Open Wide: Rodeo Mouth Talks New Music, Performs Two Unreleased Tracks
If Bob Dylan, Warren Zevon, and Roger Miller got into a back alley fist fight and the collective pools of blood morphed into a being of its own, it might just be Rodeo Mouth.
Rodeo Mouth is an eclectic folk & alt-country rock n’ roll band based out of Nashville, Tennessee, consisting of myself, Paul Howard (vocals, rhythm guitar), Emmett Rozelle (lead guitar), Anthony Fili (bass), and Zach D’Amico (drums). What started out as me reclusively writing off-color folk songs and occasionally playing out as a solo performer would eventually evolve into wrangling old friends from home in Upstate New York (that have been living in Nashville) to join in on the fun and frankly, make the songs sound better.
The first song performed here for our entry in the Water Tower Sessions series, “There’s a Boot in My Wallet,” is in my humble opinion, one of the most real songs written about Nashville – or at least that takes place in Nashville. It’s got a dreary, somewhat deranged cowboy vibe, and simply deals with being out at a bar when you’ve entered a state of temporary psychosis due to substance use: ups and downs, lapses of clarity, paranoia, feelings of fun but also feelings of dread, and the like. In particular, it takes place at a popular East Nashville bar. I like to picture Jack Torrance of The Shining as the character when singing this song. As for the title, it was just one of those strange nonsensical phrases that came to my head and wouldn’t leave. Something a delirious drunkard may say. This song is not autobiographical. (or is it…)
The second song here, “Leaving For Phoenix,” is in fact quite autobiographical. This more upbeat number came to me when I woke up with a simple melody in my head after spending the night at an AirBnB in East LA on July 4th, 2019. I was indeed set to leave for Phoenix the next day, making my way back home to Nashville from a solo cross-country trek. I was putzing around on my guitar in bed with the chorus when I felt my bed rattle and shake. My first thought was, “Is this some Exorcist shit right now?”, but then remembered I was in California, and it was in fact a small earthquake. This track does have more sentimentality, as I left my then-girlfriend home alone with our two dogs while I spent 30+ days on the road. This was precisely one of the reasons I left on a westward adventure to begin with: to write songs and ponder the future.
We recorded this session in Emmett and I’s backyard in Nashville because, well, it was awfully practical. It’s damn fun pickin’ on the back porch, with the exception of the relentless mosquitoes. If you watch and/or listen close enough, you might catch snippets of my dog, Dolly. Both songs here are unreleased, but we did have our debut single, “Sunset Blues Revisited,” drop May 30th of this year.
While writing songs and playing out always fell somewhere above a hobby but below a career, I found myself in the throes of other full-time creative endeavors that would pull me away from seriously pursuing my own music. The first being my nonfiction humor travel book, Vagrants in Paradise, which I spent 3+ years writing and eventually published in 2016. In 2017, I started my own Nashville-based music blog, Music Mecca, which I feverishly worked on and continue to work on full-time.
I’ve always gravitated towards the songwriters who stray from convention and commercial appeal, and absolutely live in the past musically. Artists that inspire my songs include Ween, The Band, Warren Zevon, Bob Dylan, Harry Nilsson, Roger Miller, Bobby Bare, and the list goes on.
Rodeo Mouth has many fun, cheeky, if not delightfully twisted songs on the docket like the two featured here, along with other live favorites including the honky tonk nightmare rocker “Cowboy Cannibal,” the breezy beach love song that ends in disaster with “Pacifico Clara,” and the ode to good old fashioned rural diner hospitality in “Fanny’s Farmhouse.” These will all be on the debut Rodeo Mouth album, date TBD.
Be sure to stream “Sunset Blues Revisited” wherever you get your music, and keep an eye out for our next single, “Fanny’s Farmhouse,” due out this summer!
Paul Howard
Contributor
Paul is a singer-songwriter from Nashville and member of Rodeo Mouth. He's also a publicist for Clarion Call Media.
