Invaders From Waukesha

By JAY COCKS

The BoDeans, four guys from the Midwest baptized by the fire of good old rock 'n' roll, have just released their first album. Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams it's called, an appropriately no-nonsense title salvaged--for reasons of reverence and resonance--from the lyrics of the Rolling Stones' Shattered. So far, this record stands as the most galvanic major-label debut of the year. Some 35,000 copies sold, and still counting. First single just released. Video on MTV. Band on tour. Fans everywhere. Count 'em.

Well, there were at least 40, maybe even 50, at a Philadelphia gig a few weeks back. This represents an encouraging rise over the attendance in Richmond three days earlier. "We played to only about 25 to 30 people there," says Kurt Neumann, 24, the band's electric guitarist who goes by the name of Beau BoDean. Truly, things are looking up.

Last spring, in Stevens Point, Wis., the BoDeans commanded a crowd of four, but when their album was released a year later, they filled up 1,200 seats at a theater in Milwaukee. If the word is spreading a little slowly past the borders of Wisconsin--"For the next six months they'll have to work their tails off on the road to build some name awareness," says their record- company president, Bob Biggs--the BoDeans are built for the long haul. It wasn't so long ago, after all, that Neumann and his buddy Sammy Llanas (a.k.a. Sammy BoDean), now 25, played one night a week, just for drinks, in the window of a joint in their hometown of Waukesha. "There was a bar in one room and a connecting room with a couple of pool tables," Sammy remembers. "Sometimes there'd be a couple of guys shooting a game, but usually we played to nobody."

The boys made good use of their time, working up material and trying it out on whoever was making a bank shot nearby. Even far from the green felt, however, the tunes that Llanas and Neumann write stir memories of late nights, lost loves and lives edging over to the debit side. "I have a hard time with lyrics, so I keep it simple," Llanas says. "I write about boys and girls." Neumann, who splits the writing with Llanas, says, "All our lyrics are real positive. I like happy endings."

The songs sound punchy all right, real straight-ahead, pedal-to-the-floor rock with no fancy instrumentation, just the sort of thing to come floating back from the window of a car that is moving too fast in the passing lane. Simple, direct, traditional, without the calculated callowness of retro rock. Despite the modest claims of Neumann and Llanas, the echoes of the BoDeans' music cut past the surface calm. These tunes have a strong undertow.

She's a Runaway evokes Del Shannon's 1961 hit single and sounds like a sock-hop sure shot until the lyrics take hold at the end of the first verse. The Llanas-Neumann runaway is a woman named Mary who "got beat up/ One too many times." Her solution is simple. She "stole some money/ And she got herself a gun/ Then she shot her man down/ Now she's on the run." The BoDeans deliver the tune with deadpan compassion, catching the frenzy and melodrama of the situation and turning it--thanks also to a melody that won't let go--into a dead-end morality play that stalks the imagination. She's a Runaway is like Joseph H. Lewis' film noir classic Gun Crazy scaled down to juke-joint size, and it kicks the album off in high and handsome fashion. With Guy Hoffman (BoDean for stage purposes), 32, in charge on drums and Bob BoDean (a.k.a. Griffin), 26, playing a fine bedrock bass, this is a band that could take it near as far as it can go, even if the going, for the moment, is a little tough. "We were a big fish in a little pond," says Llanas. "Now we're little fish in a big pond. You're a local band until you get a record contract, then all of a sudden Bruce Springsteen is your competition."

Guy Hoffman's father worked for RCA Records in Milwaukee and rode herd on Elvis Presley during a local swing, but the closest any of the other BoDeans came to the music business was the radio. "We came off the streets listening to Midwest radio," says Neumann. The first time Manager Mark McCraw met Neumann and Llanas, they were in the basement of a friend's house, working out an arrangement of the Stones' Hang Fire. "They must have played it half a dozen times," McCraw laughs. "But there was an appeal, an energy there. Sam had a voice that no one could forget." Llanas still has one of the wildest vocal tones in the business--he sounds like a Munchkin singing on a dirt bike --but, even back then, McCraw says, "I knew."

Injured in a fall as a teenager and confined ever since to a wheelchair, McCraw, 24, began to sink much of his $2,000 monthly insurance settlement into seed money for the band. He keeps lots of jokes handy about how the boys still have to scrape by and about the Midwest's distance from the social rituals of the music biz ("When they talk about doing lines in Milwaukee, they're talking about bowling, not cocaine"), but everyone knows that what he calls "BoDean rock 'n' roll" is tough to categorize, even as roots rock. "I don't want to be looked at as a trend band," says Llanas. "This 'American music' deal is bull. So many bands take names like Lone Justice and put on this western image. Somebody said to me recently, 'You don't look like a band,' and I said, 'Thank you.' You think of rock bands as guys in leather jackets. Well, I like my sweater."

The BoDeans don't have to worry about their threads. They already have so much native spirit that with a couple of years, another album and a few more tours, BoDean rock 'n' roll may become a generic term. And, oh yes, about that name. It was inspired by Jethro Bodine on The Beverly Hillbillies. Llanas thought the name "sounded cool." These boys, it should be clear by now, have a refreshingly revisionist idea of cool. It's all part of BoDean rock 'n' roll.

With reporting by Cathy Booth/Philadelphia