Backyard Tire Fire

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ED ANDERSON, vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards, percussion
MATT ANDERSON, bass, vocals, percussion
TIM KRAMP, drums, percussion, vocals

As their moniker suggests, Backyard Tire Fire churns out a barely-controlled conflagration—starting off low and slow, flaring into a flat-out blaze at the whim of a breeze, then drawing back down into a pungent, smoky flame—yet always smoldering with a stubborn intensity that will not be ignored.

On their third disc, Vagabonds and Hooligans, Backyard Tire Fire continues to hone and expand upon the distinctive, pan-genre songbook of front-man Ed Anderson, tapping into the serpentine roots mélange that’s fueled fellow-travelers Brent Best (Slobberbone, The Drams), Patterson Hood (Drive-By Truckers), Adam Levy (The Honeydogs) and many more.

The band began to take shape in late-2000/early-2001 in the hill country of Asheville, NC, where Anderson (fresh from a five-year stint as guitar avatar in the popular, Chicago-based Brother Jed) looked to redirect his songwriting efforts into a vein that was, at once, more musically subtle and more emotionally sophisticated.

Along with co-founder Tim Kramp, Anderson and BTF performed regularly in the Asheville area beginning in 2001, quickly expanding into the alt-rock haven of Athens, GA. After recording their debut, Live at the Georgia Theatre in 2002, Anderson and Kramp relocated to the Midwest, setting up base camp in Bloomington, IL with Ed’s rock-solid brother Matt more than ably taking over bass/backing vocal duties.

Through it all, BTF continued to expand their stylistic range, dipping into folk, pop, alt-country, Southern rock, R&B and rock’n’roll, all of which was imbued with Anderson’s deft, seemingly-effortless lyrical gift for illuminating blue-collar stories with shock-of-recognition detail and a voice as comfortably worn as a favorite shirt.

Via extensive touring (from clubs to festivals), BTF has built a reputation as a compelling, remarkably flexible live act, sharing stages with such diverse luminaries as Son Volt, Alejandro Escovedo, James McMurtry, The Radiators, North Mississippi Allstars, Will Hoge, Jackie Greene, The Mother Hips, William Elliot Whitmore and Dan Bern—and gathering a hard-won fan-base along the way.

The band’s uncommon growth and casual command of their material were underscored by their slinky sophomore disc (2005’s Bar Room Semantics), which drew across-the-board critical acclaim while garnering glowing comparisons to Drive-By Truckers (Harp), Jeff Tweedy/Wilco (Cincinnati’s City Beat), the Jayhawks and Whiskeytown (Americana UK), Slobberbone, Neil Young and Gram Parsons (Dallas Observer), Violent Femmes (JamBase) and Jay Farrar/Uncle Tupelo (Illinois Times).

Like its predecessor, the brand-new Vagabonds and Hooligans is co-produced by BTF and Tony SanFilippo with organic, old-school immediacy, utilizing the vintage early-‘70s 3M tape machine (a la the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street) and gear housed at SanFilippo’s proudly-analog Oxide Lounge Recording studio in Bloomington.

Although outwardly similar in tone and texture to Bar Room Semantics, Vagabonds and Hooligans is palpably more assured, accomplished and cohesive, the tracking order of the far-ranging tunes more expertly positioned, and—as Ed readily acknowledges—"this record rocks a little more; I take a couple of solos out a little bit, something we do much more live."

Not surprisingly, the aforementioned ‘out’-bound solos underscore Anderson’s six-string facility and range, from the soaring, lyrical fretwork on the impossibly lovely, Beatle-esque (right down to Kramp’s ‘puddin’ head’ tub-work) anthem “Corinne” to the muscular, stream-of-consciousness Southern rock rave-up of “Downtime.”

Clearly, the boy could be an all-world air-guitar poster-child, but the lyrical content herein and the band’s attendant, sublime attention to making the music ‘serve the song’ holds sway.

