Orbitsuns’ front-man Vinnie Dombroski is a very busy man.
His successful rock band Sponge are still going strong, and
his industrial sleaze outfit Crud are starting to make waves all over the
globe. And yet the charismatic artist still finds time for The Orbitsuns, a
dirty country band that has been favorites on the local scene since their Y2K
formation.
For Dombroski, starting a country band and an industrial
band during the same period of time wasn’t something that he considered strange
at all. “It’s all about the songs,” Dombroski says. “I just write songs, and
then I get an urge to play them and that necessitates forming a band. I don’t
think too much about direction, I just write.”
On Saturday April 12, Callahan’s Neighborhood
Bar and Grill will host the release party for “Redneck Disco Revisited.” Though
the original version of the record preceded The Orbitsuns’ sophomore album “Dollars
and Dice,” the band recently returned to the studio in an effort to bring the
mix in line with Dombroski’s high standards.
“We revisited the thing,” Dombroski says. “New mixes, new
material – it really embodies what the band is about now. ‘Dollars and Dice’
was our second record and I felt that it was a more-focused effort. We just
wanted to make ‘Redneck Disco’ more concise. The new version of the record
reflects what we’re about.”
True to form, “Redneck Disco Revisited” features the kind of songs
that make an Orbitsuns’ show such a rollicking, toe-tapping, bourbon-drinking,
gasoline-fueled good time. Naturally, many of the new tunes have been
fan-favorites within the Orbitsuns’ live set for some time, most notably the
signature agro-groove of “Haul Ass.”
Additionally, the record includes future cow-punk classics
like “Hard Part of Town” and “Long Line of Sinners” and a cover of Johnny
Cash’s “Boy Named Sue.” The new and improved album promises to see the
Orbitsuns mentioned in the same breath as Mike Ness, Eddie Spaghetti and Hank
Williams III when talking about the prime purveyors of that good ol’ rock/country
fusion.
Having already played with such country heavyweights as
David Allen Coe, Blake Shelton and Sawyer Brown, not to mention rock royalty
like Cheap Trick, Dombroski and co. have honed their live show into the
ultimate honky-tonk hoe-down. Sir Tim Duvalier (guitar, lap steel), Jimmy
Paluzzi (drums) and Bob Heckler (bass) complete the line up.
Local guitar semi-legend Duvalier has previously played with
such local favorites as Thornetta Davis (in The Chisel Brothers), The
Sharecroppers of Soul (a band that also featured Dombroski) and Chef Chris’s
Nairobi Trio. Paluzzi has played with Dombroski in both Sponge and Crud, and
has also sat behind the stool for both Hoarse and The Fags. Heckler has
previously plucked bass strings for Randy Volin’s Sonic Blues and Larvel.
With such a rich pedigree spread across the four members,
The Orbitsuns have the experience, the talent and the know-how to push the band
out of the “local band” bracket and into the nation’s eye. Their richly praised
appearance at 2002’s South by Southwest in Austin, Texas
certainly didn’t hurt them, performing as part of the Detroit Future Platinum
showcase.
The newly polished “Redneck Disco Revisited” should see them making
further headway, showing the world that Detroit
may be the Rock City but we also know how to lay down
some sonically stratospheric slabs of country, too.
So dust off the Stetson that’s been sitting at the back of
the closet for the past few years, pull on those cowboy boots, practice those
jigs and get down to Callahan’s in Auburn Hills on Saturday. If any extra
incentive is required, Dombroski has something special planned. “We covered ‘Boy
Named Sue’ on 'Redneck Disco,'” Dombroski says. "A lot of people cover a lot of songs by a lot of
different country artists, but when you cover a Johnny Cash song it’s gotta be
believable. Covering ‘Boy Named Sue’ in a way that would be believable is very
difficult. We don’t often play it, but we’re definitely gonna play it that
night.”
