Reunited Oakland hard rockers Drunk Horse play Thee Stork Club
A leading light of the Bay Area heavy rock underground during the late 1990s and 2000s, reunited Oakland band Drunk Horse plays Thee Stork Club in Oakland Saturday.
Formed in 1998 by guitarist/singer Eli Eckert (formerly of local garage-punk outfit the Pants), drummer Chris Johnson (aka Cripe Jergensen), guitarist John Niles and bassist Cyrus Comisky, the band eschewed the Sabbath-worship of countless stoner-rock bands trying to retrofit '70s hard rock and metal sounds for the modern era.
While the band's original label, poster artist Frank Kozik's Man's Ruin imprint, released plenty of albums that genuflected before guitar giant Tony Iommi, the Oakland quartet dealt out a unique style of Southern-fried boogie that evoked the chugging tempos and muscular six-string heroics of early ZZ Top, the Allman Brothers, Foghat, and more obscure blues-rock bashers like Cactus on the band's self-titled Man's Ruin debut in 1998. Their subsequent sophomore effort, Tanning Salons/Biblical Proportions in 2001, would add touches of experimental blues skronk indebted to the fractured sound of Captain Beefheart as well as the blazing guitar heroics of fusion master John McLaughlin's seminal '70s band Mahavishnu Orchestra.
When Man's Ruin dissolved, Drunk Horse was left looking for a new label to partner with and -- before too long -- the band had teamed with SoCal hard rock and psych mainstay Tee Pee Records for their third album, Adult Situations in 2003.
With the departure of Niles after that album was released, the remaining members reached out to a pair of friends to help, enlisting the F--king Champs guitarist Josh Smith and multi-instrumentalist Joel Robinow to fill in. The band built on its Bay Area following with tours of the U.S. and Europe and several appearances at South By Southwest in Austin. Their 2005 offering In Tongues stood out as their most focused effort yet with a set of blinding tunes like "Strange Transgressions" and "Priestmaker" spotlighting furious slide licks from Smith, with shades of Thin Lizzy audible in Eckert's vocal swagger and his adroit harmonized interplay with Robinow on "Self-Help" and "Vatican Shuffle." But despite the album earning the band some of the best reviews of its career, Drunk Horse would cease regular activity not long afterwards outside of occasional live performances in the Bay Area.
The musicians involved would move on to new projects. Comisky recorded and toured with noted Oakland metal stalwarts Saviours for several years, while Eckert and Robinow joined Comets on Fire guitarist Ethan Miller's more roots-minded psych band Howlin Rain, filling out the line-up that recorded 2008's Magnificent Fiend for producer Rick Rubin's American Records. By the time the group was working on its ambitious magnum opus The Russian Wilds that finally came out in 2012, Eckert had left and Comisky had taken his place in the powerful quintet version of the band that also included drummer Raj Ojha and Earthless guitar virtuoso Isaiah Mitchell.
More recently, Johnson has been playing drums with punk crew Andy Human and the Reptoids as well as another band fronted by Miller, the fuzzed-out power trio Feral Ohms. Meanwhile, Robinow and Eckert (now playing bass) have teamed with Ojha in their celebrated prog-pop outfit Once and Future Band, releasing two albums and an EP and touring with such notable acts as Tool and Chris Robinson's As the Crow Flies, while Comisky has been working with a new group of Oakland vets in the punk band Smokers.
Still, with Drunk Horse never actually announcing a break up and all the members on good terms, it was only a matter of time before circumstances and the steady badgering from friends and fans would bring the quartet back together. In 2019, the band was invited by the organizers of annual Portland, OR heavy psych celebration Stumpfest on 4-20 weekend (the three-day festival that included performances by Elder, Kinski, the aforementioned Earthless and Once and Future Band among others), leading Drunk Horse to play a warm-up gig at Eli's that marked the first time the band played a hometown show in over a decade.
While several additional shows would follow that year, the group has largely been quiet since 2019 with Eckert and Robinow focusing their attention on Once and Future Band, though Robinow also spent extensive time on the road touring in the latest line-up of the Black Crowes with former bandmate Mitchell. The band reunited once again to play Stumpfest last year, this time performing with original guitar player Niles.
That line-up once again takes the stage this Saturday night at Thee Stork Club, where they will be joined by SF supergroup Desslok. A pandemic project that includes former members of beloved SF band Zen Guerilla Rich Millman (also a member of psych favorites Carlton Melton) on guitar and keys and Carl Horne on bass and ex-Acid King drummer Joey Osborne (who has played with Altamont and Frisco), Desslok is fronted by Bob Hannam on vocals and synths. While Hannam is a relative newcomer to performing outside of being a member of SF Ace Frehley tribute act Frehley's Vomet (he also co-directed the 2016 documentary "The Colossus of Destiny: A Melvins Tale"), two years ago Hannam sang a pair of Small Faces covers on the first release by Cabbages N' Mash, a band with Melvins drummer Crover on guitar, Toshi Kasai on keyboards and a rhythm section featuring Blondie drummer Clem Burke and original Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock.
Desslok delivers a dystopian post-punk sound that takes cues from classic Killing Joke and early Gary Numan/Tubeway Army (they've covered deep cuts by both bands live) with nods to pioneering space-rockers Hawkwind. The quartet has played a number of San Francisco shows and earlier this year tracked an album's worth of material at San Francisco's El Studio. While still looking for a label home to release their proper debut, last year the quartet put out its first corrosive single "What's the Use?" backed with a cover of the Robert Calvert/Hawkwind nugget "Ejection" that is available now digitally and on seven-inch single. Earlier this month, the group released another new song entitled "Recall." Opening the show is SF noise-rock power trio Highwinds, which features drummer Kyle Gibson from local garage-psych outfit the Fresh & Onlys, bassist Gustavo Mendoza (Curl Up & Die) on bass, and guitarist/singer Jesse Robeck (of San Francisco hardcore band Hides).
Drunk Horse with Desslok and Highwinds
Saturday, Sept. 21, 8 p.m. $15-$18
Thee Stork Club