This article was originally submitted to Puncture magazine in October 1998; an abridged version eventually appeared.

Sept. 1996-I'm riding shotgun in a van tooling down the autobahn on the final X-tal tour when former Bedlam Rovers/Camper Van Beethoven fiddler Morgan Fichter slips a cassette into the deck. Listen to this, she says, it's Caroleen's new band. For the next half hour I am stunned; yes, that deep, husky female voice is Caroleen from Rovers all right, but the familiar punky quasi-Irish two-steps and folky shuffles of that band are nowhere to be found. In their place is a dark, brooding rumble, crunching dirges dominated by distorted, tortured-yet-lyrical bass and mournfully swooping slide guitar. The tempos are mostly slow, yet the music percolates and explodes with fierce, nervous energy. (This is not "slow-core".) The lyrics, too, are a far cry from the protest anthems, satires and laments Marko Sakmann penned for the Rovers; Caroleen is writing her own material now, and her words are complex, personal emotional readouts leavened with sly, sardonic jokes. Lines keep popping out of context like signposts: "If I slit my wrists can I take it back in the morning?" "Haven't I seen your face on coins and bills and cups and plates?/I'd like to mount your head upon my mantle!" "I've had better company to harass and judge me/I've walked out on far fiercer wars." "She's got a proper name for all she sees/calls it 'mine, mine, mine'!" I have the odd sensation of hearing a familiar voice delivering completely new words for the first time (i.e. her own) and by the end of the tape, Waycross have become my new favorite band.

Two years later, I'm sitting in the backyard patio of San Francisco's Bottom Of The Hill with the members of Waycross, who have just finished opening for the Monks Of Doom reunion. Earlier that week, they played a triumphant record release party for their self-titled, self-released debut CD. My own enthusiasm for the group hasn't diminished; after seeing them a dozen times I'm a bigger fan than ever. Live, they exude personality: Caroleen a vision of aloof/shy concentration, usually in some stunning thrift-shop ensemble; Sunshine Haire the butch-nerd-heartthrob firing off her slide guitar lines; Doug Hilsinger lurching back and forth like a bearded lumberjack shaking the plaster off the walls with his bass; Bruce Ducheneaux looking scruffily dapper as he pounds out rhythms within rhythms on the drums. Now we're all sitting around a table in the breeze as the nutty prog riffs of the Monks waft across the yard and occasionally drown out our conversation.

Sunshine: "I was sitting in with the Bedlam Rovers, and Jeff Mann kept saying to me, 'you need to meet Doug Hilsinger because he can really show you the way of the electric guitar'...at that time I was only an acoustic guitar player...'Doug is the man who will be your mentor!'" To make a long, complicated story short, the Bedlam Rovers, by the time they recorded their third album, Land Of No Surprises (produced by Mekon/Waco Brother Jon Langford, more on whom later), found themselves beset with serious problems. Not only were the band no longer getting along the way they once did, but writer/guitarist Marko developed a mysterious, painful ear ailment that rendered him unable to play loud music. When the band resolved to do a final European tour, Marko's roommate Sunshine was recruited to fill in on guitar for the electric portion of the set. On the road, Caroleen began showing Sunshine the new material she had been writing and an alliance was formed. With some help from a close mutual friend, sound engineer Jeff Mann from the Komotion club/studio, Doug and Bruce were brought into the equation.

Bruce: "Our bands broke up at the same time, pretty much. The last tour I was on was with the Gary Floyd Band. And...that went awry. (He still plays in Black Kali Ma, Floyd's newest group.) And while they were still on tour, I got a call from Jeff Mann who told me that Caroleen was starting a new project..."

Caroleen: "I called Jeff, drunk, many nights from Europe!"

Sunshine: "I remember. I was there in the hotel room! (authoritative voice) 'Jeff! We're looking for something. Find it!'"

Caroleen (mock-needy voice): "Did I get any messages?"

The four came together and, after some shuffling of roles, began forging a new sound to fit the stark, downbeat songs Caroleen was bringing in. Doug, the most experienced guitarist, turned to creating expressive, probing bass lines while relative novice Sunshine, with the help of a slide given to her by Christopher Simmersbach of A Subtle Plague, found herself thriving in the "lead guitar" position.

Somehow, having everyone a little off balance created something fresh and powerful. I ask Caroleen about her songwriting, which seemed to have sprung up out of nowhere. Was it something she'd been trying for a long time, or did it happen spontaneously? "It's something I always meant to do and never really did until I sat down and tried. I think I started writing after I broke my arm because I became very appreciative of the fact that I could (still) play guitar. So I started playing and realizing I could make up melodies that I wanted to use."

After a few tentative stabs at contributing to the Bedlam Rovers (the song "Bully", which was later covered on the Waco Brothers' debut album, is all hers) and recording a solo acoustic demo at Komotion, Caroleen says her writing took a major step forward with the scathing waltz, "Lovers Of Art", which couples a rollicking, catchy tune with a full-on, even vicious, attack on "consumers of shackles...crusaders for justice in absolute terms" who "make the city streets grid/a world without challenge for the weak at heart!" Who the hell is this song aimed at, anyway? Wussy liberals?

