Posted in Whathaveyou on November 3rd, 2017 by JJ Koczan
As they continue to support late-2016’s Fire Not Reason (review here), Pennsylvania-based trio Backwoods Payback will hit the road for 11 shows alongside Royal Thunder this coming January. Most of the gigs are in the Southeast, but the tour starts out in Philly and hits Brooklyn before dipping back down the Eastern Seaboard to hit Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri and so on, and in addition to Royal Thunder and Backwoods Payback, the first four nights of the stint are set to feature Heavy Temple as well, which only bolsters the bill as far as I’m concerned.
I was lucky enough to see guitarist/vocalist Mike Cummings, bassist Jessica Baker and drummer Erik Larson perform earlier this year at Roadburn 2017 (review here) as part of their European tour with New Hampshire riffwreckers Scissorfight, and of the many times I’ve been fortunate to see them play, I can’t recall one where they sounded so completely on-all-cylinders. The material on Fire Not Reason is a joy of heavy rock combined with raw hardcore, metal and other elements, and their presentation has never been so tight. Am I telling you outright it’s worth showing up to see them play? Yes, yes I am.
They announced the tour thusly:
Greetings from the other side of Halloween!
Lots about to be happening in the Backwoods Payback camp. We are hitting the road this coming Jan 2018 for a run of shows supporting ROYAL THUNDER! Heavy Temple will be jamming the first four shows with us as well.
1/18 – Philadelphia PA, Kung Fu Necktie 1/19 – Brooklyn NY, St Vitus 1/20 – Lancaster PA, Lizard Lounge 1/21 – Richmond VA, Strange Matter 1/22 – Charlotte NC, The Milestone 1/23 – Johnston City TN, The Hideaway 1/24 – Nashville TN, The End 1/25 – Jackson MS, CS’S 1/27 – Birmingham AL, The Nick 1/28 – Atlanta GA, The Earl 1/29 – Raleigh NC, Slims (just Backwoods Payback)
We were also just announced as a part of the Maryland Doom Fest taking place June 22/23/24 2018 in Frederick MD alongside some old friends in The Obsessed, Windhand, Weedeater, Lightning Born, Caustic Casanova and a TON more!
Some cool stuff should be hitting the digital shelves before the end of the year too…keep your eyes peeled
See you on the road,
bp
BACKWOODS PAYBACK: Jessica Baker – Bass Mike Cummings – Guitar/vocals Erik Larson – Drums
Posted in Reviews on December 1st, 2016 by JJ Koczan
[Click play above to check out the premiere of Backwoods Payback’s video for ‘You Don’t Move,’ directed by 51 Deep. The band’s new album, Fire Not Reason, is out tomorrow, Dec. 2.]
From the opening strains of its leadoff track, it’s clear Pennsylvania’s Backwoods Payback have made the choice the title of their third album presents: Fire Not Reason. With a screaming beginning, post-hardcore lead work in the guitar and an underpinning of heavy riffing that somehow ties it together, “Elephants” stomps out more of a genre span in its quickly executed three minutes than some bands do in their career, yet like much of what follows on the self-released outing, it wastes nothing.
It’s been five years since Backwoods Payback released their second album, Momantha (review here), and while they’ve released a 2012 live outing (discussed here) and the 2014 In the Ditch EP (review here) in the interim, the nine-song/30-minute Fire Not Reason hits with all the intensity of the passing half-decade, forming its crux around a brutal honesty of emotion and songcraft that’s neither apologetic nor ironic in the slightest. For founding guitarist/vocalist Mike Cummings and bassist Jessica Baker, it is a realization of the human core that has always gone unnamed as the central appeal of the band: here metal, here punk, here grunge, here heavy rock, but most of all itself in a way that strikes as wholly without pretense. Intimidatingly without pretense.
Not that it’s in-your-face in some cliché metal dudeliness or aggro fashion. Certainly there are aggressive moments, as on “Elephants” or the black ‘n’ roll midsection of “Dirge” (video premiere here), which elsewhere provides one of the album’s landmark hooks — and if you told me second cut “You Don’t Move” was written with the intent of being a pro wrestling theme, I’d believe it — but throughout, Backwoods Payback keep emotional rawness so central to their mission that it comes to be the defining facet of their approach. Fire Not Reason finds further distinction in Cummings and Baker having added drummer Erik Larson to the fold. Known for handling guitar and/or vocals to one degree or another in outfits like Alabama Thunderpussy, The Might Could, Hail!Hornet, Birds of Prey and so on, in addition to his solo work, Larson also drummed in Richmond, Virginia-based punkers Avail, and so is no stranger to the stylistic turns that Backwoods Payback make within these songs.
Rather, he’s right at home in this trio incarnation of the band, and does much to bolster both the start-stop chugging of “You Don’t Move” and the more languid rollout of the later “That Dream Again.” While “Elephants” launches Fire Not Reason at an all-go, all-in melding of styles and drive, songs like “Don’t Try” and the somewhat faster centerpiece “Tuxedo” seem more like signature Backwoods Payback, as much as their sound permits anything to be. Informed by grunge and heavy and Southern rock, they make something that acknowledges all of them and isn’t necessarily shooting to emulate — perhaps less here than ever — but even when “Tuxedo” breaks at its halfway point to build back up to its full-thrust finish, they’re very much in their element if not necessarily their “comfort zone” in the sense of coming across lazy or haphazard in their approach.
