Golden Boots
"crumbly western & alt-alt country"
Location: Tuscan, AZ
Bio: Golden Boots is an alt-alt country band from the American Southwest, home to open spaces, Roy Rogers, and the Hydrogen Bomb. Born seven years ago, ... (more)
despite pleas to preserve the health of the mother, Golden Boots has managed to win over the jaded and faded from Tucson to France. Their warped and fractured mixture of psychedelic rock, folk and country has drawn comparisons to Alex Chilton, The International Submarine Band, Beck, and the Monkees.
The first four years can be summed up by two suitcases overflowing with strings of primitive lo-fi four track tapes and a handful of performances shifting around a hodgepodge of instruments.
New to Tucson, Philadelphia area transplants Dimitri Manos & Ryen Eggleston met each other in 2001 for the first time at a neighborhood pancake breakfast. After a tentative noodling session the pair decide to embark on a song writing screed that culminated in the first collection of recordings ambitiously entitled "Super Gold". Coincidentally they have never eaten pancakes since. Over the course of the next three years the duo; along with friend/engineer Nathan Sabatino, continued to write, record & produce several more song collections combining stylistic modes as bizarre and varied as the lyrical meanderings. The occasional performance featured Dimitri & Ryen trading songs and rooting through a grab bag of instruments in an entertainingly frantic (& often comical) attempt to "cover" all the parts.
In 2004 Golden Boots recruited drummer Justin Champlin (of NoBunny fame) to embark on the "Bland Canyon Adventure" : a series of west coast tours, camp-outs, calls for help, & a record of the same name. After arriving back home in Tucson, Golden Boots was contacted by southern California label Nightpass Handmade Records, who released their next two albums. One of these records was "Blunderlust Chpt IV"; which was released as 3" CDR sewn into a quilt. In an attempt to better capture the unhinged melodic malay of their recordings Nathan Sabatino left the mixing board and started playing live, and the band added James Grip on drums.
The band continued to play the southwest & west coast, often times recording the performances to sell at the following nights' show. While on a 2007 tour with K Records' Jason Anderson, Golden Boots was simultaneously contacted by Magnolia Electric Co.( to play tour support) and Park The Van Records to sign the Boots for their next release. As fortune would have it a new studio recording was nearing completion and PTV agreed to rush it as a digital release in time for the Magnolia tour. The ten song album "Burning Brain" was recorded at the Golden Boots' home studio and is a happy ear ache, a whimsical ramshackle of fractured pop.
Work soon began on the next (& first physical) release for PTV . During the interim, 2008 produced a vinyl LP released by Olympia,WA based People in a Position to Know Records. This eccentric beast, titled for its two differing sides: "Coyote Deathbed Surprize" & "EV" features a color swirled side A playing from the middle of the record out and a double grooved side B (like the Monty Python "three-sided record").
Their newest full-length album, entitled "Winter Of Our Discotheque"- to be released by Philadelphia's Park the Van in January 2009- is an inside/outsiders art project of true Itinerant Roots music that examines American themes of lackadaisical paranoia. True to form, the material honors both the creative acts of song writing and the glorious mistakes, drunken or not, that add their beautiful destruction. A seemingly more refined vision of Golden Boots' hook laden, future-as-now confused melancholy pop, this album attempts to walk that fine line between malt liquor and Malbec, between strip malls and malls... a self induced field recording sobriety test. What's more, this album has moxie. Blending pop-folk with distortion-laden breaks, fuzz guitar, primitive keyboards and the unique clarity of unencumbered experimentation. Golden Boots is deconstructing Americana one curio at a time. Some say "Winter" is like driving a dump-truck up Route 66 with a tankful of $4 gasoline and every light is yellow.
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