It looks like they’ll be Texas-bound at the time, but I gotta say, I wouldn’t mind if Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol showed up on the bill for Desertfest New York either. They’ve been through NYC, which is where I’d be likeliest to catch them, so having not done so is more on me than the band at this point, but yeah. Probably something I should correct, and with their 2024 album, Big Dumb Riffs (review here), as the cause they’re heralding, so much the better.

This round of touring will bring them neither so far north nor so far east in the US, but wherever you are, the arguments for keeping an eye out are manifold, and it’s all the more worth doing so since they tour enough they’re bound to show up on your block sooner or later. Or I guess you could go to Austin City Limits or Levitation in their hometown if you’re feeling fancy/have cash to spend. Point I guess is it’s time I saw this band. If you already have, I’d love to know how that went.

Tour dates and such from the PR wire, and the album stream so you can get a dose:

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol add Fall US dates to Austin City Limits ACL Fest & Levitation

Austin trio Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol announce additional Fall 2024 US tour dates ahead of their performances at Austin City Limits’ prestigious ACL Fest and Levitation 2024 with The Sword and Pentagram. The band continues domestic dates supporting their new album BIG DUMB RIFFS through the end of the year. See current shows below. Tickets are available HERE: https://taplink.cc/rickshawbillie

The band has also recently joined the roster of Doomstar Bookings for EU & UK touring beginning in Spring 2025.

Hot on the heels of their breakout 5th studio release Doom Wop (2023), Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol returns with Big Dumb Riffs: A whole new variant of the fuzzed out, overdriven, melodic, groovy music they have been making since 2016. While Big Dumb Riffs is decidedly more aggressive and rhythmic, it still retains the overtly melodic feel of Doom Wop. But Leo Lydon’s vocals are considerably more angry and negative (song titles like “1-800-EAT-SHIT” and “Body Bag” should be a clue.)

RICKSHAW BILLIE’S BURGER PATROL LIVE 2024:
08/02 Austin, TX – Sagebrush
09/14 Martindale, TX – Duett’s
09/21 Denton, TX – Dan’s Silver Leaf – Burnouts Custom Motorcycle Show
09/26 New Orleans, LA – Siberia
09/27 Birmingham, AL – WorkPlay Canteen
09/28 Asheville, NC – Static Age
09/29 Raleigh, NC – Kings Barcade
10/01 Columbus, OH – The Summit
10/02 Cincinnati, OH – MOTR Pub
10/03 Indianapolis, IN – Black Circle
10/04 Davenport, IA – Raccoon Motel
10/05 Whitewater, WI – Strange LaGrange
10/06 Louisville, KY – Portal
10/07 Chattanooga, TN – JJ’s Bohemia
10/09 Little Rock, AR – Whitewater Tavern
10/13 Austin, TX – Austin City Limits’ ACL Fest
11/03 Austin, TX – Stubb’s – w/ The Sword, Pentagram

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol:
Leo Lydon: eight-string guitar/vocals
Aaron Metzdorf: bass
Sean St.Germain: drums

https://www.facebook.com/rickshawbilliesburgerpatrol
https://www.instagram.com/rickshawbillieandtheboys
https://rickshawbilliesburgerpatrol.bandcamp.com/
http://www.rickshawbilliesburgerpatrol.com/
https://taplink.cc/rickshawbillie

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, Big Dumb Riffs (2024)

What you can glean from Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol signing with Doomstar Bookings and heralding tour plans for the first half of next year is (1:) that will probably include a slew of festival slots and (2:) their earlier-2024 fifth album, Big Dumb Riffs (review here) and the past couple years of hard touring have helped spread the word of their particular take on heavy, combining taut songcraft, a willful drive toward directness, and a heaping dose of shenanigans for a take that feels like it’s been in development for about eight years because, well, it has.

I look forward to seeing where 2025 takes them, and in the meantime they’ll apparently have another US tour for the last quarter of this year — I guess around their hometown appearances at Levitation and Austin City Limits so whatever angle you’re looking from, there’s more to come.

The PR wire dives in on where they’re at and headed:

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol join Doomstar roster for EU & UK touring

More US dates September-December 2024

Austin trio Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol today announce they have joined the roster of Doomstar Bookings for EU & UK touring beginning in Spring 2025. Meanwhile, the band continues domestic dates this Fall supporting their new album BIG DUMB RIFFS from September through December. All tour dates will be announced soon. See current shows, including Austin City Limits’ prestigious ACL Fest and Levitation 2024 with The Sword and Pentagram.

