Album Review: Backyard Tire Fire

Backyard Tire Fire
Good to Be
[Kelsey Street Records]

Backyard Tire Fire has been stuck in the underground for way too long. With blues based roots-rock bands sucking at the teet of pop-stardom everywhere, BTF still needlessly toils in the background. Pound-for-pound, these guys write better songs and will out-play the members of King of Leon with only a snare drum and their amps unplugged.

With their latest album, Good to Be, BTF has once again proven that they might very well be the best band no one has heard of. Frontman and songwriter Ed Anderson leads this trio with purpose, rounded out with his brother Matt on bass, and Tim Kramp on drums.

The songs here are catchy as hell – and each one resonates with the deep sense of personal longing Anderson exudes. “Roadsong #39” is a song with a smacking beat that recounts the trials and tribulations of being in a band that spends a significant amount of time on the road. I know this topic hardly seems original, but these guys aren’t a bunch of rich rockstars looking for your pity as they retire to the back of a million dollar bus. These are guys with real problems and real passion, who are scraping together to the pay the rent, to take care of their families, and trying to make ends meet – all while playing ratty bars and sleeping in the backseat of a broken down van.

But Anderson’s true gift in songwriting is creating quirky characters that seem instantly recognizable but wholly original. “Estelle”, “Brady”, and the anonymous protagonists in “Ready or Not” and “Learning to Swim” – all seem like abandoned character arcs from “Eleanor Rigby”. And at no point does Anderson’s soft tenor sound more solid and earnest than it does on “Food for Thought”, where he passes on the lessons learned from a life where dreams don’t really come true…but kinda do.

BTF matched with Steve Berlin’s production now seems like a match made in heaven. How has this not dawned on anyone before? The Los Lobos multi-instrumentalist has the perfect ear for catching this band at their best. He playfully handles their classic rock, blues based roots and their refined ear for pop-hooks, masterfully.

BTF has always blurred the lines that separate southern-rock from college-rock, and they do it perhaps to their detriment. The band is phenomenal, however, you’re not really sure what to do with them, and as sad as that may sound, if you can’t easily shelve it in a store (or search for it on iTunes, as the case may be), it becomes harder for a band to break-through. If Good to Be tells us anything about this band, it’s that they’re resilient and they aren’t here to get rich, which luckily for us means we’ll have a hard time getting rid of them.