Fresh Dirt - Online Music Mag - Mar/Apr 2002

Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes

by William Michael Smith

In that same 1984 issue, Creem wrote favorably about a band of young Knoxville post-punkers and their wry, underground, independently released sleeper single "Ethiopian Jokes" that in the best traditions of punk took a vicious, socially conscious slap at the college cool set and the broader Reagan-era complacency.

Looking back with a jaded eye, it is easy to see the cosmic irony of Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes juxtaposed to the future material girl pop diva in the same magazine. While Madonna's career was about to explode, no such explosion occurred for Dave and The Dopes. Where Madonna became a multi-million dollar enterprise, The Dopes merely became a local cottage industry. For ten more years they would play bars from Maine to Miami from their base in Knoxville and, when it finally ended after 600 gigs, they had put out three albums, achieved legendary cult status in East Tennessee, and shared stages with the likes of REM, Husker Du, The Replacements, and the Georgia Satellites.

Talk to prominent musicians in the Knoxville scene and they almost unanimously cite Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes as the band that influenced them. According to former V-Roy Scott Miller, who played the occasional gig with The Dopes and wrote the liner notes for the recent Smokin' Dave reissue of 1989's Too Many Years in the Circus, "Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes ruled Knoxville for much of the '80s and '90s. If you know Knoxville, you know that is no small feat. If you don't know Knoxville, you at least know that now." Miller notes that Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes exemplified the cheesy motto "think globally, act locally." "Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes did that before it was chic. They weren't spiking nuclear reactors or getting arrested in front of trees, but doing it one verse, one song, one show, one club, and one city at a time."

V-Roys drummer Jeff Bills, whose popular early '90s Knoxville band The Swamis was strongly influenced by The Dopes, is more succinct in his analysis of the band: "They were The Shit, bar none. They simply ruled a stage. And they paved the way out of town for all the Knoxville bands that followed, showed us that it could be done."

Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes were drummer Dug Meech, bassist Dave Nichols, and Todd Steed, guitarist, singer, songwriter. The more one delves into The Dopes story, the more one begins to think that this might have been the one band that truly didn't care if it ever "made it" among the thousands who adopt that pose. The Knoxville scene has always had an independent, insular, do-it-yourself, screw-the-record-companies streak (on one Opposable Thumbs album, another Steed project on which the Beach Boys' "In My Room" was covered, the credits simply note "All songs by Opposable Thumbs except In My Room which is by somebody else"). The Dopes were in the vanguard of that attitude and mindset, releasing their vinyl and cassettes through local music stores and the rear of their van.

"We had good luck getting distribution from national companies," Steed said. "We put out our own stuff but we did sell it nationally. We had good sales in unexpected places where we never even played -- or played later on - like San Francisco, Little Rock, Lexington, Virginia, and Chicago. We were on a small label out of North Carolina for a while, but in fact I ended up running the label myself. Some guy just gave me money to do it, so we considered that our own label."

The Dopes formed in 1982 when Steed and Nichols left The Real Hostages, a Knoxville punk band, and they lasted officially until late 1992, when Nichols took a job as music director with the Barnum and Bailey Circus. Meech moved to Nashville and now plays in a jazz big band. Steed, who is now employed by the University of Tennessee as an advisor to international students and also fronts the band Apelife, took a teaching position in Lithuania and didn't return to Knoxville until 1995. But the band's reputation remains large enough in Knoxville that they've arranged several "reunions" (timed around Nichols' vacations), the most recent one Dec. 21 when they opened for Scott Miller and the Commonwealth at Blue Cats as their "CD release party" for the Live and Not Lern (1987) and Too Long In The Circus (1989) reissues. The band did release one album on cd, 1992's Huh?, which Disgraceland plans to reissue later this year.