BIG DUMB RIFFS is available on digital, LP and cassette, released May 10th, 2024. Order/stream the album on all formats HERE: https://taplink.cc/rickshawbillie

The band-curated second annual Rickshaw Billie’s BIG DUMB FEST in Austin, TX on June 1st SOLD OUT at Mohawk Austin. This follows a string of sold out dates throughout Texas, Denver, Los Angeles, Brooklyn and more.

“Our catalog has never been short on big dumb riffs, but the idea on this record was to really turn the screw,” says RBBP bassist Aaron Metzdorf. On Big Dumb Riffs, that screw is cranked incredibly tight.

“We just wanted ‘the part’: The opening of Pantera’s ‘Primal Concrete Sledge’, the breakdown in Primus’ ‘Pudding Time’ — the shit that makes you move and lose your mind. Just that part the whole time.”

Across 11 concise, taut songs — most clocking in around 2 minutes or less — Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol demonstrates their skillful ability to blend the merciless low end of Leo Lydon’s 8-string guitar, Aaron Metzdorf’s masterful chordwork on the bass, and Sean St.Germain’s driving drumming.

Hot on the heels of their breakout 5th studio release Doom Wop (2023), Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol returns with Big Dumb Riffs: A whole new variant of the fuzzed out, overdriven, melodic, groovy music they have been making since 2016. While Big Dumb Riffs is decidedly more aggressive and rhythmic, it still retains the overtly melodic feel of Doom Wop. But Leo Lydon’s vocals are considerably more angry and negative (song titles like “1-800-EAT-SHIT” and “Body Bag” should be a clue.)

“The whole writing process was, ‘what if we just played two notes the whole song’,” Metzdorf says. “‘What if we tuned down to almost unusable string tension?’, ‘what if we write a record that will make everyone say ‘wow that is dumb’? Leo and I really move around on stage a lot. Being a dingus is crucial to the groove. All these riffs were designed to allow us to act bigger and dumber on stage.”

Big Dumb Riffs is available on Limited Edition transparent orange vinyl LP, cassette, download and streaming, released on March 22, 2024. Orders are available HERE: https://rickshawbilliesburgerpatrol.bigcartel.com/

RICKSHAW BILLIE’S BURGER PATROL LIVE 2024:
10/13 Austin, TX – Austin City Limits’ ACL Fest
11/03 Austin, TX – Stubb’s – w/ The Sword, Pentagram

https://www.facebook.com/rickshawbilliesburgerpatrol
https://www.instagram.com/rickshawbillieandtheboys
https://rickshawbilliesburgerpatrol.bandcamp.com/
http://www.rickshawbilliesburgerpatrol.com/
https://taplink.cc/rickshawbillie

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, Big Dumb Riffs (2024)

It’s hard to argue with a song called ‘1800EATSHIT.’ Even harder when it’s so damn catchy. Yeah, it’s a little counterintuitive to think of a record called Big Dumb Riffs as refined, but with their third LP, Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol are so clear in their intention and they deliver on it thoroughly enough to make it undeniable. Issued through their own Permanent Teeth Records, the album strips down the Austin, Texas, three-piece’s approach, honing in on tonal character, structure, attitude and, as “1-800-EAT-SHIT” assures, a solid amount of fuckery. Yes, they already their own beer.

The record takes place across 11 songs that span just 23 minutes, and could just as easily position itself as an exploration of the intersectionality between the masculine and the dumbassed writ through lunkheaded hardcore chug, nü-metallic palm-mute dissonance and the Primusian bounce that inspired it — looking at “Papa Pop It” for the latter and “Brat” for the former — stoner riff idolatry and hooks strong enough to hold them up despite the weight of tone emanating from Leo Lydon‘s eight-string guitar and Aaron Metzdorf‘s bass. Both of these dwell in a monolithic low-end space, but with such short songs and make-it-a-party tempos made all the more propulsive through Sean St. Germain‘s drumming, the momentum that opener “Clowntown” sets forth in its initial cycles of tense, head-down chug and subsequent sprint-out is unrelenting through the duration despite slamming into a wall of Even Heavier® brand mega-chug in the metalcore-style breakdown of “Peanut Butter Snack Sticks” on side A.

One thing to understand: Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol know what they’re doing here, and they’re doing it consciously. The short runtime, which is less than many EPs in a heavy underground that often prides itself on longform construction, becomes an advantage. On Big Dumb Riffs, the longest inclusion is closer “In a Jar” at 3:39 and seven of the 11 songs are under two minutes long. They get in, hit hard, make their point, get out. They are not lazy, as the sneering ’90s-style circle-mosher “Whip it Around” clearly demonstrates across its devastatingly efficient 55 seconds, leant a sense of freedom by dropping the pretense of being about anything other than the physicality being conveyed, which is all the more effective since it’s about headbanging, itself a physical act.

