By Steve Hyden   Published Aug 08, 2006 at 5:19 AM
Milwaukee media, you owe Joe Crockett an explanation. It's nearly been a year since his band The Championship self-released its exceptional debut "Dance Casador!" and there's been nary a peep from local newspapers and Web sites. (Except, cough, for this one, cough, as of right now.)

How can a ruggedly handsome collection of dreamy roots rock tunes go unnoticed? Crockett deserves an answer, but he's too busy to ask for one.

"I'm a little salty about it but what can you do?" Crockett, 24, said with an almost audible shrug during a recent telephone interview. He was less than one week away from heading out on a month-long national tour, the band's longest to date. "We're going to do this whether they publicize it or not."

Which brings us to an important philosophical conundrum: If a really good rock band falls in a forest and local media doesn't hear it, does the band make a sound? Put another way, will The Championship be Milwaukee's answer to Tapes 'n' Tapes? For the non-Pitchfork reader, Tapes 'n' Tapes is an inspired Pavement knock-off whose debut album "The Loon" went virtually unnoticed in the band's hometown of Minneapolis until blogger-fueled Internet buzz made them one of the breakout acts of 2006. Twin Cities music fans still are playing catch-up.

Whether The Championship will break out remains to be seen. Whether it should is confirmed by "Dance Casador!" -- an amazingly assured debut and one of the more impressive records to come out of Wisconsin this decade.

The dichotomy between Crockett's folksy songwriting and back porch baritone and guitarist Jordan Burich's space age riffs invites no-brainer shorthand like "Wilco meets Radiohead and has a beer with My Morning Jacket," but what really distinguishes The Championship is how well-crafted the music is, especially considering the band is barely older than the CD. John Crockett and Travis Doar round out the line-up.

Joe Crockett formed The Championship in May 2005 to record a lonely batch of songs he wrote while listening incessantly to Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska." Once the disc was released in October, the band used it like a business card to get shows and promote itself in Milwaukee and throughout the region. "Dance Casador!" seems more like a means to an end than the end itself for Crockett, who thinks "it sounds fine for what it is" but "like it to be a lot more professional."

The next Championship record, he hopes, will be made in an actual studio with a producer and a budget fatter than a shoestring. In the meantime The Championship needs label support, which Crockett hopes to find on the road.

"It's kind of the purpose of touring," he said. "We can keep recording records and putting them out, but it wears on you. Nobody in this town can help you as far as putting out your record and promoting you. We'll need somebody who likes us, believes in us and can help us out."

In Milwaukee, at least, Crockett feels like The Championship is building a following. While a CD release show last fall was attended mostly by empty barstools, a recent pre-tour benefit concert to raise gas money earned enough cash to satisfy hungry pumps from here to Tallahassee, no small feat in the Bush era. "It's hard to judge our fan base because we're always opening up for bigger bands (like Decibully, Maritime and Magnolia Electric Co.)," said Crockett, though crowds are growing at shows.

But Crockett isn't getting overconfident. Local audiences can be even dicier than local media.

"It's like school politics all over again," Crockett said. "It doesn't matter if the music is good, it's like 'I like that guy.' It's so stupid." No, it would be stupid not to pick up a copy of "Dance Casador!" Not that you need a Milwaukee media outlet to tell you that.