SEE WESTY RUN
From the fertile almost-headwaters of the mighty Mississippi, a region also known as Minneapolis, comes yet another entry in the thoughtful thrash category: Run Westy Run. Three brothers, two guitars, one whomping good sound. The Westy’s unadorned, not too tight, just tuff enuff approach to this thing we call rock ’n’ roll invites comparisons to fellow Twin Cities bashers like the Replacements, Husker Du and Soul Asylum, but as the boys themselves will assure you, “Nobody in the band really looks to those groups as influences, y’know.”
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SEE WESTY RUN
From the fertile almost-headwaters of the mighty Mississippi, a region also known as Minneapolis, comes yet another entry in the thoughtful thrash category: Run Westy Run. Three brothers, two guitars, one whomping good sound.
The Westy’s unadorned, not too tight, just tuff enuff approach to this thing we call rock ’n’ roll invites comparisons to fellow Twin Cities bashers like the Replacements, Husker Du and Soul Asylum, but as the boys themselves will assure you, “Nobody in the band really looks to those groups as influences, y’know.”
That’s singer/lyricist Kirk Johnson speaking, whose older brother Kyle and younger brother Kraig man rhythm guitar and bass respectively. “What’s good about this band,” puts in lead guitarist Terry Fisher, "is that the four of us have different tastes.”
Kirk goes for Lou, Iggy and the Doors, Kraig favors funk ’n’ the Stones, Terry digs “Zeppelin and heavy blues,” and Kyle’s main inspiration, Terry figures, is most likely “some band I don’t even know about—he comes up with the most unusual licks and guitar rhythms and stuff.” Drummerless at press time, the band had borrowed Tommy Ray from Minneapolis pals, the Mofos.
The Westys first tore out of the starting gate two summers ago. They took their name from a third-grade reader, which Kirk claims is the first book he ever read, all about a delinquent kid from Chicago named Westy, who steals his dad’s haircut money, goes on a fishing spree, and watches his best friend drown. “But he learns a lesson,” says Terry, who admits he hasn’t read the book.
The group quickly developed a following among the spiked-hair contingent of Minneapolis. R.E.M.’s Peter Buck came in with Husker Du’s Grant Hart, and Buck ended up helping Hart co-produce a demo for the Westys. “Pete and Grant were really easygoing,” Kirk recalls. “After we got the drum sound, it was like, ‘All right, you guys, go ahead and do it.’ ”
Run Westy Run had already made a splash last fall with a single on Hart’s Tontine label, “Dizzy Road.” "It’s basically about somebody who's caught up in the tide of society, and not really knowing where he’s going,” Kirk explains, sort of. "He gets wrapped up in the family thing.”
Ah, the family thing. Kirk allows as to how he and his bro’s get on as well as any three siblings in a band might be expected to, and Fisher, who’s served as mediator for the Johnson’s periodic spats, tends to agree. “There’s always the thought that these guys are sooner or later just gonna kill each other,” Terry grins, “but I really don’t think that’ll happen.”
Moira McCormick
