Grind the Arch

Casey was the bass player for the legendary dance-punk-post-hardcore band In Medias Res. Contemporaries of Nineteen, Kill Me Kate, the Conformists, Corbeta Corbata, and the like, In Medias Res didn't last too long but their outsize ability to inspire and bridge gaps across genres left a generation of (slightly) younger punks to blaze similar trails. Here's Casey. 

Luc has been involved heavily for a long time. A hardcore kid through and through (and also a comedian and other things), Luc started out playing in and booking hardcore bands at the Lemp Arts Center and elsewhere. He toured extensively with the enigmatic noiserock act Black Panties, where he wore a gimp-style facemask and left more than a few people in disbelief about BP's true identity. Here's Luc!

Ryan Koenig might be most known, or by now most remembered, as a folk scene guy, one of the punks-turned-historian of roots music from the region. He's made a career out of learning, performing, and ultimately preserving old roots music which in some cases would die forgotten if folks like him didn't do the work of preserving it. He's been in countless bands, but for our purposes, he was the frontman of the pop-punk band Ill Deception, he was in the hardcore band Disorange, and the short-lived post-9/11 band The Dead New York Cops, who, though short lived, performed at one of the legendary South City YMCA shows. (Do you remember it?) I went to middle school with Ryan, and we both were kickstarted into our love of music by our iconic and immensely-inspiring jazz band teacher, Larry Wilson. Where are you, Larry? We talk about it. Here's Ryan.

Ida was in it from the beginning. Of the early 2000s, and into the late 1990s, as she'd been going to shows from a super young age. Someone who was a friend of the 2Keys folks, the St. Charles punk kids, the noise scene folks, and, pretty much, everybody else, Ida booked some of the most iconic shows of our shared youth, the South City YMCA punk shows among them. She has insight into what it means to be a fan of the music, something that, to those of us who were in multiple bands, might feel like a surprisingly new perspective. Here's Ida!

Perhaps you don't know him; Kerns was in the latter days of the "early 2000s" scene, someone who spanned the Webster and Lemp and Noise scenes, toured with Jack Callahan and members of Realicide (Cincinnati) with the intense doomy, grindy, experimental hardcore band Praey, and generally has some really excellent insight into what St. Louis brings out in artists, and what St. Louis music means outside of St. Louis. Here's Kerns!

Joseph Grove, musician, actor, performance artist was the unforgettable frontman for the ska punk band from Gillespie Illinois, Hyphen-O. They had a short career in St. Louis but if you saw them I'm sure you remember them. They were quite possibly the funnest band in St. Louis while they existed, took skapunk to another speed-level, and had a fan-favorite packed setlist where, after a little while, the audience would be doing most of the singing and their shows turned into fun parties. This/they were one of the purest distillations of the euphoric and impossibly perfect punk scene days of the early 2000s. Joe joined us to talk about those days, the punk scene across the river, and life since. 

Grind the Arch is back for Season 3!

I first met James as the frontman of Waxwork of a Dynasty, a band that seemed to spring onto the scene in Saint Louis fully formed, immediately one of the most technically interesting and tight post-hardcore, post-metal bands around. Right at a time when there was a lot of big talent around - Sine Nomine, Yowie, The Arch, The One Inch Punch, Dancing Feet, etc. - standing out wasn't super easy to do. 

James is an excellent vocalist and charismatic showman. When Waxwork was on hiatus I immediately began working with him and various other participants to put something worthy together. It never panned out, but I hung out a lot with James and we became good friends. Even after a while, however, I never really learned how he managed to channel his nonchalant energy into something so powerful, so the opposite of nonchalant. 

Though Waxwork was really, really good, it was but one of many excellent bands he's fronted, and by now is a relatively distant memory. He's toured all over, and has some amazing stories. We were so stoked to get to catch up with James. 

Enjoy!

The thrilling conclusion to our interview with Mike Benker, in which, crucially, he tells the great story of The Conformists' prank war with Corbeta Corbata. In our interviews there are at least two other retellings of this infamous yarn. 

The views expressed by Mike do not necessarily constitute the views of The Conformists as a whole. 

Enjoy!

Mike Benker fronted the Conformists for 19 out of their 23 (and counting) years of existence in the Saint Louis music scene. Mike is the second most consistent member of that band, after Christopher Dee, ingenious guitarist, conceptualist, and co-founder.

The Conformists are an institution in Saint Louis music, and well known in experimental circles in the US and internationally. It's hard to overstate their importance, what they've meant to Saint Louis music over the years. Suffice to say that "seeing the Conformists the first time when I was __ years old" (insert impressionable teen/pre-teen age in the blank) seems to be how a surprising number of STL scenesters' punk initiation stories begin. It certainly figures prominently in our own stories of finding our way down the rabbit hole and into our unique, beloved Saint Louis musical subculture.

That said, the views of Mike as expressed in this interview do not represent The Conformists as a whole. 

Enjoy!

Super excited to have gotten to interview Chaz'men Williams-Ali!

I met Chaz in eighth grade (he was in sixth grade at the time) at McKinley Classical Junior Academy. We met in Jazz band, an after school club hosted by Larry Wilson, the hands-down favorite band teacher, who, rather than dish out the usual watered-down swing scores to us, would hand-score old R&B and funk numbers (and also Janet Jackson and Jay-Z songs, because duh!) for us to play. So, really, it was a Funk Band. And it was amazing. It would be impossible to count how many young Saint Louis musicians he inspired at an extremely crucial stage of development. Folks who later made up important parts of the Saint Louis music community - including myself, Chaz, Ryan Koenig, Josh Levi - and I would estimate pretty much anyone who happened to go to McKinley and was in band while Larry Wilson taught there. 

