It happens only occasionally: Beastwagon rolls around a local venue spilling out violent but accomplished extreme metal. And for its next show—on Saturday, Nov. 28, at The Alpine—the band is celebrating the vinyl release of its first album, It’s Always Been … High Desert, High Gain.
Beastwagon features metal-scene vets who live in separate cities. James Dean Booth (from Pittsburgh) is on guitar and vocals, duties he shares with Carson City resident Scotty Bennett. The rhythm section is from Reno: Jason Thomas on drums and Anthony Ashworth on bass (Full disclosure: I’m currently in the band Kanawha with Ashworth).
Beastwagon’s roots go back to a show at Knucklehead’s in 2007, when Booth and Bennett were playing with their metal band A House Cursed, and Ashworth shared the bill with his band Young Goodman Brown.
“While my band played, my guitar strap came loose, with me ultimately sitting on the drum riser to continue to play,” Ashworth said. “James jumped onstage and helped me by holding the guitar in place, making sure I could still rock. In fact, he said, ‘There’s no sitting in metal.’”
It was many years later when Booth and Ashworth decided to work together on their own band.
They set up a benchmark: a debut show in Reno on April 1, 2022, at what is now Lo-Bar Social, with Booth flying out from Pittsburgh the month before and working remotely while also launching the band. Booth described it as “a surreal and crazy time,” as he said his father died of cancer in Reno a week before the show.
“The dudes asked if I wanted to cancel,” Booth said. “That was the last thing I wanted, and I knew I needed the show even more. We play, and the whole tiny bar goes absolutely apeshit. Looking at the dudes, we knew there was something special happening.”
The group continues to play at least once a year and finally got together to record last year. Ashworth said the band has only written one song with everyone in the room at the same time.
“Everything is digital,” he said. “Riffs get shared by drives. Same with art and lyrics. We stay pretty plugged in thanks to James. He keeps the group chats and drives pumping.”
For It’s Always Been, Booth booked studio time for the group in 2025 at Helvete Sound in Portland, Ore., which specializes in metal bands. “We planned a show in Reno, practiced our tails off, and drove up to record the day after the show,” Ashworth said.
Booth prefaced his thoughts by saying he is “his own worst/best critic,” but said he’s proud of how It’s Always Been has turned out.
“It sounds huge and just loose enough to sound like it’s going to go off the rails at any moment,” he said. “We did a lot of new stuff vocal-wise, from phrasing to tones. I was really nervous, but after a few runs in the vocal booth, I came out to the main room and (engineer Seánan McCullough) says, ‘It just sounds like you’re beating the shit out of someone and yelling directly into their face.’ I knew I accomplished what I was going for (laughs).”
As for the future of Beastwagon, Ashworth said they are planning “more shows, more tunes, and a zine à la Creepshow being spearheaded by James. If we can do lots, we sure as hell will.”
Booth had a more down-to-earth answer for the band’s plans after the Alpine show: “Weengineer Seánan McCullougre old: food and then sleep.”
Check out Beastwagon’s Bandcamp site and Instagram page @beastwagonshreds for more details on the group.
Lemmon Valley punk-folkers set to release first album
Two Man Lemmon Band is another Reno act putting out an album with a show this month. Spencer Eldridge (guitar, mandolin, trumpet and vocals) and Lucas Grimes (bass and vocals) will release Learning How to Spell at a show on Saturday, Nov. 28, at West Street Market.
The duo has known each other for decades. The band name, and the joke about poor spelling, refer to Eldridge and Grimes’ upbringing in Lemmon Valley.
“I’ve known Luke since he was a little kid, since before we hit puberty,” Eldridge said.
The duo started in 2019 when Grimes began to perform on Eldridge’s solo material. Eldridge and Grimes had also played together when Eldridge drummed briefly for Grimes’ band, Grimedog, but he left that group to start his own solo work, under the stage name Just-In Beaver.
