Sounding Off: Two Cow Garage leaves smokey trail across America

Written by Jeremy Johnson
(jjohn308@mscd.edu)

For a band called Two Cow Garage, the Columbus, Ohio foursome are far less redneck than the name might imply. TCG’s sad, late-night party anthems about smoking and drinking too much somehow manage to avoid coming off cliché, thanks in part to frontman Micah Schnabel’s vocal conviction, and his band’s less-than-driving, rusty-sounding accompaniment. To call Schnabel’s lyrical delivery smoky would be an understatement (an online description has the band sounding “like Pall Malls,” a particularly harsh brand of cigarette). The vocals are often just barely coherent, making for a perfect match with TCG’s bare-boned rhythms and deliberate, downward chord progressions. Part Gin Blossoms and part Gaslight Anthem, TCG’s apathetic, graveled and tired approach, in every instance, is a case of one dirty, bluesy hand washing the other, with the end perfect match of dark and light, black and white. Schnabel took time from the band’s busy tour schedule (nearly 200 shows per year) to talk about the Cows’ trip through our own cow town, Denver.

JJ: Two Cow Garage is kind of an odd name, especially for what is essentially a rock band. Where did it come from?

Micah Schnabel: The name came from a friend of ours, who said it as a joke. We didn’t even have a name yet, and we tried it jokingly in our first show. For some terrible reason it stuck. It’s been kind of a curse through time, and we would go back and change it if we could. But here we are seven years later and, well, we’re over it now. People just assume we’re a country band, which is misleading, I guess.

JJ: Well you’re really not a country band, though you do have some country appeal.

MS: I don’t use the word “country,” but we did all kind of grow up around folk music. We all sort of come from the Bob Dylan school of music writing. You know growing up in Ohio kind of lends itself to a very Midwestern feel. So we started out with country feel, that’s kind of where we came up, but over the years we’ve gotten away from that. Shane (Sweeney, bassist and co-vocalist) and my voices lend to our country appeal. Growing up around cornfields and such lends itself to country songs. We’ve moved away from that a little, but we have a fan base there and so we’re going to stick with that.

JJ: Well, it’s a refreshing movement from all the hipster, indie rock that’s out there right now.

MS: Yeah, you know it’s kind of weird because it seems like it’s coming back around for us. All these hipster kids now are starting to want to be country. I don’t know where that comes from. We’re the real thing, I guess, and they can fake it all they want. But it’s definitely more genuine coming from us.

JJ: Aside from the obvious booze and cigarettes, what else influences Two Cow Garage?

MS: Just living, you know? Picking apart everyday situations I would say is where most of our songs come from. They’re the kind of situations probably everybody’s been in and we just try to put it under a microscope and really pick them apart. Put it out in front of people. I guess that’s why people can connect: you take these everyday situations and tear them apart and romanticize them a little bit. When people hear that they can connect with that because they’ve been in these situations and they know how it feels. Everyday life is what influences and inspires us.

JJ: We talked about your country image and your influences, but how would you describe your music.

MS: Man, that’s the hardest thing. Being on the inside it’s so hard to describe. In our heads, it’s probably nothing like what people hear. I guess we kind of have that Bruce Springsteen-esque thing going on. You know, the way he wrote about (New) Jersey and other things, it all comes from the same place. As a band we portray that whole thing of where we’re from and dig deep into that. And then people hear that country thing, too. If people like that, then it’s fine. If not, well then, we’re not really country at all.

JJ: What is it about TCG that makes the band particularly unique in today’s overcrowded indie scene?

MS: I think just not being part of it. We’ve really been shunned by the whole thing just because of our name, you know? We really haven’t been accepted into those circles. I think that alone keeps us outside of that. It sucks sometimes to see your bands get caught up in that scene and get some breaks and stuff. And you see them fly by you, just because their name isn’t Two Cow Garage. But it keeps us honest. We do 200 shows a year and we work harder than a lot of bands that get stuff handed to them and so I think it means something more. And that’s why we have the fan base and respect we do: not just because of the music we write, but because we had to work so hard to get anybody to even listen to us. It’s a lot of work to get somebody to respect a band called Two Cow Garage. It might have put us in a hole, but at the same time I think it’s built a lot of character.

JJ: How do you feel about coming back to Denver, a genuine “cow town,” if you will?

MS: I don’t know how they get that. They call Columbus that, too. Whatever, we do pretty well in Denver. If that’s the reason, we’re alright with that.

JJ: What are the staples for TCG when you go on tour?

MS: Cracker Barrel and Gaslight Anthem records. We really love Gaslight Anthem and we feel like we’re kind of in the same vain, but we get left out of that indie rock category.