Pulse!
September 1995

Smoking Popes

While his two brothers race off to a nearby Taco Bell, dry-witted Midwesterner Josh Caterer slouches in his tour van, chain-smoking Camels and trying to make sense of his unique croon-punk combo, the Smoking Popes. “A lot of midd1e-aed people, like parents of our friends, have said they enjoy our music, but I’ve alwaystaken it with a grain of salt,” notes the 23-year-old, Who—in ratty skater duds and ratty burr haircut—looks the perfect neo-punk iconoclast. “But I dunno, maybe it’s true. Maybe we are”—and he exhales dramatically— “multigenerational!”

That’s one way of putting it. With siblings Matt on bass and Eli on guitar—and Chicago neighbor Mike Felumlee on drums—Caterer has staked out a strange but winning sonic turf with Born to Quit, the quartet’s Capitol-released sophomore disc. Picture Vic Damone fronting Fear. Maybe Bobby Dan smoothly anchoring the manic Dickies. And Josh ain’t joshin’—his deep, considered vocals drip like lounge-act syrup over his bandmates’ snapping, of ten hyperspeed suburban angst.

Caterer says he spends most of his time at home smoking, listening to big-band oldies and watching vintage Cagney and Cary Grant movies on his favorite cable network, American Movie Classics. Artistically. Caterer has always looked to the black-and- white era for ideas. “There’s an element of songwriting that I think has been lost over the years,” he sighs. “Nobody’s writing songs like that anymore, and I try to incorporate some of that classic feel into our songs, just in the way they’re structured, and in the kind of moods that are created lyrically.”

So Caterer decided to add some languid Mel Torme cool to the Rezillos-frantic powerchords of “Need You Around.” Says Caterer, “There was no grand idea about how to fuse two genres together to pave some new path for the next generation or anything. The uptempo song and the down-tempo singing

just seemed like they would mix in an interesting way.” The similarly speedy girl-as-infection yarn “Rubella” was Caterer’s romantic topspin on a disease chart he saw in his doctor’s waiting room. And the rest of Barn to Quit is mostly chiming first- date optimism—”Midnight Moon,” “Cotta Know Right Now, “Mrs. You and Me.” Why is Caterer such a softie? He shrugs, puzzled. “I try to write about things that are gonna have some emotional significance, and usually the only thing! can come up with that has any emotional significance is affairs of the heart.”

Although the Popes have been championed by platinum punk hero Billie Joe of Green Day and by the punk indie Johann’s Face—which issued their Get Fired debut in ‘93— Caterer insists he wouldn’t call what they make punk “Almost

éveryone I’ve met has their own idea of what punk is. And it usually doesn’t have a lot to do with the actual music— it’s more about what label you’re on, or how you handle your band’s business affairs.”

His outlook, however, remains pure slacker central. “Boredom is a great source of musical inspiration,” Caterer admits, fishing around in his pocket for his umpteenth Camel. At home, only a couple of things ever disturb his nonstop AMC habit:

“Making an occasional sandwich or getting so bored with TV I pick up my guitar and write another song.”

—TOM LANHAM