Whether delivered in the first or third person, Anderson’s tunes continue to eloquently address regret, disconnectedness, internal demons and the dark end of the street, in general—just witness this brain-pan-spinner from the outwardly-placid title cut:

“Vagabonds and hooligans are beating down the door
Of the house that burns on the hill inside my head…”

Yikes!! It’s not all heavy-lifting, though, as the spirited, tongue-in-cheek rock-star romp on “Tom Petty” underscores, but most of Anderson’s hunting takes place in the tall, tall grass, simply because that’s where the biggest beasts are…

Big-hearted, jarringly direct and riding a powerful, upward arc, Backyard Tire Fire is a happening thing. Wake up and smell the burning rubber…

Kind words from our influences:

“My favorite band right now is Backyard Tire Fire and they sometimes remind me of early Wilco, Sonvolt and Flaming Lips. And they unabashedly name check both Wayne Coyne and Tom Petty in song. They are my earworm the last few months.”
- Johnny Hickman, Cracker

“It takes a pretty special band to rivet the attention of everyone in my band, and BTF certainly are. Great songs, great playing and great guys. I’m really looking forward to the recording sessions- they’ve come up with another amazing batch of songs. In my opinion they are one of America’s best young bands”
- Steve Berlin, Los Lobos

The Places We Lived makes best of 2008 lists:

Safety Break blog
Stereo Pills (spanish blog)
Culture Belly blog
Glide Magazine
TO Snob blog
Shotgun Knowledge blog
Strangers Almanac (Glide Magazine) – Best Song
JamBase.com
Saints Don’t Bother blog
No Depression (Andy Moore’s list)

More from the Press about The Places We Lived:

“The Places We Lived is a record that more closely resembles Neil Young’s ‘70s masterpieces…with its honest feelings and longing for home that are brought to life with a storyteller’s touch and a guitar god’s muscle. "
- Paste Magazine – Tim Newby

“The Places We Lived certainly captivates the essence of a journey. It is almost like a lifetime of happenings all crammed into one on a fantastic record. Raw, emotional and thorough. Backyard Tire Fire have the ability to seize your feelings and portray them in even the simplest of lyrical form. "
- Altsounds.com

“The Places We Lived is inventive, intelligent, genre-crossing good fun, Backyard Tire Fire is a band defiantly swimming against the raging current of cookie-cutter corporate rock and alt-country bands. "
- Rev. Blurt Magazine – Keith A Gordon

“The release of last year’s highly acclaimed, Vagabonds and Hooligans – an alt-country-indie rocker – left the musical world salivating for more of Backyard Tire Fire’s boisterous-guitar take on Americana. The release of the intensely gorgeous The Places We Lived early this year should help satiate that hunger and further cement their claim to greatness. "
- HonestTune.com

“Yes, they still rock, but six-string open-field wailing is no longer the BTF’s primary objective. Instead, Anderson has decided to reinvent himself as the premiere Pop Balladeer of America’s Heartland. The perfect primer for a group that truly is one of rock’s best kept secrets.”
- PopMatters.com

“BTF is ripe for wider discovery, perhaps the next in line behind other recently anointed working artists like The Hold Steady, Alejandro Escovedo, the Truckers and My Morning Jacket. The music is all there on Places, and a great trail of tunes lays behind it.”
- JamBase – Sir Dennis Cook

“Instead of being just another collection of guitar driven, middle of the road rock music full of stolen riffs from some of the worst excesses of the 1970’s, these guys know how to write and arrange songs and understand what melody means.”
- BlogCritics.org – Richard Marcus

“The bluesy piano romps are just as good as the rock anthems — lovelorn with yearning nostalgia but coupled with straight-up Southern-fried noise — Highly recommended.”
- Can You See The Sunset

“Take everything you love about Patterson Hood’s emotional grit, The Old 97s classic barnburner footstompers, and the spirit Whiskeytown had when Ryan still had something to prove, and you’ve already got a good sense of what the band is about: It’s Midwestern Americana at it’s slice-of-hard-life best.”
- Berkeley Place

“Backyard Tire Fire’s exposed new sounds and ideas and shaped a record that is completely different from anything we’ve heard from them before…they’ve grown more than should be possible a few short months since they were offering up a collection of acoustic ditties.”
- Hero Hill

“Note to the World, if your tired of the same refurbished, drivel that continually makes the air waves, this is your door way to walk through the mundane and into the vividness of raw but polished Americana. There are ordinary story tellers who write lyrics and then their are master narrators, who make you believe what they are saying like you were there with them when they wrote the song.”
- Ozone and Shadow Blog

""In an era in which we have drowned ourselves in ridiculously over-produced computer music in which the noise is more important than the band, it is refreshing to see a band like Backyard Tire Fire emerge on the scene. With chorus-loving songs that bounce over bluesy folk rock, Backyard Tire Fire makes music that is truly…fun. ."
- Amplifier Magazine – Pat Moran