The lineup of Dope Walker is an unlikely cross-section of members from Minnesota and Iowa: Aaron “Lazerbeak” Mader from the Twin Cities hip-hop collective Doomtree; Lee County, Iowa folk mainstay William Elliot Whitmore; Mike Schulte from Iowa juggernaut The Pork Tornadoes; Joel Anderson from ft (The Shadow Government); Jeff Allen, who records and performs as TYTE JEFF in the Twin Cities.
Upon closer inspection, the connections start falling into place and reveal friendships that go back over 20 years. Mader and Allen were part of the Twin Cities band The Plastic Constellations, who were tight with legendary Iowa City punk band Vidablue (later Ten Grand) with Anderson, and had a fresh-off-the-farm merch guy and occasional opening act in William Elliot Whitmore. Mike Schulte came up through the Iowa punk ranks in the band Brian Jones at the same time as Vidablue.
They stayed in touch and the topic of making music together finally gelled into recording 2020’s Save Save, which was tracked at Flat Black in Lone Tree with Luke Tweedy, also of ft (The Shadow Government). The band reconvened at Flat Black for their new album Heavy Revelations.
The seeds for the new album started as many have recently: during the COVID lockdown. Mader explained in an email, “I started picking up my acoustic guitar again during COVID and writing some little guitar songs with Jeff. We sort of thought that would become a 40yo version of a [The Plastic Constellations] album — just some dads with acoustic guitars — but the more we wrote, the more we got curious about how the songs would sound with a full band.”
Where Save Save derived its sound from the electric-guitar-forward post punk, hardcore and emo sound established by the members’ original bands, Heavy Revelations works with a wider sonic palate which I suspect comes from the early collaborations between Mader and Allen. In fact, some of the first songs to stand out to me are the ones that Jeff Allen contributed to the mix and provided the most diversity to the album. On songs like “Mystical Listicle,” “Turf War” and “Wine Time” the influence of Andy Partridge and XTC’s later-era psychedelic folk shines through with fun, often nonsensical (or way out of context) lyrics like, “Don’t stare dumbstruck, you’ll puncture your eyes” and “Don’t build dumb pipes/we’ll have 6G in time” from “Turf War.” Driving the XTC comparison deeper is the wonderful whistling solo in “Wine Time” recalling “Generals and Majors.”
Which isn’t to say they lost the plot, Mader’s personal reboot anthem “2 Many Kids” which opens the album is a slightly tongue-in-cheek, mid-tempo call-and-response heater. Layers of alt-rock signature layered clean and distorted guitars chug through percussion rolls. The couplet “Throwing out all my shit/margaritas and chips” cracks me up, especially followed by a chorus of bros, “Hell yeah, let’s go to the mall!” Whitmore kicked in his own rocker, “Set It On Fire” which seems to recommend an exothermic solution to urban sprawl. “We could always set it on fire/Embers floating up they look just like stars” Following a cool loping bridge decorated with buzzy analog synth, Whitmore sings “Here in the city/the lights are always on/nights are always long/The pull of gravity/a moment in the sun/it’s here and then it’s gone.” This album could have used another track from Whitmore.
Heavy Revolutions wraps up with “Green Mill” which is an autobiographical account by Aaron Mader of a fateful trip over 20 years ago to take friends to go see his buds in The Vidablue play a show at Gabe’s. The song starts with hopeful expectation with the sun shining. “We’re gonna take a real road trip down to Iowa City/Get the gang back together again.” Things turn when the Camry they were driving hit an icy patch totalling the car, and requiring a rescue by a good samaritan trucker. This account, while a bit macabre, serves to bring the band full-circle. Dope Walker is more than old friends getting back together to make music, but a celebration of friendships which have continued for over 20 years.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s July 2024 issue.
