Face the Nation: from left, Tony and Chip Kinman.
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COWBOY NATION
RADIO NATIONALS, MEMPHIS RADIO KINGS
Tractor Tavern, 206- 789-3599, $7
9 p.m. Sat., May 10
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London, england, 1983: The filth and the fury long ago succumbed to fashion and frill. British bobbies even pose next to tartan-clad, Mohawk-coiffed punks for tourists' cameras and nobody bats an eye.
But here come Americans Tony and Chip Kinman, in Britain with their band Rank and File for a five-week tour with Elvis Costello, strolling down Kings Road and decked out in what, for them, is their usual garb: fringed jackets, flannel shirts, cowboy boots, and impossibly wide-brimmed Stetsons. Shoppers stop and stare; punks gawk and giggle; some wiseacre cabby slows his vehicle down and bellows, "Hey, Texwhere's the bloody roundup?"
"At every step along the way, Rank and File had to prove it deserved to exist," says Tony Kinman, with an exaggerated sigh that gives way to a deep-throated chuckle. He's deeply proud of his former band, but he also has vivid memories of how it felt attempting to break through with a wholly unique songwriting, singing, and visual style.
Because back in the early '80s, there was no such thing as the "alternative country" scene or No Depression magazine. At the time, Rank and File was one of but a handful of outfitsamong them, rockabilly kingpins the Blasters, psychedelic cowboys Green on Red, and Gram Parsons acolytes the Long Ryders dedicated to re-examining the Americana underbelly. As Kinman once famously told a reporter for the New Musical Express, "You can't really label [what Rank and File do]. It's not country-rock. One writer called it rock-country. It's been called country-punk. It's all those things!"
Most of us settled for the term "cow-punk."
Two decades later, Rank and File's first two classic albums, 1982's Sundown and 1984's Long Gone Dead, have been compiled for the first time on CD (with unreleased bonus tracks and a thick booklet, natch) as The Slash Years, courtesy of Rhino/Handmade. And for Kinman, it's a long-overdue acknowledgment of his band's pioneer status. "It used to bother me that it was almost like we'd never existed," he admits. "A lot of younger people playing now never had the chance to hear us. They'd make the jump from, say, Gram Parsons to the Knittersor Uncle Tupelo. There's this whole void there, and I think it's simply because our stuff was not around on CD."
In 1977 the then-teenaged Kinman brothers formed the Dils, quickly becoming, along with X, the Germs, the Avengers, and the Nuns, one of the top West Coast punk bands. Likened to "an American Clash," the Dils issued a handful of seminal 45s (in particular "I Hate the Rich" and "Class War"), even touring with the Clash. By 1980, however, with a rigid punk orthodoxy setting in hard and the musically restless Kinmans not content to adhere to a louder/faster aesthetic, it was time to call it a day.
Chip headed for New York to hook up with former Nuns guitarist Alejandro Escovedo, who'd joined Judy Nylon's band but shared with Chip (whose father had owned numerous country albums) a reawakened interest in Johnny Cash, George Jones, and Merle Haggard. Meanwhile, Tony, who'd split for Portland to pursue a romantic interest, became increasingly intrigued by his brother's letters and phone calls detailing his and Escovedo's embryonic country/pop project they dubbed Rank and File.
"So they had booked a little tour that was going to bring them through Portland," recalls Tony, picking up the story. "I'd broken up with my girlfriend, and I thought, 'This is a perfect opportunity! I'll just hop in the van with them and get out.' All we did on the way back was talk about music. And we talked about going someplace other than New York as well."
That someplace would turn out to be Austin. Shedding the original Rank and File drummer and bassist, Escovedo and the two siblings headed for the Lone Star State.
Kinman remembers the move being based on an out-of-date mental image of a region dominated by Willie, Waylon, and the outlaw-country movement. "We weren't hip enough to know that that scene had been over for six or seven years!" he laughs. "It would have been like being a punk and moving to London around '84 to hang out with the Sex Pistols." Yet despite that naïveté as well as some initial resistance from both the local punk scene and the older country players, Rank and File flourished in Austin. They picked up a drummer, Slim Evans, and began working up a repertoire. They additionally took in as many country shows as possible; Kinman recalls seeing the likes of Ernest Tubb and Jimmie Rodgers protégé Bill Neely on a regular basis.
"Another big part," observes Kinman, "was Chip, Al, and I really thinking about what we were doing, trying to bring some life and skill into it. Because you know how badly it can sound when people are just going, 'Hey, even I can do a country song!' We didn't want that. Plus, you're gonna come up against guys who can pick and sing the pants off you. So you better be able to play."
The band got its break during a tour of the West Coast with Slash Records act the Blasters, striking up a friendship with Dave Alvin, who advised the record label to sign Rank and File, and hooking up with San Francisco producer David Kahne, who loved their sound. By June of '82, Rank and File were in the studio with Kahne recording their debut for Slash.