"That's too easy", Caroleen responds. "It's about personal responsibility. I guess what I mean is that it's good to tread lightly and be aware and accountable for your actions but life is not black and white and dry discussion isn't always a means to justice. I wrote it on the last Rovers tour. We weren't getting along as a band. I was...looking back at how carefully I'd lived my life up to that point. Not very carefully by a lot of standards, but there was still plenty to kick away. It's more directed at what I felt I had been in my relationships with others. Safe and padded, you know? It just so happened that most of these relationships were with people in the band. "It was also kind of a kiss-off to singing someone else's words. Being accountable for what came out of my mouth no matter how twisted and ugly it was. Once I started writing, it was such a rush that I was kind of incredulously angry at myself for not having the courage or discipline to have done it earlier. That was all my fault. I was putting my inflection on someone else's personal take on the world. Although it was very close to my own, it still wasn't mine."

Caroleen's own "personal take on the world" is not easily pinned down, nor, it seems, is it meant to be. Waycross songs tend to be filled with emotional detail, but not necessarily a detectable story line. Is this sort of "veiled intimacy" a conscious effort? "Yeah...I mean, it's just the way it comes out, but it's the only way I'm comfortable with it coming out..." Sunshine bursts in, "Because they're all about me!" which sends everyone into gales of laughter. Are you reluctant to talk about your lyrics? "Am I reluctant? Kind of. They can be very twisted and personal, and they can also be kind of flip. It's all melodramatic and exaggerated. Things that I scribble down in fits of panic when I'm reanalyzing a situation and remembering details. Things that I said in an offhand way that way have more meaning to the listener than I ever intended. Everybody does it."

Often she ends up mixing several viewpoints and plotlines in a single song, like the agonizingly poignant "Tips For Travelers", which she says "is simply about loss. My grandmother had just died, Sunshine had gone to New York after a particularly uncomfortable phase in our relationship and I was being tormented by telephone by an ex-lover. They're all in there. It just bounces back and forth from phrase to phrase." Fragmented as it sounds on paper, the song itself is a heart-wrenching study of a weary, oppressed character, first seemingly observed from afar, and then inhabited by the narrator. The music starts as three eerie bass notes hanging in the air and ends as an angst-filled crashing din. This band pours on the drama, and makes it work

Collecting 11 tracks recorded over the past two years at Wally Sound and Komotion studios in San Francisco, Waycross mastered, packaged and duplicated their first album out of their own pockets. (Unlike most bands who do this, Waycross didn't even bother to fabricate a "label" name; the disc remains labelless. "We forgot!" Caroleen jokes.) The technology for putting out your own music on CD is more available than ever, but that doesn't mean it will get heard. [Check the Waycross website, www.unitedmeat.com, for details.] With at least one (or two?) albums' worth of great songs either left in the can or as yet unrecorded, [note: 3 years after this was written, that should read five or six, probably; at this writing, a second album has been mastered, but not yet released. And yes, it's very, very good too.] this could be (and hopefully is) only the beginning. And Caroleen Beatty may be a late-bloomer when it comes to songwriting, but she'd rapidly making up for lost time, to the point where she's now generating more material than one band can use.

Which brings us to Pre-War Jewel, her ongoing collaborative project with the ever-prolific Jon Langford. So far, only one song has seen the light of day (the exquisite "Leave Home Now", on an obscure local compilation), but we should be hearing more soon. [Sadly, this optimistic prediction has yet to come true; as of 2001, the PWJ recordings have only been heard by a small group of fortunate people. "Song For The Helpless And Downtrodden" in particular is an unheard classic.]

Caroleen: "Jon Langford is a prince. He's the most fun person to work with in the universe, as well as Dave Trumfio, engineer extraordinaire. I've never been so comfortable in a recording studio. There's 10 songs, 8 of which we recorded and mixed in 4 days, with Dave Trumfio playing bass and Steve Goulding playing drums...bringing them all in and saying, 'OK, now! GO!' We're gonna try, and...I have a bunch of shelved songs that were entirely too poppy for Waycross! (Laughs) Tidy, wrapped-up, and in 4/4! So that's going on, and we're writing songs over the internet. We're writing a song about crockery and rocking chairs. But he doesn't know it's about crockery because I haven't submitted my half of the song yet!" A mischievous gleam flashes in her eyes. "Actually, the last track we did was Jon sending me a DAT tape of a song he'd already recorded, and Jeff and I took it into Komotion and spliced it apart, and added another section with these weird up-strokes...and put in a whole 'nother verse and another chorus, and put my backing vocals on all the other choruses! (Laughs harder) It's so cool! And I think we were driving at the same subjects. But even if not, now it all means one thing to me!" **********************************************************************