When Wussy’s name was announced as the Rock winner at the 2016 Cincinnati Entertainment Awards last month, the band was not in attendance to accept its CEA bling. Presenter Eddy Mullet, host of Class X’s long-running local music radio show Kindred Sanction, took a quick photo of the band’s name on the sheet that revealed the victory and texted it to guitarist/vocalist Chuck Cleaver, who was in the throes of a nasty flu.
He messaged back with a good excuse for the band members’ absence. Though Wussy has several CEA trophies from the Critical Achievement category (including a few Artist of the Year ones), the band had never won a fan-voted CEA. Since its only nomination this year came in the publicly decided Rock category, they elected to skip the ceremony.
Wussy stands a good chance of scoring a few more CEAs at next year’s event, based on the epic brilliance of the band’s imminent new album, Forever Sounds. The group’s last album, 2014’s Attica!, amped up the noisy elements that have defined the band from the beginning, but Forever Sounds unleashes a sonic arsenal unlike anything in Wussy’s acclaimed catalog. (Read a review of Forever Sounds here.)
There’s an old adage about prophets rarely being recognized in their home countries, and it’s been proven time and again in the musical context. Cleaver’s first major band excursion, Ass Ponys, never got much love in its own backyard during its prime years; the band’s two biggest shows ever were reunion gigs last November at the Woodward Theater. Wussy, while clearly possessed of a healthier and more sizable Greater Cincinnati fan base, has sometimes played to thin audiences at home due to the old “they’ll be back next month” cop-out.
Although it hasn’t landed that major-label deal that gave Ass Ponys their early leg up (the Ponys had two albums released through A&M Records), Wussy hasn’t needed it to garner widespread attention. Since Cleaver and wildly talented guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Lisa Walker formed Wussy as a duo a decade and a half ago, the band has been a fixture on the roster of local indie label Shake It Records, with album releases that have been lauded by some of the country’s most respected music writers, particularly the “Dean of American Rock Critics,” legendary scribe Robert Christgau, known for decades of work for New York’s Village Voice and numerous other major music publications. Since falling for Wussy’s stellar 2005 debut, Funeral Dress, Christgau has been a passionate supporter. He cited Funeral Dress and 2007’s Left for Dead as two of the 10 best albums of the new millennium, and the lowest letter grade he’s given any Wussy release is a “B-,” which he assigned to the band’s 2013 odds-and-sods, free download release, Berneice Huff and son, Bill sings Popular Favorites.
Wussy’s rise has been gradual but steady, with more people taking notice with each successive album release. But with Attica!, the group’s name-recognition and popularity increased significantly. Forever Sounds is coming out to more national (and international) anticipation than any album so far in Wussy’s career. The band boosted its touring activities after the release of Attica! and discovered that the album had raised its profile so much in some areas, its headlining shows were selling out in cities the group had never before played. Through enthusiastic word-of-mouth buzz, glowing notices from popular press outlets like Spin, NPR, Uncut, The Guardian, Pitchfork and The New York Times, a feature and performance segment on CBS This Morning (the band’s network television debut) and dates opening for The Afghan Whigs and The Heartless Bastards, Wussy went into the recording of Forever Sounds knowing there was a much larger audience excitedly waiting to hear it.
But regardless of the global accolades that are routinely thrown its way these days, the band remains grounded and largely unaffected by all the potentially distracting attention and pressure, particularly on a creative level. Wussy is a tight unit, trusting each other when it comes to collaborating and never letting egos get in the way.
The Process“Everyone has an idea about everything,” says bassist/multi-instrumentalist Mark Messerly. “We can say… ‘That’s a cool part, but what if you did this?’ You can pretty much say anything. The egos are real low.”
“Music is a collaborative process,” Walker adds. “If you’re creating in the moment, what is there to have an ego about? It’s just an idea to try.”
