It’s a pretty common experience for an artist or a band to record a cover for a tribute album in progress and then not have that release actually happen. Happened to me, anyway. Happened apparently to Mike Cummings, then of Backwoods Payback, now of Boozewa (think ‘bourgeois’ but with the demon alcohol) circa 2012 for a Neil Young tribute for which he took on no less than “Cortez the Killer” from 1975’s Zuma, self-recording for a bedroom-folk intimacy and carrying the sweetly infectious melody of the original over to his own expressive modus. I’ll cop to not being nearly the Neil Young fan that Cummings or any number of other people are, up to and including Pearl Jam, of whom Cummings might just also have a cover or two laying around, but it’s a cool take, raw of course but the song suits that.

Giving ear won’t take but a few minutes — the player is at the bottom where the players go in hopes that you’ll read the words between here and there — and as always, I hope you enjoy.

From Bandcamp:

mRc – Cortez the Killer

Roughly a decade ago I was asked to be a part of a cassette only Neil Young tribute record. It was a small label based out of Virginia or DC from what I recall and I was excited to contribute to it. The band I was in at the time was of course in a state of flux and we were not able to get our shit together to make what I wanted to happen happen.

Instead, I decided to do this on my own, live with two mics taped to my Tascam 4 track tape machine.

The label never responded once the song was sent (in the mail mind you!) and honestly I don’t think the record ever ended up coming out.

This has sat on the shelf for a long time…and it felt like the right time to set it free.

mRc – vocal/guitar/harmonica

words/music – Neil Young

photograph – Jared Castaldi

https://michaelrudolphcummings.bandcamp.com/

https://instagram.com/boozewa
https://boozewa.bandcamp.com
https://www.BOOZEWA.com

mRc, “Cortez the Killer”

This week, Michael Rudolph Cummings releases his new recorded-live-to-two-track EP, mRc, and begins a weekender of shows in Los Angeles, which is not a minor trip for someone based in Pennsylvania. The new release is, well, not really new. It was recorded 10 years ago by Cummings on an old tape machine and it’s been mastered and all that happy whatnot, but you can still hear the songs are plenty raw. It sounds like, oh, say, a guy recording onto a tape machine he found at somebody’s garage sale.

That barebones-ness gives a sense of intimacy to a track like “1993” or the twang-grunge of “The Meaning Of” (premiering below) and as with Cummings‘ more recent work in the trio Boozewa alongside fellow former members of Backwoods Payback, the lo-fi aspect across mRc becomes a crucial part of the aesthetic. For about 15 minutes, then it’s done. It’s a very quick release.

As to what else Cummings might have in store for the year, I don’t know, but he’s dropping hints of more to come, so who knows what else may be in the proverbial vault, which one imagines as actually a disorganized closet or one of those plastic bins you get at the Costco. At least that’s how I’m living these days.

Cummings is playing with Bob Wayne, IV and the Strange Band (which is Hank Williams III‘s kid? fuck I’m old) and Desert Danish and Sammy Ruiz. Looks like a cool couple of shows. And the EP’s right on. I guess that’s the depth of insight I have to offer here. Dude does cool shit. I should rewrite the headline.

Audio and info and dates and so on:

These two LA shows will mark my first time playing on the west coast in close to a decade. To say I’m excited for them is the understatement of the year (it’s still early!).

Add in the release of this new/old long lost ep and it’s safe to say 2022 is already shaping up to be quite productive…and it’s only getting started.”

some info on the ep:

It was recorded sometime in 2012 (I think?) here at the compound in an old 2 track tape machine I bought at a yard sale. It had one reel of tape with it and I recorded the songs live. It was then mastered by Mike Bardzik at Noisy Little Critter and given back to me on a master CD. The CD was lost in the shuffle of tours and bands and vans up until the lockdown of 2020 when it found its way back to me. Now it’s out, 10 or so years after it was intended, but it feels good to share it finally.

