The name might suggest some kind of internal struggle, but Battleme tries to keep things intuitive, says bandleader Matt Drenik. “Other people have these interpretations of the name: ‘Are you trying to battle yourself with your pop songs and your loud songs?’“ Drenik jokes from his home in Portland, Ore. “I’m like, ‘Not really. I don’t know what I’m doing.’” When listening to Battleme’s latest, Future Runs Magnetic (El Camino Media), the idea that Drenik doesn’t know what he’s doing sounds far-fetched, with his bedroom-pop sensibilities somehow finding common ground with the record’s brasher rock songs. But the first Battleme tracks were very different. While still a member of Austin stoner-rock band Lions, Drenik recorded some country/folk songs under the Battleme moniker for Sons Of Anarchy. Drenik will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand-new feature on him.
Drenik: Back at the turn of the century, I found myself running a dive bar on the south side of Austin. It was filled with blue-collar drunken heroes, and I took some pride in including myself as one of them, even though I wasn’t much of a drunk at the time. It was some real, salt-of-the-earth, Bruce Springsteen shit, if the Boss was a cowboy in TX that is. And like a religious routine that started everyday at 4 p.m., my heroes would pile into the bar and flood the room with rants. Sometimes it was politics, sex, music, but most of the time it was BBQ. And I’m talking about Texas BBQ and how there was a little town 30 miles outside of Austin that hosted a slew of BBQ joints, most notably Black’s.
“It’s been there since the 1800s!”
“No one has ever put out the fire! It’s been burning for over 100 years.”
“That’s why it tastes so goddamn good!”
Working in a bar with this kind of rub going around, you had to take everything with a grain of salt. But this was a story I was starting to buy.
Fast forward 10 years later to last week, after I’d been in Portland for several years. The last thing on my mind was some 100-year-old burner. And then I’m leaving Austin with the band en route to Corpus Christi with four starving people in the back of the van.
Lockhart: next three exits.
So I pulled up to Black’s. And sure enough, it was the best BBQ I’d ever tasted. There wasn’t an ounce of exaggeration in the air. Matter of fact, it smelled like the finest BBQ joint you could imagine. It was rough and crowded, and they made us wait as they cut that meat on a massive chopping board and slopped it onto styrofoam plates.
“Is that sauce?”
“I don’t know. It’s good, though.”
And we ate.
“The best?”
“Yeah. Gotta be.”
“Is that a Big Red?” Ash D pointed.
“Yup.” I said. “Haven’t had one since I was five. Figured what the hell.”
*Note to reader. Black’s burner has been in use since 1949. Not quite 100 years, but getting close.
