Ken Katkin Reviews Wussy & The Championship - Mar. 6th, 2008

On a pleasant winter night in Northern Kentucky, I attended one of the four Cincinnati-area gigs being performed within six weeks by the Queen City's finest band, Wussy, the mixed-gender quartet (part-Velvets, part-Vaselines, part-Neil Young, part-Love Child, part-Dead Moon) that is the current project featuring ex-Ass Pony (and local luminary) Chuck Cleaver.  This flurry of local activity was designed to allow the local heroes to test out some new material, and also to prepare them for their forthcoming road trip to SXSW in Texas, to be immediately followed by their second-ever spate of east coast tour dates.

This gig took place at a new venue, The Keystone Bar & Grill in Covington, Kentucky.  I'd never been there before (at least since the excellent Sonoma restaurant, which used to inhabit the same space, closed down a while back).  And frankly, I was a little alarmed when Wussy bassist Mark Messerly noted in the band's blog that the Keystone's myspace site portrays the club as "a nice place with lots of young energetic people acting energetically."  Which I guess was a euphemistic way of saying that the club portrays itself as a haunt for overaged fratboys and feather-haired ex-sorority girls on the make, and also for the handful of "upscale" (the Keystone's word, not mine) yuppies who toil in Northern Kentucky's nearby three-block corporate office-tower district.

It turns out that Wussy organized this gig as a favor to a slightly gay dad-rock band from Milwaukee called "The Championship" who had apparently begged for help in scoring a last-minute Cincy-area gig. Although "The Championship" had their moments, my advice to them would be to come out of the closet, lean heavier on their underutilized Bowie influence, lighten up on their overdone Uncle Tupelo influence, and play fewer songs.

The gig received essentially no advertising, and was not even mentioned in the Citybeat article that cited Wussy's next-night gig at Southgate House as a pick-of-the-week.  Accordingly, the audience was limited to roughly 30 dedicated readers of Wussy's blog, 15-20 apparent Keystone "regulars" (i.e. thirtysomething stockbroker-types and Jessica Simpson knockoffs, some wearing expensive painters' caps), and frontwoman Lisa Walker's parents, in from Muncie, Indiana for the show.   This audience was smaller than Wussy usually draws in metro Cincinnati, but filled the small room comfortably.

Wussy took the stage around midnight, just minutes after The Championship finished their opening set and Lisa Walker simultaneously arrived in the building.  (The rest of the band had been there for hours, as had Lisa's parents).  Although guitarist/singer Chuck Cleaver (ex-Ass Ponys) was suffering from a recently-torn Achilles tendon and also had just lost a lens out of his drugstore-generic reading glasses (without which he could not write or read the band's setlist), the venerable old pro (and the rest of the band) hit the ground running.

With a diffident stage presence that belied the confidence and verve with which they performed their brilliant songs, Wussy ripped through about four songs apiece from their two indispensable albums, and also debuted about half a dozen new originals never previously performed in public.   The new originals all sounded good to me, though I will need to hear them again to decide whether they measure up to Wussy's previous impeccable output.  The selection of older songs focused mainly on Wussy's best and most popular material.  Of these, the highlights included an anthemic new Mekons-like drum-attack/arrangement which breathed fresh life into Wussy's signature tune "Yellow Cotton Dress" (already a picture-perfect ode to infatuation that had not appeared to be susceptible of improvement); a wide-open performance of "Airborne" in which Chuck and Lisa seemed to simultaneously cut loose on separate Ira Kaplan-like guitar solos, creating a symphonic crescendo that would have put a smile on Rhys Chatham's face; and the set-closing rave-up "Rigor Mortis" which brought to mind what Mission of Burma might have sounded like if they had ever been willing to sing about their troubles.

Wussy are a great band that is only getting greater.  If you get a chance to see them, take it.