“I Googled Just-In Beaver, and it was a sex doll that came up,” Grimes said, “so I said, ‘Man, I don’t know. I think we should probably change the name’ (laughs).”
The duo is definitely on the punk-folk side of the rock fence, but there are colorations in their sound that go beyond what’s expected in that style.
“People have compared us, because we have a comedy aspect, to Tenacious D or Two Man Group,” Eldridge said. “A lot of my songs are on the funny side, but I also have songs on the darker side. It just depends on what mood I’m in and where I’m at.”
For a while in 2023, the duo also had a cello player, Bobby Lee, but Grimes said that “he didn’t want to fully join the band, but he did like the darker songs that we wrote.” Lee, who also left to start the doom metal band Furrow, does play cello on Learning.
The 11-song album was recorded mostly at Dogwater Studios in Reno, with one song from sessions at Tin Roof Recording in Fallon. The band took its time, starting in 2023 and finishing up recording earlier this year.
“Yeah, we move slow,” Grimes said. “Our lemons are no longer sour, we take so long.”
What slows them down? Grimes and Eldridge said it was a mix of songwriting that took its time to complete and finding the right times to record.
“There’s always that guy (in a band) who pushes it forward and has big dreams and big ideas, but I don’t think either one of us are like that,” Grimes said.
Added Eldridge: “We’re just kind of chill dudes. Whenever it comes out, it’ll come out, you know?”
Two Man Lemmon Band will have CDs available at the West Street Market show, and it will also be streaming right before the show. You can get more details on the band at its Instagram page @twomanlemmonband.
MC Frend returns from tour with Souls of Mischief
It’s a nightmare many musicians have faced: You’re playing in a new city, and you get either a muted or nonexistent response to your music. That’s what happened to Reno rapper MC Frend on the first date in Las Vegas of his tour stint with classic hip-hop group Souls of Mischief.
“It was the hardest show I’ve ever played, period,” MC Frend said a few days after the tour ended. “It’s like I was so focused on remembering all of my words to all of these new songs I was doing that I had put pressure on myself to memorize and to figure out. And I forgot that there’s actually a performance aspect to it as well.”
Frend described his Vegas set as having “a full-blown conversation in the mirror,” but he said the rest of the tour dates went well when he talked less between songs and rapped more, advice he received from Lynnwood Robinson, a member of the touring party he befriended.
“I’m very happy about all of it,” he said of the tour, which took place Oct. 15-24. “My whole thing is about learning, growing, making the world smaller and a more positive place. And I think across the board, all of that stuff happened.”
MC Frend was asked by Brandon Deriso of Club Underground, and the tour’s booker, to join the Souls of Mischief trek. He took the offer to play in Las Vegas, Fresno, Chico, San Luis Obispo and Reno mainly because he grew up listening to Souls of Mischief and their parent collective, Hieroglyphics. He said he did get to meet and chat some with the Souls rappers during the tour.
Born Trevor Parker, MC Frend said he started rapping in 2004, his junior year of high school. He’s been a part of the local rap collective the Wild Things in the past, but recently has mostly been recording and performing solo. Now that the tour is over, MC Frend said he’s planning to continue and complete several recording projects in 2027, including some that have been gestating for a while.
“I learned that it’s less about me and more about the people who want to hear my music,” he said about when to release his songs online. “I had a friend who was like, ‘As someone who’s a fan, I think it’s rude that you’re keeping your music from me when I want to listen to it.’ And I can see that perspective as well.”
MC Frend described his hip-hop style as “conscious. Emotional would be a part of it. Transparent. It’s my life. Something you should know about me is that there’s no question you could ask me in this interview about any facet of my life (to which) I would not give you the best answer possible. I have a fully open-door policy, so I’d like for that to come out in my music.”
To learn more about MC Frend’s music, check out his Instagram page @mc_frend.
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Are you a fan of a great Reno band and want us to know more about what they are doing? Let us know—and it’s OK if you are in the band, too. Slip me a note at markearnestwriter@gmail.com, or follow me on Instagram @markearnestofreno.