Bad City: Rock and Roll Dorks

By Jeannette Madden
Staff Writer

I have to start this story by saying that Bad City’s Max Perenchio is a rocking dude. Any musician that can relate Chuck Klosterman [Fargo Rock City] to playing a show in Fargo is awesome in my book.

Max and the rest of the Bad City boys are the newest rock and roll band to come out of Chicago, playing sweeping songs in the spirit of Def Leppard and Van Halen that defy labeling except to say that they fricking rock.I was able to speak with Max and get the lowdown on Bad City, their music and their expectations about playing The Venue August 8 in support of Hinder.

High Plains Reader: Let’s start with the history of Bad City.

Max Perenchio: Well, the band started with myself and the other guitar player, Tom Schleiter. We were essentially what you would call ‘high school rivals’ [laughs]. I was in kind of a
psychedelic band, he was kind of in a metal band, when we were in high school, and we
shared some of the same circle of friends. We would be debating over who was the better
guitar player and we had jammed a few times so it was just a matter of time before we
started hooking up and rocking together. I had met Jake Serek, the bass player, also in
high school. He had this dead ringer John Lennon haircut and these hilarious mutton
chops from like John Lennon circa 1967 and I was like, ‘Dude, this is the guy’ and he had
a Rickenbacker bass on top of it…he wizzes out, this guy’s like a bass wizard. Tom went
to college in Ohio and met Kevin Kane, who is the drummer, and at the time Kevin was
philosophy major so everyday was debating the merits of that kind of stuff. He
approached drums kind of in the same way, balancing complexity and sublety. Josh
[Caddy, vocalist], it was one of those classic things where you see a guy playing in a club
and this guy’s amazing and you think ‘I need to be in a band with this guy.’ From day one
you get that feeling that there’s really something great in store. All that kind of stuff and
everybody’s in different bands and eventually it all comes together perfectly and we went
from there.

HPR: How did you hook up with your producer, Johnny K (Staind, Sevendust)?

MP: We were originally scheduled to do an EP. We sent the tunes over to Johnny and
he’s probably the best producer in the state of Illinois and one of the best rock producers
in the whole country. He heard it and right away he called us up and said ‘I’ll do it under
the condition that we’re not doing and EP, man…’ or as he would say it, ‘We’re not
fuckin doing an EP…we’re gonna fuckin do a full length!’ He loved it and he saw the
vision from day one, which a lot of people didn’t. He’s given us a lot of opportunities and
he’s given us a lot of space. With a producer breathing down your neck and changing
everything up, that’s not the best way to go. It’s still a great relationship and I’m sure
we’ll work together in the future. He’s one of the few rock producers that still knows how
to make hits. He still knows his shit and the bands that he’s worked with are pretty
successful. He’s got a great ear and that ear should be hanging in the Smithsonian by the
time he’s done.

HPR: When I was researching the band, I noticed a lot of references to old school
rock and roll and in your bio it states you were ‘looking for the sound’ and ‘no studio
magic, the way records were made in the ‘70’s…’ What made you decide to go in that
direction? You certainly don’t sound old enough to have really gotten into that style at
that time.

MP: I can do a million interviews and I’m still not prepared when people say, ‘Can you describe your sound?’ I guess nobody is. One of these days I’m going to sit in like a Zen decompression chamber and meditate and come up with like the perfect description or tag for the music. But I
guess the best thing I can say to that is we’re total rock and roll dorks. I love rock and
roll music, everything about it. Classic rock in the sense of not old rock but timeless
rock. Rock and roll that has been around forever and that goes from Queen and Boston
all the way to Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana and Jack White and the Strokes. I love the
new stuff as much as the old stuff and I like taking things and throwing it into a little
cauldron of rock and just stirring it up and that’s our music. We try to stay relevant, we
try to stay really modern, we don’t even think about it. It’s not like we’re trying to bring
back anything. Going back to your original question of studio magic, let’s put it this
way…ours is the frame of mind of somebody like Queen or Boston where there’s these
majestic rock and roll albums…we wanted to make our first one like that…it’s that whole
chain of kind of ambitious but still very fun music that we wanted to do with this first
album.

HPR: Have you learned anything from being on bigger tours with the Smashing
Pumpkins and Hinder?

MP: Tours in the past, with our smaller bands, it’s usually with much younger bands so
there’s your Jaeger bottles sitting all over the place and you’re filthy, scummy, you’re
peeling your clothes off after the show, you’re putting them right back in the van,
sleeping on them, you’re shaving in the public bathroom where all the patrons are, and so
that’s what we were used to. Now, we’re working with people who have been in the
business for thirty years and it makes you realize, ‘Listen, there’s a time and a place to do
what you would expect from a typical revelry obsessed young rock band and there’s also
a time to be professional.’ That’s one thing we learned from this Smashing Pumpkins
tour, you know, compact all that energy that would be wasted breaking mirrors in the
dressing rooms and take that to the stage and really show people what you got. You learn
how hard work is what really pays off. There’s always those bands like Guns n’ Roses
that have that attitude, that image, where they just throw shit at the wall and see what
sticks…but eventually it’s not about that anymore. It’s about really working hard for
music and realizing you’ve been blessed to even been out here and don’t fuck it up by
being an idiot [laughs]. So, that’s what I learned from the Pumpkins.

HPR: Sounds like a great lesson, something to last you the rest of your life…what is it
that Fargo can expect from the Bad City show?

Max: Yeah, Fargo, I mean, I love Fargo. From like the [Chuck] Klosterman era,
Klosterman school of writing, I love it. The thing is, with a guy like that, he’s kind of like
a James Joyce, kind of one of those writers (I don’t mean to compare him to James Joyce)
but when James Joyce wrote a book, you felt Dublin when you read it. When you read
Klosterman, you feel Fargo. I’ve been there a few times and you get that whole idea of all
those rock and roll bands, that Fargo rocked …and culturally I think that Fargo has a
really awesome vibe. I’m not even going to reference the movie but all that stuff kind of
adds to it and for people that live in Chicago, it’s kind of a romanticized environment.
What they can expect out of us is we’re coming and we want to give it one hundred…aw,
you know one hundred ten percent is the worst thing you can say, but we want to impress
people as much as we possibly can. You can expect harmonized guitar solos, jump kicks,
singers belting out high E notes, screaming at the crowd blood, windmills…we bring our
own version of rock, which we’ve taken from a million different people from forty years
of rock. We just want to share what we have. I was just talking with Richie
Sambora…shooting the shit with him and I was like, ‘You know, you guys didn’t break
for like three albums. What were you guys doing for your first two albums when you
were still like us, traveling around in a shitty silver van?’ He said, ‘Well man, you know
we were planting the seeds, dude, we were planting the seeds all over the place. And then
eventually, if you can make it rain those seeds will grow.’

HPR: You could write a song about that.

MP: I’m like, ‘Richie, that’s a very beautiful thing you just said to me.’ And I love the
analogy …we’re still a very new band and we’re dying to give people a rock and roll
show …a place where they can go to forget about whatever shit is going on in the world.
We’re not going to teach people how to save the whales or to prevent environmental
crisis or how to end poverty. It’s just a great place to go when you’re sick of your fucking
job and you wanna go rock.

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If You Go

What: Hinder, Bad City, Stereoside
Where: The Venue at The Hub
When: Sun, Aug 8, 7:30pm
Info: 701.232.6767