With feet firmly rooted in rock and roll, but with hands in American roots music and post-punk, Milwaukee’s One Horse Towne plays down to Earth, gritty music. Think part Replacements and part Son Volt.
Fronted by George Mireles – co-owner of Riverwest’s Cafe Corazon – the trio is made up of local veterans with a combined tenure somewhere between 75 and 90 years on the Milwaukee music scene.
The band, which performs sporadically in area clubs, recently issued a self-titled, six song CD recorded with engineer Andy Stilin.
We caught up with Mireles to ask him about the songs, his bandmates and some upcoming One Horse Towne gigs...
OnMilwaukee.com: Give us a little history of the band.
George Mireles: Tommy Tiedjens on bass, (was in) Those X-Cleavers, and Chris Lehmann on drums. He’s also owner of Lehmann Audio Production. I played in The Mercurys, Screaming Lilies, and a revisited version of Cherry Cake. All the members have been playing the Milwaukee music scene the last 25 years or more.
OMC: Tell me a bit about writing the songs on the disc.
GM: The songs on the disc are mostly songs I wrote five years ago or so. With a couple of newer numbers like "Dance Floor" and "Mountain." "Drinking in the Dark," a song Tommy wrote, is on a solo disc he put out a year ago. The last song on the disc, "Medicine," was a Mercurys song that was never recorded.
I tend to write slow and sporadically, I'll come to practice with a riff and we can build on that. And sometimes I come to practice with a song with chords and lyrics all complete, ready to show the guys. Usually it's something I've worked on for months.
OMC: Does the band plan to play out regularly or is it more casual?
GM: We go in spurts when playing out. We won't play a show for months, then we’ll get gigs playing out once or twice a month. We have two gigs in May and usually do most of our gigs in spring and summer. We've played Locust Street Daze the last two years.
OMC: Does owning a popular restaurant guarantee you'll always have a great place to play?
GM: Having the restaurant really doesn't do anything for gigs. I like to keep things with the band simple – we like playing Circle-A and Linneman’s.
OMC: When and where are those May gigs?
GM: We are playing May 1 at Frank’s Power Plant, And a fundraiser in Racine on May 10. So we’re out there gigging.
OMC: Where can folks buy the record?
GM: You can get our CD at our shows for now, and we plan on pressing more soon. I'll give a few discs to my friend’s record store, Rush-mor.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
