When Cark played its album release show at The Towne Lounge in Portland, the door guy said our performance was the best thing he’d ever seen there. It was a bananas show, with a dozen or members of the audience stripping down and joining us on stage to do the “everybody scream,” but it was a pretty major venue, so it still meant something to stand out to a door person who saw everything, and for whom this was work, not entertainment. Night after night until he was so jaded it was all just background. And he still had a great time. That’s how we knew we’d actually done a great job.
Portland had a lot of bands. And Cark played a lot of empty rooms. Often to just the bartender and the sound person. We never took it personal, because we considered them our target market. If we could entertain the most jaded cynical burnt-out folks in the joint, then we actually stood apart from all the other bands in some way. The audience was cool, but we wanted to rock for the sound guy; someone doing a thankless job that made live music possible.
This was not a solid business or marketing strategy. But caring more about reigniting a cynic’s passion than making money had a bohemian romanticism to it. We could get paid at our day jobs.
Since that was one of our operating thesi, it went down on the song idea list. We thought it would be especially funny to only play it live for sound checks—never for the audience.
But it was a tough nut to crack. Doing it as a one-liner like “We Are Rock and Roll,” didn’t seem to get the point across. And it needed an appropriate tone. Somewhere along the way it hit me to make it like a 1970s arena-ballad, about the grind of the road, and what it is that keeps you going. Cark had only ever done one ballad before, and it was half-satirical, but it felt right. So I went with it.
Aubry and I were driving to Boise at the time and I started scribbling out lines every time we’d pull over for gas or to pee. My favorite was just… “that poor fuck who hears so much suck…” Then when we got there, I wandered around her parents’ backyard for days strumming the same couple of chords and singing “rock it for the sound guy,” over and over until it started to take shape.
When I sent it to Dustin he was aghast at how long the song was. But to me it just flies by, cause it is constantly changing in small ways, like adding modified repetitions of the phrase “rock it for the sound guy,” each time it returns to that part of the song.
When he sent me his backup vocals, I nearly choked laughing. They’re so good—now that they’re lower in the mix anyhow. When you hear them, imagine them louder than the lead, cause that’s how they came to me, and it was a terrifying example of why sound people are so essential.
So Mr. Sound Guy (or gal), this one’s for you!