From Matt Perrine, Budgeteer News, Duluth, MN, http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/127705/ Unraveling the mysteries of Old Knifey and the Cutthroats’ universe is like conversing with the dusty barfly whose book is as open as you want it to be: At first you feel guilty prying — but damn if you can pull yourself away from each ensuing down-and-out tale. Your soulmate-for-the-night has been used and abused but, you reckon, pouring these emotions out has to be cathartic? A form of healing … right? I have been known to succumb to overdramatic tendencies, sure, but that’s how I felt talking to the gin-soaked Cutthroats crew of Chris Kelly, Caleb Anderson and Adam “Old Knifey” Depre. This outfit may stem from the same musical community that spawned acts like On King’s Road and Medford, but — not to get too classic rock on you or anything — you ain’t seen nothing yet. And with the recent release of the trio’s self-titled debut, we thought it prudent to let these C&W hardliners expand upon their typical (and decidedly too-easy) description of their music: “thick three-part harmonies and country songs about drinking.” 1. “Missed Opportunities” There’s no cushiony way to introduce Adam’s leadoff track: as nuanced as it sounds now, it started out with “cheesy lyrics about NOT hooking up.” “The sophomoric lyrics really had to be changed,” he said matter-of-factly. “But the chorus has always been the same; it’s about going out to the bars and hoping something would happen, you’d meet someone really cool … but you go out to these places and you just end up going home alone.” While Adam is no stranger to the hops circuit — in addition to playing most of his shows in must-be-21 establishments, he also hosts the Rex Liquor Emporium’s open mic night — “Missed Opportunities” stems from one particular night out on the town: After hitting it off with a lady at [to remain nameless], Adam offers her a ride home. She invites him up for a nightcap or two. “But I had actually made plans to hang out with Chris,” Adam recalled with a big laugh, prompting his friends to spend a couple minutes joking about a hypothetical “Bros Before Hoes” tattoo. The point? This band of brothers cleans up nicely. As much as these three friends’ material stems from mid-20s shenanigans, the end result is a showcase of mature songwriting unrivalled by many musicians twice their age. (But that’s just one jerk’s opinion on the matter — visit www.myspace.com/oldknifeyandthecutthroats to listen to samples from Old Knifey and the Cutthroats’ self-titled debut.) 2. “Best Wishes” In stark contrast to Adam’s songs, the group’s other main songwriter, Caleb, focuses his attention outward. A good example of this is “Best Wishes.” “Our last band, Medford, kind of came to an end because a couple of the guys were going to move away, and Chris is now about to [move to Scotland],” Caleb said, “so this song is about me being able to understand that they’re going to go away and do some other stuff — and maybe they’ll find their new song and come back home again.” For those of you who have heard the track, its Van Morrison-level quality belies the fact that it was only the second or third song Caleb had ever written. “I’m kind of a new songwriter, and I’m kind of an embarrassed guy most of the time, so to bring it up to these guys and sing it to them took a lot,” he said. “It’s kind of sing-songy; I actually thought it was a bit of a Sunday school song.” In fact, Adam said it wasn’t until the group sat down to hammer out the song’s cramps that Caleb even believed in his own talent. “At the end of the day, when we got it all arranged and all the harmonies were there, Caleb was like, ‘I didn’t really like this song, but now I really DO,’” Adam said. “That was our big thing for a few weeks when we were just starting out as a band: We would get together and play this song because we were just really happy with how we arranged the harmonies.” At this, Caleb jokes that it turned out like a Beach Boys song. “Some of the songs are loose and I noodle more,” Chris added, “but this one is almost to a T every time we perform it. It’s very arranged.” “Except when I messed it up today,” Caleb countered, laughing. (The group came straight to the Budgeteer interview from an in-studio performance for KUMD.) 3. “Ain’t Never Tried Blues” As much fun as Adam seems to have with self-medication, Old Knifey also has a serious side. “This one’s a down-and-out country song about never having felt really down and out,” the songwriter said pointedly. “The reason I wrote it is that the Republican National Convention protests were going on down in Minneapolis and I just remember being up here thinking, Here I am, I’m