Bare Jr., 1990s
Allegedly, I’m interviewing two elder statesmen of Nashville’s underground music, revered musicians and businessmen who have had an outsized impact on our music community, artistically and economically. But I’m talking to Bobby Bare Jr. (the son of the country legend who’s also a standout songwriter and a member of Guided by Voices) and Mike “Grimey” Grimes (of Grimey’s New and Preloved Music, The Basement and The Basement East). So the energy is more akin to shooting spitballs across the back row in detention. The belly laughs and boisterousness make it feel like no time has passed since their band Bare Jr. released its debut LP Boo-Tay in September 1998.
Listening back to the interview, you might get the impression that the pair on the other end of the line are 20-something pranksters who just pulled one over on the whole damn record industry. And maybe they did. Revisiting the album in advance of a reunion show on Friday — playing between Walk the West and Jason Ringenberg solo at Brooklyn Bowl — and Boo-Tay’s first proper vinyl release as a Record Store Day special edition on Saturday, it’s pretty clear that Bare and his buddies were way ahead of their time.
“[Grimey] kept saying he was going to quit,” Bare says between chortles. “He wouldn’t quit.”
“We went to have a meeting, and we were both — he was going to say, he fired me,” replies Grimey, stifling laughter for a split second. “I said I was going to quit. He said he got the words out first.”
“He wouldn’t quit,” Bare blurts. “So I fired him. And only because I missed being his friend. [He] hated me as the bandleader.”
This is the dynamic at the heart of Boo-Tay — it feels like an album about to double over with laughter, though the songcraft is no joke. Boo-Tay has bubblegum hooks and punk-rock energy, a deeply Southern sense of tradition and an equally Southern sense of irreverence. These characteristics make the whole affair a premonition of what independent Nashville would sound like in the 21st century. Songs like “You Blew Me Off” — which Spin ranked 51st among “The 69 Best Alternative Rock Songs of 1999” in its 2019 retrospective, marked with a write-up by yours truly — and “I Hate Myself” convey the big slacker mood endemic to the era, accentuated by Bare’s Southern drawl and unremitting self-effacement.
“I thought I was being something like Flaming Lips,” Bare says, laughing again. “It sounds nothing like that — nowhere near Flaming Lips — but somewhere on the way towards that, something I think is a little bit unique.”
That distinctive flavor took the group (which also included Keith Brogdon on drums, Dean Tomasek on bass and Tracy Hackney on electrified mountain dulcimer) across the country. They weaved between the worlds of alt-rock radio — a landscape that was shifting and consolidating in the wake of Clinton-era deregulation in media ownership — and the jam-adjacent proto-Americana scene. Bare spent his early childhood making records with his dad and his early adulthood running sound and lights at places like Exit/In, so when he plays the part of enfant terrible on Boo-Tay, he does it with the nonchalance of a seasoned pro.
Bobby Bare Jr.
It can come off as wildly unhinged and makes you wonder what kind of lunatics were cutting checks at Immortal Records in the late ’90s. They funded a band whose guitarist, Grimes, wore the same pair of pajamas for every show, for crying out loud. Bare Jr.’s kind of rowdiness is invigorating, adventurous and not harmful in moderation, and it’s hard for a lot of folks to access in an era when many things that demand serious attention always feel close. Based on our chat, it’s clear the flame hasn’t dimmed in the time since the band dissolved in the Aughts.
“It’s awesome — I love it,” says Bare. “It’s strange in that it sounds exactly like Bare Jr. as soon as we start playing together. … It’s like time travel in a really good way.”
