In the song “Mark of Vaccination” by Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, a confused and slow-minded bumpkin of a narrator confesses, “I cannot cipher, I cannot read.”

He’s not the only one who’s perplexed.

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club puzzles people. Does the Denver-based sextet play country and western? Or alt-country? Gospel? Or, essentially, cabaret music to drink by? While there are traditional elements within the arrangements, what to make of the occasional banjo-feedback solo or bowed and distorted pedal steel guitar? The stand-up bass weaves melodically, not in thunka-thunka fashion. The drums—not limited to one-two, one-two beats—add exuberant polyrhythms. The music undulates like a bull whip. Lyrics, akin to literary short stories, waver between the sacred and the secular, the goodhearted and the gothic. Among his endearing vocalizations, the band’s namesake coos and yodels. Altogether, it’s a mixture of high art and cornpone.

“I think it’s closer to folk music than alternative country,” says guitarist and singer Slim Cessna, the gold cap on his left front tooth shining. “It’s true to the spirit of what that means: Playing our music for our people, the Americans in the USA, telling stories.” He also categorizes it as “American music.”

On the other hand, pedal steel guitarist/keyboard player John Rumley says that the sound of the band’s latest record, Cipher (Alternative Tentacles), reminds him of “music that I listened to in the early ’70s, such as Black Sabbath and Brownsville Station, Deep Purple.”

“I look at this band as a rock band,” says guitarist, banjo player, singer, and ornery co-frontman Jay Munly. (Munly’s liable to bust a rib wrestling onstage with Slim, when not hooting it up with and performing coordinated dance steps alongside him.) However, Munly—who studied Modern English Literature at Columbia University, and who has, lately, been the band’s primary, painstaking lyricist—adds, “I’m ashamed sometimes of rock ‘n’ roll [lyricism]. It’s hard to be put in that category. And maybe that’s why it’s difficult for people to categorize us.”

Onstage, something happens when the tall, bespectacled Cessna drapes himself in what appears to be a faux preacher persona. He lays hands on people. He testifies. He makes converts, as much as fans, to the music. There’s a sense of exhilaration, of spiritual frenzy. Slim Cessna doesn’t need to handle snakes; instead, he’s got an electric guitar to wrangle with.

But Cessna, the son of a Baptist preacher, says, “I think that what we do is less an act than people assume.” He adds, “There is a spirit that happens in live music… In a way, that’s my religion.”

Although Cessna has been leading the Auto Club for over a decade-and-a-half, the band has gone through stylistic evolutions and multiple line-ups. (The song “SCAC 101” tells a satirical tale about Cessna breaking out his mason jar in order to drink one last time with the musicians he’s firing.) The group’s released two early, independent recordings; one live double-disc (Jesus Let Me Down on Smooch Records); and three CDs on friend Jello Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles label (Always Say Please and Thank You, The Bloudy Tenent Truth Peace, and Cipher).

And while Cessna hasn’t lived in Denver since 2000 (he currently resides in Pittsburgh), and guitarist/banjo player Dwight Pentacost has taken his handlebar moustache to Boston, the band will always be inextricably linked with the Mile High City. (Munly, Rumley, drummer Gregory Garcia, Jr., and stand-up bass player/trumpeter Shane Trost remain in Colorado.) Cessna has amusingly sung about encountering Satan at the Lion’s Lair, a dive bar/music club in Denver where the band has played in the past. And he’s made a quasi-celebrity out of a local waitress at Club 404 by mentioning her name in a couple of songs. (“Oh, Nonny! Another round over here.”) No matter where they’re playing, Cessna shouts out, “We’re from Denver, Colorado!”

Cessna says, “It’s like when the Denver Broncos say, ‘Without the 12th man, we wouldn’t have been able to win that game.’ Denver is our 12th man.” When Munly is asked if he isn’t originally from Canada, he redirects: “I feel like I’m from here.” Garcia, Jr. has “D-E-N-V-E-R” tattooed down the front of his left forearm. “This is where I want to die—in Denver,” says Rumley.

There are no ciphers—as in, deadweights—in the Auto Club. Band members say everyone contributes to the sound, if not the lyrics. And, seemingly, they all agreed on a mystifying business choice: Writing out the song titles and liner notes on their latest recording Cipher in a code—a cipher—rather than spelled out in country-simple English.

“Magalina Hagalina Boom Boom” (one of the decoded song titles) has an almost Cab Calloway-like feel: Imagine a sped-up “Minnie the Moocher” about an androgynous character, who just might be—in its own special way—a messenger of the Lord. “Ladies in the Know” is a bawdy, countrified romp, and a play on knowing someone in the biblical sense. “Everyone Is Guilty #2” whimsically imagines fraternizing with Jesus, before the song takes on a horn-tinged toreador meets finger-pointing vibe: “Maybe it’s time to take account…”

Cipher’s CD packaging purposefully doesn’t include the lyrics. But Munly agreed to publish some of them as an accompaniment to photos of the band within a new book by photographer Gary Isaacs (whose photos of Slim and Munly accompany this article). However, the lyrics are written in a cipher there as well.

On a recent gig night at the 3 Kings Tavern in Denver, the permanent dark patches beneath Munly’s eyes fittingly match his black attire. Munly says there used to be “something magical” to him about bands that limited the amount of information released about them. Bands with mystique, an aura of mystery.

“I think we somewhat accomplish that,” says Munly, the sound of his offstage speaking voice not much louder than a whisper.

They may not be the easiest band to get a handle on. Nonetheless, people manage to revel in the musical spirit of Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, even without secret decoder rings.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

Tags: Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, Munly, Alternative Tentacles, Gary Isaacs

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