not doing anything like that anymore — basically I’m just trying to get by, working jobs, whatever I can get. “I went through college and really didn’t try too hard to become anything all that great. And I just ended up in this spot where I felt like I was really mediocre at a lot of different things. I was really frustrated with that and I wrote this song.” He went on to call it a “weird, mid-20s realization song,” but its message of ambivalence resonates with his bandmates. “When I first heard this song, I thought, Damn, that’s very honest,” Caleb said. “There are things I’m kind of embarrassed about in my life but he’s just singing about them out loud.” Chris also identifies with “Ain’t Never Tried Blues,” saying that people keep on waiting for that big thing in their lives to happen but only seldom do they actually do something to facilitate it. (This probably has something to do with his plane ticket to Glasgow, eh?) 4. “When You’re Not Around” “I just don’t write happy songs,” Adam said quickly about this one. “I’ve tried before, and it just doesn’t work out.” His clarification (of sorts): Even when it seems like everything’s going well in your life, you will always dwell on the things that aren’t. “When life is really stressful, you might not think about the fact that you haven’t had a girlfriend in three years,” he said with a laugh. “But when everything seems to be going fine, you think, Gee, I really wish I had somebody to share this good life with. I don’t know, it’s kind of cheesy, but that’s kind of where the song comes from.” Caleb then took the opportunity to explain the Cutthroats’ chemistry: “It’s pretty new,” he said. “Even though we’ve been playing music together for a long time, this has a new sound.” Whereas Adam is the “lead singer” in Old Knifey, Chris was seen as the bandleader in the Medford days. But the new dynamic doesn’t seem to bother anyone involved. “Adam writes a nice melody and sings it perfectly,” Chris said, “whereas I’m more of like the big stage presence — the guy who prefers to rock out.” (For the record, it was pointed out later in the interview, Chris has been planning his escape to the United Kingdom for some time and isn’t becoming an expatriate to spite his bandmates or anything.) 5. “Breaks My Heart” Before you make any assumptions, note that this is one of Caleb’s: It is a heartbreak song, yes, but it’s not about girls or lost love. (That seems to be solely Adam’s department.) “We had a buddy who was going through a really rough patch — it was hard to watch,” Caleb said. “Then my grandma was going through a rough patch … just a lot of people having trouble at one time.” As such, Caleb finds “Breaks My Heart” to be a downer and doesn’t always want to play it live. But Adam always insists on it, because the plight of its characters needs to be told. “This is one of those songs where, if I listen to it and separate myself from actually being in the band, it really is a heartbreaking song,” Adam said. “… There are such good lyrics and such good stories.” Even Chris, who prefers his rock to be angular instead of twangy, has a soft spot for this Caleb creation. “I think it’s cool that it sounds so pretty,” he said before totally switching gears to explain his great escape: “I just want to surround myself with what seems to be going on in Glasgow. Maybe because I’ve been playing country — and I’ve been playing all the funky jam band stuff [with the group formerly known as Heavy J and the Fantastics], which is very technical — but I’m just kind of getting back to wanting to go to a place where everybody’s making a lot of noise.” 6. “Whiskey, Cigarettes and Country Music” When Adam introduced this track at the last Beaner’s Central songwriter competition, I noted in my write-up of the event that he had a terrific sense of humor because he said it was “about a girl.” As it turns out, it really is. “It’s one of those situations where you put yourself out there to somebody and they just kind of turn you down,” Adam said, explaining that it’s about a good friend of his who almost became more than friends. (The timing never really worked out — in case you’re nosey like that.) “There were three things she didn’t really like about me: the fact that I drink, the fact that I smoke cigarettes and the fact that I like country music. “Those are three pretty important things in my life.” He’s kidding … kind of. As the song goes, it was those things she hated about him that helped him get over her. “I actually showed her the lyrics for this song,” Adam said with a laugh. “She was like, ‘Geez, really? You think that my heart can’t be thawed?’” She was concerned about the lines about whiskey’s ability to melt ice cubes but his inability to thaw her heart. “I’m like, ‘Well, it’s just really good wordplay,’” he continued, letting out a big laugh. 