Wisconsin Historical Society
Tom Laskin with Appliances-SFB in 1984.
Staff writer and Appliances-SFB frontman Tom Laskin.
Are you a musician? Would you like a major-label record contract? Write for Isthmus!
Well, it worked for one guy.
In the 1980s, Phil Davis was an Isthmus staff writer on the arts beat. He covered music acts including the Madison power-pop band Spooner, whose lineup featured future Garbage co-founder Butch Vig. The two became friends and collaborated in Fire Town, the garage-rock band that signed with Atlantic and released two albums before disbanding in 1989. Davis sang and played guitar.
“It was something I wanted to do, and I got an opportunity to experience it,” Davis says of his major-label career. “Very few people really do.”
Davis belongs to a select group, Isthmus music writers who have also been active musicians in the Madison scene. He says making music and writing about it are complementary endeavors. When he was covering musicians, he says, “I understood what was going into the songwriting. I understood what was going into the production of records.”
But eventually he had to choose. “I can’t do this,” he recalls thinking. “I can’t be this writer because there’s just too much to do, touring and all this stuff.” So he left the Isthmus staff. He returned as a freelancer after Fire Town disbanded and kept playing music with projects including, more recently, the Ghost Particles, Stone Prairie and the Emperors of Wyoming, which reunited Davis and Vig.
Davis says he brought another journalist-musician to Isthmus, longtime staff writer Tom Laskin, who died in 2016. In the 1980s Laskin fronted Madison punk band Appliances-SFB. Davis met him at Vig’s Smart Studios.
“I knew he was getting a Ph.D. in English, that this guy was smart, and he probably could write, and he liked music,” Davis says. “I suggested, ‘What would you think about writing something for Isthmus?’ He said, ‘Yeah, maybe.’” Laskin wrote for Isthmus until 2008.
Davis says Laskin’s onstage persona belied his mild presence offstage. “His vocal style was sort of like a constant roar, which, if you knew him at all, that was not him,” Davis recalls. “He was letting something out, I suppose.”
Another journalist-musician is Andy Moore, who has contributed to Isthmus since 1980. He wrote the column Close to Home and has covered many local and national artists.
Moore is also a banjoist, guitar player, singer and songwriter. In 1996 he co-founded the Cork ‘n Bottle String Band and played weekly with the Madison bluegrass group till 2001. Other projects have included the Americana group Winn Dixie; the Christmas-themed Andy Moore and the Misfit Toys; and Disaster Passport, which accompanies screenings of the documentary Koyaanisqatsi.
“My music vocation has introduced me to a lot of people and experiences that have benefited my reporting in Isthmus,” Moore says. “And I believe that Isthmus has introduced me to a lot of people and experiences that have benefited my music.”
Being a journalist-musician has its pitfalls. Davis says he became uncomfortable reviewing other musicians’ work, a sentiment echoed by Isthmus guide editor and music writer Bob Koch, who plays guitar and sings with Madison bands the Low Czars and the Arkoffs.
“The longer I’ve done it, it feels weirder to be a critic,” Koch says of combining music and journalism. “I feel like if somebody is honestly trying to make art, it feels weird to slam it.”
Full disclosure: I am a member of this club. In the 2000s I played country music with the Madison bands the Junkers and the World’s Greatest Lovers, and I was on staff at Isthmus as an editor and writer from 2005 to 2012. As I entered my 40s, I learned a truth every part-time musician eventually faces: Late nights in the clubs make early mornings in the office tough.