Michael Rudolph Cummings “mRc”
Release date: Feb 1 2022

1. Beltdrive
2. 1993
3. Healer
4. The Meaning Of
5. Hurdles

SHOWS
Feb 4th Bourbon Room Hollywood CA w/ Desert Danish, Sammy Ruiz
Feb 6th Alex’s Bar Long Beach CA 2pm MATINEE w/ Bob Wayne, IV & The Strange Band

http://www.boozewa.com/
http://twitter.com/bckwoodspayback
http://instagram.com/backwoodspayback
https://michaelrudolphcummings.bandcamp.com/

Michael Rudolph Cummings, mRc (2022)

West Chester, Pennsylvania’s Boozewa release their First Contact demo tape on Feb. 5. The play, phonetically, is on “bourgeois,” and while I have no doubt that the four cuts on the 14-minute long demo will inspire no shortage of wax poetry about things like the ‘real’ and the ‘authentic,’ the truth of the matter is I don’t have time for that shit and neither do you. You know what Boozewa are? Wholesome.

That’s right. Fucking wholesome.

The three-piece formed last year, with Mike Cummings and Jessica Baker of Backwoods Payback and Rylan Caspar (formerly also of Backwoods Payback) stuck in lockdown. It’s not hard to imagine how the band happened: stick artists in a room with some instruments and see what happens. Cummings drums, Baker plays bass, Caspar guitar, and they all add vocals at some point in the midst of “Black Flag?,” “Those Who Deny the Existence of Robots May, in Fact, Be Robots Themselves,” “Full Tank” and “No Name Maddox,” which should come across familiar enough to Backwoods Payback listeners but still sound like the band went back to ground and started over from their original lo-fi punk foundation.

I suspect because that’s exactly what happened. “Black Flag?” — premiering below — is a melodic punker of thickened tone that rides its bass, drum and riff groove toward a sing-along hook that, recorded on a four-track as it was, sounds raw as all hell and likely got its name for how the central riff in its second half draws from the band in question, as if to ask, “is this from Black Flag?” Yeah, maybe.

“…Robots…” and “Full Tank” are shorter but carry the same vibe forward, somewhere between punk, heavy rock and pandemic-age whatthefuckdoIdonow-ery, and “No Name Maddox” — the longest track at a sprawling 4:14, though it finishes early and leaves behind some swirly noise to close — caps in instrumental fashion, underscoring the purpose throughout First Contact about the simple act of playing, of making something, as an expression of restlessness. Not like they could go and play shows, as they otherwise might have done. Holed up together with post-apocalyptic dystopia flourishing outside, they tracked a demo.

And that’s why I call it wholesome. Because what you’re hearing in First Contact is these three players bring there for each other, contributing to making something together. I’ll spare you the COVID-19 sincerity™ since you’ve probably seen it enough in car insurance commercials by now, but from 45,000-year-old cave paintings to these very songs, humans make art as an expression of support for one another. It’s raw — this is a demo tape and it sounds like it — but unmistakable.

Enjoy:

Michael Rudolph Cummings on “Black Flag?”:

“To me the best songs are the ones that just ‘happen’. No memory of the time before them or how they got there, they just appear and feel like they’ve always been with you. Woke up one morning in a haze from the night before and this song was recorded on the 4 track with a note in the cassette case that read “black flag?” Much like its namesake this tune is best listened to fully cranked with the rulebook thrown out the window!”

Featuring members of Pennsylvania’s Backwoods Payback, Boozewa brings those wall-shaking, glass-clattering riffs in ways that will be no surprise to longtime BWPB fans…. And a knock in the back of the head for everyone else!

The new band is comprised of BWPB alum Jessica Baker on bass and Mike Cummings on drums and lead vocals, joined by Rylan Caspar on guitar; Baker and Caspar are handling backing vocal duties as well.

The demo was entirely recorded and mixed by the band on a 90s Tascam 4-track tape machine at the compound. It was mastered for the cassette release by Mike Bardzik at Noisy Little Critter in Downingtown, PA.

This demo, titled First Contact, will be available in cassette and digital formats on February 5th 2021.

