Denver Westword magazine http://www.westword.com/issues/2001-07-05/music/music2.html
Here is a web reprint of the interview chad did with Andrew Turner of Dandercroft magazine:
Chad Rex
by Andrew Turner
Chad Rex sips on his shot of Jagermeister and takes a puff off a cold pint of PBR as he asks how ling this article is going to be.
"Between 500 and 1000 words," I reply.
"Good, 'cause that's about how many words I know," he explains and gives a few examples - "Sasquatch...Sea Urchin...Wildebeest...Anus...Xanax..."
Chad's a terribly funny motherfucker. If you've ever hung out with him then you know what I'm talking about. He just returned from nearly a month on the road playing lead guitar for Drag the River, the current project of Chad Price(All) and Jon Snodgrass(Armchair Martian), and is getting ready to go out for another stint. We got drunk and shot the shit before his Sunday night Westport Flea Market solo show. I didn't make it into work the next day...
A "Chad Rex" Google search turns up about 20 pages of results, with 99% of those actually referring to our own KC area singer-songwriter. Sites based in the US, UK, Italy, Germany, and Japan all mentioning our man Chad - most of which with his on again/off again band The Victorstands.
He leaves a long string of ex-bands along the way from his hometown of old St. Joe: Oddface, Hotsy, The Tap Dancing Bulimic Redheads (later to be renamed The Tap Dancing Bulimics), Screaming Fetuses, and his very first band The Brats - started with his brother Scotty(Go Kart, Sons of Rex, Groovehead, Victorstands + God knows how many more...).
"Scotty started playing drums first, and I played on his drum set when I was like five," says Chad. "he and I basically were inseparable and needed a band but we were both drummers, so I learned how to play guitar." He picked up the guitar around the age of eight, and still remembers how to play their first song.
The Brats grew up and Chad found himself influenced by the Bob Mould/Husker Du sound and similar sounds of the day. "I basically ate, and slept fuckin' Bob Mould for years, that's why I write every song in G," jokes Chad.
"I was writing songs with eight or nine chord changes, I was like - I could change from this key into a key you would never even think it would be." While influenced technically by other musicians, Chad strove for his own style and sound.
"I never wanted to write a song that sounded like another song, and I later realized that was pretty fuckin' difficult to do...it's all been done before," he says. "Now someone says that sounds like this song or that...I don't even care."
He doesn't play out too much in KC, just an occasional show here and there. He has been playing in the area for 15 years or so, but unfortunately along with many other talented local musicians, he doesn't seem to get much justice. He mentioned one local venue where he has been told he was good, but didn't "talk to the crowd enough".
Another time he opened up acoustically for a nationally touring artist with a HUGE draw, and was told later there was no money to pay him.
"I didn't really care about the money," says Chad, "but goddamn, the place was packed." In 1995, Chad got an offer to join the Ft. Collins band Armchair Martian and to go on the road opening for The Descendents.
"Jon (Snodrgrass) called me and said they needed a bass player," reminisces Chad. He couldn't turn it down. "Well, I can stay around here where nobody seems to like my band, or I can go play bass for this band, whose songs I already like, and tour with The Descendents...I think I'll do that." Just a few years earlier a younger Chad was walking the halls of his high school listening to The Descendents album Liverage on his headphones. Now he was on tour with his favorite band.
"They're fucking amazing, and I was on the side of the stage watching them every show," says Chad as he downs another hit of Jagermeister. "I was just hanging out watching Bill Stevenson play drums every night Milo too - it was fucking crazy."
Some time after returning to KC, Chad began to put together some songs which would eventually be recorded with his newly-assembled band The Victorstands. The album Songs to Fix Angels was released on Mars Motors in December of 2001. Reviewers used phrases such as "transcends classification" and "bridges the gap between musical generations old and new". A foreign review, translated into English, described it as "roots rock from the earth of no-one" - whatever the hell that means.
Songs to Fix angels would earn Chad a nomination for a Pitch Weekly music award for the best new something or another. When he showed up at the ceremony, the person at the door had no idea who he was and was not going to let him in...
"I'm sittin' at Justin Petosa's house just drinking bourbon until I couldn't see straight - he lives like a block away," remembers Chad. He rolls in for the 'before party' and the exchange at the entrance goes something like this...
"Chad Rex," he states.
"You're not on my list," responds the person at the door.
"But I'm nominated for an award," he proclaims.
"I don't know who you are," the gatekeeper responds.
"But I'm nominated," Chad repeats.
After and uncomfortable moment or two, a plan comes together...
"Rex Hobart of the Misery Boys," Chad chimes.
"Oh yeah," is the new response, and he walks in.
An interesting example of Kansas City's weekly entertainment rag being a bit out of touch with what is actually going on in the area.
