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: “My step-dad used to draw posters for the Fillmore and stuff,” my wife said late one night. We were just starting to date.
“The Fillmore?” I was a bit taken back.
“Yeah. The Fillmore.”
The conversation set off my quest to meet my future father-in-law Norman Orr. I wanted to waste no time. In my mind, the Fillmore poster art from the late ’60s, early ’70s was by far the best ever, hands down.
“He still draws in my old bedroom.”
I quickly found out that back in the Bill Graham days of the Fillmore, Norman was among a handful of artists Graham contracted out to create what are now some of the most ripped off and revered pieces of music history in the last 50 years. When you walk into the famed venue in S.F., you’ll see some of Norman’s work decorating the walls. His style is similar to the others, but slightly different in ways that I can’t explain. He was the youngest of the crew.
“Hey, man,” he said the first time I met him, shaking my hand. I knew my wife told him I was a musician and that I’d hammer him on the Fillmore stuff. He wasted no time and brought me into my wife’s old bedroom to show me something he was working on.
“It’s a snowboard,” he said, pointing at a large canvas drawing on the wall. “It’s for this company called Burton. Some snowboarder named Shawn White. Do you know him?”
“Uh hell yeah,” I said. “He’s a big deal.”
“That’s what they told me.”
Eventually we moved on to his work with Santana.
“I was just a kid, you know. They gave me $50 to design this poster.” He pointed up to a framed Santana poster with a lion glaring out at me. Beautiful.
A few weeks ago, my band was hanging in Cleveland with nothing to do on Easter Sunday. So we did what any rock ‘n’ roll band would do. We went to the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame. After we got through the mildly annoying tourist sludge, we found the ’60s area just inside the main entrance. Janis Joplin hand-written lyrics, Hendrix clothes, Jefferson Airplane guitars, and low and behold, a beautiful Quicksilver poster from the Fillmore.
“Holy shit! My father-in-law drew that!”
“Yeah right, kid,” the guy next to me said.
