Songwriter Robby Schiller has penned new material for a Dec. 21 reunion.
The eccentric personalities who make up Madison’s pioneering garage-grunge rock band Blueheels can’t live with each other — and they can’t live without each other. The latter part of the equation is good news for fans, because Blueheels are reuniting Dec. 21 at the High Noon Saloon after a nearly five-year hiatus.
The original Blueheels took shape in Neenah in 2005 around the prolific songwriting of Robby Schiller. Between 2008 and 2012 it was actually difficult to miss a Blueheels show. They toured the state as hard as any. Live, the band was confident and rebellious — like the Replacements, only consistently tight and without the blood and dresses. The boys spilled out from whatever modest barroom dressing room was available and brought the party already-in-progress to the stage.
Schiller’s themes have always been bent and quirky — often dispatching everyday losers deep into a fog of misunderstanding and romantic dead ends. But it’s the combination of Schiller’s voice — a Leon Russell croak — and Justin Bricco’s manic lead guitar that creates the Blueheels sound.
By 2012 the band had worn the treads off the tires. Even as the touring continued, the group began work on their fourth album, Weather Machine, also known as “the project that would eventually kill the band,” according to drummer Adam Cargin.
“Between 2008 and 2012, we played a ridiculous amount of shows. Being together all the time is eventually what made us all need to take a break and do something else with our lives,” says Cargin, who emphasizes that no major event precipitated the break. “On stage we could read each other’s minds as we changed songs up almost nightly, trying to keep things interesting as we played some bar for the hundredth time.”
Every musician knows that kind of cohesion doesn’t grow on trees. So it’s no surprise that the players got hungry to play together again.
It’s not as though the members have been twiddling their thumbs these past years. Schiller, an arborist in Madison, has continued to write and perform, most notably as drummer for Little Legend. When not on tour as guitar tech for Lucinda Williams and the Indigo Girls, Bricco performs with Green Bay’s Snowbirds. Cargin is a stay-at-home dad in Providence, Rhode Island. Keyboardist Teddy Pedriana is working as an electrical engineer in Milwaukee, where he also performs with his band Versus the Magnet. Bassist Landon Arkens is head engineer at Madison’s Blast House production facility.
Blast House is where the guys gathered in August to once again kick up their heels in the studio. The result, after only two days of recording and with minimal post-production, is Get Lonely, a crunchy set of new Schiller songs, including an instant Blueheels classic: a Todd Rungren-meets-Prince-sounding number, “Electric Laundry Lady.”
“This time we just wanted to get together, arrange some new tunes and record them basically live. Rely on our instincts and see what that would get us,” says Cargin.
What it got them was vintage Blueheels served up with the fearless attitude of a live show.
The High Noon show will be the rock ’n’ roll reunion of the year as the Blueheels pick up right where they left off. “The only difference now,” says Cargin, “is that a Blueheels show is more like a fun vacation than a tedious day job.”