Me and Chaz were in a middle school supergroup, Blackberry Jam, with Clayton Davis and Sarah Lee, and later formed the band Funk Shui, with Ian McGowan on bass. It was a funk/punk predecessor to what would become Commichung, and we gigged a bit. Chaz, even at 12 years old, was immensely talented. He could sing anything, was an ace on the drums. We would routinely have 4-6 hr band practices on weekends, and get sidetracked jamming Beatles and Stevie Wonder songs, listening to Frank Zappa, intensively becoming ourselves. 

Chaz went on to Central VPA, and then the University of Iowa, where he studied voice, and is now a professional opera singer. His story is a good one, and we had a blast talking about our formative years, and getting into the nitty-gritty of opera. 

Enjoy!

After a bit of a hiatus we have Season Two coming atcha! More great folks and awesome conversations about Saint Louis music; as always, the breadth and talent of Saint Louis music runs deep! 

We still ask the big questions: was it a special time? How is it Saint Louis kids are so preternaturally gifted, inspired?

Stay tuned! Our first episode will drop May 13th, and it's a doozie!

The thrilling conclusion to our interview with Charlie Turner, longtime doorman and 1/2 of the intense metal duo Van Buren. 

A Webster native and member of many groups along the way, Jon Hellwig is best known as the drummer for the Saint Louis indie band Foxing, who have had a great deal of success touring, playing festivals, and recording. Their intensive work ethic has only slowed recently, with the effects of Covid 19. Early on, Hellwig was a founding member of Puppetshow and Subject to Evaporation, two Webster-scene groups which were some of the first of their generation of bands to come into the city and rock the Creepy Crawl, Cicero's, The Lemp Arts Center, and other venues.  

Longtime frontman of Corbeta Corbata and latter-day member of Lumpy and the Dumpers, Ben Smith has been in and around the scene for a while. As ubiquitous a presence as Corbeta Corbata itself through the 2000s, Ben was a big part of STL punk and hardcore scenes from early on, dipping a bit into the nineties when he was still a squirt. Inspired at the DIY and organizational possibilties he saw in the nascent Centro / Tin Ceiling venue, he later served on the board of directors, for a period of time, at the Lemp Arts Center, as well as booking and being a perennial presence at 2 Keys House and elsewhere. 

Sociologist and old school STL scenester Sarah Outland has done her own extensive research of the Saint Louis punk scene. We were lucky enough to get to talk to her about her own experiences growing up across the river in Illinois and coming into the city for shows in the early years of our millennium. Though the data she collected in her research is confidential, the dozens of interviews she conducted have left her with a very detailed understanding of the scene, especially as it relates to how people become part of the scene, who has access to it, how people conduct themselves within it, and how, and if, people age out of being "punk." Enjoy!

Part two of our interview with Sean O'Connor of YOWIE (and of course, THE ARCH!). A sage of the scene, he's seen it all! Check it out!

The most excellent second part of our interview with Stephen Inman of NINETEEN, Dancing Feet March to War, and Blight Future fame (among others). Dig in! 

Longtime noise musician and currently 1/2 of the epic doom metal duo Van Buren, Charlie Turner has worked a number of venues in the St. Louis area, including the Lemp Arts Center during its final era, and has seen, and heard, a great deal. From the Webster Groves microscene to the greater metal scene in the area, as well as the noise scene in and around St. Louis, Charlie Turner has been around. 

Shawn O'Connor is the driving force behind Yowie, one of the most important math rock groups - now, in the past, and in the future to be sure. Shawn has been around the block. He started his musical life in the nineties and has been one of the most consistently hardworking drummers in the Saint Louis scene ever since, painstakingly maintaining the always-transforming, ever-demanding beast that is Yowie, performing a few years for an era of The Conformists, and also playing for a longish time in the angular art-rock band The Arch - a fun, more straightforward rockin' band that was nevertheless still breathtakingly complex in its compositions one of those marvels of the St. Louis scene that rises up for a time, wows everyone lucky enough to catch a glimpse of it, then dissipates almost without any trace at all. Let's dive in!

This is part two of our interview with Jessee Rose Crane! Enjoy!

Stephen Inman played in Saint Louis' greatest punk band (I think I can say that), NINETEEN, as well as the post-punk band Dancing Feet March to War. Heavily involved in the Lemp Arts Center during its heyday, Stephen now performs in Blight Future and So Many Dynamos. As great scene unifiers, NINETEEN pretty much acted as a glue among many disparate scenes in the greater punk scene in Saint Louis. Him, Mat, and Tim were friends with everybody, were socially conscious in a way that felt about ten or more years ahead of their time, and they were also really, really good.

Jessee Rose Crane fronted the Dead Rose Boys in the immediate post-millennium era, a time of significant musical proliferation in Saint Louis, quickly solidifying her place in the burgeoning scene. The Dead Rose Boys were scene uniters in the way that Nineteen were, bridging divides between punk and poppunk and hardcore kids, ska and rockabilly kids, city and county kids. 

A prolific multimedia artist, musician, and activist, Jessee Rose Crane studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and SIU Edwardsville, and currently plays in the long-running, hardworking art punk duo The Funs with her partner Philip Lesicko. They run an art residency and gallery space in New Douglas, Illinois. 

Welcome to Grind the Arch: Oral Histories of the Saint Louis Music Scene, where we interview people from the punk scene of the early 2000s and try to answer the eternal question: Was the scene unusually vibrant in those years - was there a scene 'boom?' - or are we just nostalgic, biased about the fast punk rocking days of our youth? Tune in to find out!