Kelly Bolter
Newski in front of a mural.
NEWSKI will play "the best venue in the world."
Milwaukee-based '90s-alternative-style band NEWSKI will soon visit Madison’s Memorial Union Terrace as part of a 100-date tour across America, Europe and South Africa. Long a Wisconsin favorite, the geek rock outfit features frontman Brett Newski on lead vocals and guitar, Sean “Tubs” Anderson on the four-string, and Steve “Mr. Bicep” Vorass on drums. The tour promotes the band’s latest album, Friend Rock, released on April 7.
“Weirdo-ism, drifter culture, environmental apocalypse, depression as a result of social media, and finding the comedy in heartache” — that’s how Newski describes the new LP’s themes. Friend Rock refers to the system Newski followed while creating the album, rocking out with friends. A different guest artist is featured on each track of Friend Rock, including some big names.
“It’s been a way to pay homage to my musical heroes and friends,” Newski explains. “Nada Surf, The Verve Pipe, and Guster were all musical influences on me as a kid.” Having the lead singers of all these bands — Matthew Caws, Brian Vander Ark, and Ryan Miller, respectively — sing on his record “was incredible,” Newski says.
The album also connects NEWSKI’s fans to artists from around the globe. H-Burns, a singer-songwriter from France, makes a guest appearance on “Too Much Reality.” Other tracks feature folk-punk duo The Shabs from South Africa and folk-pop band The Secret Beach from Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Some contributors hail from closer to home. Rock band Red Wanting Blue is based in Columbus, Ohio, and rock and soul singer Miles Nielsen, who Newski refers to as “my brother,” comes from Rockford, Illinois.
Despite this mixture of collaborators, Friend Rock provides an unadulterated dose of classic NEWSKI. The band delivers its characteristic low-fi, quirky sound reminiscent of Cake, laced with Newski’s swooping and sometimes Tom-Petty-ish lead vocals.
“I’ve always loved low-fi recording because it is the most human sounding production style on the planet,” Newski says. There are “no fancy tricks or expensive technology to give the music that shiny perfection and patch blemishes. Perfection is for mathematicians and golf course maintenance guys. I want to make flawed inertia and capture vulnerability on tape. I love music that sounds damaged.”
With the exception of “Flake Town,” which Newski wrote in South Africa with Jon Shaban, he wrote the songs by himself in his house in the Bay View neighborhood of Milwaukee. “Some were written upstairs while sitting on the floor, others downstairs while blasted on CBD,” he says.
Given the distances involved, putting Friend Rock together was sometimes a rocky process. Newski recorded the tracks himself in Milwaukee and then sent them to the guest artists to add their own parts. “Organizing audio files from artists all over the world was for sure a pain,” Newski says. “It was a long, drawn-out process of collecting vocal tracks from musicians in other time zones. There was a bit of phone tag and chasing down files. Props to Matt Spatola for producing it.” Spatola also makes his own guest appearance on the album’s first track, styled as Magic Charles.
Clearly with the tour and the new album, as well as writing a book and launching a new podcast, Newski is no '90s-era slacker.
Cover of the NEWSKI album Friend Rock. It is pink with quirky line drawings of the band.
“My music career runs on three things: obsession with music, fear of complacency, and total desperation not to have a ‘real job,’” Newski explains. “I’ve worked many [expletive] jobs in my day, and the thought of getting trapped in them scared the crap out of me. You can sit perched on the jaws of the system, wait for its teeth to clench and grind you into paste. Or you can take a road most people wouldn’t normally go. Uncertainty is the medicine that protects you from the disease of complacency.”
Newski’s road less traveled has prompted him to become an advocate for mental health. On his podcast Dirt from the Road and his book It’s Hard to be a Person, he discusses his own challenges with anxiety and depression, employing humor as a vehicle for coping as well as connecting with others.
Friend Rock continues this work, encouraging listeners to stay weird. “‘Freak Flag Fly’ is an important track because I believe everyone is kind of a weirdo deep down,” Newski says. “Unfortunately, it gets suppressed by environment, especially in the corporate world. Weirdo-ism is good. It makes us all unique. For me my weirdo-ism got crushed and picked apart in public high school. When you suppress your quirks, or oddball qualities, it’s terrible for mental health and damaging to the soul.”
Similarly, “Flake Town” confronts the negative effects of social media on mental health. Newski says this track is “about the societal disease of fear of missing out (FOMO) and how social media makes us watered down versions of ourselves when we overdose on it.”
After NEWSKI plays the Terrace, which Newski calls “the best venue in the world,” on July 1, the band has a number of in-Wisconsin concert dates, including Milwaukee on July 14, Mile of Music in Appleton on Aug. 4 (two shows), and The Shitty Barn in Spring Green on Sept. 21.
