The Bad Livers were an American band from Austin, Texas whose inventive musical style defied attempts to categorize them according to existing genres.McLeese, Don. "Musical Mayhem: Bill Monroe, Metallica inspire Bad Livers' High-Speed Style" The Austin American-Statesman March 7, 1991.Alden, Grant. "Bad Livers: Deconstruction of the Labels" No Depression No. 8. March–April 1997. Retrieved December 21, 2012Lupton, John. "Bad Livers: Dust on the Bible" (Review). Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine Volume 43, No. 4. Summer 1999. p. 125 Their influences included bluegrass, folk, punk, and other musical styles. The original lineup, formed in 1990, included Danny Barnes on banjo, guitar and resonator guitar, Mark Rubin on upright bass and tuba, and Ralph White III on fiddle and accordion. Barnes composed the majority of the group's original songs.Nitchie, Donald. "Interview with Danny Barnes". Banjo Newsletter. August 1995. 6-11. When White left the group at the end of 1996, he was briefly replaced by Bob Grant on mandolin and guitar. Barnes and Rubin then continued to perform and record as a duo until unofficially dissolving the band in 2000. The band has neither toured nor recorded since then, but Barnes and Rubin have played a few live shows with Grant in 2008, 2009, and 2014.Bad Livers collection, Archive.org, Retrieved January 1, 2013.Richard, Terry. "Mt. Hood Meadows' season ender on tap, featuring Austin-legend Bad Livers". The Oregonian May 12, 2014. Retrieved May 14, 2014.
The Bad Livers' music has often been cited for its influence on other groups,"Phantom Power & Spiritual Benefits: The Return of the Bad Livers". The Austin Chronicle February 14, 1997. Retrieved December 21, 2012Kale, Wendy. "Club Notes: Juno What?!, Danny Barnes and Edward Sharpe at Boulder Theater" Colorado Daily November 25, 2009KUT Music Archive. "Folktronics with Danny Barnes: January 29, 2010" Retrieved December 23, 2012Krings, Mike. "Come together: Split Lip Rayfield, Bad Livers members see no limits to new project". Lawrence.com. June 6, 2012. Retrieved December 27, 2012. creating what The Austin Chronicle described as "an impressive legacy".Hess, Christopher. "Bad Livers: The Ridgetop Sessions (Review)". The Austin Chronicle June 30, 2000. Retrieved December 31, 2012. The Stranger credited them with "revitalizing roots music",Reighley, Kurt B. "Border Radio: Roots & Americana". The Stranger September 15–21, 2005. Retrieved January 1, 2013. and, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, "The Bad Livers helped open the way for old-time and bluegrass bands of today".DuShane, Tony. "The Bad Livers: Old-time hip, not hippie". San Francisco Chronicle. March 19, 2009. Retrieved January 1, 2013.
History The Bad Livers formed in 1990, when Barnes "came up with this idea that it would be great to have a small-format acoustic band that could play different kinds of music [at a] virtuoso level, where they could play any kind of music".Morris, Chris "Banjo Widens Its Horizons" Billboard October 10, 1998. p. 52. He began playing with Rubin and White,Hernández, Raoul. "Complete Freedom: Danny Barnes". The Austin Chronicle November 5, 1999. Retrieved December 21, 2012. and the trio adopted the name Bad Livers in the summer of 1990.Blackstock, Peter. "Best bets". The Austin American-Statesman August 13, 1990. They began playing frequently in Austin, including a weekly set at the Saxon Pub.Schroeder, Audra. "Year of the Squirrel: Ralph White's Old, Weird Americana". The Austin Chronicle. December 8, 2006. Retrieved December 21, 2012. A typical set in 1991Internet Archive. Live recording of the Bad Livers at Cicero's in St. Louis, Missouri. May 4, 1991. Retrieved November 10, 2012.Internet Archive. Live recording of the Bad Livers at the Saxon Pub in Austin, Texas. August 12, 1991. Retrieved November 10, 2012. included a wide variety of styles and periods of music, as Rubin later explained: "We were doing Mississippi John Hurt, gospel tunes, Captain Beefheart—anything, really, but it was Motörhead or the Misfits that caught on."Riemenschneider, Chris. "Bad Livers transplant: Austin band is doing nicely after music-saving procedure". The Austin American-Statesman. February 13, 1997.
Imprecise descriptions of the Bad Livers' music abounded: "thrash-grass",Fricke, D. "Rockin' in the Heart of Texas". Rolling Stone. April 30, 1992. 28. "acoustic bluegrass with a punk death wish","Critics' picks". Houston Chronicle. December 24, 1992. Retrieved December 22, 2012. "something called 'contemporary bluegrass,'"Stoute, Lenny. "Mud puppies left holding the bag". Toronto Star. May 14, 1992. F10. and "acoustic-metal-bluegrass",Armstrong, Gene. "Pop band Overwhelming Colorfast on bill with a unique hip-hop duo". The Arizona Daily Star. May 27, 1994. 2E. although these same sources would cite the band as "much-lauded" and note that "the musicians can really play". The recurrence of the term bluegrass, however bizarrely it was modified, along with counter-assessments of them as "good, faithful traditionalists" who "preserve the spirit as well as the technique of old-timey folk music",Schoemer, Karen. "Sounds Around Town". The New York Times. September 25, 1992. Weekend Desk C. created a generic perplexity that led Austin country legend Don Walser to observe that the only question he couldn't answer was what kind of music the Bad Livers played.Beal, Jim Jr. "Bad Livers Indescribably Delicious". San Antonio Express-News. May 17, 1996. 9 H.
