Rockabilly Noir: The Country Dark

Much of Rock and Roll, especially in its earliest days, has been good-time music, with the top three themes being, in no particular order, girls, cars and Saturday night. Well, OK, the girls part has always been number one … but besides that you get the idea.

And mind you, there a lot of girls, cars and Saturday night in the Country Dark’s music. But the girl is dead – or maybe undead, the car is involved in a high-speed chase as it flees crime scenes across state lines and Saturday night, well, let’s just say all the praying on Sunday won’t wipe out a Country Dark Saturday night.

Hailing from Kuopio in Finland’s hinterlands, the Country Dark has just released its fourth album, Cookie Trail. Brooding and foreboding throughout yet also surprisingly high energy, the new album, if there's even a splatter of justice in the music biz,  should easily expand the group’s following.

The band’s pulsating beats jump out like ‘50s muscle car on rocket fuel, powered by the sounds of Rockabilly as well as its sibling which desperately needs opiates, Psychobilly. There are also generous touches of punk, surf, country and good ol’ fashioned garage rock throughout.

With songs like “Bella in the Witch Elm” and the garage-y “Today I Killed My Best Friend,” Cookie Trail may not be the ideal first choice for, say, a family picnic with kids and grandparents. That doesn’t mean it’s not loaded with fun though. Even the dirge-ish moments shine with a firm tongue-in-cheek attitude. And songs like the upbeat, gospel-esque “Black Diamond Train” border on music from the good quality end of the mainstream spectrum.

"I think every song on the album has it's own very special strength and value,” explained Mika Sollas, lead singer of the Country Dark. “But in my opinion ‘Just Because You Killed Jesse James’ and ‘Death of Kay Kent’ are very important because these two songs are the first ones we wrote/made for this new album. They kind of started the whole process. It seems that every record we make has its own unique feel and spirit, a spirit of goneness. You can control that spirit to some degree but after a while it just sort of takes over."

Here at Garagerocktopia, we’re quite proud of the traditions that make up American music. Mind you (you should be queuing up “Battle Hymn of the Republic” right about  now), we’re not a bunch of nationalists – we’re merely – and justifiably -- pleased that our country was the one that gave the world blues, jazz, country and of course most important of all, rock and roll.

We hasten to applaud, however, the legions of artists around the world who have adopted those genres and taken them places their originators could scarcely imagine. Especially amazing to us is how so many artists have taken rockabilly – that quintessentially American blend of country and blues – and rocked it in ways that must keep Carl Perkins and Eddie Cochran smiling from heaven nonstop. Sollas explained the allure of rockabilly in lands far beyond its southern United States birthplace.

"Elvis started it all in the 1950's of course, but back in the late seventies and early eighties there was this huge rockabilly revival thing going on here in Finland,” recounted Sollas, talking to Garagerocktopia via e-mail. “In time local young Finnish bands started to play American 1950's music.”

The band also includes Marko Lukkarinen on guitar, Lassi Kauppinen on bass, Henri Keinänen  on rhythm guitar, drummer Antti Alvasto and Tomi Kosonen on saxophone and keys.

Rockabilly, for the decades after the ‘50s always bubbled under the surface with a devoted cult following. In the early ‘80s, it finally punched its way back as a mainstream musical force powered by lots of regional bands, such as Southern California’s pride and joy, the Blasters. Some found it curious that such a rootsy music would find a large audience with the punk/new wave generation. Others felt it made perfect sense – after all, in its first wave, rockabilly was more frantic and edgier than anything middle America could handle in the ‘50s.

The Stray Cats would take Rockabilly to the highest reaches of the charts in the early ‘80s on both sides of the Atlantic. But perhaps more importantly, those legendary Long Islanders would leave a lasting impact on aspiring musicians the world over.

