Guzzard were a tight-as-nuts Minneapolis post-hardcore/noise-rock trio featuring the Beeman brothers, Tom (vox/guitar) & Pete (drums), and bassist David Paul.
They had a fairly productive five years, spanning 1991 through 1996. In that time, there was a lot of touring, most notably on the Clusterfuck '94 tour with Chokebore & Today Is The Day, and gave us two 7"'s and three LPs (as well as contributing three tracks to the Clusterfuck '94 10" comp), all of which, except their first single, were released on AmRep.
I have been a fan since the "Glued" single was released in 1993, and still, to this day, pull their records off the shelf on occasion. But if we're being honest about it, all these years later, they are not a band that is spoken about with the same reverence as many of their peers from that time.
I think there's a few reasons why this might be. The band has rarely ever reconvened for any reunions. I am only aware of one reunion gig in 2009 in their hometown of Minneapolis (maybe there were more? Fill me in). And, other than drummer Pete Beeman's stint with Philadelphia's Burning Brides, none of the members of Guzzard have really gone on to make a significant dent musically. Pete, seemingly, being the only member to have pursued music to any degree following Guzzard's break-up.
reunion show at Grumpy's, Minneapolis ('09)
But getting to Guzzard themselves, there may have been a bit of a lack of identity when compared to the other AmRep bands from that time and, it's interesting that in this interview, they seem to be almost uncomfortable with the branding of being an "AmRep band", wanting to distance themselves a bit as a band from the company that simply releases their records. But that goes to show you the impact AmRep had as a label at that time - as they correctly point out - some of us would give a bit of extra attention to a band by merely having been released by that label. AmRep is one of those labels that built a trust with its audience....if they released your band, I was probably going to give your band a pretty fair shake.
While Guzzard did have certain rock/noise elements that we might expect from other AmRep bands, they were fundamentally a tight post-hardcore unit (with some incredible, tight, syncopated, rhythm-skipping drumming from Pete). They were not relentlessly unhinged musically like Hammerhead. They did not create their own unique sound and style like Unsane. They were not a bunch of larger than life absurdists like Cows. They were not infant aliens from Cynot-3. They were just three dudes who got on stage and did their thing - and in doing that, may have been lost in the shuffle, and may not be the first band we think of from those times.
While Guzzard did have certain rock/noise elements that we might expect from other AmRep bands, they were fundamentally a tight post-hardcore unit (with some incredible, tight, syncopated, rhythm-skipping drumming from Pete). They were not relentlessly unhinged musically like Hammerhead. They did not create their own unique sound and style like Unsane. They were not a bunch of larger than life absurdists like Cows. They were not infant aliens from Cynot-3. They were just three dudes who got on stage and did their thing - and in doing that, may have been lost in the shuffle, and may not be the first band we think of from those times.
Even though they may have just been three dudes doing their thing - they brought a great energy on stage that was never captured on their records. This is also referenced in the interview and maybe on that account, their complaints about the production of their records is justified. I still think they're great listens, but there was something missing compared to seeing them perform those songs live.
I'm typing this up before I start the dull, tedious work of transcription - but there's one moment of the interview I remember and took a very good lesson from (a lesson which should have seemed obvious). I had picked a few random songs from the newest record, which I admittedly had not yet become familiar with, to ask them what the songs were about. One of the songs I picked to ask about was "Hiro"....to which I received the answer, "uh...that's an instrumental". So - I felt like an idiot and learned to never ask a question about a specific song unless I knew that song down cold....and - at the very least - making sure there were actual lyrics before asking about them. Live & learn. Not sure if that part made it into the interview or if I saved face by editing that out way back when. I guess I'll see in a few moments.
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Aaron and I interviewed Guzzard before their show at CBGB on November 4th. Guzzard are a 3-piece from Minneapolis who combine that AmRep NOISE sound with more traditional punk rock riffs. Guzzard are Tom Beeman (guitar, vocals), David Paul (bass) and Pete Beeman (drums). - Jeff
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| setlist - CBGB - 11/4/95 |
3C: 3 Cynical
TB: Tom Beeman
DP: David Paul
PB: Pete Beeman
3C: How is it being in a band with your brother? Have you always played music together?
TB: It's OK. We've played together off and on with various bass players.
3C: How did you guys hook up together? How'd you start out?
TB: We both wanted to start bands....we hooked up with DP.
3C: How long ago was that?
TB: 4 years ago.
3C: Was Dave a childhood buddy?
PB: I had just heard that this guy DP played bass...
TB: ....we grew up in the same area so we had mutual friends.
PB: So we went to the record store he worked at one day and just asked him, "You wanna play with me and my brother?"...but I was with my little brother and he thought...didn't you think?....
DP: Yeah, I thought he meant his younger brother Danny.
PB: He said, "Yeah, OK."
