Shake Appeal is a column that highlights new garage and garage-adjacent releases. This week, Evan Minsker shares a conversation with the Rochester, New York enigma Aweful Kanawful, who recently self-released his debut solo tape Pharoah's Lonely Ego. Also, he shares a compilation of Detroit garage covers by Turn to Crime.
A month ago, I found (and wrote about) a tape by the Rochester hardcore band Beastman on Reel Time Records. Some time while writing that week's column, I impulsively bought another tape that was being distributed by Reel Time. I knew nothing about Pharoah's Lonely Ego by Aweful Kanawful & His Rubber Husband's Band. Outside of the tape's description, no music or information could be found about it online. Within the week, I got it in the mail and put it on. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it sure as hell wasn't what I heard.
It's a record that, at the beginning, makes several unexected punk rock shifts that evoked images of early godfathers of oddball punk, like Devo or Wire. On the B-side, he goes for the sort of wild-eyed rockabilly you'd expect from Norton Records.
Wanting to know about the dude behind this tape, Reel Time put me in contact with Aweful Kanawful, aka 21-year-old Austin Lake. It turns out, the name isn't a total put-on: The guy considers himself a stunt man. Our email conversation and all of Pharoah's Lonely Ego is below. His next tape, Brave As Hits, is coming soon.
Pitchfork: What's your background in music?
Austin Lake: I have an older brother and a younger brother, both two years apart from me and they have carrot-red hair. We lived in Hilton, New York, which is a hick-ish town outside of Rochester. Most suburbs of Rochester are Ritzy as hell but Hilton's on farm land. They were my first band; my dad played the drums so learning how to rock was just as readily available as hockey in the driveway and building ramps out of dirt. I bought a guitar and there ya go. We built wrestling rings in the yard and jammed when it rained.
Pitchfork: Brett from Reel Time Records described you to me as a stuntman. Is that true?
AL: First and foremost. It goes right back to childhood hobbies that devolve in adulthood. I have a stunt I'm planning where I bomb a hill on skiis with wheels playing a snare drum wearing the red white and blue helmet. It's just stuff we would do as little boys but now it looks like it's what I'm put here to do. I decided I wanted to make a record, almost as a publicity stunt. I figured Evil Knieval made one, so I probably should too. But now people like that more than my stunts so I'm going to roll with it and continue working on a big musical performance.
Pitchfork: Do you have plans for more Aweful Kanawful records?
AL: I have many many more Aweful Kanawful records that I'm working on, but there's already two hours of music I have recorded that I'm trying to put out before I work on new stuff. Everything you heard is a compilation of recordings from the last seven months. Ideally I'd like to make a record for every day of the week. So far Pharaoh's is Wednesday, and Brave as Hits is Thursday. I'm in the making of an album called WacksonWhacksoff, that must be Saturday.
Pitchfork: Do you record the tapes with other people, or is it just you?
AL: The Aweful Tapes are just me. I use a Tascam 8-track recorder and usually start with drums or guitar tracks first, but there's no formula. I didn't, however, use a single instrument that belonged to me aside from the piano (Craigslist). All my roommates' amps, drums, guitars, bass. Actually, I used my own mic. So I owe them a debt of thanks for letting me be a lazy piece of shit who uses everyone's things. Tascams are portable in a suitcase, too, so I brought that thing everywhere and recorded in all different places to get the effect.
Pitchfork: With some of your tracks, it's really tempting to compare you to Devo.
AL: I love Devo. I have a cat named Spudnick and we call him Spud-boy. But I'm mostly influenced by Bo Diddley and Louis Armstrong, believe it or not. It's just when you convert their methods through a mind so contorted from them it sounds weird.
Pitchfork: Later in Pharoah's Lonely Ego, there's a lot of that reads as rockabilly. Are you a fan of that stuff?
AL: I'm a huge Jerry Lee fan, and Carl Perkins and Charlie Rich, but rockabilly is just a side effect of not being able to play black music honestly. It's always going to have some strange twang of something else that seems unnatural. Rockabilly is cool, but I think Jerry and the other boys and I are trying to play jazz but just can't.
Pitchfork: What's your day job?
AL: I work for Galaxy Graphics, which is owned by two of the most respectable brothers I know. One of which I'm in a band with but I'll get into that. I clean screens and do some printing so basically I'm a chore-boy. I wash dishes on the weekend for a vegan restaurant and it's goofy as all get out people try to order lunch without sugar salt or wheat in it. We give them water and they tip very nice.
Pitchfork: What other bands are you in?
AL: I'm also in a band called Flip Shit with my older brother, Trevor. That band is about eight years old now. I drum for that band and he sings. I also drum in a surf rock band called the Televisionaries, with Taylor, who I work for, and Trevor, who RIPSSSSS the surf guitar.
Trevor drums in a band which I play bass and sing for called King Vitamin. Then comes Illiterate, Fast Eddies, Panty-Raid, and Trevor is the drummer of Beastman, which is the only band he and I are not in together. All of these bands are variations of Trevor and I with our several friends. We play almost every week and it's getting old. We need desperately to venture out.
The Temptators is the real Rubber Husband's Band. I've turned a lot of those songs along with many more of mine into what I think is a sensation act. My younger brother, Brendan plays bass, I guitar, another guitarist, a drummer, and Cougar, a young teen idol to front it. We use three-part harmonies and when this tape comes out I think it will turn heads.
Pitchfork: Since the first Aweful Kanawful tape seems to split genres, do you feel any need to release a record that goes consistently in one direction or the other?
AL: I'd also love to make a consistent album but I think the point I tried to make with Pharaoh's was to investigate the musical potential of one mind and with that notion, it's pretty impossible to keep things in order. The philosophies and morals change almost minute by minute.
Pitchfork: What can you say your songwriting process?
AL: The songwriting process is as simple as singing to myself all day every day. Walking around, sitting down, eating, just hummin' riffs. People think you're goddamn loony. The songs are in everyone's head. Everyone. It's less of a process to pull them out than people think.
Also worth hearing: Detroit's Turn to Crime have shared Neighborhood Watch #1, which features covers of their Wayne County compatriots: Tyvek, Protomartyr, Timmy's Organism, Johnny Ill Band, and more.