“I don’t care if somebody doesn’t like something I do,” Cleaver says. “I’m probably going to be second-guessing when I walk away anyway. I think we’re a whole band of second-guessers.”
That streak of humility is deeply ingrained in Wussy’s five members — Cleaver, Walker, Messerly, drummer Joe Klug and pedal-steel player John Erhardt (who played with Cleaver in Ass Ponys) — to the extent that it’s a tangible part of the band’s sound. From the very beginning, the members of Wussy have never focus-grouped their music or overthought their intentions. That lack of deliberation, even when the band chases specific ideas, is a hallmark of Wussy’s catalog in general and Forever Sounds specifically.
“Attica! started out with a bunch of acoustic songs from Chuck, and we were like, ‘Oh, this will be our Harvest,’ then it turned into what it turned into,” Messerly says, referencing Rock legend Neil Young’s acoustic-based masterpiece and the band’s decidedly not-Harvest-like last album. “(For Forever Sounds), we talked about how we wanted to make it our Dark Side of the Moon and try to connect everything, and it ended up being what it was.”
Cleaver gives a good deal of the credit for the way Forever Sounds turned out to co-producers John Hoffman and Jerri Queen, who worked with the band on its 2015 Record Store Day EP, Public Domain, Vol. 1. Longtime Wussy producer John Curley (also the bassist for Ass Ponys/Wussy pals The Afghan Whigs) turned the reins over to Hoffman and Queen, whose musical adventurism — both play together in Vacation, among other bands — synced up well with Wussy’s laissez-faire studio demeanor.
“John’s very perceptive, and I think he knew we would work really well together,” Cleaver says. “Those guys will try anything, and that’s the attitude we went into the record with, like, ‘Let’s do this. Let’s make the record we want to make.’ ”
“We’re sometimes afraid to make that leap in the studio and get as raw as we get live. That’s what John and Jerri helped us do,” Walker says of the producers’ fresh energy and perspective. “They’re 25, they’re making Punk records, but their records and our records aren’t that much different. You could take Vacation’s record and Wussy’s Wussy record and play them side by side, and they make sense.”
“John Hoffman gave us the best compliment ever,” Cleaver adds. “He was like, ‘You guys let us leave in what everyone wants us to take out.’ I’m not sure that’s absolutely true, but they’re right. It’s human beings making records.”
Messerly has his own theory on Forever Sounds’ glorious din, and it concerns Erhardt’s recent promotion to full-member status after a few years of touring and playing live shows with the band.
“A lot of that wall of sound and so much of the cool noise on this record is coming from John,” Messerly says. “We’ve always wanted to be noisy, but he actually makes us sound like what we wanted to sound like.”
While Cleaver agrees that Erhardt has had a huge impact on Wussy, he’s convinced that the band has always operated as a collective, and its sonic success is predicated on that relationship.
“People come with ideas, and there’s spontaneity, and we’re all doing it at the same time and someone goes, ‘Hey, this’ll sound good here,’ ” he says. “Everybody kind of makes it happen. Once in awhile, a mistake turns into something, so there’s that realm. I still fucking don’t know what it is (that makes Wussy work). I do, but I don’t. Noise is kind of a trial and error thing. Sometimes it’s great, and sometimes I know they’re sitting in there going, ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’ ”
But even as Wussy has relied on basic protocols for approaching a new album, every foray into the studio has featured new elements and yielded new results. On Forever Sounds, the band’s recent trend of recording relatively live in the studio continued with obviously great results.
“With Attica!, we were playing the songs live (in the studio),” Messerly says. “More and more with each record, we’re playing at the same time, not like the old way where you start with the drums and keep stacking stuff.”
That technique sometimes means any song a band constructs in the studio requires a steep learning curve to perform live. While Wussy remained committed to writing and arranging Forever Sounds on the fly, they were more prepared to play the finished song, regardless the result.
“Our last practice, a couple of days ago, we played the whole album,” Cleaver says. “Some of it was not all up there, but we did it, and I don’t know if we’ve ever done that.”
