Drinking With Tony Ladesich In Honor of Pendergast, Whose Final Show Is Tonight
Not counting next year's reunion (though, in this economy, who knows?), tonight will be the last opportunity to see the Vito Corleone (from the first movie) of Kansas City alt-country, Pendergast, perform live. The details: 9 p.m. at Davey's. Brother Trucker and Macon Greyson open. Cover is $7.
Readers of this blog will remember the announcement Tony Ladesich made a couple of weeks ago that the band was parting ways. Well, later that same day, I met up with Tony and his lovely girlfriend Rhonda Lyne for drinks and Bob's Yer Uncle Music Trivia at the Record Bar. The idea was we'd have some fun and look back on Pendergast's life as a band, and I'd write it up, but it was kind of hard to stay on task.
When you've just arrived and Tony Ladesich looks at you and says, "I haven't done any significant drinking in months," and then orders another vodka cranberry (his fourth? fifth? eigth? who's counting?), and then reflects, "I like red drinks. They're lady drinks" -- you know the evening isn't gonna get more lucid as it progresses. On top of that, he wasn't the only one drinking. And I forgot my camera. However, I did take notes, so ... I don't know what exactly will be after the jump, but there will be something to read. I hope. Click on the tiny cosmo to continue.
LE FILM
Why, you might ask, had Ladesich done no serious drinking in months prior to trivia night? It is because he'd been working 12- to 16-hour days finishing up a documentary. Cowtown Ballroom: Sweet Jesus is a look back on the heyday of the legendary 1970s Kansas City rock venue that devolved into the El Torreon we know today (which varying reports say is still more or less being restored). I wrote a column about a summer fundraiser for their film, looky. Ladesich and his partner, Joe Heyen, had just finished their first draft of the film, and Tony was in the mood to celebrate.
LA TRIVIATA
Maybe you know things and maybe you don't. This is the hard truth of trivia. Like, maybe you know that the DJ who first coined the term "rock and roll" was Alan Freed, and maybe you don't. Having or not having this knowledge doesn't mean you automatically do or don't know about other cool shit, but it sure looks that way. The pub quiz is where the straight-A kids from grade school who grew into the pop-culture geeks of today can get their smug vindication.
You do realize this is becoming a thinkpiece.
Tony, Rhonda and I fared quite well in the first round. Tony got the Freed question. I managed to guess that a name-that-tune song that host Robert Moore played a clip from was Echo & the Bunnymen, though if I weren't familiar with the host's taste in music from listening to his show for years, I may not have been able to guess correctly. We got other questions -- I mean, Tony did -- in that round, about Shane McGowan and some country musicians and other stuff. Then, in the second round, we bombed. I am still ashamed that I didn't know that one song was "Holiday in Cambodia" by the Dead Kennedys. 'Cause, man, knowing about punk rock is important. It's like America. Conclusion: We -- er... I mean Tony -- knew the correct answer to the final question, but we bet zero points, so we came in nowhere near the top. The question was about Pat Smear -- you know, Ricardo's brother.
DESCRIPTION PHYSICALE OBLIGATOIRE DU TONY LADESICH
Face: Youthful. Boylike. Mostly hidden behind a thicket of whiskers.
Body: Stocky. Broad. Ursine. Roughly the same shape but half the size of your average NFL center. It is a build that seems bred for long winters out on the road, singing country music to people with cold noses and large glasses of beer in front of them. See also: Steve Earle.
LE PRONUNCIATION DU <
"Laddish."
Also laddish: the Mad Lads.
PENSÉES SUR LA MUSIQUE
The Jason Beerses among you -- for whom naught but pure, distilled information about the music itself is paramount; those who abhor frivolity and trifles and despise talk of places and people and hopes and dreams and guilty pleasures and chickens, because all but the description of the man with his instrument and the sound the twain maketh together is but chaff upon the palate to be spit out and rebuked -- will by now (if you're still reading) want to know what's going on with Ladesich and the other lads of Pendergast and what sort of music they are making and intending to make.
I haven't talked to any of the other lads in the band (Mike Rooney on guitar, Rich Burgess on bass and Sam Platt on drums), but Ladesich is starting a new project, ostensibly with Brendan Moreland, his old bandmate from the pre-Pendergastian Sandoval, plus Matt Brahl (original Pender drummer), Jason Magierowski (bassist for Paw) and pedal steel player Nate Hofer. They're thinking of calling it The Belleweather State.
Burgess and Platt, of course, are going strong in Expassionates. Mike Rooney heats up licks in Faster than Hell. That's about all I got as far as future plans go. I feel like I've failed you, Jason Beers.
But this discussion does raise the question, "Why break up the band if you're going to keep playing music anyway?" Well, for one, as Tony said at some point in our trivial evening, "You can only be in a band for so long in a town like Kansas City before people stop coming to see you." He also added that it was not an easy decision to make.
Our party moved to Dave's Stagecoach Inn, where he reminisced on the glory days of Pendergast. "I could drink Herculean amounts of whiskey," Tony said as he began on another vodka-cran, the vodka in it being the "clean-burning fuel" that he now prefers.
He remembered playing the Way Out Club in St. Louis, back when Chris Meck (now of the Gaslights) was in the band. "I was drinking a lot. ... We played at 10 o'clock. I was Westerberg drunk and fell down on the first song. Chris said, 'If you ever do that again, that's it, I'm out of the band!" The band nursed itself on a bag of burgers and a bag of fries bought at White Castle.
"I knew we weren't gonna be famous," Tony said. "My goal for the band was to do good work and make great songs. I just got the feeling it was time to be over. ... We've come to the end of a cycle."
FIN
And so ends our exploration, friends. Go see Pendergast tonight. Tell the boys they done good. Buy them shots -- but not too many. Or whatever.
And now, a cross-section of a fully automated mechanical duck.
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