I first discovered Houston’s Cornish Game Hen when I purchased local label Artficial Heads Records Knights In Satan’s Service 2014 album, which features 12 mostly Houston-area bands doing KISS covers. Cornish Game Hen’s version of “Rip It Out” from Ace Frehley’s first solo album was definitely a standout track on that compilation.
Stupidly on my part, I just got around to listening to them again on their recently released album called Death Process produced by Mike BBQ. The band’s lineup consists of Tyler Jans on bass, Doktor Shoen on synth and guitar, and Ken Dannelley on drums, who I previously met when he was drumming for great local band The Escatones.
Cornish Game Hen started in 2012; Jans and Dannelley had played in a band together called Art Institute from 2010 to 2012 which broke up in the summer of 2012. They started playing together as a duo at the end of 2012 and that was the beginning of Cornish Game Hen, which continued as a duo up until early 2014 with just drums, bass, and vocals, and both of the guys singing.
Shoen came into the group in 2014 contributing and performing with the other guys for the band’s first record Museum Piece which was released in 2015.; One of many cool things about Cornish Game Hen is that all three members of the band sing lead vocals and write the lyrics on different tracks.
“Generally who’s singing it is generally the person who wrote the lyrics with a few exceptions,” says Dannelley. “‘Murder Police’ was one that I had written where Ken had maybe taken my rough draft of the lyrics and made it better and sings the majority of it as well,” adds Jans.
“I do sometimes name the songs like “Murder Police” as an example,” explains Shoen. “They’ll say ‘what are we going to call this?’ and the first thing that pops into my head I’ll just blurt out and sometimes that’ll stick.”
“Tyler is by far the most prolific songwriter of the three,” adds Shoen. “And I don’t really write I just throw inane verbage and they’re foolish enough to write music to it, I don’t know why.” jokes Dannelley.
So what kind of music does Cornish Game Hen make?
“I’d say split the difference between synth-punk and post-punk would be pretty much it, ” says Dannelley, with Shoen agreeing that is a good desciption. “I think so and I think it’s finally taken me- and y’all have said this for many years but I think finally the last year or so I’ve kind of settled on just saying synth punk. I think that’s pretty accurate and I think this record really exemplifies that,” adds Jans.
“I’ve always said synth-punk but if I had to, if I was held to the fire I’d just say rock.” explains Shoen. “But I’ve heard other people give this description that I don’t particulary disagree with it is Mission of Burma meets Devo.”
As for how they came up with the title Death Process for the new album:
“It doesn’t mean anything, I am really into-I have a fake mad scientist lab at home and certain things, certain words interest me, so the last album was called Human Repair and this one’s Death Process; it’s just something about anatomy, glass, electricity, things like that you know?” says Shoen.
Shoen also designed the album cover art for Death Process.
“I did it, me and Midjourney. It’s AI art, usually I do 3D renderings but I was able to come up with AI,” explains Shoen. “It takes some coaxing, I had to come up with the promps to get exactly what I was looking for and I never could get a single picture to give me what I wanted so I got two and was able to composite them together to give me what I needed.”
The image is an android called Diandroid that is on all the Cornish Game Hen album covers; Diandroid is like how Eddie is to Iron Maiden album covers, a band mascot of sorts.
I was able to listen to Death Process several times before meeting up with the band so I asked the guys about some of the songs that particularly stood out to me.
” A Terrible Mistake”
“Terrible Mistake is loosely based on a book by the same name and then a Netflix streaming series called Wormwood and that’s basically, it was a gentleman working for the CIA on biochemical stuff named Frank Olson who was dosed with LSD because they feared he let some secrets out and they thought LSD was a truth serum so he basically lost his mind because they dosed him with extremely powerful LSD, ” explains Dannelley. “And in losing his mind he basically tried to quit the CIA and you don’t quit the CIA and he had a CIA cleared psychiatrist say ‘come up to this hotel in New York City’ which isn’t there anymore and he basically jumped or was encouraged to jump because the CIA is helpful if you want to commit suicide even if you change your mind they’ll still help you.”
“It’s a fun song to play I think we would sometimes close shows with that one when we play gigs because yeah, there are those time changes and it kind of ends on a very fast tempo which is fun, ” adds Jans.
“Glass Joe”
“That’s basically hating my life at that point and looking at the mirror one morning hating my job and thinking here’s fucking Glass Joe looking at me. Glass Joe is the entry level on the Punch-Out!! game so basically a coin-op game, it became Mike Tyson’s Punchout!! on the NES,” explains Dannelley. “So when you’re learning the game anybody can beat Glass Joe and life was beating me at that point so here we are you know? That’s where you hear the body blow, body blow, upper cut, knock him out, ya know?”
“For such dark subject matter it’s a fun, quirky kind of song so that contrast is always kind of fun to do,” adds Jans.
“I can’t stand boo-hoo crybaby songs so if I’m going to write boo-hoo crybaby lyrics I’m going to have to do something with it where-I always like very dark lyrics but very happy music,” says Dannelley. “I like that contrast where you can pull it off, you’re kind of slipping it in where people are humming along oblivious. Score.”
Doktor Rubato Pt 1 And Pt 2
“It’s actually all one piece. For the last few years when I first joined the band I just joined to play synthesizer but I personally became interested in classical piano and started learning piano and I basically composed some études on piano for myself instead of trying to learn what other people are doing I kind of just worked on what I want to do, what I’m trying to do and I just sort of made this thing about it and it’s a pretty rudimentary thing but anyway the whole idea is there’s Rubato so it’s Doktor Rubato, Rubato is the classical term for the romantic era of music, ” explains Shoen.