7. “So Long” Chris, ever the rocker, really digs this one for its ability to get the crowd going. Caleb, its author, on the other hand…. “I feel like a real a------ for writing this song,” he said bluntly. It’s about the overwhelming feeling of “much too much” one gets when they’re seeing someone who consistently sees the cup as half empty. Needless to say, Adam, ever the scorned lover, immediately became attached to it. “Caleb was playing this one in his room when we were living together,” he said, “and I came in and I was like, ‘Yeah, I totally identify with this song — can I write a verse?’” Still, it was Chris who came up with the song’s most vindictive line. (Though he doesn’t remember writing it and I’m not inclined to reprint it here….) 8. “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?” Before anyone else has a chance to comment on this track, Adam drops “This is another song about a girl” to overwhelming waves of laughter. His propensity to write about love gone wrong aside, this might be his most poignant effort on the album. “I think about this one person a lot and the effect she had on my life,” Adam said. “I wonder if she ever actually thinks about me. I wonder if I cross her mind, if I had that kind of effect on her. “I just want to send her this CD — this track especially — and just be like, ‘SO, do I?’ [Laughs] Because I’d really like to know.” Speaking of girls, an interesting query came to me while we were listening to this track: If Adam and Caleb WERE to send out a CD to each girl referenced in these 11 songs, how high would their stacks o’ plastic be? “Well,” Caleb said with a big smile, “my girlfriend’s going to be reading this, so….” They all laugh. Fair enough — “no comment” there. But what about the group’s notorious womanizer (who joked that I should print his phone number with the article)? “I’d have to send it to about five or six on — how many songs do I have? Seven?” Adam replied and, as if on cue, the three friends all cracked up. Despite producing such down-and-out songs, the Cutthroats sure seem to enjoy life. 9. “1,000 Songs” Riding the wave of guffaws, Caleb made the crack that “1,000 Songs” actually IS a love song. Chris chimed in with: “Yeah, it’s the group’s only in-love song….” But he trailed off after seeing a blank expression on Caleb’s face: “… Isn’t it? No?” Like Jamie Kallestad in Saint Anyway, Caleb keeps his song’s particulars close to his chest; almost immediately after Chris’ call for an explanation, he quickly changed the subject. “I never really liked writing lyrics, so I figured I’d just write LESS,” Caleb said, explaining that he learned this minimalist trick after reading through some Paul Simon liner notes one day. “There really weren’t that many lyrics — but then I realized there’s just a lot of stuff going on [with the music].” 10. “October Winds” Adam called “October Winds” his first foray into topical songwriting. “One day I was just standing around in my apartment looking out my window; it was the middle of October and the wind was just blowing really hard, and the all the leaves were flying around,” he said. “Then, eventually, with the flag whipping around, it just started to take on political undertones.” The songwriter construed the flag falling on the ground as an allegory for the state of the nation and how it will take all of us working together to put it back on top. “That said, have I actually done anything to [fix our situation]? No — and that’s where a song like ‘Ain’t Never Tried Blues’ comes in,” Adam joked. “It was just me being upset about the political system and just throwing my hands up in the air and saying ‘whatever.’” Despite its relatively tame position on the protest scale — though it does have an “Obama verse” that chides all those who believe a single person can save the nation — the group sometimes shies away from playing it in small-town venues. “You don’t want to talk about the flag falling to the ground in Kerrick,” Chris quipped. 11. “Another Blue Song” The title really says it all, but, to be fair, we let Adam explain himself one last time: “I’ve never actually written a love song, and I just have all these sad songs,” he said. “… I can’t write anything but really depressing songs, though I ended up really happy with how this one turned out. [Quotes from the song] ‘I’ve got a dozen songs that’ll make you blue, and here’s another one for you.’” No matter; some people feed on sour times and, if that happens to be you, you’re in luck: Adam said he’ll keep on writing blues songs until he finds the inspiration not to. Hear that, ladies?