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Afterdark fun

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By Stephanie De Pasquale | Wednesday, April 23, 2008 1:18 PM CDT | () comments

When the band formed in 2003, The Afterdarks were a joke. But not in a bad way.

Joe Robertson, the band’s upright bass player and singer who goes by Papa Darkness on stage, explained that the band was originally a parody of The Misfits, an ’80s punk rock group that wrote songs about B horror movies.

The joke went on for two years while The Afterdarks wrote lyrics about vampires, killing zombies and bodies floating in the Mississippi River. Finding success in the Quad-Cities and making some lineup changes inspired the band to branch out in an effort to avoid being pigeonholed as a horror punk band.

“We knew we liked ’50s rock ‘n’ roll, we knew we liked ’50s country and ’50s blues, and we knew what our influences are, and this is how we’re going to write now,” Robertson said.

He and other members of The Afterdarks, Jake Cowan, known as Dr. Nasty on guitar and vocals, and Tony Johnson, or Smokehaus, on drums, try to capture the sound of rock ‘n’ roll before The Beatles brought the British Invasion to the United States.

“We call ourselves Rat Rod rock ‘n’ roll. The idea is the Rat Rod is a 1950s automobile that the kids put together and it’s kind of like a jalopy. It’s got a little bit from this car, a little bit from that car and a little bit from this car,” Robertson said. “And the idea is that we incorporate blues, country, rockabilly, rock ‘n’ roll and we call it American roots or Americana, just Rat Rod rock ‘n’ roll.”

The Afterdarks still write songs about dark topics and keep the tongue-in-cheek humor from their first tunes about the undead. The song “Memphis Is to Blame” is about a man telling his significant other that he can’t come home because he’s in Memphis. But it’s also about Memphis’ role in making rock ‘n’ roll what it is today, as opposed to the original form The Afterdarks seek to reproduce, Robertson explained.

“The ’50s were such a growing experience. But it was the innocence in the fact that it was the genesis of all rock ‘n’ roll, and that’s what we try to capture is that dirtiness, the grittiness, the greasiness, the stuff that you don’t see nowadays,” he added.

The Afterdarks will play Saturday at RIBCO in The District of downtown Rock Island. An all-ages outdoor show precedes The Afterdarks’ 21-and-older indoor headliner spot at 12:30 a.m.

Robertson said The Afterdarks’ live show can get pretty crazy.

“We have a good time. We try to get the crowd into it as much as possible,” he said. “I stand on my bass. I spin it around. I’ve even been known to pick up my upright bass and play it like a standard bass up on top of the kick drum of the drum set.

“It’s not for everybody, but we get a lot of response from younger people when we play all-ages shows, and we get responses from older people when we play car shows.”

Stephanie De Pasquale can be contacted at (563) 383-2639 or sdepasquale@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.

What: Driver of the Year with The Lion In Rome, Bumper Crop and The Afterdarks

When: 8:30 p.m. Saturday, April 26, outdoors. The Afterdarks play indoors at 12:30 a.m.

Where: RIBCO, 1815 2nd Ave., Rock Island

How much: $6

Information: Call (309) 793-4060 or visit ribco.com on the Web

Also on the Web: theafterdarks.com and myspace.com/theafterdarks