Request
September 1995

Smoking Popes Chicago

LIKE THREE FRONTMEN OF SMOKING POPES LOOK LIKE MEMBERS OF A HIGH SCHOOL WRESTLING

TEAM, or Pugsley Addams, postpuberty and looking for trouble. Beefy buzz-cut brothers Josh, Matt, and Eli Caterer formed the band with their drummer pal Mike Fetumlee, whom they outweigh considerably, back in 1990 in Lake in the Hills, Illinois, a far Chicago suburb near the Wisconsin border. The Popes don’t talk much, and they offer no revealing anecdotes about their formative years playing DIY punk shows in basements, bowling alleys, and suburban VFW halts. “We were in high school and we decided to get a band together and we called it the Smoking Popes,” is how guitarist, vocalist, and primary songwriter Josh sums up the band’s early history.

The group honed its sound on two 45s and 19g3’s Get Fired album, all released on the Chicago punk label Johann’s Face. A follow-up, Born to Quit, was originally on the same label, but in between releases, punk had become big business thanks to Green Day and the Offspring. The major labels thought the Popes were likely to catch fire, and they pursued the band aggressively. For one show at Chicago’s Double Door, Warner Bros. flew a dozen West Coast staffers in to court the group. “We didn’t ask those people to come we had nothing to do with it,” Josh says somewhat defensively. “But we’re not scared of those guys. They’re wimps.”

The band ended up signing to Capitol (whose representatives presumably seemed a bit tougher), and the label has rereleased the 10-song, 28-minute Born to Quit with two tunes remixed for radio consumption. The tinkering probably wasn’t necessary. Modern-rock FM powerhouses KROQ in Los Angeles and WKQX in Chicago already were all over such songs as “Need You Around,” “Mrs. You and Me,” and “Just Broke Up,” which merge buzz-saw guitar, Ramones tempos, giant AC/DC choruses, and Josh’s unique punk croon.

That vocal style perfectly matches Josh’s unabashedly romantic lyrics—”girlfriend” is by far the Popes’ favorite word—and it has some unusual (for punk) roots. “Sinatra, Torme—it’s obvious that I listen to people who sing that way when you hear me sing,” he says. The group also does the occasional killer cover by Willie Nelson (“Valentine” or “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground”), all of which has caused the narrow-minded to sneer. Smoking Popes don’t care. To them, it’s all cool, and it’s alt a part of the mix. “It’s just important to ignore almost everyone and continue to make music that we like,” Josh says.

Now in their early 20s and flush with capital from Capitol, the Caterers recently moved out of their parents’ house and into Chicago, but their lifestyle hasn’t changed. Their favorite pastime still is sitting around watching MarIon Brando and Robert De Niro movies, and smoking way too many Marlboros. Josh claims that the cliché about rock ‘n’ roll brothers isn’t true and the Caterers don’t fight. “A lot of people are surprised that we’re able to get along so welt,” he says. If they ever do end up going to the mat, it would be a hell of a tag-team match. —JIM DeROGATIS