It’s been more than a decade since Brian
Henneman first broke onto the national scene with the Bottle
Rockets, his alt-country band from Festus, Mo. Through the years
the group has survived record-label shuffles, band-member switches,
and many other pitfalls of the music business. “We’re
the last ones standing of those roots-rock bands from back
then,” Henneman says. “Compared to others, we’ve
stayed together.”
Last year, right around the 10-year mark, the
Rockets made some major changes. “We redid everything,”
Henneman says, “new manager, agent, label. Then, right in the
middle of changing everything, Robert [Kearns, the long-time bass
player for the band] left.”
Enter our local hero, Springfield resident
Keith Voegele. “We tried a bass player and just figured it
would take a while to get someone to fit,” Henneman says.
“Then Keith came in like a frigging miracle. He was exactly
what we thought we’d never find.” That was back in
April; by July, the Rockets were flying across the Atlantic, headed
for London, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and other European sites.
“We played our first show in London a few blocks from
where the bus [the double-decker destroyed in the recent bombings]
was,” Voegele says.
“The security was a tighter and it had
an effect on the crowd size, but they were all awesome, good
shows.” No great time would be complete without some mishap,
though, and Voegele supplied it himself. “I fell off the
stage before we ever played a note and hurt my knee,” he
says. “It was dark and I couldn’t see. I hobbled around
the whole tour.” Apart from the knee-wrenching experience,
Voegele was delighted and says he was taken by the European music
scene. “Over the last 50 years, the church attendance is way
down in Amsterdam,” he explains, “but they kept the
churches and turned a lot of them into concert halls.” He was
also impressed with the setup of the facilities and the European
thought process of enjoying entertainment. “Every club had a
great PA and lights and elevators and dressing rooms,” he
says. “The governments support entertainment by helping the
venues.” Voegele reports that the audiences are also
supportive of live music. “We had at least a hundred people
at each show and over 6,000 at a festival in Belgium headlined by
Los Lobos,” he says.
For the Bottle Rockets, who had not been to
Europe since 2000 and only have two CDs available there, the
reception was a pleasant surprise. “Now everything is as good
as it can be,” Henneman says. “Our biggest problem is,
our older recordings are scattered around so much on different
labels. Eventually we’ll wrangle them all into one
place.” In the meantime, the Bottle Rockets keep moving,
playing shows, and gearing up to record a new CD in the fall.
“Yeah,” says Henneman in a
not-at-all-world-weary voice, “yeah, we’ve got lots of
stuff to cram in before we’re done.”
The Bottle Rockets perform at the Underground
City Tavern,in the Hilton Springfield (700 E. Adams St.,
217-789-1530), on Saturday, Aug. 6. Mike Ireland and Holler open
the show at 10 p.m.
This article appears in Aug 4-10, 2005.
