Doughboys - Home Again

Artist: Doughboys
Album: Home Again
Release: 1989
Label: Restless Records

Tracklist:

1. Buying Time
2. No Way
3. I Won't Write You A Letter
4. Waiting Away
5. White Sister
6. Numbered Days
7. In My Head
8. Today
9. Never Sleep
10. She Doesn't Live There Anymore

This is a first and surely to be rare kind of ICDT post-- a making-of-the-album post. I've interjected tidbits of a lengthy interview I did a while back with Doughboys guitarist/singer Jon Cummins.

Before I delve into sentimental "what the record means to me and why it rules" waxing, I want to give a shoutout to mah boy Tony Pence at Celebrated Summer Records. His recommendations never disappoint.

A year ago I had a jonesin' in me. I'd been playing Husker Du's Warehouse: Songs and Stories record now and again ever since I'd found it on cassette the previous summer, and couldn't get enough of the Descendents' classic Milo Goes to College. Something inside me was thirsty for punk-based music imbued with melody–and not in the manner of Green Day-Blink-182 crap I'd been subjected to all of middle school.

So I walk into Celebrated Summer one fine Friday and try to explain to Tony the sort of sound I'm looking for. He hardly hesitated before whipping out the Doughboys' second record, 1988's Home Again, on CD and popped it in. It wasn't as intense as the sound I'd wanted to hear, but the conglomeration of the music and the imagery in the jacket completely sold me. In the former department, the lo-fi production grabbed me immediately (in a good way) and everything about the tunes seemed to simply sound honest.

I opened the sleeve to see pictures of guitarist/lead singer John Kastner doing an insane jump with his Les Paul outstretched. Other guitarist/singer John Cummins was in mid-headbang. Brock Pytel was sweating his ass off on the drums and John Bondhead, crouched with his bass, almost looked like Mike Dean from COC did in the mid-80s. I couldn't help but feel the hair length kinship, even though the dudes' dos were in crusty dreads. To top it all off, they all sang. Sweet.

I bought Home Again on the spot and I'm still listening to it all the way through these days. Right from the disc's opening seconds, "Buying Time" has one of those riffs that, when played live, would have a lot of jumping involved. There is a whimsical, nonchalant youth about the album that seems to revel in semi-slackerdom. "I don't care/if I never sleep again," sings Pytel on "Never Sleep." "I don't care/if this highway never ends." "In My Head" is Kastner's more lamenting attitude towards the touring mindset: "This goes out to all the shakers/And all my friends/That feel the pressure/From that tour tension."

Make no mistake-- this is a road record, penned while on tour and recorded quickly in California with Stephen Egerton and Bill Stevenson from All and The Descendents. "We spent so much time away from home," says Jon Cummins today. "It was always good to get back. At that time, my real home would still be Toronto which made getting back to Montreal a little bit weird at times. Later, Paul and I would live in our rehearsal space just after Happy Accidents because we were on tour too much to justify actually getting an apartment. I remember we would eat French fries from this place and walk around while other bands practiced in the space."

As for the recording process itself, Cummins recalls times being "somewhat stressful, as cracks between the individuals in the band were starting to form, but still stoked as this was the first record I had ever played on. We stayed at the All HQ, which was located in a strip mall which was a big wakeup call for me to see how a real touring band lived and ate really good Mexican food at a place a couple of blocks away in Lomida, California. Like any punk rock record, we did it really fast and went back on tour. Brock recorded his vocals laying on his back because he read Ace Frehley did that. I would like to set the record straight, though, that the classical intro on “Never Sleep” was done by Brock and not me. There is flubbed note on that and I thought the idea made us sound like Jethro Tull – still do."

Home Again closes with a straightforward ballad. "She Doesn't Live There Anymore," adds romantic tones to the slacker charm exuded by the rest of the album and features soft acoustic plucking underneath the usual wash of flanged-as-hell distorted guitars. Bondhead, in his sole contribution as primary songwriter, keeps his basslines a little more reserved than on other cuts (great playing) and focuses on a past tour crush. "She had hair just like the wheat in Colorado," he recalls, "and every time we pass those fields I have to wonder/because they're waving there just for me/I can't wait to get back home again and leave." "I remember it being a true story," affirms Cummins. "I think there was a girl Bondhead met in middle America on the first tour with the Descendents and when he went back to the city the person had moved."

I've written this a lot lately, but this is yet another album with few weak points regarding songs. You could make an argument the production is crummy, but I'd just say that takes little away form the catchy, addictive songwriting these dudes were capable of. They'd later go on to a major label, but that's a story for a different ICDT post. If you want a short little pop-punk album or something perfect for a journey, here's the one.

Download Here

-Asa