Providence

Deer Tick, from Providence, R.I., is the songwriting vehicle of John McCauley, whose distinctive, hoarse voice leads music that straddles the line between scruffy alt-country and raucous barroom rock ’n’ roll. The band plays at Cargo in Commrow, 255 Virginia St., on Wednesday, May 9. We talked to McCauley about Nevada, songwriting and drinking.

Being from Reno, it seems like the first thing to ask about is “Nevada” on War Elephant. What’s that song about? Why’s it called “Nevada”?

I drove across the country for a girl who lived in Las Vegas. I was a little stupider and a little more romantic when I was a little younger [laughs]. That whole trip probably shouldn’t have happened. You know, being young, you make mistakes, and you’re stuck with them.

Have you been to Reno before?

Only once. We played a house show. We were touring in a school bus at the time, and it broke down a couple of hours away. We were able to find a dealership to fix it, but it was going to take a day, if I remember. It was a little desert town. … I think it was in California, right on the border. … The guy at the dealership was like, “There’s one car rental place in town. They’re closed, but I know the guy. I’ll give him a call.” He calls the guy, and we got to the car rental place, and, “We only have one car left.” It’s a fucking Dodge Charger [laughs]. So we didn’t take any of our gear. We took one guitar. We were just like, let’s see what happens. And we drove like 120 miles [per hour] the whole way. It was pretty awesome actually.

Was it a good show?

As far as I remember. I basically just played solo while my bandmates sat around and got drunk.

The most recent full-length is Divine Providence, which is a reference to your hometown, right?

We chose that more for the religious aspect of the term. Because me and [drummer] Dennis [Ryan] wrote this extremely anti-Christian black metal song [laughs] that we recorded fully intending to put it on the album, and called it “Divine Providence” as a joke. Then when we finished everything, we were like that song’s not going to work on the record, but the name of it we decided to use for the album title, and we thought it was cool, you know, Providence being our hometown.

And there’s a new EP, Tim. I haven’t heard it yet. Can you tell me about it?

Those are like all the leftover songs from the Divine Providence sessions. It’s a little batch of songs that as standalone tracks, they’re really good. We didn’t want to rerecord them. But they didn’t really fit the mood of the record.

Is the title a Replacements reference?

It is that. It’s also the guy who owns our label [Partisan Records]. His name is Tim Putnam. And we really enjoy fucking with him. We tried … basically getting Tim to pay for and put out this EP with his face on the cover of it, and named after him, without him even knowing about it. We were just really hoping that the first shipment would arrive at the office, and he would open it and be like, “what the fuck?” But the guy who mastered the record, John Baldwin, while he’s a brilliant mastering engineer, he really screwed up and attached Tim on an email while we were planning the mastering process. But by the time Tim found out, it was already in production. The vinyl was already being pressed.

So that cover is him?

Yeah, that’s a picture of him from Bonnaroo. He was fucking obliterated. We have some videos of him from that year that we considered projecting behind us while we played, but I don’t think Tim would ever talk to us again.

What was his reaction to the album cover?

He was pissed at first, but after a week, he was more flattered than anything.

How would you say your songwriting has evolved over the years? I definitely hear an evolution from a more folk-influenced singer-songwriter thing to the more recent stuff is fully a rock band. Would you agree with that?

It has changed a little bit. … I don’t think my writing has really changed. I’ve learned to write more band-oriented songs. I still write the more singer-songwriterly tunes, but I’m also writing bigger rock ’n’ roll songs. That’s just because I have a great band to play with. When I was doing War Elephant … I didn’t have a band. Nobody wanted to tour as much as me, so I was stuck by myself.

A lot of the songs Divine Providence are kind of drinking songs. Is that something you wanted to write about specifically? Or is just something you gravitate towards naturally?

If there’s a bottle around me, I gravitate towards it [laughs]. I don’t know. Like I said, when we put the record together, there were songs that fit together and songs that didn’t. That’s how we got the EP out of it. But as a drinking album or something, aside from that song “Let’s All Go to the Bar” and maybe “Something to Brag About”—the rest of the songs are just peppered here and there with drinking references, it’s not really a frat boy fest or whatever. But, yeah, I love to drink, man. Probably addicted. Probably not going to admit that.

But there is a unique appeal to a good drinking song.

I love getting together with my friends and getting rip-roaring drunk and listening to “Whiskey in a Jar” or something. “Let’s All Go to the Bar,” that song is not supposed to be a smart song ort a clever song or anything. It’s just supposed to be a big, dumb anthem. … The song involves this pretty pathetic character who takes underage girls into bars. He’s creepy. We’re not celebrating his behavior, but we’re making an anthem out of it [laughs]. He’s an asshole, and you shouldn’t like this guy, but he’s out there, and he deserves a song just as much as anyone else who gets a song written about them.