Rusty Pipes

“Rusty Pipes is a group of all American boys brought together in the capital of the midwest, the great city of Chicago. Founded on the 4th of July, on a rooftop under the rockets’ red glare, Rusty Pipes is Benny Twohats, Perfect Artie, Nick Vegas and Gypsy Davey.”

David “Davey” Thompson had always dreamed of starting a band with his childhood best friend, Benjamin “Benny” Monson. When they left their hometown of Hastings, MN for college, Davey headed up north a few miles to Minneapolis-St. Paul, while Benny shipped out to Chicago. Both studied performing arts, Davey got his spurs fronting a MN punk band, and Benny played acoustic and sang with the indie rock band Snowpants. Benny moved into an apartment in Bucktown with Arthur “Artie” Jordan, a southern Louisiana transplant by way of New York City who’d been sitting on an unexplainable urge to play the bass but had never seen himself as the band type. When Davey moved to Chicago with his electrics guitars, mohawk, and Marshall half stack the following year, he and Benny wooed Artie into picking up his untouched bass with talk of The Clash and Johnny Cash. Artie in turn drafted Nicholas “Nick” Campbell, a suburban Detroit transplant and veteran performer / DJ / motion graphics artist / photographer / one man band (Dnab Nameno of The Roar of ‘84), into playing his children’s mini kit for the band. They sealed the deal watching the fireworks on Nick’s roof on a warm summer night in 2003, and have been making country punk rock ever since.

Rusty Pipes has independently recorded two 5 song EPs (“Rusty Pipes” and “City of Chicago”) and published to the internet two live recordings from Chicago’s Double Door and Darkroom. They’ve run the Chicago live music gauntlet of house parties, block parties, theater benefits, and a series of shows at The Globe Pub (nee Lyon’s Den), The Mutiny, Life’s Too Short, Cowboy Monkey (Champaign), Mix (nee Crush), Phyllis’, The Darkroom, Gunther Murphy’s, No Exit, Martyrs’, Cal’s, Bar Vertigo, Underground Lounge, Mike and Molly’s (Champaign), Betty’s Blue Star, Cobra Lounge, The Abbey, Double Door, The Beat Kitchen and The Note. Rusty Pipes currently offers their entire catalogue of music for in free mp3 format on their website rustypipes.org, under the auspices of their fiercely independent record label Tyranny Belle (tyrannybelle.com) who’s unique distribution practices emphasize the promotion of media through extensive on and offline campaigns.

The members of Rusty Pipes possess the obligatorily eclectic musical interests and CD collections of any modern musicians, though since the founding of the band have set out under the banner of country punk. Rejoicing equally in the age old traditions of folk music, and in the youthful DIY spirit of punk rock, Rusty Pipes’ music seeks the themes common to both: hope, liberty, revenge, hypocrisy, sorrow, adventure, work, wages, booze, loss, romance, injustice, spirit, rage, solidarity; all of which are American dreams.