LOCAL BAND PROFILE: The Recessions

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

By Ben Cannon

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-For the crowd of hundreds that attended the Goatstock benefit in September, the concert was a showcase of the genres of live music often associated with the small communities of the Rocky Mountains. Various bands performed classic rock (Mandatory Air), reggae (the Chanman Roots Band) and even a set of somewhat rarer, yet nonetheless fitting, Afro-Cuban music (Calle Mambo).

It was a musical lineup composed of what you might expect for the proverbial mountain town, regardless of whether anyone covered a Grateful Dead song that day.

But when the band called The Recessions closed their set that afternoon, they chose to play a signature cover tune that might seem a tad unusual alongside, say, the all-woman’s conga drumming line that formed later.

“Did you see us?” Andy Schwartz, The Recessions front man and lead vocalist, said off-stage after the set. “We ended with ‘Anarchy in the U.K.’”

The song he was referring to, in case you didn’t know, is the classic 1976 tune by the legendary British punk rock band the Sex Pistols. And while the song’s nihilistic lyrics (e.g. “I am an anarchist”) nowadays are generally non-threatening, it’s still seems rather unusual that “Anarchy” would be performed at an event where some adults twirled hula hoops.

It’s also a tiny bit humorous that The Recessions do “Anarchy” when you consider that Schwartz, who performed the song since the early 80s, is a respected elected official.

Goatstock was the most recent of only a handful of performances by the band since it reunited in 2007 following a hiatus that lasted more than 10 years. This weekend, The Recessions will again take the stage when it plays two nights at the Silver Dollar Bar, a venue usually reserved for Americana and country outfits that beckon some people to the traditionally Western dance floor. But the band is no punk rock act, despite “Anarchy” and the occasional cover song or two by The Clash.

The story of The Recessions begins nearly 30 years ago. As men in their 20s and early 30s, the band’s members were part of an early wave of young people relocating to Jackson Hole for the outdoors and easygoing lifestyle. Three of the founding members – Schwartz, bass player David Swift and guitarist Jamie Bigelow – are still here.

The passage of time has brought each his own success. Alongside his role as County Commissioner, Schwartz is a local retailer. Swift, who was a burgeoning Jackson Hole News photographer when he first jammed with this clique, has published work in books and built what be described as “a very successful” photography business. Bigelow, a former technician at the Los Alamos nuclear test site, was recently featured in a newspaper profile about his latest quirky profession: salon mani-pedicurist. 

Ronnie and the Recessions played its first live gig on the deck of the Steak Pub, a long-gone South Park restaurant in what is now South Side Pizza. Schwartz and Bigelow worked at the Steak Pub, which had a reputation for employing a wild and fun-loving staff. Schwartz, a born leader, managed the kitchen; Bigelow was a line cook. The year was 1982.

“It was one of the better restaurants of the time, but it was also a notorious party outfit,” Bigelow remembered. “Everybody that worked there would stay late at night after the restaurant closed and have a good time.”

In those early days of the Reagan administration, America was experiencing a severe recession – not unlike today. But in Jackson Hole, where the nascent tourism and getaway home economies were a sliver of what they are today, the woes of a nation seemed far away to a group of young men who believed they had found a Shangri-La in the shadow of the Grand Tetons.

Schwartz named the band Ronnie and the Recessions in the same way any good young liberal might use playful irreverence when referring to a conservative with whom he does not see eye-to-eye. (They later dropped “Ronnie” from the marquis, effectively kicking him “out of the band,” Scwhartz said.) Despite the name and the handful of politically edgy songs in the band’s early repertoire, The Recessions were in it solely for the fun. It wasn’t about communicating a cynical message to the other ski bums and free spirits, who likely didn’t feel connected to whatever youthful unrest was occurring in cities across America anyway.

“David and I would always make certain kinds of jokes, but our left-wing politics were never the driving force,” Schwartz said.

The band rehearsed underneath a friend‘s arcade, and soon crowds turned out for regular shows at the Steak Pub, and also venues like the Mangy Moose and the Calico restaurant.

They performed various arrangements of classic rock and blues rock numbers, and also covered music that was cutting edge for the day. While there were a few other rock and roll bands, Jackson Hole until that time had seen mostly country and Western acts. Suddenly, a local band was doing “Psycho Killer” by the Talking Heads as that band was entering the general public consciousness, and the local crowds ate it up.

