy, sludgy iceberg in need of further exploration. But at the least, they’ve released an album that’s barely left my turntable all summer. Except it’s raised the temperature several hundred degrees, which is hardly making summer in Austin bearable! But it’s made it more rockin’!
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