“At that same time, punk rock/new wave also kicked in hard,” recalled Sollas. “I was a nine or ten year- old kid. I got immediately hooked on rockabilly music. It was such powerful stuff that it totally blew my socks off. The Stray Cats were my favorite band. There was sort of a Stray Cats hysteria in Finland. Also, lots of British teddy boy bands came to Finland to play concerts and rockabilly festivals. Bands like Crazy Cavan and Matchbox, these groups sold huge amounts of records here. For a short while Finland was like this mutant 1950's parallel universe rockabilly fantasy land.”

Rockabilly has found substantial audiences across Europe and in Japan as well. But Sollas said for whatever reason, Finland was especially smitten with the OG rock style.

“I heard that there was this same kind of phenomenon going on in some parts of Scandinavia, Germany and Great Britain, too, but to a much lesser extent,” Sollas said. “Many older foreign Rockabillies say that during that time, the atmosphere in Finland was truly something else.”

But like the music of the Country Dark, Sollas said his tastes also ventured well beyond Rockabilly.

“I also liked some punk rock. I love primitive 1977-style punk rock and some early 1980's hardcore punk like Finnish band TerveetKädet, but Rockabilly definitely was and is my thing. I started buying old rock 'n 'roll records. I bought records by  Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eddie Cochran and so on. The Rockabilly revival came and went but I think it had strong impact on our generation of Finns. A few years later I discovered The Cramps, The Sonics and the Pebbles and Back from the Grave garage-rock compilations. It opened up a whole new world to me."

"We definitely are not pure rockabilly,” Sollas points out. “I must say we actually don't listen to much psychobilly at all. But we do listen to lots of music that has influenced psychobilly like The Cramps, Misfits, 50's obscure rock 'n' roll, hillbilly/country music, old blues, 60's garage rock, early primitive psychedelia, 70's punk rock and so on.”

 “I personally love rockabilly but I also like other musical genres too and other band members listen huge variety of different kinds of stuff. I think our music is a mix of rock 'n' roll, blues, country, primitive psychedelia and greasy punk rock. But we call our stuff simply ‘rock 'n' roll.’”

The songs of the Country Dark aren’t just informed by rock and roll, though. The music is also dramatically affected both by movies and literature, which contributes inspiration to the music’s darker themes.

"Horror and trash movies are big influence too,” Sollas explained. “We like to watch lots of movies, stuff like "Greasy Strangler" which really electrify our imagination. I also read lot of true crime stories, watch TV series and documentaries about various murder cases and serial killers, as well as everything I consider to be weird and odd that interests me.”

One could be forgiven for assuming the Nordic Noir is also a big influence. Taking off over the last couple of decades and popularized in large part by Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, writers and film makers across Scandinavia have dramatically revitalized the noir subgenre. With the region’s long winters and crazy amounts of nighttime, one would think it has a natural connection to the darker themes that sometimes emerge from Finland. Yet, Sollas says he is actually more attuned to Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler than Larsson.

“What comes to Nordic Noir I must say I'm not really an expert,” Sollas reveals. “I watched few episodes of the original Swedish/Danish television series, Bridge. It was OK, good actors and stuff,  but I like the old American 1940's black and white detective noir movies more. I don't read much fiction nowadays, except maybe some 1950's pre-code horror comics and old Donald Duck comics.”

“I like to read books though...mostly history books and biographies, as well as some Finnish mythology and folk tales. The Finnish nature itself shapes our character and the state of mind. We have long cold dark winters with lots of snow and short summers, with a midnight sun, like in Alaska I would think"

For right now, it’ll only be European audiences that get to groove – and maybe be a little scared – of the Country Dark. In North America we’ll have to wait for our turn to see the band’s joyous nightmares.

"We primarily perform here in Finland,” reported Sollas. “We mostly perform in the eastern and southern parts of the country. We also have done some touring in Germany too, in Berlin, Dresden and all. North America would be great, and hopefully, someday soon we will come to play there."

We have some other features already in the works here at Garagerocktopia. Artists have been sending us some very cool stuff. As always, we don’t make any guarantees in stone but we’re happy to say we’ve gotten a lot of very promising music sent to us, and we’re always happy to spread the word about about bands that are playing the way-out kinds of music we profile here. Send us a line and we’ll talk.

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