Monkey Dogging Around
TAOS’S NEWEST ROOTS-ROCK band, Monkey Dog Rodeo, will perform at Gutters on April 15 and May 13. It started with a Craigslist ad. Songwriter Timothy Severns was new to Taos and missing music. He’d spent five years teaching English and social studies on rural Navajo and Zuni land, where he was having a hard time forming a band after a good decade of singing and playing harp at ski town saloons, blues clubs and honky tonks across the Rockies and Midwest. He craved roots-rocky, creative collaboration.
Alex Cserhart, who’s played bass since his teen years in New York and Los Angeles, responded to the call. It was dominoes from there. Cserhart hooked in with Texas Music Hall of Fame inductee and Austin legend, Bill Anderson, at a punk rock show at Revolt Gallery. Next, Cullen Winter — who fronts local acts The Cullen Winter Blues Band and rockabilly power trio Chicken Sedan — stepped in as drummer, though he normally makes the guitar roar. So, there, like a swirling nebula was born Monkey Dog Rodeo.
“We all wanted to do original music, and didn’t want to be inside the comfort of covers,” says Severns, who grew up in the blues city going to Chicago Fest, and Ravinia Festival, marveling the symphony orchestra and acts such as Miles Davis and Steely Dan.
The group — whose newest iteration includes Taos’s most in-demand drummer, Gray LeGere — has 23 original tunes that they circle through, with the occasional cover thrown in. The guys sometimes refresh old songs of theirs, like Anderson’s semi-morbid song about a car crash (“I’m gonna die in a car crash / I just know”), which he originally played with alt-country group, The Meat Purveyors, back in Texas. Then, it was a super-fast acoustic joint with the mandolin screaming, and now it’s more of a classic rocker. (Rock the driving force for the band.)
“In my more drug-induced touring days, I was totally trusting of the road,” says Anderson of the tune, which Severns was resistant to singing at first, not wanting to jinx himself. Anderson’s songwriting is influenced by his extensive film noir collection, which includes Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” and “Touch of Evil.” His song “Gypsy Woman” echoes a line from a fortuneteller in the latter flick, chorusing, “Your future is all used up” before breaking into heavy guitar licks.
Severns is the primary song spinner for Monkey Dog Rodeo, the name which came arbitrarily in a last-minute hustle before their first gig at Gutters. (A good Google search pulls up a funny YouTube video of a cowboy-costumed monkey riding a running sheep dog around a track. The guys — all in their mid-to-late 50s — liked the western theme and foolishness.)
One of Severns’s songs is an organsand-all gospel praising the river, written from his time living in Utah and in deep relation with the Colorado River. He thinks people in Taos can relate to the lyrics with the Rio Grande coursing through as the town’s main vein. His song “Hard Time Coming” documents Covid’s shaking of security into chords, which were simple and written on a cigar-box guitar when Severns brought the melody to the boys. They helped him shape the fragments into fuller form, adding lyrics and layering guitars.
“Our songs run the whole gamut of human emotions,” says Severns, who’s musically drawn to both light and dark themes. “In the shadows are where it’s interesting.”
Monkey Dog doesn’t have any released recordings yet, but will play two more shows at Gutters on April 15 and May 13. They’re excited to have the complete band (now including LeGere) on stage.
“We’re 20 percent better now,” jokes Anderson.“I want us to be so good we have to play at the Alley,” says Severns.