Since forming his Seattle-based outfit Brent Amaker and the Rodeo in 2005, Amaker has reveled in an idiosyncratic style that doesn’t fit into preordained categories. He’s a country singer whose band is known for dressing in matching black cowboy outfits, yet Amaker is more inspired by art-rock icons like Devo and David Bowie than the usual country mainstays. A Seattleite since 1997, he’s a Southerner by birth, yet Southern crowds are frequently puzzled by his ambitious stage show.
“When we tour Texas, they’re like, ‘What are you?’” Amaker says. “We’re cowboys, living the spirit of the West. We’re not really playing country music, but we’re playing cowboy music. ‘Western performance art’ is what I like to say.”
Amaker’s Western performance art achieves its fullest form on Philaphobia, a sly, heartsick collection that serves as Brent Amaker and the Rodeo’s first proper album in 10 years. Today it’s announced for a January 26th release on Seattle imprint Killroom Records. Throughout it, Amaker wrestles his demons and subverts frontier masculinity in his trademark baritone drawl (think Johnny Cash meets Matt Berninger) on tracks that span from rollicking motivational romps (“Take It by the Horns”) to criminal confessions (“Wanted”) to unlikely covers (Devo’s “Gut Feeling,” reimagined as a woozy twang breakdown).
It’s a spirited and boozy record, but don’t let the yeehaws and hollerin’ scattered throughout “Take My Heart,” the album’s first single, fool you: Philaphobia is a divorce album, steeped in that eternal country tradition of channeling heartbreak into gallows humor and cowboy laments. The bulk of the album was recorded in 2019, when Amaker was reeling from the end of his second marriage. The songs are among the best of his career, wrought with the steely-eyed recognition that love doesn’t always last.
On “Take my Heart,” he’s downtrodden but not defeated as he confronts his ex and fights for his dignity: “I will not let you take my heart,” he vows as his bandmates hoot and holler around the edges of the tune. “It’s about my ex-wife,” Amaker explains. “She gave me a lot of things, but she also crushed me, and I’m gonna survive and you can’t have my heart. I’ve still got it.”
Just in time for the Halloween season, check out the sinister new video with a literal take on the subject matter, for “Take My Heart”via YouTube and pre-save the album here.
“I’ve been married twice, and about five or six years ago, I divorced my second wife,” Amaker says of the record’s inspiration. “Philaphobia — with the Greek root word of PHILA being the feminine version instead of PHILO — is the fear of love, a fear of feminine love. That’s the theme, because I was going through something that was really intense. It’s a really intense time in my life. I was feeling heartbreak. I was feeling freedom. I was feeling excitement. I was feeling sadness. And I think that comes through.”
Throughout Philaphobia, Amaker turns the lemons of late-life bachelorhood into whip-cracking lemonade. Resilience is the guiding force on “Take It By the Horns,” a blast of a tune that boasts a rousing call-and-response refrain between Amaker and his band. On “Los Angeles,” the singer bids adieu to a relationship turned sour and plans a new life in a land of promise: “I’m moving to Los Angeles and leaving all the bickering behind,” Amaker croons over careening rhythms and cowpunk-flavored guitars. He wrote the song while his marriage was failing, but before it ended.
At the center of it all is “Gut Feeling,” a bizarro tribute to Amaker’s biggest influence, the New Wave icons who first piqued his interest in conceptual rock: Devo.
“When I was a little kid, I saw Devo on SNL,” he recalls. “I remember seeing them and saying to myself, ‘Is this real or is a skit?’ They became one of my favorite bands. I’m really into performance art and trying to create something that is consistent, so that every time somebody sees or hears us—like the Ramones or Devo—they know what it is.”
In his late 30s, after spending much of his younger life playing in rock bands, Amaker had an epiphany and decided to start a cowboy band. While Amaker and the Rodeo may not echo Devo in genre, their conceptual unity and insistence on matching stage uniforms is an homage to the Ohio legends. The Rodeo’s lineup shifts over time, but Amaker clings to a unified look: Whenever he brings a new cowboy into the fold, he takes them out to buy their cowboy hat and uniform (Wrancher polyester pants; black shirt; no colors allowed on any clothes, just solid black). When the group is on tour, they wear their cowboy uniforms 24/7.
And when they’re onstage, “performance art is at the heart of our shows,” Amaker explains, describing his elaborate James Brown-esque stage entrance; at a typical show, he walks onstage as the band plays an instrumental overture and somebody drapes a cape over him, then the cape comes off. “Just creating tension is what we try to do with our live performance. It’s fun and people are entertained.”
Indeed, Brent Amaker and the Rodeo have toured far and wide, performing everywhere from Europe to the Capitol Hill Block Party to a maximum-security prison in Belgium, where a riot nearly broke out at the end of the gig. Listeners may also encounter their music in needle-drop form; the group’s music has been noted for its evocative, cinematic textures and has been featured in television shows such as Weeds, Big Little Lies, Californication, and others.
“I think our music is intentionally cinematic,” Amaker says. “I like to write with a theme, and I like to shape my songwriting with visions.”
“When the Rodeo started, we were putting on costumes, outfits,” Amaker says. “But after we went out time after time, I didn’t feel comfortable if I didn’t have some pieces of the Rodeo on me. It became me. It’s not a costume anymore.”
Keep your mind open.
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[Thanks to George at Terrorbird Media.]