Vladopus9 Stretches the Fabric of Country in ‘Roughneck’ [Fresh Track]

From The Byrds to The Mekons to the present era of Americana, rock artists have been busy appropriating the sounds and themes of country music. Still, you’d be hard-pressed to come up with a more unlikely rock-meets-country scenario than the pairing of old-school Nashville tunesmith Bobby Fischer, who is 85, with punk-noise band Vladopus9, led by 47-year-old guitarist and songwriter Joseph Page, who made his bones in various Florida punk and hardcore scenes before moving to Nashville in 2009.  

What Vladopus9 does with — or to — “Roughneck,” which is the band’s first single since their 2019 full-length Expires on Tuesday, is pretty weird, but it registers as a variation on good old country music. Vladopus9 may have added out-of-meter guitar licks and hardcore grind to a conventional Music Row co-write, but they manage to make the song sound, you know, wholesome — even commercial. 

Written by Fischer along with fellow Music Row tunesmiths Philip Douglas and Tony Stampley, “Roughneck” started out its life as classic country, and ended up as a radical reworking of country as avant-garde rock, right down to Lisa Rau’s atavistic singing. How Page & Co. came to record “Roughneck” has a lot to do with the ebullient personality of Fischer, who is a major country songwriter with — as he tells me from his Nashville home — 704 cuts to his credit. On the other hand, it wouldn’t have happened without the unlikely connections Page made after he hit town. 

To put it simply, Page met an old-school country producer and musician, Dennis Money, in 2014, and began recording at Money’s Music Row studio, SweetSong Nashville. Page and Rau, who are married, cut Vladopus9’s first album, Unicorn Graveyard, that year with Money at the helm, signing to Money’s label and publishing company in 2017.  Money also produced Expires on Tuesday, which established the group as up-and-coming noise rockers. 

Money, whose résumé includes work with country singers like Moe Bandy, has known Fischer for years, and he often takes pitches from him for Bandy and other artists he’s producing. A couple of years ago, Fischer pitched him “Roughneck,” never thinking it was going to morph into something resembling the convolutions of early Sonic Youth more than it did, say, the easygoing style of Conway Twitty. 

As I mentioned above, Fischer has an outgoing personality, and this may be a product of his success over five decades in the music business. He was born in 1935 in Wilton, Iowa, and moved to Nashville for good in 1970 after hustling around town in the late ’60s, looking for a way into songwriting. (An unrelated side note: Fischer happens to be Margo Price’s great-uncle.) Among his hits is Reba McEntire’s multi-million-selling 1990 single “You Lie.” He also wrote the bizarre novelty tune “The Unluckiest Songwriter in Nashville,” which Black country singer O.B. McClinton recorded for Memphis’ Enterprise Records in 1973. Like many of his other songs — he’s written for George Jones, Conway Twitty and Tanya Tucker — “Roughneck” is a co-write that illustrates his philosophy of collaboration.

“I’m basically a three-chord guy, and I hire talent around me,” Fischer tells me in an upbeat tone. “Vladopus9, they really got into it on ‘Roughneck,’ and they lived it, you know. They get into the middle of it and just do their thing. That song was one of them I pitched [Money], probably for a different act, and then Dennis called me and asked me if they could record it.”

The latest version of Vladopus9—Page, Rau, drummer Matt Bach and bassist Lukin Tolliver—tear up the song, and the version of the single currently available has a built-in promo, delivered in old-school style by veteran disc jockey Robert Lewis. 

For Page, who arranged Vladopus9’s version of “Roughneck,” the recording process was one of both expansion and reduction.

“When I got the song, you know, it wasn’t like the kind of music that I do, but I could understand it,” Page says. “So what I did, I took the formula that they presented to me. Like, the way they did their intro, the way they did the structure of an industry song. I rewrote the music to what was more me. In country music, they’re a lot wordier than we are.”

We’re very pleased to premiere the track today. Stream it below via YouTube, or put it into your rotation on Spotify or Apple Music. And keep up with the band on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.