Brody Ramone: Live Your Life. Live Indie.

Black Tar Heroines- Carbondale Illinois
Written By: Hunter MacLeod

Welcome to the first installment of my weekly articles on unsigned and under-known bands and artists. I hope to expose some great music that you're not going to hear on the radio, most streaming services or wherever else you listen. I keep reading that rock is dead, but I digress. If there is anything I have learned over the last four or five years since I started this journey of music discovery it is that not only is rock and roll alive and well, there is more out there than you could ever find on your own. I just hope to be a resource for you. An influencer, if you will.

I find them from all over the World, from the usual suspect cities associated with music to well... small towns. The internet is a wonderful place to search and find any kind of music that you seek. Not only what you want to hear but what is fresh unique, interesting, and even mind blowing and creative!

I have compiled a massive list of groups and artists that I have accumulated from my years of research and inquiry. I could have picked any number of groups from Seattle, Austin, Nashville, New York, L.A., even London or Manchester. I decided on Black Tar Heroines from Carbondale, Illinois a city of approximately 25 thousand people. Why there you may ask? Partially I did it to show that a group of small town rogues can make fascinating and amazing music. Yet I also did because, damn it, it is so fucking good!

Imagine if you would, a mix of garage rock, trippy surf jams, brush strokes of Queens of the Stone Age desert grooves, with a touch of sneering punk with glam pop sensibilities? Band leader, lead singer and guitarist Cobi Walker makes music, in her words, for "beach parties and bar fights." The album Summertide does just that and more. First track "God Only Knows" is a tornado of garage mixed with a beach jam that dares you to jump around and dance. "Cruise Controller" is so obviously influenced by the desert swagger of Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age with a brush stroke of modern glam and attitude but Cobi owns it as all hers. And it is a gritty and sexy song. "Better off in LA" could be a glam nod to David Bowie, with an Iggy Pop attitude, that is also quite a guitar grinder. Summertide  track by track surprises with genre deviations that circle round and create a coherent differentiating sound.

Cobi is basically the band as she has written, played all the instruments, sang all vocals, and did all production, engineering, mixing and mastering at The Flight Deck studios in Decatur, IL. For live performances Cobi is joined by John Galik (drums) Gabriel Arnone (guitar), Zach Arnold (guitar) and Zack Stokes (bass).

Black Tar Heroines, small town rogues, indefinable, rock glam, punk, garage. Music for beach parties and bar fights... genuinely unique, perhaps hidden genius. You just can't designate this group in a particular genre and you can't stop listening once you hear them!

You can always support them on:

Bandcamp and Facebook

About Hunter:

Hunter is a freelance music writer that concentrates on finding outstanding, unsigned, unknown and under appreciated bands from around the world and unabashedly wields them onto the unsuspecting and the great unwashed. His work has appeared on music sites kilScene (NYC/Brooklyn), Mother Church Pew (NYC), and East of Eighth (Nashville). One of his writings has even been shared and press quoted by a Grammy Nominated artist (Do the Grammy's even matter anymore?!)

After a particularly difficult and surreal week of work about five years ago Hunter decided to search the dark, dusty corners and obscure underbelly of the Internet. It was after hearing one of the same 30 songs that a so called "New Rock" radio station played yet again on his way home. That is what started him n his quixotic quest.

Since then through many seasons of bleeding ears, anguish, and many neurotic episodes, he has learned well how to hone the power of the Internet in his search. Along with that, he has a vast array of concerts and music rouges throughout the US and around the world, and his goal is to find some of the most unique, fresh, and kick you in the ear hole artists and bands. You can follow him on Twitter or Facebook (if you can find him!)