Premiere: Gudbye Stoopid Whirled, from Brian Lisik

Today's music, recorded in 2019

With Gudbye Stoopid Whirled, Lisik and his longtime songwriting partner, Steve Norgrove, finally release an all-acoustic album populated by inscrutable instrumentation. Rocker Lisik boasts a decidedly early-rockabilly/60s garage punk/Stax soul vibe throughout, utilizing “lap drums,” “mouth trumpet” and “heavy metal banjo” to achieve tongue-in-cheek perfection.

Swirling, jangly guitars and understated jazz percussion from Norgrove’s Hillbilly Savant bandmate, Chad Jenson, buttress the songs’ universal themes, each delivered by Lisik with a poignant immediacy. The singer coos and snarls his lyrics with a restrained ferocity that never fully explodes, but rather percolates menacingly over the album’s entire 33 minutes.

Recorded in 2019—also the year his longtime backing group, The Unfortunates, disbanded—Whirled, with its commentary-style lyrics and stark instrumentation, takes on a much more sinister quality in this COVID-19 world. “The album was titled months before the pandemic; it was not intended at all to be prophetic,” Lisik stated, despite evidence—the title, for starters—to the contrary.

Lisik talked to Elmore about this featured cut, a healthy dose of rock-n-roll frivolity: “’Cheyboygan, Sheboygan’ is probably the most ‘band-song’ track on the new album. I think it took me a grand total of 10 minutes to write and it has become the one I play when I get requests for ‘Wagon Wheel’ – which I neither know how to play, nor like. To continue the joke, we decided to bring as many instruments into the studio as we could find when we recorded it, though the mandolin and the banjo were the ones that made the cut – the banjo being Don Dixon’s favorite part of the song. And, of course, ‘Cheboygan, Sheboygan’ is named for both the Michigan and Wisconsin towns, since we didn’t want to offend or leave anybody out.”

Brian Lisik · Cheboygan, Sheboygan (radio edit)

Gudbye Stoopid Whirled was recorded at Norgrove’s Bass Mint Studio and mixed by legendary producer Don Dixon (REM, Counting Crows, Smithereens, Gin Blossoms, Kim Carnes, Mathew Sweet). The result is an altogether fresh and unique sound scheduled for release 10/2/20 on Cherokee Queen Records.