"As far as I'm concerned," laments Chad, "all the Pitch does is make fun of Kansas City every week...they basically rail on everything." The booze is beginning to do its business, and a more disgusted than disappointed Chad defends KC.
"Everyone thinks that 'Night Ranger" thing is brilliant," Chad disagrees, speaking of a regular feature in the magazine. "All this person does is go out and talk about all the rednecks she meets and how stupid these people are.
"Well you know what?" He asks. " "They're all out, and they're drunk, and they want to get laid - put that in your article." Chad mocks the writer: "' I'm going to go to a bar at midnight and see if I can see some stupid people and make fun of them.'"
"They're stupid people, yeah,it's a bar, and it's midnight," he continues. "find something better to do than ridicule drunk people. It's not that hard to do...come to my house at 7:00 in the morning, I'll be laying there with one boot on and the other off, you can write an article about that!"
Like I said Chad's a funny motherfucker. He's also a hell of a songwriter. Be sure to check him out when he makes a guest appearance with Drag the River, and get your ass to one of his solo shows. Gravity Works, Fire Burns is the title of his next release, currently in the works and due out in March. If you can't find a copy of Songs to Fix Angels at your local record store, you can have one delivered to your door from www.marsmotors.com
Chad Rex & The Victorstands
Songs to Fix Angels
by Will Leatham
It's past 1:30 AM. In the morning, I must be at work, yet I find myself again hitting the play button. The home grown group of brawlers calling themselves Chad Rex and The Victorstands have hit pay dirt with thier first release on the independent label, Mars Motors.
Earlier, I had been to the Tribal Grill on 39th with my girl for a bite to eat. Chad issued from the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron. Beneath the thick, black-framed glasses, he grinned mercilessly, "It's done."
The title, Songs to Fix Angels, unequivocally estqablishes the disk's tone. these twelve tunes chart a course through the late-night wastelands of last-call looneliness, grinding bottom-of-the-glass yearning and an unyielding optimism that'll drag one back the next night for another go.
Recorded on a shoestring in a series of 3 AM sessions, Songs to Fix Angels distills its energy like granddad's moonshine. Its subjects are unaffected and familiar to all who wake and sleep along live's edges. A midwestern scuff on it's shoes, the tunes remain refreshingly unpretentious through repeat listenings. Lacking the fauyx spit and shine of most of today's nnew releases, songs brake from the gate hard, make thier point and get on down the road quickly. Not since Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, John Prine has the three-minute song been treated so well. On song after song, Rex and the boys return to mine the rich vein of countrymusic, but don't be fooled - this is rock'n'roll pure and simple.
This disk kicks the barn doors open with urban ache of Tied up To Die.
Down below the city sky,
Blood drains down from the lights.
And there's no one to stop the bleeding...
In Build A Rocket, the hunger for the gone love translate into a melody so powerful that it stays with one for days.
Sombody's house is burning down,
I play my song to drown it out,
I'm wasted that's how I get through.
I'm lonely, is it too late to.
Parting Dress, may very well be the finest song penned in Kansas City in over a decade, dragging the listener through a bout of late night, brown bottle counseling.
Across the street there's a cheeper wine,
I used to drink it all the time,
It never treated me unkind,
I can't say the same for you.
The song that grow on me most with each listening is Edgar Bergen's Ghost. Voising a certain piano freshness, Bergen's Ghost celebrates summer sweaty, front porch evenings, all the while the night breeze haunted by unseen things.
As fortgetful as I am,
Think I would remember how, where, why.
The first Chad Rex song i ever heard was a cover of Desterate and Poisoned. Long time Rex partner-in-crime, Chris Pilgrim, sat in Prospero's Books, a bottle of beer within reach, and wrung the very drops of heartache from its melody. As thrown down on this collection, Desperate and Poisoned churns like indigestion.
Dead Man Rising is a full-on barroom brawl of desperation and recovery. I could go on. Even the weakes offerings, Sleep Through and Loaded Up are worth a listen.
Those who frequent the late night peripheries in search of stiff drinks and honest tunes, frequently catch performers covering Rex's songs. Kara Werner, host ofthe Monday night shows at Fred P. Otts notes, "Everyone covers two people -- Tom Waits and Chad Rex. Just goes to show what the musicians in ths town think of the songs."
"Working a bone grinding, mind mumbing job till 2 AM, only to spend three hours extracting the energy of a song, trying to lay down a bass rack and a guitar track and a vocal track that is truthful," said Rex,"can break one's balls."
Yet it worked- boy, how it did work! Songs to Fix Angels is Rock'n'roll like it's supposed to be. Straight agead, no gimmicks, poignant songwriting that twists in ones stomach like a heartache refusing to give up hope.