White Iron Band

White Iron Band: Wild Dancing Frenzy Provoked

Next week brings a rare sighting of those wild things in the White Iron Band in this neck of the woods.

These Minneapolis-based renegade rockers are going to brave serious wind chills to bring their music to area audiences. If you haven’t heard these guys live, their last album, “White Iron Band at the Cabooze” (2006), can give you a taste of what they do best-and that’s whip up an audience to a wild dancing frenzy. This album, like all their live shows, always features Willie Nelson’s “Whiskey River,” a song that has become the White Iron Band’s signature. It usually sets the tone for a good time.

Lately, though, Matt Pudas, lead singer and principle songwriter for the band, has been exploring some other avenues. The Cabooze album puts their high-energy rock alongside of their “Willie Nelson, You Ruined My Life,” both a satire and an homage to the Redheaded Stranger. However, there are also some very tender tunes like “Whiskey Town” and “Rosalita” that give audiences some life to chew on and some different images to consider besides whiskey and drinking and more whiskey.

The band also is working on a new album. “It’s a lot different actually than a lot of our other stuff,” Matt Pudas says. “We’re kind of titling the album: Devil’s Sweet Revenge. That song is on the live album, and we’ve kind of taken that and expanded it. It’s got more of a darker overtone than some of our other stuff. It’s something totally new for us…it’s more of a bluesy rock album.”

The band is also recording the album differently this time around. Previously, they just went into a studio, played, and threw everything on tape. “We’re recording this differently,” Pudas says. “digitally instead of how we’ve always done it on tape. For this one, we kind of made a lot of it while we were doing it.” So, the creative process was also in the recording itself. That work is being done at Fuzzy Slipper Studios in the old St. Paul train depot. “The studio’s on the top floor. It’s like a haunted place,” Pudas says. “But he studio up there is really top notch.”

The White Iron Band will be playing cuts from that new blues album.