The Roof Rabbits bring ‘Creature Comforts’ to Volcanic

Published 12:00 am Thursday, December 20, 2018

Vocalist and guitarist Johnny Bourbon writes a lot of cowboy songs.

Local music fans know this thanks to his prodigious work with cowpunk band Harley Bourbon, which includes two studio albums: 2013’s debut “Old Empty Bottle” and 2015’s live-in-studio set “New Heritage,” recorded at Robert Lang Studios in Shoreline, Washington. And anyone who’s been to an open mic night and seen the guitarist and vocalist perform has probably heard a lot more than what was on those records.

But that’s not the only style of song Bourbon — born John Forrest — writes.

“Harley Bourbon, it kind of became a thing, and then with that thing, it has an associated box,” Bourbon said. “So, oh, can’t do that, that’s not this enough or it’s not that enough. It’s weird. So it put me in a place where I need something else, too, because I write all kinds of music. I’m always gonna write. I write songs all the time that I’m like, that’s a pop song, and I should probably try to sell it to somebody because I’m never gonna play it.”

Enter The Roof Rabbits, which initially began as a side project Bourbon formed a little more than two years ago with bassist Sam Fisher (also of Harley Bourbon and local punk band Tuck and Roll) and drummer Sean Garvin (of Tuck and Roll and blues/rockabilly trio Boxcar Stringband). The trio will release its debut album, an amped-up slab of hook-laden punk and heavy alterna-rock called “Creature Comforts,” at a show at Volcanic Theatre Pub on Friday.

“I’m always gonna write country music and stuff,” Bourbon said while sitting with Fisher at a coffee shop in downtown Bend. “I still play tons of outlaw country, and I write those songs, and I still do that when I play acoustic or I play by myself anywhere. But I write punk rock songs too, and this is an easy band to be able to allow myself to just do punk rock and focus on some of my other influences that aren’t country rock influences or cowpunk influences.”

Bourbon had the songs that make up “Creature Comforts” written a little more than two years ago, and attempted a few of them with Harley Bourbon. Garvin provided the push to start the new trio.

“He wanted to start something where it’s like, ‘Man, can we just selfishly embrace our love of some ’90s … stuff, too?’” Bourbon said. “That was a big part of it as well.”

Turns out that sound was almost exactly what Bourbon and Fisher wanted, too.

“We didn’t know it even at the time,” Fisher said. “I think when we first started playing some of this stuff that Johnny wrote, there (were) moments when I looked at Sean, I was like, yeah. Because me and Sean are both big fans of independent ’90s stuff, like Merge Records stuff and old Sub Pop stuff, so it was just really cool.”

Bourbon, who recalled driving to work with his father and listening to ’90s rock music on the radio, also cited early ’70s punk rock as a big influence on The Roof Rabbits’ sound.

“I like every era of music for different reasons, but those ones specifically are cool, and they’re very intertwined,” Bourbon said. “We’re separated by 20 years, 20 years, 20 years. And here we are, and it’s like you’re looking back at 20 years ago, and then 40 years ago and great things were happening.”

Soon after forming and before they even had a name, the trio were in the studio at The Firing Room in Bend with engineer Dayne Wood, who recently produced albums for Alovitiman, Larry and His Flask, Cosmonautical and many others. They banged out the 12 songs on “Creature Comforts” over the course of a few months in fall 2017.

As Bourbon puts it, the album is “about a cycle of letdowns from everyone that you love, from your childhood all the way through — this repetitive cycle of people hurting you and you hurting other people because you’re hurt.”

“I guess it’s a lot about self-realizations that happen to people in their 20s,” he said. “I think everybody goes through it. I think there’s albums that were written specifically to teenagers, right? And that’s a thing, and that’s — big music does it all the time. I don’t really think that this is written for teenagers.”

The album will be the first released on Keg Records, a local record label/artist collective Bourbon will spearhead in 2019. The Roof Rabbits also plan to tour as much as the members’ schedules allow, and Bourbon mentioned plans for Seattle, Portland, Northern California and Reno, Nevada. And the band is working on writing a follow-up EP and plans to record with Wood again in the spring.

“The big one was getting this album recorded, put out, all that, and then throughout this year of doing that, we’re more and more in love with the concept,” Bourbon said. “It started as a side project, and now it feels more —”

“More center-stage,” Fisher interjected.

“It feels like something, yeah. It feels more like what we all want to do musically,” Bourbon added.