The album’s first single, “Dropping Houses” (which Spin magazine’s website premiered in January) was one such semi-construction that also benefited from another recent wrinkle in Wussy’s writing process.
“Mark and Joe started recording practices and we would listen, and I narrowed it down and found some tracks I liked and that they remembered they liked,” Walker says.
“They were tiny little ideas before we got in the studio,” Messerly adds.
“But the feel was right,” Walker continues. “It had this sort of drum feel and this guitar riff, and we would keep that.”
“It’s a great way of making records, I mean if they turn out (well), obviously,” Cleaver says. “You go in with not much of a notion and come home and you’re like, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’ ”
“Also, there’s seven heads in the room,” Klug notes. “There are spots on the record where I didn’t intend some of the percussion to be that loud in the mix, and I fought for (it) to be lower, but it didn’t end up that way. You accept that. Maybe next time there won’t be percussion. It’s all part of it.”
The AlbumKlug is the dividend that keeps paying interest for Wussy. Since his 2010 arrival after the departure of original drummer Dawn Burman, he’s brought a hammer-and-tong sensibility to the rhythm section and a multi-instrumentalist’s facility to the studio, which has extended to the rest of the band.
“Since Joe, there’s arranging going on,” Cleaver says. “I tend to be like, ‘Oh, it sounds like it’s in a garbage can. I like it.’ But there’s a lot more to it. We’ve also been able to fix songs that weren’t going down the right path.”
“I think we all had different goals coming into this record that meshed really well, and the nice thing about it is everyone has creative ideas beyond their main instrument,” Walker says. “Joe plays a shit-ton of keyboard and organ and Mellotron, and Chuck and I play a little piano here and there and Mark did the harmonium.”
Another interesting facet of Forever Sounds is the band’s restraint, not only in the balance of the noise-to-calm ratio, but also in the relatively brief nature of the album — 10 songs in 38 minutes.
“We recorded 16 or 17 songs and kept the 10 that fit together well,” Cleaver says. “We can use those (others) as unreleased b-sides and actually have good b-sides.”
“The thing I’m most proud of with this record is the fact that 16 or 17 song ideas were generated, but there was very little fussing about letting songs go as the sound of the record began to emerge,” Messerly says. “Certain songs started making sense (together). It goes back to there was no ego, and (the album) really did grow into its own thing.”
Cleaver says not having just one dictatorial songwriter results in an abundance of material from which to pick.
“Songs aren’t as precious when there’s so much to choose from,” he says. “I know we can come up with something else. We could come up with another song probably by the end of this day. We go in, we fuck around and there it is.”
When it comes to influences, Wussy has always covered the waterfront. Walker cites British Shoegaze icons like Slowdive, Ride and My Bloody Valentine as personal faves, and calls out Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright and Led Zeppelin bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones for the flourishes and touches they inspired. All of the band members give solid props to Tom Petty for a catalog packed with songwriting gems. How all of that comes out as Wussy is fascinatingly mysterious.
“You’ve got four other people who are behind it, in the right way,” Erhardt says. “I think a lot of our stuff comes out of the air, and out of feeling, and it’s without expectation of what’s going to happen. And the result, which is cool, is that there are a lot of things that feel like something — they feel like Led Zeppelin or My Bloody Valentine — but they’re not, because they didn’t come in with that intent. We’re just open and respond to what’s happening.”
Erhardt refers to the friendly competition between Cleaver and Walker as Wussy’s primary writers, and the pair agrees that they continually set a high bar for each other.
“Lisa sang (new album track) ‘Donny’s Death Scene’ one night, and I’m like, ‘Aw, my songs are shit,’ ” Cleaver says. “I went home, sat on the couch all night and came back with a couple that kind of sounded the same, because there is some competition, but it’s a healthy competition. If somebody comes up with a little lick or riff, it’s like, ‘Sonofabitch, now I gotta go get something.’ And that’s a good thing.”