Light on flourish by nature and aesthetic choice, they offer a sneering, sometimes-aggressive stance through Lydon‘s vocals and lyrics like, “Stop being a bitch, like your mother,” in “Papa Pop It” or just the screamier backing lines shouting the title later in the penultimate “Blue Collar Man,” which answers both the meaner-sounding distortion of “Peanut Butter Snack Sticks” and the Claypoolish underpinnings noted above following the gets-up-and-runs “Bastard Initiated,” where they foster a similar clenched-teeth tension to that of “Clowntown,” working quickly in a no-bullshit-and-playing-at-being-all-bullshit manner that those who picked up what Rob Crow put down with Goblin Cock should find refreshing. Three dudes in the band means a total of six middle fingers. They all seem to be up here, however busy their hands might otherwise be at any given moment.

As much as Big Dumb Riffs is what it tells you it’s about — i.e., riffs, big, dumb — and as much as Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol have put into making it a fun listen, which is absolutely is, there are also some fairly dark themes. I haven’t actually seen a lyric sheet, so pardon if the quotes aren’t exact (I’m happy to correct whatever needs it), but “Body Bag” is the rolling centerpiece that kicks in after “Whip it Around,” and it and “Papa Pop It” both seem to be about suicide on some level. The verse in “Body Bag” tells the story of a protagonist who takes their own life after “Trying to be mama’s little twinkle in her eye,” and, “His father didn’t want him in the first place but he came in first place,” opening to its catharsis in the stuttered, “Ma-ma-ma-ma-mama, I’m about to have a heart attack” and concluding with, “I loved you but you didn’t say it back,” as the backing vocals join in for “You’d better put him in a body bag,” and they ride the chug through a last chorus around that line for another minute or so.

Outwardly poppier (go figure) and likewise grim in substance, “Papa Pop It” is framed as an imperative: “Papa pop it/Papa pull it/Do it,” and what’s happening there is someone telling, almost daring, their father to kill himself. Between these, the ultra-catchy fuck-you of “1-800-Eat-Shit” — which will no doubt be a sing-along on however many tours the band does for the record — as well as the pointedly-mom-voiced “You love it!” that oozes mockery next to a line about nostalgia being a sack of shit, the taunt in the repeated “Whatchu gonna do about that?”s of “Brat,” and the fact that “In a Jar” despite its turn toward patience and more peaceful, semi-doomgaze-comedown feel, is about murder, the vocals delivering the lines “Keep my hands…/Wrapped around your throat,” like wistful post-punk before rolling into the chorus that makes it plain with, “I’m gonna fucking kill you,” without departing the subdued-in-context last-minute drawl. “Blue Collar Man” encapsulates working class disillusion in the single lyric, “But it wasn’t the plan for the blue collar man” — daring to have a point and make it — and both “Clowntown” and “Bastard Initiated” execute their willful arrogance with a decidedly negative bent.

And I’m not sure who or what “El Sapo” (“the toad”) is about, but its 49 seconds of mute-chug and concluding gang shout come across like homage after the fact. What one might take from all of this is that while Big Dumb Riffs directs itself toward truth in advertising, there’s complexity in how it goes about that, and while its songs are short, they want nothing for persona or narrative. That St. Germain, Metzdorf and Lydon accomplish this side-by-side with their stated goal of simplifying their sound even from where they were on 2022’s Doom Wop (review here) isn’t to be understated — it makes that act of breaking a thing down to its most essential parts a creative progression — and whether you take it on with that in mind or you put it on just to blow your speakers and pummel your brain with its chunky-style depth of frequency, fair enough. It feels like Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol have arrived at the point they’ve been working toward for the last seven years, harnessing primal rhythm and uniting around a single sonic purpose with a deceptively multifaceted confrontationalism. Fuck around and find… yourself?

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, Big Dumb Riffs (2024)

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol on Facebook

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol on Instagram

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol on Bandcamp

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol website

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol links

Up to right about now, my official position™ on Austin’s Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol has been ‘they’re probably a live band.’ All the videos of there’s that I’ve seen, all the photos on their socials, and so on, would seem to back this up, but Fall 2022’s Doom Wop (review here) had charm in its songwriting beyond the ‘this would be cool on stage’ impression it made — though it certainly also made one.