Boozewa:
Rylan Caspar plays guitar
Jessica Baker plays bass
Mike Cummings plays drums and sings (sometimes)

Boozewa on Instagram

Boozewa on Bandcamp

Any Starfleeter worth their replicated salt knows no mission is more important than First Contact. Thus one assumes that the upcoming four-song debut demo from West Chester, PA, lockdown project Boozewa will arrive with no shortage of diplomatic fanfare. Remember, you don’t want to alarm the natives of the planet, but you do want to tell them that there’s a whole galactic federation out there and that no, they’re not that special and, no, the world isn’t flat, and so on. Good fun.

Boozewa made their debut at the recent Mutants of the Monster II and features three current/former members of primo dirt rockers Backwoods Payback, if in somewhat shifted configuration. Suffice it to say the new band formed during quarantine and finds them having realigned the matter transducers to tap into the auxiliary EPS grids in order to create a kind of plasma flux in the nacelles, drawing energy from non-essential systems. There’s a chance the whole ship might explode, but it should work if they time it just right.

For those who believe in linear time, the demo is out Feb. 5, as per the PR wire:

Boozewa – First Contact

The good cheese on recyclable plates – BOOZEWA!
Bloody Marys in the fancy glasses – BOOZEWA!
Bottom shelf scotch
Top shelf riffs
BOOZEWA!

Featuring members of Pennsylvania’s Backwoods Payback, Boozewa brings those wall-shaking, glass-clattering riffs in ways that will be no surprise to longtime BWPB fans…. And a knock in the back of the head for everyone else!

The new band is comprised of BWPB alum Jessica Baker on bass and Mike Cummings on drums and lead vocals, joined by Rylan Caspar on guitar; Baker and Caspar are handling backing vocal duties as well. The band says of their four-song demo,

“Making music during a time when you literally could not do anything else just made sense. We were lucky that a wave of inspiration decided to crest in the spring of 2020 and even luckier still there we all had a house full of gear to make it happen. We have no idea what 2021 holds for this band but wherever we end up, you will for sure hear us coming…

The demo was entirely recorded and mixed by the band on a 90s Tascam 4-track tape machine here at the compound. It was mastered for the cassette release by Mike Bardzik at Noisy Little Critter in Downingtown, PA.

The cassettes were all run off individually by hand and assembled at the compound as well. This release is possibly as DIY as you can get. It was a labor of love.”

This demo, titled First Contact, will be available in cassette and digital formats on February 5th 2021.

Tracklisting:
01 Black Flag?
02 Those Who Deny the Existence of Robots, May, in Fact, Be Robots Themselves
03 Full Tank
04 No Name Maddox

Boozewa:
Rylan Caspar plays guitar
Jessica Baker plays bass
Mike Cummings plays drums and sings (sometimes)

https://www.instagram.com/boozewa/
https://boozewa.bandcamp.com/

Boozewa, “Farm Witch (Reprise)”

The creativity born of restlessness. How was your quarantine? Was it productive? Well, if not, there’s always the next one, apparently. For Backwoods Payback guitarist/vocalist Michael Rudolph Cummings, the early part of the summer resulted in three new solo songs that he’ll release this week under the banner of MRC, or if you go by the logo, mRc. The EP is called What Year is It?, suitably enough, and is being self-released by Cummings with proceeds headed to the ACLU, which, you know, is legit. I don’t know who was involved in this recording with him — he calls the backing band The Souvenirs and has toured as mRc and the Souvenirs in the past — but the last time Cummings did an mRc release was 2015’s More Barn (streaming below) and that band included Jessica Baker from Backwoods Payback as well as Dan Metzker and Pat Shannon from Philly’s Hold Down the Ocean as well as drummer Mike Bardzik, who engineered that recording and also just engineered the new Hold Down the Ocean EP, Sidereal Month.