DP: Tom and Pete were in some local bands, they both quit those bands around the same time and they started jamming in their parent's basement. Tom wrote some songs, this was for about two weeks...then they got a practice space and decided to get a bass player, so they asked me.
PB: We played with him, and it's been that way ever since.
3C: Did any of your other bands ever put anything out?
All: Nope.
3C: Was the 'Glued' 7" the first thing out?
PB: No, we put out a single on a label called Project A Bomb out of St. Paul [the 'Pinch' 7"]. That was it, and it was AmRep from then on.
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| "Pinch" single ('92) |
3C: How did you hook up with Amphetamine Reptile?
PB: Just from knowing the guys who worked there. Just being around, they came to our shows.
TB: There's only a couple of venues.
PB: Those guys liked it, but Haze [Tom Hazelmyer - main man at AmRep - ed.] didn't like our single or the demo we had sent around....but he liked our live show. One time we saw him at a bar, we just said, "Hey, what's up?", we were just shootin' the shit. He asked us to come down and record at AmRep, and if it turned out maybe do a single. It turned out and the "Glued"/'Tex" single came out of that. After that he just said, "Let's go whole hog", as he called it. He usually waits, but he said, "I'm ready to go whole hog with you guys." So, we went whole hog.
3C: What happened next, the 'Get A Witness' LP or the "Clusterfuck" thing?
PB: The album, then the "Clusterfuck".
3C: How did they put together the "Clusterfuck" tour?
PB: It was just the three newest AmRep bands, Chokebore, Today Is The Day, and us. We all put out a record at pretty much the same time. We had tons of fun together.
3C: I saw you guys in Amsterdam, at the Sleep-In Arena...
PB: That was a cool fuckin' place.
TB: I felt sleepy when we were playing there.
3C: Did you have a good time there?
All: Yeah.
PB: We had a good time everywhere over there.
DP: We went back to Europe this last April.
3C: Did you play Amsterdam again?
DP: No, we played in Utrecht. I thought it was a beautiful city, we had a good show.
3C: Were people very aware of Guzzard over there?
PB: Utrecht? That's when we played with Babes in Toyland, right? So, no. We opened for Babes, and there's like 900 people there who had probably not heard of us, maybe there was six people who had.
3C: How was the reaction there?
DP: Good. People are into music, buying records. They know about a lot of bands.
PB: A lot more people come out to shows there, I think.
3C: They come out to see bands even if they've never heard of the bands.
PB: In some cities...in a lot of cities, the scene is so big there are tons of shows all the time. You can see an American band every night, probably.
3C: Any good tour stories? Near disasters?
PB: I threw up once...
TB: It landed on my face.
3C: He threw up on your face?
TB: He threw up in a bag in the van. It was leaking out the bottom of the bag, so I took it and opened up a side door to let it out on the highway.
PB: And it all came back!
TB: Right on my face.
DP: I held it together enough to not start to spew. Our tour manager was tough. I stuck it out. I didn't want everyone to start. Tom didn't puke either.
3C: Where was this at?
PB: Slovenia. I got sick in Vienna...
3C: Did you eat something bad?
PB: No. I just got a migraine...I got some weird ass European bug that was going around. I had a bad headache, we played, I felt better. I drank some beer, then we went upstairs and feasted. We sat up there, they had all this catering we didn't even touch. I ate so much food, I was thinking, "Yeah, this is great!" I just totally pigged. Then, when I woke up, it was...UGH!!!
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| David Paul & Tom Beeman - CBGB - 11/4/95 |
3C: Did they have a lot of catered stuff there for you?
PB: That's a totally different story, yeah. The hospitality is turned up about 50 notches.
TB: They give you sandwiches before soundcheck, then later they give you a big meal.
DP: The biggest clubs here don't seem to give a shit...but over there they go all out.
PB: The clubs are run a lot different. The P.A.'s are top notch. It's good.
3C: What are you guys doing now? Are you on tour or did you just come out for a show or two?
PB: We've been touring with Unsane for awhile. It started in Montreal, and it goes for five weeks. Tomorrow's the last night.
TB: We play Boston tomorrow night.
3C: Is the tour in support of the new album?
DP: No, it's for Unsane's new album. Our album came out last March, so it's more like they asked us to come with them.
3C: The first album blends the noise thing with more traditional punk rock riffs, while the new album seems a bit more mature...and stylistically different somehow. Comment?
PB: That first record was the first batch of songs that we jammed on....they were already old songs when they were recorded. The last record was much newer songs.
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| 'Get A Witness' ('93) |
DP: We don't even think of the new record as a new record....those songs are pretty old, too.
3C: You have a whole bunch of even newer songs then?
DP: Yeah, we're thinking about recording again in January. Put out another album in the spring.
3C: How does that work? When you record you just go to AmRep and tell them you're ready to record again?
