Scotland Barr and the Slow Drags

Music that punches the heart like a fist with brass knuckles. Barr and the boys should feel proud of producing something some great bands never pull off: An attractive, wholly listenable album that hits all the right chords with powerful, painful and beautiful accuracy. - Joshua Sommers/the Oregonian

"...Overflowing with raw, rough and tumble reality that made me feel the pain and truth with lyrical grit and presentation in a class of it's own , which is saying a lot considering all the quality music that I receive. - Eddie Russell, Outlaw For Peace Radio

" Scotland Barr and the Slow Drags make roots music with an uncompromisingly independent spirit. With a sandpaper voice that's far from pretty enough for country radio, Barrs not writing for a top 40 demographic; he's spilling his guts, dropping the bile on the table." - Michael Sutton, CD review.com

"The first five tracks on this CD are so strong that it makes one wonder why the group has not been picked up yet. Roots rock rarely achieves the lyrical and musical heights that Scotland Barr and the Slow Drags reach here." - Kyrby Raynes, Ink 19

"When music touches me, I am generous with my compliments. This is enough to make Steve Earle jealous....sure to get onto the Euro-Americana charts." - Roots Time

" Scotland Barr and the Slow Drags is not your typical rock band, for one thing their lead singers vocal chords sound if they were marinated in a gravy of whiskey and chewing tobacco...Barr and the Slow Drags offer impressions of dark nights, lonely places and flashes of love affairs gone awry. Taking in their music is like dragging on a Clint Eastwood hand rolled cigarette at the bar of a dangerous saloon." - Nathalie Weinstein, the Daily Barometer, Corvallis

Puns aside, Scotland Barr’s music is perfect for bars. On his new disc, All the Great Aviators Agree, he serves up colorful boozy tunes about meeting “a flat-chested girl in a Flat Head bar” who “stole [his] wife”, spending “one more drunken
Christmas in ... jail” and apologizing because he “drank all the wine and killed all the roses.” The nicotine-throated Barr prevents his bar-stool odes from being watered-down Bukowski through his spirited (and varied) roots-rock sound, ably abetted
by his trusty, talented band, the Slow Drags. Bryan Daste’s pedal steel and Chris Hubbard’s piano bring the honky-tonk and roadhouse (respectively) to Barr’s apologia “Dirty Old Waltz,” while Zach Hinkelman slips some Allman Brothers–like guitar licks into “Fall Hard.” The rousing saloon sing-along “Juanita,” a disc highlight, sounds like the Pogues heading for Mexico.

A veteran of the Portland, Oregon, scene, Barr knows that it’s good to have a shot of rock along with the tears in your beer.
(Michael Berick)

- Michael Berick/LA WEEKLY

You would think, judging by the luckless, 100-proof subjects on this album, that Scotland Barr has seen the underside of the bar and the soul-crushing side of relationships far too often to have retained a sense of humor, let alone to have enough unpickled brain cells to recall more than a blurry kaleidoscope of disjointed disasters. Yet All the Great Aviators Agree, this Portland, Oregon, sextet’s second disc, is chock-full of near-cinematic, often hilarious details served up with self-deprecating charm via Barr’s rugged, Tom Russell-esque rasp.

There are countless memorable couplets citing wife-stealing, flat-chested women and naked waltzes, plus wry descriptions, from the Vatican (“It’s a lot like they all say – it’s big”) to some of the most loveable, laughable losers in recent memory.

Barr’s stories, tunes, and vocals would be more than enough to sustain a crackerjack solo act, but it’s all backed up by a fluid, fluent combo boasting ace chops and well-placed harmony vocals. The Slow Drags’ sound – highlighted by Chris Hubbard’s rippling-water piano flights and the deft guitar interplay between Zach Hinkelman’s electric and Bryan Daste’s pedal steel – seems weighted toward country-rock, but the overall flexibility and collective catholic tastes recall the heyday of British pub rock.

- Jim Musser/NO DEPRESSION

"Music to commit suicide to"

Imagine a dilapidated double-wide trailer, a rusted Ford truck growing out of scrub brush like the hulking carapace of some giant insect, a hound dog so old and tired it doesn't bother to bark at strangers anymore, a stop sign riddled with buckshot that's what Scotland Barr & the Slow Drags sound like.

SAD TO THE BONE
Scotland Barr & The Slow Drags bring their sparkling lamentations to Frog and Peach on Oct. 2.

The Oregon-based sextet rolls through SLO Town in support of their CD Legionnaires' Disease, playing Tuesday, Oct. 2, at Frog and Peach.

Working within the Americana/alt country/folk-rock genre, the group plays literary-minded lamentations of lost loves and lives. This is some depressing shit, but so emotionally charged and well played you're happy to go along for the bumpy ride through the great American depression highway.

Led by Scotland Barr frontman, guitarist, and songwriter the band has little trouble shifting from maudlin crying-in-your-whiskey ballads to barn-burning honky tonk, but they rarely let up on the dark subject matter. Musically, the backing band is top notch, featuring Pat Munson (bass), Chris Hubbard (keyboard, backing vocals), Bryan Daste (pedal steel, backup vocals, sax, theremin), Nick Kostenborder (drums), and Zach Hinkelman (lead guitar).



Barr's vocals have a boozy nonchalance, and the four-part harmonies on some songs recall the Beach Boys and the Band. Formed in 2004 as a studio project, it quickly became clear to the session men that something special was going on. If you're in the mood for some brutal songs that offer "insights into the darker side of the human condition" and explore the "bi-polar nature of beauty, love, hate, hope, addiction, and shattered dreams," this is your show.

- Glen Starkey/ New Times, San Luis Obispo

In the liner notes of Scotland Barr and the Slow Drags' Legionnaire's Disease, there's a quote attributed to Charlie Parker: "Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." Listening to Barr sing about watching his life from the bottom of a glass so he doesn't have to think about tomorrow — or about the girl he always loved when she cried — you get the feeling the guy's been through some shit. Dude's lived it, and it comes out of his dust-soaked vocals, which recall Shane McGowan once upon a time in the West, minus the drunken slurs. While Barr and company hail from Portland, Oregon, it sounds like they spent five years in Nashville honing their country chops before taking the southern route — with swings through Texas and Arizona — back home.

- Glen Starkey/ Westward, Denver.