What Year is It? comprises three tracks and runs from heavier-ended Americana to more straight up ’90s alt worship and is a step-aside from some of the more intense fare that Backwoods Payback has unleashed over their last couple records, though Cummings‘ voice and songwriting are nothing if not characteristic. Kind of a fan-piece here, maybe, but hell, it’s a three-song tape, I can’t imagine he’s making too many of them, and all the money goes to the ACLU. You could do worse.

Incidentally, it’s definitely 2020. Sometimes feels like 1620.

Announcement is quick:

mRc – What Year is It? EP

August 7th I’m releasing a brand new mRc ep. Three songs written the first week of June and recorded the second week of July with the souvenirs. These songs are now. It’s never too late.

100% of the proceeds will be going to the @aclu_nationwide to ensure we can all keep fighting the good fight……

don’t give up.

https://michaelrudolphcummings.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/backwoodspayback/
http://instagram.com/backwoodspayback
https://backwoodspayback.bandcamp.com/
https://www.backwoodspayback.com/

MRC, More Barn (2015)

Easiest conversation I had last week went like this, “Hey man, we’re doing some shows with Cavern, you wanna present the tour?” “Yes. Duh.”

That’s not quite verbatim, but it’s enough to give you the gist anyhow, and when it’s Backwoods Payback doing the asking, the answer’s just about always going to be yes. Even if I hadn’t seen the Pennsylvania/Virginia three-piece last month at Maryland Doom Fest 2019 (review here) and been so thoroughly blown away, they’re reliable the way people think of sunrise as being reliable, and I’m too busy indulging delusions of relevance any time they ask for anything to say no. “Well, if Backwoods think it’s cool, I must be on to something,” and so on.

But lo! There’s intrigue here too, as the Marylanders Cavern will be heading out in their newfangled trio incarnation, having welcomed bassist Rose Heater to the lineup with guitarist/synthesist Zach Harkins and drummer Stephen Schrock and, for the first time, turning not just from a two-piece to a three-piece, but from an instrumental to a vocal-topped outfit as well. In order to “demonstrate their style” — as Madball once put it — Cavern put up the post-rocky, prog-tinged single “Fade Before the Flood” in April. You can hear it streaming down at the bottom of this post. Indeed, it sounds like something I’d want to check out live.

And because any excuse to put it on and I’m happy, I’ve included Backwoods Payback‘s 2018 album, Future Slum (review here), as well. I know you’ve heard me say it a ton of times by now, but if you haven’t given that record its due, the time is now. Quick, before they put out another one!

Genuinely thrilled to be involved here in the small way I am. Go see these bands on this tour:

Cavern & Backwoods Payback Sept. Tour:
09/23 Cleveland OH Now That’s Class
09/24 Youngstown OH Westside Bowl
09/25 Erie PA Basement Transmissions
09/26 Buffalo NY Mohawk Place
09/27 Toronto ON Bovine Sex Club
09/28 Montreal QC Turbo Haus
09/29 Philadelphia PA Kung Fu Necktie

CAVERN:
Stephen Schrock- Drums
Zach Harkins- Guitar/Synth
Rose Heater- Bass/Vocals

BACKWOODS PAYBACK:
Jessica Baker – Bass
Mike Cummings – Guitar/vocals
Erik Larson – Drums

https://www.facebook.com/cavernmd/
https://cavernmd.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/backwoodspayback/
https://backwoodspayback.bandcamp.com/

Cavern, “Fade Before the Flood”

Backwoods Payback, Future Slum (2018)

I’ll admit I have no experience trying to manifest psychic weaponry of any sort, let alone a knife. If I did, I think I might go with a type-two phaser set to heavy stun and just shoot myself with it so I could get a full night’s sleep. But that aside, the visual theme to coincide with Backwoods Payback‘s “Pirate Smile” makes sense when one thinks of, you know, someone smiling at you and then stabbing you. There’s a connection there. It’s psychic. You can’t see it. But it’s there.

Also pretty easy to imagine envisioning a knife as a decent mindset for playing a show.