Barnes insisted that the Bad Livers were not a bluegrass band, but had created an original sound: "This isn't bluegrass and it isn't this or that. It's Bad Liver music. We end up making our own thing."Rosenberg, Madelyn. "The Bad Livers Play Music from the Heart". The Roanoke Times & World News. February 22, 1997. Metro, 10. Barnes' original compositions were featured on their first album, Delusions of Banjer,Foster, Dan. "The Bad Livers". The Old-Time Herald. Fall 1993. 11-13. released in 1992 on Quarterstick Records and produced by Paul Leary of the Butthole Surfers. The album was praised for "Barnes's strong material, as well as the group's tight musical interaction". Barnes credited the latter with improving the former: "The musical telepathy is really good. I can sort of tailor-make a song to the guys' playing, make the song fit what they're doing, since I write most of the material."
Rubin claimed that they had decided to incorporate the accordion and tuba into the band to counteract their growing popularity,Internet Archive. Live recording of the Bad Livers at the Nick in Birmingham, Alabama. April 21, 1993. Remarks spoken at the end of "Turpentine Willie". Retrieved November 10, 2012. but to no avail: their audience continued to widen and more critics saw beyond the gimmicky descriptions to the band's innovation and skill. The Washington Post described them as "truly great",Brace, Eric. "Shocked and Soundly Rocked". The Washington Post. October 25, 1991. B06. The Times-Picayune praised their "serious musicianship" and Barnes' "soulful, urgent lead vocals",Sandmel, Ben. "Bad Livers Play It All". The Times-Picayune. July 17, 1992. while Rolling Stone admired their "striking blend of virtuoso flash and poignant simplicity".Darzin, Daina. "Bad Livers". Rolling Stone. December 15, 1994. Page 40. Don McLeese of the Austin American-Statesman twice described the Bad Livers as "Austin's best band"McLeese, Don. "Amusements". The Austin American-Statesman. January 12, 1993. F5.McLeese, Don. "The Noise of '94". The Austin American-Statesman. December 22, 1994. 5. and raved of one live show: "The uncommon telepathy enjoyed by Danny Barnes, Mark Rubin and Ralph White makes the band's frenetic acoustic interplay sound like the work of a six-armed, multistringed monster."McLeese, Don. "Step right up for big springtime shows: Austin takes on all it can handle with touring acts and South by Southwest". The Austin American-Statesman. January 17, 1995. E6. Barnes was voted "Best Player of Any Other Instrument" for the banjo at the Austin Music Awards in 1991 and 1992,"Austin Music Awards: Best Austin Musicians". The Austin Chronicle.] Retrieved December 22, 2012. and the Bad Livers were voted "Best None of the Above" for four consecutive years from 1991 to 1994."Austin Music Awards: Best Performing Bands". The Austin Chronicle. Retrieved December 22, 2012.
The Bad Livers' second album, Horses in the Mines, was produced by Barnes and released on Quarterstick in 1994. In his review, McLeese admired them as "a band drawing from the wellspring of tradition to create something fresh, vital and original".McLeese, Don. "Releases play with tradition". The Austin American-Statesman. April 21, 1994. Süddeutsche Zeitung found that the record "sounded quite authentic—almost as if it had long held a place in the Library of Congress".Ellenrider, Manfred. "Fettlebe; Die 'Bad Livers' wechseln das Label" Süddeutsche Zeitung. November 5, 1997. Raoul Hernández poetically concurred, saying that the record sounded "like a bunch of skeletons cackling into the sole microphone that dangles from the outhouse ceiling".
The Bad Livers spent 1995 and 1996 touring and working on side projects as well as looking for a new label to release their next album."Bogs on the Highway". The Austin Chronicle November 29, 1996. Retrieved December 21, 2012. Finally the band signed a three-album deal with Sugar Hill Records, which had more experience than Quarterstick at "selling banjo records".Horak, Terri. "Bad Livers reach out to new fans with Sugar Hill set". Billboard March 1, 1997. 10, 77 Their first album for the label, Hogs on the Highway, was released along with the information that White had decided to leave the band. It was announced that he was to be replaced by Bob Grant, though Grant's tenure with the band did not last long.Langer, Andy. "Against the Grain: Mark Rubin". The Austin Chronicle November 5, 1999. Retrieved December 21, 2012. Both White and Grant appeared on Hogs on the Highway, which received enthusiastic reviews from Sing Out!, praising Barnes' "quirky and inventive" original songs,Wald, Elijah. "Bad Livers: Hogs on the Highway (Review)". Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine. May 1997. 138. and the Old-Time Herald, admiring the "considerable skill" with which Barnes crafted his lyrics.Shirk, A. V. "Bad Livers: Hogs On the Highway (Review)" . The Old-Time Herald. Winter 1997-98. Retrieved December 22, 2012. The Austin American-Statesman agreed that Barnes was "an entirely underrated songwriter" as well as a "banjo wizard",Corcoran, Michael. "Don't forget these local albums next Christmas". The Austin American-Statesman. July 1, 1997. E1. while The Washington Post lauded his "timeless, deadpan voice".Himes, Geoffrey. "Bad Livers: Hogs on the Highway (Review)". The Washington Post July 4, 1997. N14 The Sydney Morning Herald was appreciative of the "beautifully controlled ambience"Elder, Bruce. "Country CD of the week: Texans mix up a tasty brew". The Sydney Morning Herald May 26, 1997. of the entire album.