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Bad Livers's Bio:

The Bad Livers have released several albums since they formed in 1990. Industry and Thrift, of 1998, and the 1997 sound track for for Richard Linklaters' The Newton Boys being the two recent releases.

The bluegrass band consists of Danny Barnes (guitar, banjo), Mark Rubin (acoustic bass) and Ralph White (fiddle), with an occasional tuba solo from Rubin. Bad Liver audiences are apt to demand tuba solos, in fact.

Their sound is more far reaching than bluegrass. This group plays pretty much "whatever they feel like," which ranges from Flatt & Scruggs to Thelonious Monk.

Their style has been dubbed "trash-bluegrass" or "bluegrass punk." The band simply describe their sound as BAD LIVERS music. They rose to a degree of fame playing covers of punk, jazz, and rock tunes, but soon realized they had to perform their own music, and most of their albums have been original work. They build a wooden shed for one album in order to achieve the "old-timey" sound they wanted.

The Bad Livers have a busy touring schedule and are a frequent international touring act. You can keep up with their appearances, sample their sense of humor and read their "just us folks" news and notes on the Bad Livers website.

User: hitech

Bad Livers's Albums
Blood & Mood

Bad Livers Album Editorial:
The Stanley Brothers on LSD? Banjo-driven hip-hop? Though the Bad Livers have defied categorization for more than a decade--since their early days of transforming Iggy Pop and Metallica tunes into bluegrass breakdowns--here they push the technological envelope like never before. The result is a vibrantly mutant strain of mountain music one that finds electric guitars rhythm loops and country-fried samples reinforcing the creative interplay of frontman Danny Barnes and bassist-sidekick Mark Rubin. Most audaciously Im Losing opens with a ferocity that leaves most punk rock in shreds before resolving itself into a mad honky-tonk medley of Buck Owens Tammy Wynette and Merle Haggard (with some gorgeous steel guitar from producer Lloyd Maines). From the surprisingly melodic lilt of the ominously titled Death Trip to the bluesy lament of Love Songs Suck the music proceeds organically by instinct rather than calculation--like blood and mood. Don McLeese
Dust on the Bible

Bad Livers Album Editorial:
The initial recordings of these Texas punk-bluegrass heroes Bad Livers IDust on the Bible dusts off 10 country-gospel classics that banjoist-guitarist Danny Barnes first learned as a boy sitting next to his Grandma in Church. The gospel standards here--everything from roof raisers like Workin on a Building to sweet hymns like Precious Memories--offer a gentler version of the bands music than weve come to expect one filled with a moving and abiding reverence for country tradition that you always suspected was behind the bands more frenzied material but which has never before been so prominently displayed. Recorded on four-track in Barness spare bedroom in 1991 each cut here has the casual charm of a back-porch jam session but the spirited bluegrass medley of I Saw the Light Will the Circle Be Unbroken and Ill Fly Away probably soars closest to heaven. David Cantwell
Industry and Thrift

Bad Livers Album Editorial:
Since 1992s IDelusions of Banjer Bad Livers have been sowing a great wild hybrid of bluegrass picking and punk abandon. Six years later IIndustry and Thrift shows these boys working familiar fields on scorching bluegrassers such as Im Goin Back to Mom and Dad. But theyre harvesting some unexpected crops this time too: the Cali country-rock choruses of Its All the Same to Me for example and a Stevie Ray Vaughan-like blues-rock version of Flatt Scruggss Doin My Time not to mention some twangy klezmer jams and silent-movie-era jazz--all of it held together by sheer quality and the general lack of anything resembling industry or thrift. Thats how the sorry characters here came to have or be bad livers in the first place. David Cantwell
Hogs on the Highway

Bad Livers Album Editorial:
Innovation is all about the collision of previously established styles and Danny Barness Bad Livers offer a particularly striking series of violent stylistic encounters. Bluegrass blues ragtime old-time country Cajun and conjunto bounce around their cauldron with reckless abandon. In truth this kind of potent mixture is ages old dating back to early 20th-century string bands and extending through much of 1930s Western swing. Barness lyrics add a dose of 1990s irony to traditional themes although they fit rather well next to old-time romps such as Cluck Old Hen. The Livers freewheeling attitude and lighthearted approach balance nicely with their serious instrumental chops. Marc Greilsamer
Horses in the Mines
Delusions of Banjer

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