The song itself has a vaguely socio-political stance in terms of its lyrics — resulting in, among other things, a fun punk rocker’s emphasis on the word “fucked” as it’s presented in all-caps below — and the West Chester, PA/Richmond, VA three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Mike Cummings, bassist Jessica Baker and drummer Erik Larson bring a likeminded uptempo kick to the track that they always seem to nail. There’s plenty of it to be heard on last year’s Future Slum (review here) and there was plenty of it when I saw the band this past weekend at Maryland Doom Fest 2019 (review here). They were a highlight of that festival, of course, as they’re a highlight pretty much of everything they do.

I don’t know if they’ve got more touring in the works this year or not — no, I didn’t ask; it’s not like I’m chasing bands around with a press card in my hat and mining for information; “Word on the street is you’re heading to Indy, can you confirm?” — but having so recently done so, I’ll reiterate that if you can see Backwoods Payback, do it. That’s pretty much all I have to say about it by now. I don’t care if you’re already a fan or not. If you can make it happen, make it happen.

Enjoy the video:

Backwoods Payback, “Pirate Smile” official video

From the 2018 Album, Future Slum

“The Initiates Guide to the Envisioning and the Initial Applications of the Knife”

www.backwoodspayback.com

a ship of sinking fools unaware of rising tides this population screwed standing in the bread or party lines in a word all they do is lie and they only work to waste all of our time in a way maybe I was blind now I’m old enough to open up my eyes you repeat the past mistakes I refuse to play in this charade a whole generation FUCKED cleaning up the messes that you’ve made in a word all you do is lie and you only work to waste all of my time ain’t no way no more I’ll be blind now I’m old enough to open up my eyes…what do you believe?

Shot by John Keefer & Chris Johnson
Edited by Chris Johnson
a 51DEEP Production

Backwoods Payback, Future Slum (2018)

Backwoods Payback on Thee Facebooks

Backwoods Payback on Instagram

Backwoods Payback on Twitter

Backwoods Payback on Bandcamp

Backwoods Payback website

It will have been a couple months by the time Backwoods Payback hit the road again on their next DIY tour, this one headed west and south through a cut of the Midwest en route to SXSW in Austin, Texas, where they’ll play on March 14 before hitting Houston and leaving the Lone Star State behind with a couple more shows to wrap up. The Pennsylvania/Virginia (Pennsylginia?) three-piece will continue to support last year’s right-on-right-on Future Slum (review here), which put them ahead of the curve on any kind of grunge revival happening in the heavy underground while keeping to the punk root — and, clearly, work ethic — that’s been present in their sound all along.

To that end, don’t think the use of Raymond Pettibon art in their latest tour poster is a mistake or a coincidence, let alone the Black Flag-esque logo. They’re clearly aware of the kind of road-sloggery they’re doing, and while one doubts they’re eating dogfood — pretty sure convenience store burritos are cheaper anyway; plus they’re too friendly not to get fed — their commitment to “in the van” is admirable. Admirable enough you should get out and see them, anyhow. And maybe buy a t-shirt or an LP. You know, support and all that stuff that everyone hashtags nowadays.

Hashtag blessed, hashtag PR wire:

Backwoods Payback March Tour

Backwoods Payback
March 2019
SXSW TOUR

Heading back out and hitting the spots we have been missing.

Week never ends up right? Don’t let that dull your knife!

Backwoods Payback March 2019:
7- sprout music West Chester PA
8- now that’s class Cleveland OH
9- melody inn Indianapolis IN
10- livewire Chicago IL
11- the blue room Dubuque IA
12- bottleneck Lawrence KS
13- Witts end Dallas TX
14- spider house Austin TX
15- rudyards Houston TX
16- boom boom room Lafayette LA
17- growlers Memphis TN
18- highlands tap Louisville KY

Tour event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/386403138780580/

BACKWOODS PAYBACK:
Jessica Baker – Bass
Mike Cummings – Guitar/vocals
Erik Larson – Drums

https://www.facebook.com/backwoodspayback/
https://backwoodspayback.bandcamp.com/

Backwoods Payback, Future Slum (2018)