Confessions of a Rankoutsider
Pat Todd wrestles with busted romance and life's lessons on 'The Outskirts of Your Heart'
It's been almost 20 years since Pat Todd first blew my mind. In March 1987, his band the Lazy Cowgirls played a show celebrating the release of their album Tapping the Source on Greg Shaw's venerable Bomp! label, held at Shaw's Hollywood garage-rock haven the Cavern Club. Freshly transplanted from Pennsylvania, we kids were eager to hear some live L.A. music, and the Bomp! name promised a fine experience. So we headed south from our pal's Panorama City pad to the still-grimy streets of Tinseltown.
The upstairs space was claustrophobic and sweltering. It had no stage, just a place at one end where the bands set up.
Then he appeared: a short, balding man with wild long dark hair and a thigh-high cast on one leg, scribbled with well-wishes. Pat Todd announced without fanfare, "We're the Lazy Cowgirls." And this scruffy quartet promptly detonated a rootsy punk fury-bomb that knocked us flat. In-the-know fans had been rustling speculation that the cast would prevent Todd from being his usual explosive self. Fat chance. The dude was a dervish, hopping around on his good foot and bellowing into the mike, contorting his body and periodically hauling sweaty strands of hair away from his face. We were thunderstuck.
We'd seen amazing punk rock before, but Todd's intensity spoke of someone deeply committed to his craft. And he remains committed to this day, although the Lazy Cowgirls are no more. After a long and successful haul, he hung up that name a couple of years ago - partly because longtime guitarist Michael Leigh moved back to their native Indiana - and elected to put his own moniker out front. Yet Pat Todd & the Rankoutsiders is more a logical progression than a radical departure. He even has original Cowgirls bassist Keith Telligman in the lineup, along with guitarists Nick Alexander and Tony Hannaford, and drummer Roy J. Morgan.
So how come the name change? Some might call it ego, but really Todd was just owning up.
"It's always been Pat Todd," says the singer-songwriter over a grilled cheese sandwich at a Studio City coffeeshop. "It's always been my thing. So I might as well put my name on it. I love the idea of things like Muddy Waters and Hank Williams - you could have put any name you wanted on [their recordings], but you could tell who it was immediately, just by the way they wrote songs, and the sound. The same goes for me. People come and go in bands; most people don't have the drive and the energy to constantly keep it up. I do."
Indeed. Todd, 53, comes across as a calm, soft-spoken guy with a tendency to matter-of-factness and quiet reflection. In some ways he's a model of stability - living in the same Van Nuys apartment building for decades, and working 17 years as a driver for a special-effects studio. But don't be fooled - beneath that laid-back veneer is a man driven by passion and ambition.
Todd doesn't consider aging a bad or even relevant thing, other than for the proverbial wisdom it's brought. "I started to finally know who the hell I was probably in '95 or '96, as far as - this sounds really pretentious - but, you know, my own vision, voice, ideas," he says. "I have a trillion songs; they just come out. I can't hardly stop writing songs."
That explains why the Rankoutsiders' debut album, The Outskirts of Your Heart, is a 28-track double-CD. ("And I have 30 or 35 new ones," Todd adds.) With elements of country, soul, and folk tempering the loud-fast tendencies, the first half is revved-up rock 'n' roll. The second is twangy and acoustic, mostly. Both discs offer the observations, thoughts, and feelings of an ordinary guy living an ordinary, albeit very much examined, life - and voicing all the attendant heartaches, regrets, frustrations, and hopes.
Not that all those feelings belong to Todd. One fan suggested to me that Outskirts is a concept album about a failed relationship with a younger woman. Which such numbers as the wry love song "Your Heart, Your Soul & Your Ass" and the mournful "Thought I Saw My Future in a Little Gray Dress" might indicate. Todd laughs at this notion, allowing "that might be part of it," but not laying bare his past.
"It's definitely personal," he says, laughing again. "It's probably somewhat confessional. Except, that's become such a - when you say 'confessional singer-songwriter,' oh, god, that makes you wanna be sick, usually. But I definitely have a lot of that."
It doesn't really matter whether Outskirts limns Todd's personal heartbreak or an aggregation of shattered dreams, romantic and otherwise; the album reminds me of what made the Cowgirls great. Simply playing at high volume and high speed isn't enough to earn plaudits from such alt-rock vets as the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne and the Supersuckers' Eddie Spaghetti. You gotta have something to say. And Todd always did, turning harrowing-to-poignant life experiences into memorable gutter poetry. He's absorbed a wide range of art he can relate to - from music to pulp novels and classic films - and synthesized something of his own. His songs are equal parts Chandler and Capra, hardboiled with a sentimental center.
Much of Outskirts captures the alternating confusion, bitterness, and resignation in the aftermath of love-gone-wrong. But other numbers, including "As the Years Go Rollin' By" and "Is My Last Chance Gone," address the inevitable advancement of time with plain-spoken practicality and sardonic wit.
"I've gotten older, I've experienced a lot more things, and you can't help but think more about yourself and life," Todd says. His reflections aren't prompted by any sort of self-destructive trauma, however. "I'm filled with drama," he says. "I don't need alcohol or drugs; I got enough to deal with in my own mind." He laughs.
Todd's music has always been steeped in tradition - the Cowgirls drew attention to the many tributaries that fed their originals with fired-up takes on early rock 'n' roll classics (the Coasters "Yakety Yak"), country laments (Jim Reeves's "Heartache"), glam faves (the New York Dolls' "Who Are the Mystery Girls?"), and punk curiosities (The Saints' "Know Your Product"). The Rankoutsiders pay more indirect homage to their influences, dedicating "Kendall County Blues" to the late London-to-Austin singer-songwriter Ronnie Lane (of Small Faces/Faces fame) and acknowledging that Joe Ely's "Letter to Laredo" had an effect on "It Was a Stupid Dream Anyway."
Todd's own dream is simple: to keep writing, playing, and performing. The Rankoutsiders' MySpace page - he doesn't own a computer, but guitarist Alexander maintains it - keeps him in touch with old friends and attracts new, often younger, fans. He is poised to become an indie mogul - Rankoutsider Records, which released Outskirts, will soon put out albums by more than a dozen acts. Like last year, the band will perform at Austin's annual South by Southwest Music Conference, doing a mini-tour of Texas in the bargain.
Nowadays, when his group hits the stage at Mr. T's Bowl, the Scene, and other local dives, Pat Todd is not quite as frenzied as he was that first time I saw him. But he's hardly tame. In fact, the explosive energy feels even more urgent.
"This is my last stand, you know, 'til I'm dead," Todd says without a trace of pathos. "I'm actually more inspired and have a lot more hunger now than I did way back then. And whether I'm any good or not, I always say, that's not the point." He smiles. "I've gotten better. That's the main thing you should just try to do: grow and get better."
Published: 02/22/2007
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