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The Power of Two: Nashville’s Gunslinger Delivers Blistering Prog Rock

Band Plays Black Cat August 9

Story by David Brewer

Nashville-based progressive rock duo Gunslinger will return to Black Cat Burrito on Saturday, August 9, along with Six Gun Lullaby and Asheville’s Speedsquare. Like popular styles of blue jeans, musical fads come and go faster than people can name them. And in recent years, the popularity of two-person bands certainly seems to have been one of those noticeable quirks. Between The White Stripes, The Black Keys and the Benevento-Russo Duo, there has been an awful lot of loud music made by pairs.

Nashville twosome Gunslinger stands decidedly apart from their partners in pair-dom, finding more musical common ground with furious progressive rock outfits like The Mars Volta and metal gods Tool. While there exist undeniable links in certain aspects of the riff-happy guitar/drummer combos, the similarities stop there.

For the last year and half, drummer Miles Cramer and guitarist Brian Looney, former roommates at Middle Tennessee State University, have been blazing a sonic trail quite unlike most Nashville-based outfits. Pouring their creative juices in to experimental instrumental works, Gunslinger’s sound registers somewhere near sinister, epic prog-rock with garage punk sensibilities.

“We’re a two piece right now and we’ve basically been playing in the hopes of forming a larger band,” said Cramer. “We just play more intensely to compensate for it just being the two of us.”

While some duos are entirely happy to remain just that, Gunslinger sincerely hopes to find the missing pieces that will be able to complete their big sound. While Cramer and Looney envision an outfit that sports as many as five to seven members, just finding the perfect third member has proven challenging.

“We’re being really selective of who we add as a third member. We have a very strong vision of what we want,” said Cramer. “It’s just got to be that right person.”

The band’s moody compositions wax and wane with spastic energy bouncing between the pair. And while the bands they cite as their biggest influences are modern outfits, the echoes of Yes, King Crimson and early Genesis ring through Gunslinger’s chunky, fuzzed-out guitar attacks and relentless drum assaults.
“I can’t say we listen to those bands except for King Crimson, but they’re the ones that started this type of music,” said Cramer.

Thus far, the band has released Savage, a 35-minute mini-album that features the band’s long-form style of linking multiple musical passages together for a thematic effect. During their upcoming string of shows, Cramer and Looney will test several new tunes in preparation for an upcoming trip into the studio. Unfortunately, when the new batch of tunes is ready for release, the band will have to find a new name, as they recently learned that Gunslinger has already been copyrighted.

“It’s just going to be two weeks of training these songs on the road,” said Cramer. “When we play live, we play very stripped down and raw because it’s just the two of us.”

Creatively speaking, Cramer is ecstatic about the music the pair is making together. While they won’t be known as Gunslinger for much longer, the pair will continue to shoot from the hip in terms of making the kind of music they love.
“I feel like we’re on fire right now,” said Cramer. “We’re moving.”

To hear music by Gunslinger, click to www.myspace.com/petebrownshoes.

Want To Go?

Date: Saturday, August 9
Time: 10:30 p.m.
Location: Black Cat Burrito
Cost: $5