Slim Cessna's Auto Club

Slim Cessna's Auto Club

Slim Cessna's Auto Club at Le Bukowski club
Background information
Origin Denver, Colorado, USA
Genres Alternative country, gothabilly
Years active 1992–present
Labels Alternative Tentacles
Website http://www.slimcessnasautoclub.com
Members Slim Cessna
Munly Munly
Lord Dwight Pentacost
Danny Pants
Rebecca Vera
The Peeler

Slim Cessna's Auto Club is an American country music band, originally formed in 1992 in Denver, Colorado. The constant in the band has been Slim Cessna, formerly a member of The Denver Gentlemen along with David Eugene Edwards and Jeffery-Paul of 16 Horsepower. Jay Munly (often credited as "Munly Munly") is also a key member of the current lineup of the band. In addition to contributing songwriting, vocals, and banjo, he also serves as a sidekick to Cessna on stage.

Their music includes elements of country blues, Southern gospel, gothabilly and other forms loosely grouped as Americana or alternative country. The Auto Club is sometimes labeled "country Gothic" due to the juxtaposition of apocalyptic religious imagery with stories of alcohol, violence, and relationships gone awry.[1]

The other current members are Lord Dwight Pentacost, Danny Pants (Daniel Grandbois), The Peeler (Todd Moore), and Rebecca Vera. Former members of note are John Rumley (who also crafted many of the stringed instruments used), producer Robert Ferbrache, Ordy Garrison, Jon Killough (who also did the artwork for the 2005 live CD Jesus Let Me Down and "Buried Behind the Barn"), Shane Trost, Whiff (Steve) Cessna, Caleb Roberts, Frank Hauser Jr., Gregory Garcia Jr., Judith Ann Winters, Tim Maher, Reverend Glasseye, and Chadzilla (Chad Johnson).

In March 2008, the band released their fourth studio album, titled Cipher, on Alternative Tentacles Records. Cipher was recorded and produced by Robert Ferbrache in Westminster, Colorado.

Their fifth studio album, Unentitled, was released in March 2011.

April 2013 saw the release of "SCAC 102 An Introduction For Young And Old Europe" on Germany's Glitterhouse Records, which included a selection of fifteen songs from their studio albums ("Always Say Please & Thank You" and later). Five of the songs were re-recorded for this release. "SCAC 102" also included a live performance DVD which was filmed in April 2012 at the Lion's Lair Tavern in Denver, Colorado (produced by Nick Hansen-MacDonald and Trinocular Films).

Press Release Bio

There comes a moment in every Slim Cessna’s Auto Club show when you realize you’re seeing something you’ll never see anywhere else. It’s Slim Cessna in a white cowboy hat and beard, the lights haloing his ungainly frame, horn-rimmed glasses flashing through the smoke. He’s trading lyrics and insults with Munly Munly, gaunt and strange, dressed in a shade of black particular to preachers and burnt down barns. Their voices rise and converge in the kind of exquisite harmony usually found in Sacred Harp congregations, and then the band cuts loose, the best live band in the world, and the two men are doing battle, playing out some cathartic war between good and evil on stage. Or trading dance steps. You can’t tell.

I said the best live band in the world, and I ain’t the only one. No Depression and Spin Magazine have said the same. This is a band that’s held its own onstage with everybody from Johnny Cash to the Dresden Dolls. But you listen to the studio recording of “That Fierce Cow is Common Sense in a Country Dress,” and it’ll take you just about four minutes before you realize you’re listening to the best band in the world, period. It’s Lord Dwight Pentacost leading the lunatic rapture on his Jesus and Mary double-necked guitar; Rebecca Vera playing pedal steel so sublimely that I swear to God you can see the ghost of Ralph Mooney circling the stage; and, holding down the rhythm section like they have with each other since seventh grade, The Peeler on drums and Danny Pants on the doghouse bass, driving the band, making you lose your damn mind.

They’ve been making music for over twenty years, and there is, quite simply, nothing else like it. It’s gospel music, is what I’ve decided. Gospel music for a blasted world. A world straining and bursting in constant pain, but one that can’t help but overspill with joy – even knowing better. And the songs, Jesus. Songs about Colorado Indian hater John Chivington, alien abductions, patricide, a man born without a spine. This is the wild, bloody and weird America of Harry Crews, the only America worth a damn. It’s what Flannery O’Connor was trying to say when she wrote of dark romances and the grotesque. If you’ve got a heart, these songs’ll break it, and if you’ve got any laughter left in you, they’ll beat it out of you until you cry.

I probably can’t improve on what Jello Biafra said about Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, that they’re “the country band that plays the bar at the end of the world.” But I like to think that as long as they’re around, they can still save us from that end. Or at least from what currently passes as country music.

– Benjamin Whitmer, author of Pike and Cry Father, and co-author with Charlie Louvin of Satan is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers

Related Projects

Members of the Auto Club are involved with many other bands besides the Auto Club. Here are the bands and which members (and previous members) are involved in them.

Denver Broncos UK - Munly, Lord Dwight Pentacost, Slim Cessna, Rebecca Vera
Slim Cessna (solo)
Jay Munly (solo) - (John Rumley and Rebecca Vera have contributed)
Munly & The Lupercalians - Munly, Rebecca Vera, Todd Moore (Chadzilla and Danny Pants have contributed)
Munly & The Lee Lewis Harlots - Munly, Rebecca Vera
The Denver Gentlemen - Slim Cessna, Frank Hauser Jr.
The Blackstone Valley Sinners - Slim Cessna, Judith Ann Winters
Tarantella - John Rumley, Danny Pants, Ordy Garrison, Chadzilla, Shane Trost
Woven Hand - Ordy Garrison, Shane Trost
Open Road - Caleb Roberts
Reverend Glasseye - Adam Glasseye, Tim Maher
Kalamath Brothers - Frank Hauser Jr.
The Hush - John Rumley
Boxcar 7 - Whiff Cessna
The Strangers- Danny Pants, The Peeler

Discography

References

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