In this modern musical era where singles rule, the idea of an artist putting out a cohesive piece of work as an album carries far less cultural impact than it used to. Though its become increasingly popular in concert for an act to play an entire album from Track First to Track Last.
The storied folk-punk group The Violent Femmes are going one step further. On their current tour, now in its second year and kicking off a new leg March 18 at White Oak Music Hall, they’ll perform two albums in their entirety: 1983 debut Violent Femmes and the next year’s Hallowed Ground.
But founding members Gordon Gano (guitar/vocals) and Brian Ritchie (bass) were faced with a dilemma. If they went chronologically, that means they’d be kicking off the show with their most recognizable tune, “Blister in the Sun,” while many audience members may still be in line for beers or fighting traffic to get to the venue.
So, the band, whose current lineup also includes John Sparrow (drums), and Blaise Garza (saxophone/keyboards) structured the show to play Hallowed Ground first, followed by a short intermission, then Violent Femmes and a handful of fan favorites (original drummer Victor DeLorenzo, who appears on those first two albums, left the band for good in 2013).
Fans know that means the first tune heard will be “Country Death Song.” It’s a frenetic and vivid murder ballad in which a desperate and broke farmer decides to toss his youngest daughter down a well to her screaming death, and then hangs himself in the barn in shame on his way to hell.
Sounds like a surefire way to get the party started!
“Ha! That’s right! The first album is so popular, and we enjoy doing this, so it’s been kind of extended. And we get to do songs that we don’t normally play or haven’t for many years,” Gano offers via Zoom.
“There was a question in the inner circle if it would work with that break in between, but it’s almost like it’s a whole new audience with the energy when we come back. It’s been fascinating. It’s almost like we’re our own opening band. And quite a good one!”
Playing full albums also means that the band and fans get to experience songs perhaps never attempted since their original recording. It’s arguable that Violent Femmes contains the bulk of their best-known material, but Gano says he’s liked revisiting “To the Kill” on that one and “Sweet Misery Blues” from Hallowed Ground. Though he teases that he’s added new lyrics to the former and “shifted the perspective” on the second.
“I try to sing as clearly as possible, but I don’t know that a single person gets it!” Gano laughs.
As for their niche as a band, there is perhaps no group more attuned to and whose material addresses more vividly the romantic desperation, loneliness, and—most of all—sheer lustful horniness of the average male adolescent. Every single song on Violent Femmes checks one or more of those boxes.
And the graphic sexual lyrics of songs like “Gimme the Car,” “Black Girls” and “Add It Up” would surely raise an eyebrow or two had they been released in 2025. Especially given that Gano sings them perfectly in first-person character sometimes with a leering and creepy manner. One that has actually endeared them to their fans.
This writer’s first exposure to the band as a 14-year-old was not via “Blister in the Sun” but from the cool, evocative, and mysterious black-and-white video for “Gone Daddy Gone.” The tune must also surely hold the title of Best Use of Xylophone in a Rock Song for Ritchie’s memorable solo.
Back in 2018 when the band played at the Revention Music Center (now Bayou Music Center) in downtown Houston, a large object covered in a sheet was wheeled out on stage. When Ritchie dramatically yanked it off to reveal the xylophone, the crowd went apeshit, knowing what was coming.
“I don’t know if we still have that in our staging, but I’m glad you got to see that!” Gano laughs. “People really cheer for it.”
He says that he was “not aware” that Ritchie had any particular interest or skill in the xylophone prior to recording the song, and even thinks that he may have taken it up on a whim when Ritchie found a xylophone that someone had put out in the garbage and decided to rescue it.
However, Gano says that he may have had it wrong all these years when introducing the instrument onstage. He’s been told that the instrument Ritchie plays onstage today is technically a “xylorimba,” or Frankensteined-combo of a xylophone and a marimba.
“When we get to that point in the song for the solo, I announce it, and it gets a great response. But I’m thinking someone out there watching is a trained percussionist and going ‘Wait! That’s not a xylophone!’ But when I started saying ‘Xylorimba!’ there was silence. So, I go back in most cases to saying ‘Xylophone!’ and it shifts the energy to that!”
Last year, Gano and Ritchie—billed as the Violent Femmes—made a guest appearance on the Dropkick Murphys song “Gotta Get to Peeskill.”
The fact-based number is about the 1949 incident when members of the local Ku Klux Klan and others threatened violence to prevent a folk music benefit concert from happening at a park in Peeskill, New York. The show featured Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson, and Woody Guthrie was also there to show support for leftist and civil rights causes.
As the video for the song notes, members of the Fur and Leather, Longshoremen’s, and United Electrical Workers unions provided security for the performers and organizers. When the Klan was unable to stop the proceedings, they attacked concertgoers coming out of the park. A car carrying Seeger, his infant children, and Guthrie was hit with bats and stones. Guthrie wrote “Gotta Get to Peeskill” in protest.
So, how did the Femmes and the Murphys initially get together?
“Well…we have the same manager!” Gano laughs. “But before he was our manager, we played Coachella [in 2013] when the band got back together again. The Dropkick Murphys were also playing, and we got introduced. I’ve sat in with them a few times over the years on fiddle. Then I saw them at Carnegie Hall during a tribute to [Pogues lead singer] Shane MacGowan and Sinead O’Connor. We have a nice rapport.”
However, to Gano’s disappointment, he says “not a whole lot of people” know the song or the story behind it.
The Violent Femmes’ last studio effort was 2019’s Hotel Last Resort. But for a lot of “legacy” bands, the concept of putting out new music evokes a lot of different opinions.
Some say they have to do it to keep creative, while others note it’s hardly worth it given how music is consumed these days (and the zeitgeist and attention focuses only on their previous hits). Plus, only their hardcore fans would even notice.
“In the context of our over 40-year career, [new music] still means something. But we’re doing something different. This won’t be in the Houston show, but sometimes we play with symphonies doing full arrangements of our songs. They’re not new songs, but there is a newness to them.”
Finally, we circle back to “Country Death Song.” At the end with both the farmer and his youngest daughter dead, that means the wife and the other daughters wake up the next morning to an even grimmer living situation than when they shut their eyes the night before.
That begs a question about their fate: Has Gano every considered penning a sequel, sort of a “Country Death Song II: Mama’s Lament?”
“That’s…that’s interesting!” Gano says, before revealing that Ritchie once floated the suggestion to do a Hallowed Ground II. Where every song on that would relate to one on the first album.
“He loved that idea!” Gano laughs. “He said ‘That’s what the people want!’”
The Violent Femmes play at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 18, on the lawn at White Oak Music Hall, 2915 N. Main. For more information, call 713-237-0370 or visit WhiteOakMusicHall.com. $39.50 and up.
For more on the Violent Femmes visit VFemmes.com
