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The Afterdarks

Circa 1950: Cruise down the strip in a Ford convertible, the moon a hazy sliver in the midnight sky. Take a hard right, peel out around the church and take it off-road into the graveyard, knocking down every tombstone on the way. Reach across the shifter and flip on the radio to drown out the he moans of the restless dead and here's what plays:

The Afterdarks.

Rock 'n' roll has been proclaimed dead years ago. But now that the greats from blues and rockabilly—Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins—have all checked out, hell is filling up and the dead are walking the earth. These are the souls that the spooky trio, the Afterdarks, channel while thumping and wailing their updated rockabilly dirges.

Founded back in 2003 as a horror punk band, the Afterdarks have gone through a series of deaths and reanimations before their current incarnation. “I met Dr. Nasty about a year and a half ago and we just decided to jam one night,” explains founding member Papa Darkness. He was blown away. “Nasty is a madman on guitar—just watch him live, he is so loose and confident, I can barely explain it, he just has charisma.”

With this lineup—consisting of Joe “Papa Darkness” Robertson on the upright bass, Jake “Dr. Nasty” Cowan on guitars and Tony “Smokehaus” Johnson on the drums—the Afterdarks started moving in the direction of Papa Darkness's true vision.

“I've always wanted to keep the band close to its blues roots,” says Papa. Every type of rock today—be it punk, pop or even hardcore or emo—can be traced back to when rockabilly brought the music of black musicians to all the white kids. And this is the kind of authentic “swampy blues” that the Afterdarks love to play. That visceral early blues, rock 'n' roll sound straight out of the 1950s that first got America twisting and screaming.

“There's just something about that dancing tempo that gets my blood pumpin'. Nowadays, there aren't too many styles of music that a guy can still look cool gettin' down and dancin' with his girl to. The Afterdarks love seeing it happen. We love making music that makes ya' tap ya' feet.” He says.

But what really makes the Afterdarks appealing and bizarre are their horror-flick influences. Papa Darkness is a soul raised in the midst of punks and ghouls. “I saw Vincent Price's 'Fall of the House of Usher' when I was young and it messed me up for life,” he says. “Let's just say, I love all things dark and spooky...movies, goth music, goth girls, Halloween, skulls...did I mention goth girls?”

He did, in fact, mention goth girls, as he often does in their horror-film inspired songs with titles such as “Graveyard Vixen,” “Elizabeth Bathory,” and “Vampire Girl.” Lyrically, the Afterdarks sound like a campy, zombie teen romance from the 50s and sonically they sound like a cross between “Teenagers from Mars” and “Jailhouse Rock” with an extra helping of down-home blues howl and a smattering of frenetic pentatonic shredding.

The strange mix is consistent visually as well. Papa Darkness plays an upright bass as a throwback to their rockabilly roots. But while Papa Darkness is classically trained in horror and gloom, learning to play the upright bass was a bit more of a crash course. It's not easy to find a bass player with an upright to join a rock band in the Quad Cities and when The Afterdark's previous bassist moved on, Papa Darkness (then playing guitar) had to step in.

“Our last bassist was kind enough to sell me his upright bass,” explains Papa. “And thirty days and a ton of blisters and calluses later, I was ready for the next show.”

This kind of instrumental versatility—the drummer was originally a bassist, the guitarist was originally a drummer and the bassist originally a guitarist—does more than get them out of a jam during all the lineup shifts. It gives them a tightness as a band that lets them go wild on stage.

“You never know what you'll find at an Afterdarks show,” claims Papa Darkness but pictures and eyewitness accounts can give you an idea. Here: Dr. Nasty flails and shreds his guitar, Papa Darkness climbs atop his massive upright bass, balanced precariously but still playing, skeletal hands and spiked mohawks bristle in the pit—the lights are dim. It looks like Halloween.

“We keep the lights minimal to keep things dark and eerie, but we really don't put on a big extravagant show.” Papa explains. “We just like to get crazy on stage...one time I spun around my bass and kicked a hole in the back and now there's a steel plate there.”

That's how the Afterdarks like to keep things: simple and authentic. Papa Darkness seems to be a bit at odds with the mainstream today; when asked to describe what the band sounds like he replied: “An middle finger extended to the record industry.”

“The record industry seems to gravitate more towards what's in style and what's more fashionable. They find out whatever the kids are into at the moment and then chew it up and spit it out. It's just not for me,” he goes on. “If maybe one day the record industry is into true-to-the-sound, straight up rock 'n' roll then that's cool but until then...”

Although admittedly not a fan of pop-genres, Papa Darkness isn't against everything that is poppy. “I do enjoy a good hook. The way that bands like the Beatles did it, hooks are a main element of rock 'n' roll. It gets in your head, gets people singing and gets the message of a song across in just a minute or two.”

It's hooks like these that Papa Darkness feels are important in passing on the torch of authentic blues and rock 'n' roll and this is what draws the Afterdarks to the rockabilly sound. When the old Mississippi delta blues began dying out, the sound got passed on to the masses through rockabilly and then passed on again through the British Invasion. This is the kind of success that the Afterdarks strive towards, to make sure rock 'n' roll still stalks through the night, even if it's been for decades.

“If some kid from some generation 20 years from now and picks up our CD and is inspired, then that's enough to make me happy,” says Papa Darkness. “I just want to keep the torch burning.”

You can catch the Afterdarks in Morris, Illinois at the Hunert Car Pileup in October, or you can checkout their website at www.thefterdarks.com for more show information, MP3s and merch.