There just aren’t enough wild-animal pelts in rock ’n’ roll. But Chuck Garric is doing his part. Whenever the Nashville resident storms a stage, either as Alice Cooper’s longtime bass player or as the singer and guitarist for outrageous hard-rock outfit Beasto Blanco, he’s often sporting some fine fur around his neck. It’s all part of the shock ’n’ awe aesthetic he learned from Cooper, his boss of 15 years. Such onstage theatrics are the cornerstone of Beasto Blanco, making their long-awaited local debut at The Basement East this week. Damon Johnson, who led Alabama’s Brother Cane in the ’90s and now plays guitar for the Thin Lizzy spin-off Black Star Riders, co-headlines the bill with his solo band.
After five years in Reno, Nev., Garric hightailed it to Nashville in 2013 with his wife, the writer Lindsay Garric, for what he calls a “quality of life” change. He had already formed Beasto Blanco, but he honed the band’s vision after immersing himself in the Music City rock scene.
“Since I hit Nashville soil, it’s become this little rock island,“ says the long-haired, mutton-chopped Garric, sticking out like a sore thumb in a 12South coffee shop. “It’s like the ‘Rock of the South.’ There has been more rock here than I ever imagined.”
Not to mention an army of passionate rock fans, many of whom had already been hip to the live-fast, die-loud credo of Beasto Blanco. At the weekly Tuesday-night hard-rock showcase Thee Rock N’ Roll Residency (see Scene cover story “Thee Will Rock You,” Aug. 25, 2016), which Garric helped found, metalheads would pepper him with queries about when the group would bring their devilish live show to town.
For Garric, the timing had to be right, which meant the arrival of Beasto Blanco’s second album. Released in November, the self-titled record is equal parts Motörhead, White Zombie and Alice Cooper. It highlights the combustible chemistry among Garric’s band of monsters: guitarist Chris Latham, bassist Jan LeGrow, drummer Tim Husung and singer Calico Cooper — Alice’s daughter. The ubiquitous Billy Bob Thornton even turns up on the project, delivering an eerie spoken-word performance. (He did similar duty on The Legendary Shack Shakers’ Southern Surreal in 2015.)
Garric says the album was inspired by his wife Lindsay, who wrote the majority of the lyrics, from Thornton’s creepy soliloquy “Sadhana” to lead single “Death Rattle.” Opening track “Buried Angels” is Garric’s story of how he got to Nashville: “The man had his eyes all over me,” he growls in his Lemmy best, “cover me Tennessee, west of Chattanooga so I could be free.”
Calico, a former member of her dad’s band — she played the malevolent nurse who’d inject Alice with a needle — joined Beasto Blanco as a backup singer but now splits vocal duties with Garric. She covers her father’s 1991 Hey Stoopid goof “Feed My Frankenstein” on the album, turning it into a slinking, sexed-up jam.
She’s also essential to the theatrical show that Beasto brings to the Beast on Thursday night.
“She and I are Bonnie and Clyde, the Natural Born Killers,” says Garric. “Entertainment is the key to what we do. The music is important, but at the same time, when you come to a show, I need people paying attention.”
Which is where Garric’s pelts, Luchador wrestling mask and the violent choreography between him and Calico come in. Along with, just maybe, a surprise guest with a history of hopping onstage at Nashville bars.
“The price of admission is not high enough right now for the amount of entertainment you’re going to get,” teases Garric. “There will be theatrics and some special things happening that you don’t want to miss.”
“There are always people plugging into Marshall amps in Nashville,” says Black Star Riders’ Johnson, who played opposite Garric in Cooper’s band for five years. “But this is going to be a great night of original rock ’n’ roll music from some guys who have been doing it a long time. Guys like me and Chuck are almost certifiably middle-aged rock musicians and still doing it at a time when rock ’n’ roll is just not getting the spotlight that it did.”
Any decline by rock ’n’ roll doesn’t faze Garric, who witnesses crowds lose their minds nightly when on the road with Cooper. But he admits that like his shock-rock godfather, he and the band have to get into character before the lights go down.
“We summon the Beasto before we get going, and it helps me push through any mental obstacles I’m having,” says Garric. “The name Beasto Blanco tells a great story for our music — inside us there is this Incredible Hulk character. Everybody takes on their Beasto onstage.”
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