PB: They actually asked us. It takes a few months, you have to record and have a finished tape. And then have two months to get everything together. It's basically whenever you want.
3C: Is AmRep a really safe deal for you guys right now?
PB: Yeah, I would say so.
3C: How was working with Tim Mac?
TB: For some people it's good. For us, it wasn't as good.
3C: You won't work with him again?
TB: Probably not.
DP: We just want to try something new. We did the first two records with him, and the last record....
PB: ....turned out like a cracker.
DP: Yeah, we weren't very happy with how it turned out.
3C: Production-wise or...?
PB: Just the whole experience on the second record was not good.
3C: Any thoughts as to where you'll go next?
DP: Actually, we had a day off on this tour. We're friends with Steve Austin from Today Is The Day, he built a studio in Nashville, where they live. We went up there on our day off to check it out. He knows we want to go somewhere else too. He invited us to try it out for a day, so we did.
PB: He's always been recording.
TB: He's done a lot of the new Today Is The Day stuff.
PB: Their drummer went to school to learn how to do all that shit.
DP: So anyway, that worked out pretty good, so we're thinking maybe that's where we'll go.
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| David Paul - CBGB - 11/4/95 |
3C: Are you going to do anything with what you just recorded there?
DP: No. It's a bit too raw. He just invited us to check it out.
TB: It's cool...it's also their practice space, it's not like a professional studio. It's got 16 tracks, new gear, it's very low key.
3C: Will there be a lot of new songs in your set tonight?
PB: Yeah, three or four songs.
DP: We don't play too much stuff from that first record at all.
PB: One song, maybe two. We only have a certain amount of time to play, so we've got to prioritize.
DP: The bulk of the set is from 'Quick, Fast, In a Hurry'.
3C: There's no lyric sheet on the albums...
DP: On the vinyl there's none, there is on the CD.
3C: Could you talk about "Sixed" and "Hiro" on the new album?
DP: The lyrics to "Hiro" are sort of buried in the mix.
TB: "Sixed" is basically a fuck you. That's towards some people in our hometown.
3C: Is Minneapolis not a fun place to be?
TB: It's OK. It's just about people in a certain scene...
DP: It's not a fuck you to Minneapolis as a city. Just a bunch of people around town who are mean-spirited.
3C: What is the music scene like there, aside from AmRep?
PB: Pretty good...there's tons of different shit.
DP: There's a lot of different genres of, whatever, "alternative" shit. There's a whole bunch of different scenes, and they're all well-supported.
PB: It's a big deal, live music in Minneapolis...there's tons of it.
(Talk ensures about Fat Tuesday and Judas Priest).
3C: So, back to your band...what is a "Guzzard"?
PB: It's just a made up word. It sounds cool. I was thinking "gizzard"....
3C: "Gizzard" is one of my favorite words!
PB: I was thinking, "buzzard", "gizzard"....GUZZARD!
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| Pete Beeman - CBGB - 11/4/95 |
3C: It sounds like a drink.
TB: We used to tell people it was a very large and vicious species of walleye.
PB: It was a fish you could never find.
3C: Indigenous to certain part of Minneapolis.
PB: The story I like is that it's a certain species of pickle. [laughs] A vicious pickle?
TB: Or, it's a sexual position.
PB: You have to be crippled to enjoy it.
3C: Do you have any favorite places to play?
TB: [some place I couldn't understand, but sounded like "Des Moines" - ed.] in Austin. [this is Jeff in 2020...I'm pretty sure in retrospect he was talking about Emo's in Austin, TX]
3C: Des Moines?
PB: Des Moines is definitely NOT a favorite place to play...it's at the bottom of the list.
TB: No, this place in Austin, Texas.
3C: Have you guys ever gotten any shit for the cover for the 'Glued' single? [a photo of a bunch of dead goldfish in a pool of glue. -- ed]
DP: We did, on this tour actually. In Columbus, Ohio.
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| "Glued" ('93) |
PB: The soundguy. What the fuck is there to talk about? It's goldfish!! They were at a fish store, getting ready to be eaten by bigger fish.
3C: Now they have fame since they're on the cover of your 7"!
DP: I explained to this girl...they weren't cows. She said she didn't care, any living creature shouldn't be killed. I said, OK, what if they were maggots? She said, well, I guess maggots would be OK. So it's like, where do you draw the line? I think it would be rad if it was people on that cover.
TB: I know a few people...
DP: It was actually someone else who came up with that idea.
PB: That was all Haze.
DP: We couldn't come up with any artwork for that single.
PB: I'ts one of his best works.
DP: Well, we said, the A-side is "Glued", the B-side is "Tex", so we should have glue, and something to do with cowboys, and television, that's what "Glued" is about. We told him those things and to come up with something...and he did. He was very proud of that.
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| "Glued" ('93) |
3C: I've heard he's a graphics nut.
