Disciples of Agriculture
This Same Fate, 1997
Kranepool

This Disciples of Agriculture release got the three R's: rootsy, rambunctious and Roscoe. Eric "Roscoe" Ambel proves once again that he's the producer to have when you want that "truer sound." These guys sound like they listened to the Stones, the Scorchers and the Georgia Satellites and came up with a happy hybrid sound. It's hard to sit through this record, so be prepared to move the coffee table out of the way and make a dance floor.

D.O.A. are more like dusty work boots than black leather jackets. They take a song like "Cow Down" and make it believable. "Girl Up The Road" has a walkin' talkin' bass line that comes straight out of Carnegie Hall era Buck Owens, with a nod to Paul McCartney (former Satellite Keith Christopher plays bass on this record). Add in World Famous Blue Jay Jeremy Tepper, and you've got a who's who of roots rock in one place. All these luminaries don't outshine what is best about this record: great songwriting. With this record, main penman Dan Finn makes a strong entry into the rocking side of the alt.-country genre.

- Kim Webber


"The Disciples of Agriculture invented Bovina Rock, a scorch-and-twang cowpunk that has earned acclaim in No Depression, Metroland Magazine and in Alt-country circles around the globe. Local-boy Dan Finn writes Buck Owens' tunes with Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska-esque story-lines, and D.O.A. stomps in with the energy of the Ramones and the tasteful melodic-hook sensibility of early R.E.M. "D.O.A. are more like dusty work boots than black leather jackets. These guys sound like they listened to the Stones, the Scorchers and the Georgia Satellites and came up with a happy hybrid sound. It's hard to sit through this record (This Same Fate, 1997, Kranepool), so be prepared to move the coffee table out of the way and make a dance floor." (Kim Webber, Country Standard Time). (excerpt stolen verbatim from www.4cylinder400.com)


No Depression
BROOKLYN, NY
Disciples of Agriculture:
Taking Bovina by the horns

"Someone once asked me what kind of audience we get," Dan Finn says, leaning back on the couch. He smiles, remembering his one-word reply: "Accidental."

Finn, the singer, songwriter, and rhythm guitarist for the Disciples of Agriculture, has been on the receiving end of that punchline for the better part of a decade. Things are finally looking up. There's the 14-song album they just released on indie KranePool Records, the return of original drummer Joe Pelletier, and next week's gig with Roscoe's Gang. For a band that sometimes seemed like it tried to remain obscure, there's a chance they'll finally join the urban country crowd.
There is, after all, a No Depression clique of sorts in the Big Apple, what with Roscoe's Gang, the World Famous Blue Jays, Mr. Henry and Martin's Folly, just to scratch the surface. "There's a pressure to socialize (in NYC)," says cellist/bassist Sibel Firat, "and we just don't do it that much."

"It's such a business," Finn offers. "Whether you suck or you're great, it's whether you can bring 25 people through the door...and how much they drink. And our friends," he adds with a laugh, "can really pack it away."

DOA got their start in Oneonta, NY, where Finn, guitarist Jon Cunningham, and drummer Joe Pelletier all went to college (as did alternate drummer Jefferson Nichols, who played on the album). After school ended, they all went their separate ways; eventually, they all ended up in Brooklyn. "You can't earn a living in rural upstate," Finn says of his Bovina hometown (a stone's throw from Cooperstown), where he returned for a brief time after graduation.

After Finn finally made the move to Brooklyn, the band remained a loose project until Firat, the sister of an old friend, tossed her cello into the mix. A classically trained player, Firat had "never improvised in my life. Dan brought his guitar by, played some open chords, and we tried to work something out."

"Now I really love it, but when I started I hated it. I was trained to play to perfection, never to play out of tune." On their album or onstage, Firat's cello is the band's secret weapon. Finn's songs are a fine, workingman's cowpunk that suit his road-weary anyman"s voice to a capital T, as on the black rave-up "Leaving Train", the impromptu three-track "Hellbender" (on which label head Howe Glassman backs up Finn & Firat), the haunting, countrified-Kinks-sounding "Drag the River", and the gritty, Jayhawks-esque "Cry". But when Firat sits down with her cello, whether she's pulling its melancholia across the melodies or playing it like a bluegrass fiddle, she adds a dimension to DoA's sound that few others know how to attain.

None of this, however, explains how the hell a kid from the backwoods of Upstate New York ends up a cowpunk. "I always really liked country," Finn says. "As a kid, I worked in a barn where we got this AM country station - WWVA - from Wheeling, West Virginia. And the rock I heard was such drivel.

"And then the punk stuff - Ramones, New York Dolls, Buzzcocks, Pistols - came along, and I'd think of country songs. Driving along with my punk friends, I'd be playing Buck Owens and it was rockin'. All that honky-tonk stuff . . . that just rocked so much harder."

-RANDY SILVER
(KranePool Records, Box 7164, Capital Station, Albany, NY 12224-0164.)