ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON JUNE 16, 2005
By Steve Newton
For a crash course in how heavily the Atomic Bitchwax is indebted to the superstars of the ’70s, check out Track 5 from the American hard-rock trio’s new album, 3. That’s where the classic riff of Deep Purple‘s “Maybe I’m a Leo”, from the 1972 Machine Head album, makes its deathless presence known.
“That’s probably my favourite Deep Purple tune,” notes Bitchwax bassist-vocalist Chris Kosnik, on the line from his home in New Jersey. “When you’re playin’ ‘Maybe I’m a Leo’ you can just see that riff in your head. That’s what makes it so great.”
Between membership in both the Atomic Bitchwax and Black Nasa, Kosnik has had plenty of opportunities to keep his bass chops in prime Roger Glover shape. Last year he toured with both bands simultaneously, clocking more than 20 gigs in one two-week period.
“It was a lot easier than you think,” he points out. “It wasn’t like I had to set up [the gear] twice or anything. Black Nasa would open for Bitchwax, and then there’d be 20 minutes between the sets. If you think about the way old bands did it, like Aerosmith or Zeppelin, those guys would play two hours without stoppin’. So as long as you had a couple of bottles of water on the stage you were okay.”
Black Nasa-which Kosnik describes as “straight-up ’70s FM-radio rock”-has released two albums, but is currently on hiatus. The Atomic Bitchwax makes its first Vancouver appearance on Thursday (June 23) at the Brickyard, where Kosnik will be sweating it out old-style in the company of drummer Keith Ackerman and former Core guitarist Finn Ryan, who replaced Ed Blundell earlier this year. Like Kosnik, Blundell was a two-band man; his other ensemble was the well-known metal act Monster Magnet.
“Ed is from the Ted Nugent school,” Kosnik reveals, “whereas Finn’s more from the school of Thelonious Monk and all the old jazz guys. And on top of that he can sing, whereas Ed couldn’t. So that was another plus, ’cause when we started the band, I didn’t want to be the singer. Ed couldn’t sing, the drummer didn’t want to sing, and it left me standin’ there like, ‘All right, I suppose I can just yell stuff in the easy parts.’ If you ever listen to either of the first two records, half of them are instrumentals.”
Kosnik and Ryan share the vocals now, and judging by the winning sound of 3-just released on Albuquerque’s Meteor City Records-the partnership works. The group just got back from a tour of Europe, where Kosnik found music fans a tad more open-minded than in North America.
“It’s not segregated the way it is here,” he relates, “where people either like rock music or dance music. Over in Europe everybody likes everything. They just want to go out and have a nice time, whether it’s dancin’ or rockin’ out, which is great, because your crowd doubles because of it. I wish we had that attitude here.”
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