DP: He loves to do it.
PB: He's talented...he's good. You wouldn't think so, he plays this big guy/tough guy thing....this funny schtick, and it is very amusing, but, anyway...
3C: What do you guys do when you go home?
All: Work.
3C: What do you do?
DP: I work in a warehouse.
PB: I work in a restaurant.
TB: I work at a t-shirt printing place.
3C: Do you want to eventually make this a full-time thing?
PB: I would.
DP: I wouldn't mind not working.
PB: We could right now, but we'd have to be out all the time.
DP: And even then, it would be tough at this point. Gotta work just to pay rent. Keep up with bills and stuff.
[talk about WKRP In Cincinnati ensues]
3C: The drumming on the album is incredible. Was there any training in that department?
PB: Nope. My older brother taught me how to play drums. I just kind of figured it out from there.
3C: What is the ultimate show for you? How do you want people to react and get out of your music?
PB: Energy.
3C: Just people flying all over the place?
PB: Maybe not even crazy and wild...it's when you play and it feels really good....it sounds pretty hippie-ish, but a "good vibe".
DP: People don't have to get all crazy and jump on stage with us, although they can if they want to. You can just sense it. I'd rather people give us shit than just stand there with their arms folded. A lot of shows we play, people just stand there...we just do it. We're there to play, might as well practice.
3C: Are CBGB shows usually pretty good?
DP: Well, sometimes we've had to go on after the headliner.
3C: That happens all the time here.
TB: Every time we've played here, except for tonight, we've gotten stuck.
PB: The first time it turned out really good...we played for a lot of people.
DP: We played after Unsane last summer, and after Wool this past January.
PB: WOOL!! They dominated the world that night.
"Last" (official video)
3C: Do you ever actually get to check out any of the places where you play?
DP: Sometimes I'm thinking that it sucks that we don't get to see anyplace, but once we do, it's like...let's go.
TB: And it gets boring...you're just waiting around for the next show.
PB: I actually did go to pay to walk around a castle once.
TB: In Germany.
PB: You get to see cool shit anyway.
3C: Does it get frustrating sometimes, though, just coming around and playing the same places over and over?
TB: You have the places that you like better than others...you get to know a place and have a memory of that place.
PB: We don't tour that much that we hit every place every two months or anything.
DP: Once or twice a year.
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| Tom Beeman - CBGB - 11/4/95 |
3C: Have the turnouts gotten bigger each time out?
TB: Slowly...not this tour...we're just the support band for Unsane.
PB: We usually have a few people there.
DP: We gain people, it's just slow.
PB: Like last night in Baltimore there was a whole bunch of people. We had only played there once before. I don't know, they must like us there for some reason. They're all into AmRep. That's how it happens, some people are just into AmRep.
DP: But, I mean, I like the guys that work there, and some of the bands, but we're not representing them. We're the band, and that's the company that puts out our record. We happen to like them. We talk well about them. But that's as far as it goes. Sometimes people want to know more than there really is to it.
3C: Do you see yourself moving onto a next level eventually?
DP: We're pretty comfortable here, actually. In the last few months they've become such a strong company.
3C: They have a division over in Europe too.
PB: That's been there for years. That's an amazing thing, actually. It just moved to Hamburg. It's run by one guy, pretty much. This guy named Anthony Martin, he was in a band called The Bastards. He's a total fucking nut, workaholic....runs the whole label by himself. He's crazy, he's a nut.
3C: Is that you guys driving go-karts on the cover of the new album?
DP: I have to admit, I've been telling people that it is. If you look, there's a guy named "Dave" driving one of the karts. I got those photos from a library...we just figured we'd get go-kart photos.
PB: It's appropriate since we're both licensed drivers.
[Paul & Tom hand over membership cards from a go-karting track]
PB: Look at Tom's face [laughs]....blue hair!
3C: So does the title, 'Quick, Fast, In a Hurry' reflect this love of go-karting?
PB: No, it just sounds good.
DP: We knew we wanted to do something with go-karts. We're in the van all day and we think up titles.
PB: DP keeps a Michael Jackson notebook, a little pad, we'll say something funny like, "Lipstick and Karate", well, that wasn't that great, but still....
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| Quick, Fast, In a Hurry ('95) |
DP: Sometimes when you look back, they don't hold up. I thought 'Get A Witness' was a cool album title. The artwork came after the title.
3C: Any other bands you're getting excited about?
PB: Well, there's Kepone.
3C: One of the guys from GWAR, right?
PB: Nicest guy ever.
DP: They were great...original.
PB: Barkmarket are nice boys. Played with them in L.A. a few weeks ago.
DP: We haven't played with too many bands, it's just us and Unsane and sometimes a local band.
It was time for Guzzard to soundcheck, and the interview ended.
(Live on "What", a local music TV show)
