Members of Reno rock royalty are coming out of retirement … again!
The Saddle Tramps, known for their goofy high-energy tunes, are gearing up to perform one of their few-and-far-between reunion shows. After dominating the local music scene with raunchy fast rockabilly hits like “The Bulge in Satan’s Pants,” “Shit Kicker,” “Dress Like Elvis” and more, the band called it quits in 2015.
Saddle Tramps reunion shows have popped up here and there in the decade since, and this October, the band is throwing its hat back in the ring. The Saddle Tramps—Scotty Roller (vocals, guitar), “Big John” Von Nolde (vocals, bass), Michael “Powder” Young (drums), Jon Perry (guitar) and Suzy Switchblade (go-go dancer)—are set to perform at Cargo Concert Hall on Saturday, Oct. 25.
During a recent phone interview, frontman Scotty Roller explained how much of an impact this rockabilly-punk band has had on his life.
“(The Saddle Tramps) sure wound up meaning a lot more to me than it started off to be,” Roller said. “I don’t think Big John or myself thought that it would wind up being what it was. When we had a handful of songs, we immediately started touring, and we did it relentlessly for 15 years. This was pre-social media, so this really caught on by word of mouth and people seeing us. We were just doing what was amusing to us and entertaining to us—which basically was a fourth-grade fart joke that just went on for 25 years or longer, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”
The Saddle Tramps have sold out recent reunion shows, showing just how much fans have been longing to again enjoy songs like “(You Put the) Cunt in Country” and “The Mullet Song” in a live setting.
“It’s not that we had giant success, but we did have some,” Roller said. “We’ve been told many times by people in the industry—whether it were bigger bands, people from the press, management, festival promoters—that we were the biggest band nobody’s ever heard of, and it kind of really was that. From time to time, I’ll meet somebody if I’m out playing with my other band, or if I’m out doing an art show or something, and through conversation, somebody says something about me being in the Saddle Tramps, and they’ll say, ‘Oh my god, I used to listen to you guys.’ … It really wound up being a huge chunk of my life. I started that band when I was in my 20s, and I’m 53 now.”
Roller and his crew continue to perform reunion shows to keep the magic of the Saddle Tramps alive.
“The first time we did it, we just didn’t think that logistically we were going to be able to do it, but we tried it, and it worked, so then we thought, ‘Well, let’s do it again,’” he said. “We had a great time doing it, all of us as a band, but we needed to give it a minute before we did it again. By the time we play in October, it will have been a year and a half since we last did it.”
As for their next show, Roller said: “After this one, I don’t know when we’ll do it again. I say that, because we want to get some stuff re-recorded, and we want to get some stuff properly recorded and put on vinyl and expanded. It’s smart at this point to just take things one project at a time. I don’t want to say that we’re not going to play again—we most likely will; I just don’t know when it’ll be.”
The Saddle Tramps’ reunion shows focus on old favorites, but the band is also debuting a new song at the upcoming show.
“We wrote a new song, and we’re going to play that in October—but we also know that 99.9% of the people are there to see us and hear us play the same ridiculous songs that they’ve grown to love, and we’ve got to do them,” Roller said. “We’re happy to do them, but we wanted to give them something to keep it interesting, so that was the point of writing a new song. If we do another show (after the October one), I want them to have a reason to come out, so either we’ll have worked up something new for the stage show, or a new record that’s out that might be a release of something that we did earlier that is now expanded, kind of like when we did the anniversary edition of Nashville Swinger.”
Roller noted that every time the Saddle Tramps reunite, the musicianship grows.
“I know more as a musician now,” he said. “I play considerably better than I did in the early part of the band. John has become far more of a bass player than he was before. Michael Young, same thing—every time I play with him, he’s a better drummer than he was the last time I was with him, and same thing with Jon Perry. We’re better than we were when those songs were made. If I had to do it over again, I would sure straighten some shit out musically with this—but if I did, it might wreck the charm of what the songs are.”
Even though the musicians are more now skilled, Roller said he’s making sure they remain faithful to the Saddle Tramps’ classic crass jams.
“John and I consciously make it so that those songs are played like everybody knows,” he said. “When people show up, and they hear ‘Mamma Was a Flagger’ or ‘My Dick’s Too Big,’ it’s the way that they remember it. … Warren Fitzgerald from the Vandals is an insanely good guitar player, whether anybody knows it or not, and he certainly can play well beyond what those Vandals tunes require, but every time he plays those Vandals tunes, they sound the way that you want to hear them. I try to keep that in mind whenever we’re doing this stuff, too.”
Roller explained why the Tramps broke up in the first place.
“I was moving to Austin; Jon Perry was moving out by San Jose, and before that, we were already starting to look at, ‘What is the next move?” Roller said. “Things were starting to change a little bit. Social media is here, so we need to have a plan—or is the plan an exit strategy? I think every band should have an exit strategy and work toward that, and then if things pivot, they do. We were at that point where we didn’t really know what the next step was going to be, so when the opportunity came up, and I moved to Austin, that was a definitive moment.
“When we split, everybody was still friends, so we knew at some point, maybe we could try to connect again and play a gig. We had been at it since the late ’90s, and we were tired. We toured relentlessly and did a couple of trips over to Europe. We had been grinding out those van tours for so long, and even before, we were in John’s little Ford mini-truck with a shell, sleeping in the back of it and pulling a U-Haul trailer. By the time 2015 rolled around, we were kind of spent.”
While the songs will sound the same, Roller said the performance at Cargo Concert Hall will less sloppy performances, less falling down and a lot less puke than their shows of yore.
“We’re older, and it’s not as self-destructive,” Roller said. “This band was shockingly like a white-trash version of the New York Dolls. It was a lot of everything, all the time, and it wore out bands that played with us, bands that were touring with us, and people in the band. … I think our show is better now. The jokes are sharper; the timing is a lot more funny; the music is better; the musicianship is better. It’s good that we had the break, because I think people are really getting a heck of a lot more when they see us than they did before.”
The Saddle Tramps will perform at 7 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 25, at Cargo Concert Hall, at 255 N. Virginia St., in Reno. Tickets are $25.68. For tickets and more information, visit www.thesaddletramps.com.