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: “I wanna go swimming, but not at that Barton Springs place. Not somewhere like that. Take me to a place that’ll blow my mind. I’m into having my mind blown.” My future wife said this when I picked her up from the airport the first time she came to visit me.
We’d met a few weeks earlier in the summer of 2009 when my band at the time was in the midst of a dismal U.S. tour crushed with low ticket sales and brutal heat. Probably one of the only highlights of that three-month trek were the Pacific Northwest shows we did with our friends Red Fang. Sweaty, fist-pumping, muddy rock shows in venues exploding with bobbing heads. It was pretty magical. And who woulda thought Red Fang’s PBR-soaked sludge rock would eventually turn them into such an international hit. I wish we woulda thought of that larker video. But to be honest, my head was so far up my own ass that I couldn’t have seen the light if it was shining right in front of my face. So after Seattle, we headed back with John to Portland to crash at his house. And I begged him, “Please take me out! You’ve got friends. I know you do! I really want to meet a girl.” The rest of my crew was content with with sitting around eating BBQ and drinking cheap beer. But I persisted and finally convinced John’s wife, which is the ticket if you must know (convince the wife, you’ll get the guy) to take us out.
“All right. Let’s go,” he said.
And that’s how I met Sorenne and how a few weeks later she ended up in my car, begging me to blow her mind on the way back from the airport.
“Red Bud,” I thought.
Located just off Lake Austin Boulevard on the west side of town, Red Bud is technically a park with a series of trails eventually leading to a tree trunk riddled peer that jettisons out into the massive wide open of two rivers connecting. And if you’re alone at the edge, it feels as if you’re swimming off an island in the jungles of Costa Rica.
We stripped down in the back of my jeep and put on some swim suits. I think I was nervous about it at first but figured, hell if I’m going to marry this girl, and yes I was already convinced, I should be able to strip down naked with her in the back of my car.
She jumped in first. I followed. We swam out and looked up toward the looming cliff sides. The whole world was quiet. Everything felt all right.
“The tide here is strong,” I said.
“Don’t worry: I know how to swim,” she said, taking off out into the distance.