Cummings, who has a couple solo acoustic releases to his credit at this point, takes center position for “Even Odds,” which transitions directly from “Tuxedo” before it and provides a sub-three-minute breather that also gives a side-B-style expansion to the sonic palette with which the album as a whole works. It is a long way from “Elephants” or even the slick groove of “Dirge” earlier, and it changes the context of the opening strums of the subsequent “That Dream Again,” which soon enough opens a heavy blues roll with a spaciousness that calls to mind a more on-the-beat All Them Witches in its first half before solidifying around a more forward motion and, as it nears its finish, a lumbering stomp made all the more palpable by Larson‘s crash. The penultimate “Snakes” is more immediately about swing, but its thickened fuzz moves smoothly into and through an upbeat hook before dropping out to give the drums a short standalone section where they’re soon joined by lead guitar and Baker‘s bass, which feels more tonally present in the last stretch perhaps because of the distinction of its kicking in on its own as the final piece to make Backwoods Payback‘s push complete.
It does that, and like much before it, “Snakes” ends efficiently and cleanly, with no frills or veering from its central intent, stopping short to let the nodding “California Lean” close out with one more three-minute affirmation of the truth in songwriting that’s been at the root of Fire Not Reason all along. It might fit in that same category as “Don’t Try” and “Tuxedo” in terms of how its nestles into Backwoods Payback‘s bottom-line aesthetic, as opposed to the branching out in cuts like “Elephants,” “Dirge,” “Even Odds” or even “You Don’t Move,” but “California Lean” also underscores the urgency with which the trio have brought this material to life, and as much as Cummings‘ vocals — willfully strained at times — or his or Baker‘s tones, or Larson‘s drums, or the general rawness of it, it’s that urgency tying Fire Not Reason together. Half a decade later, this is clearly a story the band needed to tell.
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 21st, 2016 by JJ Koczan
I have a hard time reading the title of Backwoods Payback‘s new album, Fire Not Reason, at this point and not hearing it in my head in the voice of guitarist/vocalist Mike Cummings. He delivers the title-line in the song “Dirge,” for which the West Chester, Pennsylvania-based dirt rockers premiered a video here back in July — which you can also see below if you don’t feel like going to all the effort of clicking a link — which is one of the most striking inclusions on the nine-track offering, in part for the screams that show up later on, but even more for the breadth that Backwoods Payback cover in its sub-four-minute runtime while still keeping to a straightforward structure. I called it “dirt rock” basically because that’s what I’ve always called them, but the truth is way more complex, particularly as regards this outing.
They’ve set a Dec. 2 release date for Fire Not Reason, getting it in just before the music universe shuts down for the holiday season and everyone goes home to record who isn’t out playing a holiday tour. Half shuts down, maybe. Either way, it’ll go down as a 2016 release, and to mark its arrival, the trio — Cummings, bassist Jessica Baker and drummer Erik Larson (ex-Alabama Thunderpussy, many others) — will head north for weekender shows in Vermont and New Hampshire. Preorders are reportedly imminent as well, though through what outlet those will be has yet to be announced. Keep an eye out, I guess.
The band offered few words on the subject, but showed off the presumed cover art for the album, which shows the strip-it-to-the-core mentality from which they’re working at this point:
Dec 2nd 2016. fire not reason digital / cd / cassette
preorder info to follow
BACKWOODS PAYBACK: Jessica Baker – Bass Mike Cummings – Guitar/vocals Erik Larson – Drums
3 human beings rocking harder than you.
Backwoods Payback live: Dec 02 Showcase Lounge, Higher Ground South Burlington, VT Dec 03 Dover Brickhouse Dover, NH
“Dirge” is the first audio to be made public from Backwoods Payback‘s upcoming third album, Fire Not Reason. I’m not sure when the record is being released, but the timing coincides with what’s sure to be a landmark weekender the Pennsylvania/Virginia trio have coming up with Scissorfight and Gozu over the next couple nights, playing Brooklyn and Philly together after Backwoods also journey through the wilds of Wallingford, CT, to meet up with Buzzard Canyon and others at Cherry St. Station tonight. Either way, I’ll take what I can get when it comes to this band, and I think “Dirge” does a good job of showing why.
Like a lot of Fire Not Reason, which whenever it arrives will be half a decade removed from Backwoods Payback‘s last outing, 2011’s Momantha (review here), it offers an unexpected twist in method that, along with its kind of unassuming central melody, brings an air of the extreme to the proceedings. Some parts are more fire than reason, you might say. They’re not always tossing in screams throughout the record, but there are pieces that feel so honest and true to who and what the band is that every whim they follow seems to have a purpose in reinforcing that.
I hope to have more on Fire Not Reason and Backwoods Payback — now comprised of guitarist/vocalist Mike Cummings, bassist Jessica Baker and drummer Erik Larson (ex-Alabama Thunderpussy) — as we get closer to the release date. Stay tuned.
And enjoy:
Backwoods Payback, “Dirge” official video
From the 2016 Album, Fire Not Reason
Starting Line-Up: Jessica Baker, Mike Cummings, Erik Larson
Shot & Directed by John Keefer & Chris Johnson, Edited by Chris Johnson. A 51 DEEP production.
Backwoods Payback live: -Thurs 7/28 w/ Buzzard Canyon, Dirt Wizard, & Pussywolf @ Cherry Street Station Wallingford, CT -Fri 7/29 w/ Scissorfight, Gozu & Black Black Black @ Lucky 13 Brooklyn, NY (tickets) -Sat 7/30 w/ Scissorfight, Gozu & Worth @ Kung Fu Necktie Philadelphia, PA (tickets)
