Oh! Gunquit: A Zillion Different Kinds of Cool

Oh! Gunquit will never pass the garage rock purity test.

That’s because the London-based band combines a dizzying set of influences – which includes garage rock – that makes their sound near impossible to pigeonhole. Perhaps it’s not garage rock at all. But, we like ‘em, and so they’re here on Garagerocktopia because they do pass the most important test of all – the coolness test.

The best thing for you to do, of course, is to just buy their music, listen carefully and call it the way you see it. But per description of Simon Wild, the band’s guitarist, the best starting points might be Carl Perkins and/or the Cramps.

“Well, we do like a bit of rockabilly and psychobilly,” concedes Wild, who along with singer Tina Swasey, talked to us via e-mail. “But we also like to mix a lot of other stuff in there which after some moulding & jigging about turns into what we like to call 'Rumble-Bop Freak-a-Billy.'' 

There’s a whole lot more shakin’ than just the ‘billys, though. Add snarling brass courtesy of Swasey and sax from Kieran Ridgers, all with an assist from the hypnotic yet powerful rhythm from drummer Alex De Renzi and bassist Veronica Arcila and you get quite a fireball of rock and roll.

Maybe most awesome of the band’s secret weapons are the dueling vocals of Wild and Swasey, which really bring the music to a boil. The trade-offs between the two strongly echo that of John Doe and Exene Cervenka, late of Los Angeles’ greatest-ever punk band, X.

The genesis of Oh! Gunquit (we’ll get to what’s behind the name later) is mostly accidental and actually follows a long tradition of folks not really meaning to form a band but nonetheless making one. Before that, Wild and Swasey had merely been neighbors.

“We lived very close to one another and had worked at the same pub,” recalled Wild. “I had played in a few bands before, but Tina hadn't, apart from a marching band.  But that worked well in our band, as Tina came to it with no notions of any learned musicality -- just pure instinct and good taste!”

Before long, with the ever-reliable assistance of some adult beverages, the two discovered they had a knack for making raucous yet catchy music.

“As soon as we made up our first drunken song together it seemed to fall into place,” added Swasey, “or rather it was a fun glorious chaotic racket & something we both got an instant buzz from.”

From there, the signature sound of Oh! Gunquit evolved.

“We actually started as a three-piece - drums, guitar, and two vocals -very stripped down,” Wild explained. “Then, on a trip back to the U.S., Tina picked up her trumpet she used in marching band and we messed about with that for fun. After a while, we got a friend in to play saxophone, as we wanted to try to get that dirty R &B/Exotica thing in there too.”

“After recording the album and putting on the bass ourselves,” said Swasey, “we thought it time to actually get a bass player!”

Like so many other bands who make strong, challenging rock and roll, the members can name a lot of artists they listen to themselves and have skillfully massaged so many of those elements into their music that they themselves don’t sound exactly like any one of them. 

“We like a lot of different stuff and we could list loads of influences,” Wild explained. “I guess the major obvious ones in the list when we started would be Link Wray, Wanda Jackson, Captain Beefheart, the Dead Kennedys, the Talking Heads, Ike & Tina Turner, the 13th Floor Elevators, the B-52's, the Cramps, Bo Diddley, The Sonics, the Bush Tetras and X-Ray Spex.

“Yes that's right,” Swasey agreed. “We get ideas from mostly older music as we like a lot of early 60's gritty R&B, wild instrumental surf, ‘70s punk and post-punk, late ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll, doo-wop, exotica, mid to late ‘60s garage, psych, freakbeat and also early ‘70s afrobeat & jazz.”

“We collect records & DJ a bit too so we’re always digging about for new/old stuff that gets us going, but generally that’s the music from between 1955 & 1985. But that doesn't mean there isn't quite a few 'modern' bands that we like too.”

The band’s moniker is derived from an art colony in Maine, which in turn took its name from an aspiration of the Abenaki, a Native-American tribe who, as part of the Algonquin confederacy, populated Maine and New England.

“We changed the spelling slightly,” said Wild, “but it seemed to fit. It's got an interesting history with artists and Native-Americans. Tina has some links to this area - plus who doesn't like the idea of guns 'quitting'? “

While there’s quite a lot to admire about a band making a difficult-to-pinpoint sound, it presents its fair share of headaches, too. Oh! Gunquit has gotten airplay on BBC 6, a definite contender for the best rock station in the English language. Beyond that, though, this band, like so many others we have featured, has had its challenges building an audience.

“Although we don't think we're inventing the wheel by any means, we do try and make it have a unique sound,” said Swasey, “and not be a pastiche of anything, so people do seem to get a bit confused.  We're on a small label in the UK and play regularly, so we do get out there a bit. But yes, we seem to sit somewhere between a lot of things and could do with some help getting stuff out there. But hey, so what? We enjoy doing our thing.”

“We're not gonna start making a watered down version of our music that doesn't move our bones just to sell more records and get more exposure,” Wild confirms. “And c'mon we're not that inaccessible are we? I mean we're practically pop compared to Zappa, or Suicide, or the Monks, or the Seeds, or Crass, etc., etc.”

“Those, too, were a blend of many different elements. We’re just another twist on rock ‘n’ roll.”

The band would certainly love to tell its fans in North America that they’ll soon be at a roadhouse near you. But, without corporate backing or a sizable bestowment from a rich family member, an American tour is sadly not in the immediate future.

“We would like to get to the U.S., definitely,” said Swasey. “We have had some interest with this, but at the moment the cost to get out there with the visas and all is preventing us from doing so. But it's something that we would love to do in the future.”

The band isn’t sitting around waiting for that to happen. They are working on some new music slated for release early next year, and they have an amazing ace in the hole to help them to that end.

 “We are currently working on our second album,” said Wild, “on which we have some songs produced by Jim Diamond (the Detroit legend who has worked with, to name just a few, the White Stripes, the Dirtbombs and the Mooney Suzuki). Some of these will be out soon as a 7" single via Trash Wax records and via Weiner Records as a limited cassette EP (Hot Cross Fun). The new album should be out early 2017.” 


If you enjoyed this story, please check out our features on Stupidity and the Galileo 7 

Speaking of the aforementioned BBC 6, if you like power pop as much as the rest of us around here, you'll want to catch Katie Puckrik's nicely done retrospective, available now on the station's website.