Before trying to sell you the Mad Cowboys, I should reveal my bias against pop punk. Pursuing a career in popular punk music seems misguided and sad, like wanting to enter a beauty pageant. Catchy choruses, sing song group harmonies and standard format top-forty song structures just don’t mesh with a historically edgy style of music that once purported to fight ‘the system’. Especially disappointing is when current bands of the genre pretend they’re rebelling against something. The rebellion they offer is surface, more of a commercially successful support for acceptable forms of teen angst – see the plastic coated lyrics of Jimmy Eat World for example. The trouble with the Mad Cowboys is that they seem to agree with me, unaware that they make music that fits in fairly seamlessly with the other pop punk bands they despise (Good Charlotte, Gob, Simple Plan). That said, it’s just music right?

So on to the pitch…Mike McLeod, Dave Sowsun and Lyndon Strandquist of the Mad Cowboys are great guys. They have bright-eyed optimism, tempered confidence, and seem like three genuinely kind people. The majority of successful musicians share these traits. A Fistful of Dirty Dollars, the bands first album, was recorded by local savant Diego Medina and took just 18 hours from recording the tracks to mixing them down in the tiny Orbit, a basement studio. Medina remembers the process as being fun, “They were very gentle and motivated people. They are distinct individuals who work well together”. The album turned out sounding a lot like a demo version of Offspring’s “Smash”, a recording many of us picked up when we first joined Colombia House and one that the Mad Cowboys reference in their song “DIY”. A Fistful of Dollars is pretty generic. It has idealism, a little anger, and in the end makes for some good, but ironically toothless music. As far as local straight ahead punk music goes its well done and if I were a fan of “nice-punk”(?) I’d probably enjoy seeing them play the songs with a pint in my hand. The album’s 11 tracks are catchy, fast and simple with just enough cockiness to make them kind of endearing. It’s a youthful album made by some very nice people.

Youth is very marketable and nice can get you places. Those same qualities have recently landed Mike a position as bass player with Calgary icons Chixdiggit. Impressively, though the Mad Cowboys admit to being concerned with the marketing of their band, they have chosen to avoid making the Chixdiggit connection a major part of their image. That said, the topic is unavoidable and I did manage to coax the story out. As Mike tells it, he sat down in his U of C class on Nietzsche, Freud and Darwin and hit it off with the guy beside him named KJ. They talked about music and the Mad Cowboys mostly. As the weeks passed KJ mentioned that he was thinking of getting his own band back together and asked Mike if he would be interested in playing bass. Mike agreed before asking the name of the band he had just joined. A few months later, he was on tour in Europe with one of the most successful punk groups to escape from Canada. He says he’s learned a lot from Chixdiggit and KJ, their remarkably charismatic front man, “stage presence mostly, there’s a way to shit talk out there.” Although clearly pleased with his new job moonlighting, he sincerely didn’t want to go on about it.

For now the Mad Cowboys are focused on playing more shows in town and trying to rebuild a local audience for their style of music, something they’ve noted has been slipping. The humility of the band is evident as they discuss their hopes of getting on the road to somewhere other than Chilliwack, their only previous tour date, and possibly getting some shirts made to try and sell at their shows.

source: www.beatroute.ca