“We had to have been the first band in Wyoming covering the Sex Pistols,” Swift said.

The word about new and underground bands didn’t move as quickly then as it does now; it had to come from somewhere. And while other members introduced new material and had a say in what songs the band would cover, it was Schwartz who turned on his band mates to groups like The Clash, Talking Heads and The Sex Pistols. Schwartz grew up in Washington D.C., where in the 80s a hardcore punk scene would blossom. Schwartz, who went to Woodstock, was never punk, but he did know people back East who kept him plugged in.

“Andy definitely had the most urbane of our tastes,” Swift said, adding that his band mate has a no-holds-barred stage manner. “He would bounce around the stage singing shirtless and drenched in sweat.”

Schwartz, however, dismisses that he ever took off his shirt on stage. But he said performing live today is still the same catharsis as it was 30 years ago.
“I’ve often described it as an out-of-body experience,” Schwartz said. “It’s not at all like what I do in my daily life.”

Interviewed separately, all three men recalled one particular gig. It was a summer bonfire party at the West Table boat ramp on the Snake River. The band brought in a generator and jammed late into the night. Friends visiting Schwartz from out of town thought they were lost on a pitch black rural road until suddenly they came upon the glow of the bonfire and then raging party in what seemed like the middle of nowhere.

“That was the kind of gig that some people still remember when they think about the old days,” Bigelow said.

Bigelow came to Jackson Hole in the late 70s as an avid rock climber. A product of Southern California, he grew up idolizing bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd that ruled the arenas of that era. These days, when not playing with one of his side projects, he prefers to play Clapton-style leads while The Recessions hang back a bit on blues rock numbers.

“I learned a lot about music being around these guys,” Bigelow said.
Bigelow, like his bandmates, likes to relate the story of The Recessions to that of Spinal Tap, the fictional British rock band made famous in the comedic ‘mockumentary’ of the same name. Like Spinal Tap, The Recessions have lost multiple drummers. At least one and possibly as many as two have died in skiing accidents. Others simply quit the band.

The band also has a rocky history with women – just not necessarily of the groupie or multiple ex-wife variety.

“When The Recessions were really falling apart we took on a busty female vocalist who was kind of an extroverted bar freak,” Bigelow said. “A lot of fans were looking at us like we’d really sold out.” The woman, Bigelow said he was told later, went on to become an on-air personality for the QVC cable shopping network.

And, like any good rock and roll band, there have been issues with band members having bad reactions to stimulants.

On one occasion Schwartz, needing a pick-me-up before a gig, asked Bigelow if he had anything to help.

“I took some bee pollen Jamie gave me, and then ran off the stage to throw up,” Schwartz said, referring to the all-natural and totally legal supplement believed to boost energy.

“Andy’s got allergies to just about everything,” Bigelow said. “I gave him one of my power drinks with banana, yogurt and bee pollen. It didn’t occur to me that it would send him into, not quite anaphylactic shock, but digestive revolution.”
The band members don’t go quite as hard as they used to because of the late hours and hassle of moving equipment. These days the band rehearses at the Driggs, Idaho, home of drummer Bob Pflatz.

“Andy and David both look forward to coming over the pass,” said Bigelow, a resident of nearby Victor. “Bob’s house has expansive views and the room we play in is done in hardwood. We’ve gotten accustomed to having a nice fire going while we practice.”

It’s a big step up from the band’s days of rehearsing in the dank basement of a friend’s arcade. But much remains the same.
“We’re still a garage band,” Schwartz said.

Joining The Recessions at the Silver Dollar this weekend will be another newer member, vocalist Sue Zajac, who apparently represents that the band has made peace with female members.
“Sue’s our ace-in-the-hole,” Swift said.

Swift, 61, is sometimes self-conscious about what it means to play bass in a rock band with other post-middle age professionals.

“I don’t want to be a cliche,” he said. “But when I’m on stage I go for it. I don’t care.”

And regardless of how the upcoming gig goes, it probably won’t be the last this valley has seen of The Recessions.

“This is about friendship and getting together and just having fun,” Schwartz said. JHW

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LOCAL BAND PROFILE: The Recessions | Planet JH News Article: General News

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