The PartnersIt’s hard to imagine that Wussy could have attained the relative success they have in the past decade without the unwavering support of Shake It Records’ Darren Blase, who has handled every Wussy release to date. Their relationship began when Blase received a demo by Cleaver and Walker to consider for a spot at the MidPoint Music Festival. He was so intrigued by it that when they came into Shake It’s Northside store, he asked them if they had anything else. He loved the next batch of songs so much he offered to release them officially, which led to Funeral Dress.
“We all loved the record, but we weren’t expecting it to hit the chord that it has with people,” Blase says. “The fanatical fan base they’ve built is truly amazing, and they’re in it for the long haul and are constantly bringing others along for the ride. There’s also that aspect of playing the different mixes in the store, and people’s ears perk up and they get excited. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to those great stories of Sam & Dave cutting new tracks at Stax and bringing the demos to the front store, Satellite Records, and Stax co-owner Estelle Aston would play them and gauge excitement.
“And I really like putting out their records,” he continues, “because I really like them as people; they’re funny as hell, and it’s an honor to put out records by two of the best songwriters in the States, who just happen to be in the same band.”
That same attitude has now extended overseas with Wussy’s affiliation with Damnably records in the U.K. Damnably founder George Gargan became aware of the band when guitarist Chris Brokaw of Indie cult favorites Come and Codeine cited a Wussy album in his annual best-of list on MySpace back around 2010. Damnably had put out a couple of Brokaw’s releases, so Gargan got in touch and asked about Wussy; Brokaw directed the label to the band he had been hipped to by Ken Katkin, host of the local Trash Flow Radio show on WAIF and formerly of the independent labels Homestead and Safe House Records (which put out sophomore Ass Ponys album Grim). In 2012, Damnably signed Wussy to a U.K./European distribution deal and released Buckeye, an ace 17-track compilation culled from the band’s first four albums, followed by Attica!, which made headway in Norway, Germany and Ireland.
“Buckeye was non-stop Wussy hits and a good introduction for the U.K. (and) European folk who’d never heard of them — a better start in a new territory than reissuing an old album,” Gargan says. “Buckeye caught on and got a Guardian review, and most importantly, Gideon Coe and Marc Riley on (BBC Radio 6 Music) loved it and have championed Wussy (in the U.K.) ever since. Riley just gave ‘Dropping Houses’ its first U.K. play. We are working Forever Sounds now, and the main German ’zine and pretty big Belgian and Dutch ’zines are loving the album and premiering tracks. That doesn’t happen often for our label, so it’s going well.”
“Going well” has always been a relative term for Wussy, and while the musicians would certainly love to be able to make their sole living from their musical endeavors, none of them have dreams of making Kanye money. Until the bandmates are able to quit their day jobs, they’ll just have to settle for being one of the best bands in America. Not that Wussy isn’t going all out with Forever Sounds — cross-country tour dates begin this week, with an album release concert in New York on March 4, already-sold-out shows in Baltimore and Boston and a slew of gigs in the U.K. beginning in late April. Wussy hosts an “album pre-release” show for its Cincinnati fans on Feb. 27 at Woodward Theater (with fellow Ohio greats Scrawl opening).
Forever Sounds looks to be Wussy’s biggest album yet, but regardless of what happens next, it’s pretty apparent that the band members will continue to write and record songs pretty much the way they have since the start. They’re hardcore music fans making music they love to both create and hear.
“I like songs where the music and the words are neck-and-neck,” Walker says. “Sonically, that’s just what my ears want to hear. I want some mystery. I want to have to look at the lyric sheet. I like Rock & Roll.”
Click through the playlist below for video highlights from throughout Wussy's career.
WUSSY celebrates its new album release Feb. 27 at Woodward Theater. Visit wussy.org and woodwardtheater.com for more info, and pre-order Forever Sounds here.
