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Reid Rouse – Vocals
elliot secrist – Bass
Adam Loucks – Drums
Trey Gardner – Guitar
Jonlarsen Larsen – Guitar
Desperate for friendship and new to the state, the
first person I met when I moved to Utah as a kid was
Adam Loucks, current drummer of God’s Revolver.
Within minutes he managed to steal most of my
best Pokemon cards and spit a huge gob of mucus
on my skateboard’s grip tape. Over the following
years I watched with great interest and caution as
he carefully cultivated his mysterious neighborhood
image of being wildly unpredictable and somewhat
dangerous. Now, over a decade later, I sit outside
the Blue Plate Diner listening as his bandmates
(who happen to be ex-members of Parallax and
The HiFi Massacre) enthusiastically assure me
that’s exactly the image in which the self-proclaimed
“time-travel, blackout, Western rock” band takes
great pride and comfort. “You never know when,”
says frontman Reid Rouse, “but there will be antics.”
Not only have they terrorized a handful of local bar
owners who now harbor a wary resentment for the
band and their famous brand of drunken chaos,
but they’ve twice taken the show across the great
United States in a retired UTA bus turned vegetable
oil-powered tour craft. Guitarist Trey Gardner
fondly recalls being “out in the middle of nowhere,
sneaking into the back of KFCs and shit, pumping
this nasty slop out of their grease containers”
before he hangs his head at the thought of the bus
sitting abandoned, finally done for somewhere in
Maryland. Rouse says, “It was getting so that we’d
have to start the engine, go outside and pound the
transmission into drive with a hammer and chisel,
get back inside, and take off the brakes. We’d have
to do that anytime we wanted to go anywhere.”
After weeks of having the bus break down every
day, tensions were mounting. One night in Ohio,
loading up gear after a show with heads and guts
full of mushrooms and the contents of an open bar,
bassist Elliot Secrist and Loucks lost it. Between
sips of his alcohol-infused coffee, Secrist tells the
story in his slow drawl, “All I remember is that me
and him [nodding to Loucks] were talking shit
back and forth to each other about how each other
sucked. At some point I lost my mind while I was
moving his kick drum out and smashed [it], and he
ran up and clocked me in the face. I pulled a knife
on him. When everybody was holding me back
it pissed me off, and I stabbed our bus window.
Then I disappeared into Columbus with my whole
hand torn apart. It was bleeding through my pants
and through my hoodie that I was trying to hide it
in. I passed out in a bunch of church lawns and
the same cop woke me up like three times. When
I finally got back to the bus, the only person still
awake was Adam. I was just like ‘what’s up, bro?
Sorry about last night.’”
God’s Revolver brought home with them stories
that make weak men blush—stories of trying to ride
horses bareback while on mescaline, of getting
urinated on by “hot, artsy girls,” and of housefuls
of howling thrash punks working themselves into
beer-soaked frenzies over the group’s energetic,
haunting tunes. While these tales create a certain
mystique, they also make booking shows increasingly
difficult. Secrist explained the self-destructive
Photo: Ruby Johnson
cycle: “Urban Lounge employees get pissed, and
then they tell us we’re banned, and then they ask
us a couple weeks later to play a show.” Gardner
added, “Club Vegas banned us too, and they eventually
let us play again.” The ban that hasn’t been
lifted, however, is a citywide ban in Provo. One night
at Muse Music, tripping balls on acid, Loucks and
Gardner found themselves incapable of performing
and decided to get naked instead. Loucks, not one
to miss an opportunity for anarchy, threw his cymbals
into the crowd like Frisbees. Jonlarsen Larsen
grins as he tells the story, “The Muse thing kind of
got us kicked out of everywhere in Provo, basically.”
The band claims to be heavily influenced by Neil
Young, Ennio Morricone (who wrote the theme to
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) lots of classic rock
and hometown heroes Iceburn, with whom they
had the recent pleasure of sharing a stage. “The
desert is probably a bigger influence on us than the
music we listen to. The desert and constant booze,”
says Rouse. Their second album, The Rosary/
The Law, is due for release on Translation Loss
Records sometime within the next six months.
Although the record is allegedly already 80 percent
recorded, it’s experiencing major delays due to the
fact that their recording engineer is touring with Air
Supply.
God’s Revolver will be playing with Breaux and
Maraloka at SLUG Localized on Friday, March 19
at the Urban Lounge. After making clear the group’s
affection and respect for the other band, Rouse said
about the show, “If Breaux tries to pull some shit,
we’ll get butt-ass naked and suck.” “Just wait ‘til you
see our dicks,” says Gardner.
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