The forthcoming Big Dumb Riffs, which is out March 22 through the band’s own Permanent Teeth Records, hones that sense of craft to an even finer point, their low-end-celebrant ethic spreading across 11 heavy-in-momentum-and-tone tracks that are varied, consistent in quality, cheeky in its self-awareness, but with more intelligence behind it than the somewhat-ironic title or the accordingly willfully dopey nü-metal play in “Whip it Around” might imply, though when you’ve got a track like “1800EATSHIT” — so catchy it’s pop, heavy enough to turn off squares, and goofy enough to be the good time that the ultra-Claypool bounce of the subsequent “Papa Pop It” reinforces despite a somewhat grim lyric — the band kind of becomes undeniable.

As the PR wire notes, Primus is a big factor, and hey, I dig that a lot, and from Floor to Hum to Rob Crow‘s Goblin Cock in “Clowntown” and the fuck-yes nod of “Peanut Butter Snack Sticks,” the Austin trio sound like the real deal here, and fair enough for the work they’ve done to this point in their tenure. Some punk, some metal, mosh riffs, headbang riffs, nod riffs, slow riffs, fast riffs, up riffs, down riffs, one riff, two riffs, red riffs, blue riffs, a whole lot of tone and a twist ending; there’s a lot more to dig into than it might at first seem, and as I make my way through again, my second impression of Big Dumb Riffs is bolstered by the songs’ already-familiar feel, so yeah, they’re not making it a challenge to get on board.

Fair enough. First single is “Body Bag,” which should give you an idea, and if they’re new to you, Doom Wop will work to get you further introduced and it’s at the bottom of this post as well. A video or two and plenty more tour dates than even the West Coast run you see below don’t seem like unreasonable expectations to have here, so I’ll hope to have more to come before Big Dumb Riffs is out, but so far, it moves in a way that brings you with it really well. They’ve crisscrossed the US a few times at this point (and also founded their own festival, the Big Dumb Fest). My question is whether this will be the record that takes them to Europe, as that would seem a logical next step.

Until then, the PR wire has this:

“Our catalog has never been short on big dumb riffs, but the idea on this record was to really turn the screw,” says RBBP bassist Aaron Metzdorf. On Big Dumb Riffs, that screw is cranked incredibly tight.

“We just wanted ‘the part’: The opening of Pantera’s ‘Primal Concrete Sledge’, the breakdown in Primus’ ‘Pudding Time’ — the shit that makes you move and lose your mind. Just that part the whole time.”

Across 11 concise, taut songs — most clocking in around 2 minutes or less — Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol demonstrates their skillful ability to blend the merciless low end of Leo Lydon’s 8-string guitar, Aaron Metzdorf’s masterful chordwork on the bass, and Sean St.Germain’s driving drumming.

Hot on the heels of their breakout 5th studio release Doom Wop (2023), Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol returns with Big Dumb Riffs: A whole new variant of the fuzzed out, overdriven, melodic, groovy music they have been making since 2016. While Big Dumb Riffs is decidedly more aggressive and rhythmic, it still retains the overtly melodic feel of Doom Wop. But Leo Lydon’s vocals are considerably more angry and negative (song titles like “1-800-EAT-SHIT” and “Body Bag” should be a clue.)

“The whole writing process was, ‘what if we just played two notes the whole song’,” Metzdorf says. “‘What if we tuned down to almost unusable string tension?’, ‘what if we write a record that will make everyone say ‘wow that is dumb’? Leo and I really move around on stage a lot. Being a dingus is crucial to the groove. All these riffs were designed to allow us to act bigger and dumber on stage.”

Big Dumb Riffs will be available for streaming and download on March 22, 2024. LP to follow in late Spring.

RICKSHAW BILLIE’S BURGER PATROL LIVE 2024:
02/03 Austin, TX – Sagebrush
03/09 Houston, TX – Moontower Sudworks
03/22 Austin, TX – St Elmo Brew – album release show
03/23 Dallas, TX – Double Wide
03/27 Phoenix, AZ – Linger Longer
03/28 Los Angeles, CA – Resident
03/29 San Francisco, CA – Kilowatt
03/30 Sacramento, CA – Cafe Colonial
04/02 Seattle, WA – The Funhouse
04/03 Portland, OR – Mano Oculta
04/05 Salt Lake City, UT – Quarters DLC
04/06 Denver, CO – Hi-Dive

https://www.facebook.com/rickshawbilliesburgerpatrol
https://www.instagram.com/rickshawbillieandtheboys
https://rickshawbilliesburgerpatrol.bandcamp.com/
http://www.rickshawbilliesburgerpatrol.com/
https://taplink.cc/rickshawbillie

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, Big Dumb Riffs (2024)

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, Doom Wop (2022)