“So it’s not titled this way on the record but actually then it goes into the synth version that version is actually called Doktor Robato but we didn’t want to make it overly complicated and just for aestheric reasons thought it would be kind of cool to- if you were listen to it on vinyl the second side would start with Pt. 1 and end with Pt. 2 that’s the whole idea of the splitting up the song.”
Shoen also pointed out to me after I asked that the song is not influenced by the Styx song “Mr. Roboto” as the Doktor part is a reference to him and the Roboto part is a reference to the piano thing although it is intentional for the listener to make that connection but it’s not influenced by it.
“If anything actually influences that thing it’ s Randy Rhoads. Because he was always trying to do classical music into guitar and what actually sort of convinced me that I could learn piano was me trying to play “Crazy Train” on piano and then I was like hey that’s how the whole thing built-up that when you hear the synth version it does almost sound like a ripping guitar solo.”
“4 a.m.”
“4 a.m.” is me driving home and seeing a large-size skyscraper in downtown Houston at 4 a.m. from a show in Austin I’m driving hitting 45 South and there’s this ginormous skyscraper, one light on, corner light on- what’s going on in there? So it’s just me mulling over what could possibly-basically deals with sex, money and power,” explains Dannelley.
“The first scenario is sex, the boss is cheating on his wife with his secretary while his trophy wife is cheating on him with some punk rock guy she picks up at Rudyard’s; the second one is power, the two police cops that have brutalized people being coached by their lawyers as to what to say and I’m imagining them in this little corner office; the third one is money laundering, they’re shredding documents and basically Enron-type thing in the corner office. So when would you do that stuff? You would do it at 4 a.m. in the gray hour when there’s nobody there. That’s basically the gist of it.”
“Let’s Give Them What They Paid To See”
“That’s just kind of a fun play on-I saw a photo of Trump and Ivanka, it was like a collage of photos of like Ivanka on his lap and it was very touchy feely with her and not like in a father-daughter kind of way like in an incestous kind of way so there’s like a lot of interplay like that in the song where he’s kind of like grooming her and also grooming her professionally to because she was part of the administration and there’s also that kind of sleaziness to it that I was trying to bring out, ” says Jans. “The call and response vocals I thought were a lot of fun, the music it’s kind of gotta sinister type of feel to it and I think I just wanted to kind of paint that picture of what I’m discussing with you in the song.”
“Clear Lake Confidential”
This is another song written by Jans; he says it’s about being 40 and having a family living in a Clear Lake suburb and being on the Nextdoor app for neighborhoods. “Like Facebook, people will just spill all their guts on Nextdoor and it gets very personal and racist sometimes and very judgemental and suspicious and people trashing restauraunts they ordered food from and got brought the wrong thing, it’s just a very ugly thing. So “Clear Lake Confidential” I’m just putting all that in together. This is our small group of friends you know we think about these things and we say these things but we’re really talking behind everyone’s back.”
“There’s a little bit of that thought group, there’s a little bit of for whatever reason Lakewood Church came to mind and so that kind of comes out in the chorus a little bit talking about, because Joel Olsteen’s wife kind of runs the show it seems like and she’s the one pulling the strings so there’s a lot of that coming out.”
Jans does say that one aspect of the song is putting the blame on himself a bit and admitting that there are good people in the suburbs of Clear Lake and at Lakewood Church and we all fall into stereotyping people ourselves and that is wrong as there are good and bad people everwhere in every group and we should strive to not be so cynical.
“Blues Hammer”
“The title “Blues Hammer” is from Ghost World,” says Shoen. “It’s a very garage revival-type tune and really just the song is about acknowledging the fact that a girl that is too young for you is attracted to you and you’re attracted to her and let’s hook it up.”
“Blues Hammer is the name of the band in the movie,” adds Jans. Steve Buscemi plays a music nerd but he knows his blues music and he’s into like really old 1920s and 1930s Delta blues and Thora Birch is trying to set him up with women and she takes him to this sports bar and there’s this blues band that comes onstage and it’s a bunch of white dudes and they’re like, ‘alright you down for Delta blues? This is Blues Hammer!!!’ and all the drunk jock sports dudes start dancing and the women too and he’s just like rolling his eyes because he’s a blues fanatic and he really knows the music and this is like the worst imitation of it.”
“There’s another part to that,” explains Shoen. “Deer Tick is a very, very talented singer-songwriter and guitarist and I saw him at an in-store once at Sound Exchange on the porch and he sang the songs beautifully, then I got drugged to this show that was at Rudyard’s and he showed up there and all the hip people were there to see this band but I guess it was like kin to the way people react to Bob Dylan when he showed up with a band back in the day you’ve heard the stories. But that was the thing, this guy showed up with a band-he’s a very good songwriter but these were the most just run-of-the mill, paint guitars by numbers shit, blues-influenced crap behind him so I was getting a drink and then all the music settled down and I was like ‘Blues Hammer!!!’ and I got ran out of the club because like everbody hated my guts because everbody respects that guy but what he came out there with was shit! And I just called it out.”
“I’m happy that the album came out, it’s been a long time coming and I think it’s an album that really captures our band in the best way so far and I think it’s definitely worth checking out and come check us out I think we have something to offer people,” concludes Jans.
“Hurry up and see us before AI writes better music than us,” jokes Dannelley. “It’s probably too late but I mean you better hurry up because the robots are taking over.”
Cornish Game Hen performs Friday, August 4 at 8 p.m. at Black Magic Social Club, 7036 Harrisburg with 500 Megatons of Boogie and The Nerve Curlers.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
