Good people of the Internet,
Hello. There’s been another wide chasm between Comedy Minus One label updates, but I hope that changes with this email.
cmo021 The Karl Hendricks Trio “The Adult Section” Lp/Digital Download
Coming July 17, 2012!
Comedy Minus One is downright delighted to be releasing the new album by The Karl Hendricks Trio entitled “The Adult Section.” You can stream/download the record’s first song “The Men’s Room At The Airport” over at the Low Times web site.
Additionally, preorders for this title are now available. Read on for friend of the label Nate Knaebel’s words on this excellent record as well as why you should shell out for it ASAP:
The Karl Hendricks Trio is a Pittsburgh rock institution. Having released nine full-lengths and six singles of uncompromising, emotionally charged, very loud rock over the course of twenty years, it’s probably safe to call them an American rock institution.
A former bedroom 4-track confessionalist, Karl Hendricks formed the Trio late in 1991. The band has undergone numerous line-up changes since, having had four different drummers, four different bass players, and during the two separate spans when the band augmented to a four-piece dubbed appropriately enough, the Karl Hendricks Rock Band, two different rhythm guitarists.
The one constant has been, of course, Karl himself.
The Trio debuted on record with 1992’s “Buick Electra,” released on Karl’s own Peas Kor label. From the mid ’90s to the early 2000s the trio released several albums on Merge Records, and in 2007, Hendricks self-released the one and only Karl Hendricks Rock Band album, “The World Says,” on his Surplus Anxiety imprint.
The band’s current line-up consists of Karl, drummer Jake Leger (who has been with the band since 2001), and bassist Corey Laman (who joined in 2005). Comedy Minus One’s release of “The Adult Section” in 2012 officially marks the end of the Karl Hendricks Rock Band Mark II and the return of the stripped-down Trio line-up.
Karl’s sound and his approach to songwriting have only gotten more nuanced and thoughtful with age. Musically, the Trio remains rooted in a muscular yet melodic sound built on a massive wall of guitars, and a bass and drum assault that powers things forward as much as it anchors them down. It’s a straightforward aesthetic but it has allowed Karl’s guitar playing to develop into a more sprawling and heroic version of the spirited six-string blasts of his youth. As a lyricist, Hendricks has progressed from a writer who was at once brutally honest and endearingly confessional, though always equipped with a fair dose of wit and humor, to a more complex and empathetic observer of the nasty, mundane business of living.
Recorded with Matt Schor at his Pittsburgh studio, the War Room, in the winter of 2011/2012, “The Adult Section” presents a rock band twenty years into a career honing in on what makes it tick. There’s a bit of departure here from Hendricks’s more ragged-glory affinities in favor of a dialed-in approach to the Trio’s classic sound. There are no album-closing ten-minute-plus epics, and while the running times are hardly Spartan, there’s a brisk, focused attack to these songs that points to a revitalized unit. Karl hs certainly picked up insight into life through the years, but this doesn’t mean that life has become any less maddening or that beer still doesn’t have a medicinal purpose. In fact, “The Adult Section” hints at an even darker and more complicated world than the one that held unobtainable cigarette smoking babes from Pittsburgh two decades ago. Rather than rail against this new world, Hendricks is content to take it apart, examine it, and put it back together, with a “good grief” poeticism uniquely his own.
The story goes that the Trio’s original rhythm section of Tim Parker and Tom Hoffman suggested that Karl choose such an unassuming handle to distinguish the band from other groups with more typical monikers, but the band’s name really couldn’t be more appropriate. Every drunken fool, frustrated wallflower, confused dad, and lost cat that Karl sings of are figures in a hefty collection of comitragic guitar-rock short stories of which Hendricks is the sole author. Those characters’ drudgery, their heartache, and their occasional glimpses of a redemption, they’re all Karl’s goddamn fault. But thanks to that band name there will never be any question of whom to blame.
“The Adult Section” is limited to 500 copies and each vinyl Lp comes with a compact disc for the sake of your convenience.
By placing an advance order, you assure yourself of:
1. The physical copy in your lil’ hands well before it reaches stores. Right now estimates have these shipping a good four weeks ahead of the release date. When we get’m, you’ll get’m next.
2. A discounted price compared to the eventual list.
3. For the first 25 domestic customers, a gratis copy of The Karl Hendricks Rock Band’s “Thank God We Have Limes” b/w “Say Hi To The Girls” 45 on Surplus Anxiety, rarely seen in the wild outside of western Pennsylvania.
4. The envy and admiration of your peers.
Members of the press, music writers and radio types are encouraged to get in touch for interview requests and digital promos of our releases. For example, this record will not be serviced elsewhere.
While we’re on a roll, please “like” The Karl Hendricks Trio on Facebook.
Comedy Minus One has a Facebook page and a Twitter handle for those of you who dig such things. More frequent bursts of news can be found there or on the Comedy Minus One blog.
As some of you have discovered, Comedy Minus One Soundcloud and Epitonic pages exist.
Stores and distributors are welcome to contact us about stocking these titles. Comedy Minus One is distributed directly through Carrot Top, Matador Direct and Revolver.
Above photos by Corey LeChat.
Thank you.
Jon Solomon
Comedy Minus One
comedyminusone.com