Scott Miller recently credited Steed (who played bass in a "non-rehearsing" band called Run, Jump and Throw Like A Girl with Jeff Bills and Miller when Miller first migrated to Knoxville) with "teaching me everything I know." The Dopes were basically a rock band with great chops combined with just the right dosages of punk attitude and social consciousness. Listeners will also notice jazz and Frank Zappa influences littering The Dopes' musical landscape. According to Steed, he's "made a serious study of Zappa." The Zappa influence is full-force and frontal on Live and Not Lern, where Too Many Years In The Circus is more polished, rocking, and accessible and has more of a commercial rock bent (i.e. the Zappa influences are there, but suppressed).

While The Dopes were musically sound, much of their appeal was based on their attitude, which combined irreverence, contrariness, self-deprecating humor, and zany wordplay. According to Steed, The Dopes made it a point to "never do the same show twice." Calling bands who perfect a stage show then simply go around repeating it "excruciatingly boring for people who follow that band and see numerous shows," Steed was known for improvising songs on stage and killing the long road hours by continually exploring topical comedic routines and vicious parodies of the most popular hits of the day to work into the shows. On the Vault disc, listeners are treated to an improvisational theme on David Koresh and the Waco tragedy -- to the tune of Waylon Jenning's "Luckenbach, Texas" -- recorded live at Atlanta's Star Bar.

There's only two things that make life worth livin'
That's fourteen wives and a bunch of ammunition…

Let's go to Waco, Texas with David Koresh and the boys
Where the FBI's pounding them with their noise
The Branch Davidians, no they weren't kiddian,
When they said they were stickin' to their guns
They weren't packin' pistols, they were packin' tons
Of pistols…

The Dopes came along after the term counterculture had already become a cliché, but listen to any of their albums and there's no doubt they were counter something (or counter everything). They were certainly counter to nearly any and every kind of popular group-think. Their "John Cougar Visits The Real World" reply to Mellencamp's massive hit, "Little Pink Houses," illustrates The Dopes mentality and aesthetic.

Crazy people in my neighborhood, one across the street
He thinks he's a vegetable, but you know that he could be beet
He's proud of the land he rents, all three square feet

Ain't that America, Johnny Cougar
Ain't that America, President
Am I makin' myself heard
Am I makin' a dent?

Steed's songs are full of real Knoxville people and events. He wrote "John Cougar Visits The Real World" about a man who lived across the street from him in Knoxville. "We never spoke, but for a couple of years I honestly thought this guy was certifiably crazy. He'd give me the oddest stares and he acted so strangely. Then I found out he was just a professor at the University."

Urbane, smart-assed, hip parody and sophomoric humor (Steed can be heard telling the band during one live track on It's All Our Vault, "Now bring it down low, lower than George Bush's sperm count") will only take a band so far. When it came time to rock, The Dopes could put on their game faces with the best three-piece post-punk ensembles around. As the years wore on, Meech and Nichols (who both have jazz music degrees from University of Tennessee) melded into a supremely competent, dynamic rhythm section capable of following Steed's numerous whimsical changes (such as his incredibly clever segue into the theme from "A Summer Place" on the Vault cd). Steed's guitar playing shows the broad eclecticism of his influences, from rockabilly to acid rock to musically complex Zappan jazz-rock progressions. The Dopes could also mimic country or throw in a taste of metal or New Wave as needed. But no matter what they played, there was always a whisper, a hint, an echo, an attitude, an abandon that signified "we were once punks and we haven't forgotten." This subliminal attitudinal wavelength comes into full flower on Too Many Years In The Circus, certainly their strongest, most well balanced release. The intense sonic attack of "Get Bob Stoned" seems to combine satirical Zappan lyrics and complex musical figures over a substructure that finds its origins in bands like Social Distortion.

When asked to do the liner notes for the reissue of Live And Not Learn, noted Knoxville poet and singer-songwriter RB Morris instead wrote a poem, combining his own impressions with images and ideas contained in The Dopes' songs. Reading Morris, one gets the idea that Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes were more than just another cool college town band, that they were an icon or a symbol, perhaps an embodiment of the vibe in Knoxville during the '80s -- when most of the world was focused on Madonna.

© 2002 William Michael Smith

VISIT FRESH DIRT AND READ THE ORIGINAL STORY

BACK TO MAIN PRESS PAGE