The Ukiah Drag: Fuck The Rehashers, Backpatters, and Asswaggers

The Ukiah Drag just released a seven-inch single on Wharf Cat Records. “Dirt Trip,” backed by a Coasters cover, is a haunting, evil, backwoods ballad. It is a devil's swan song, coaxing the listener to dig their own grave. You are slowly drawn in by it, hypnotized, as it hangs heavily over you; you can almost feel its weight bearing down. This is real deal Everglades redneck freak shit. This is the type of music that you would make if you poked out the eye of an alligator with a PVC pipe when you were a child, and then your outlaw biker father came outside and killed it with a .30-30 Winchester rifle. This record is scary. “Got your shovel. Found your hole. Say a prayer. And dig.” This is The Ukiah Drag at their best thus far, and likely just a hint of what is to come.

The Ukiah Drag is ZZ Ramirez on guitar and vocals (whose father skinned and grilled the one-eyed gator that had been eating ducks from the family's pond), Brian “The Sultan” Hennessey on guitar and vocals, Tommy Conte on drums, new addition Andrew Eaton on bass, and even newer addition Nick Klein on organ. Other than Nick who lives in Brooklyn, the Ukiah Drag currently reside in a house together, including a basement practice space, in Providence, Rhode Island. “Writing rock ‘n’ roll songs for us is just cake. It's nothing,” says ZZ. Nick adds, “We're fucking great at it. We're probably one of the best rock bands going on. It's that easy.”

The members of the Ukiah Drag all know each other from the geographically isolated DIY scenes of Florida, mostly from Tampa Bay, but also from shows in Gainesville, West Palm Beach, and Miami. “At its base level, we're all Floridians, which definitely influences so much, especially when you feel like you're in an exodus by living in the Northeast. I feel like I'm on Mars sometimes. And to have a certain solidarity is one way to amplify what you're doing artistically,” says Tommy.

The band was initially based in Boston, where ZZ, Brian, and Tommy lived in a cramped apartment and recorded their Jazz Mama is Cryin and Variations of Candy cassettes on a 4-track in their basement. The cassettes were released by Ascetic House and Night People, respectively. Ascetic House also put out a live cassette titled Live Ukiah: A Devil Smiles. These are their only releases other than the Wharf Cat single, which was recorded by their old friend Ben Greenberg of the Men.

ZZ's credits in the liner notes of their new record include the word “Direction.” The band was born out of his previous highly regarded Florida redneck freak band called American Snakeskin; the first batch of Ukiah songs were originally intended for them. The Ukiah Drag's music picks up right where American Snakeskin left off; but American Snakeskin is not the beginning of the Ukiah Drag's sound or story.

Photos by Nina Hartmann

With frogs croaking and alligators bellowing throughout each night, ZZ grew up in the secluded swamps of Wesley Chapel, outside of Tampa. His parents got married when his mother was 23 and his father 36. They met in the strip club where ZZ's mother danced. She was his fifth marriage, and they got hitched when ZZ was, in his words, “in the oven.”

ZZ's father's nickname is Crash, for the amount of times he has crashed his motorcycle (and broken so many of his bones; “his collarbone looks like a roller coaster”). ZZ has had a changing but always close relationship with him. “First off, he's my dude. He's my dad but he's still my good friend. One of the only people I've had around my whole life that I don't mind talking to and hanging out with.” He is a member of an infamous and undisclosable bike gang, and has participated in both totally legal and totally shady ways of making a living, including 40 years of doing construction. “He's just always building motorcycles, getting into shit. When I was born is when he started settling down. But it was a process of settling down, maybe until my mid-teens. He was never doing any time [in prison], maybe a night or two here or there. But there would always be rough spots. Shit would happen.”

ZZ has two younger brothers who are fraternal twins, one of whom he discovered punk with. In high school, ZZ and his brother Kenny hung out at Sound Idea, an exclusively punk record store in the suburbs of Tampa. After finding out about introductory level bands like Minor Threat and the Misfits, the owner of the shop burned them CD-Rs of This Is Boston, Not LA, Negazione, Iggy Pop, and others. The two got a band going called the Random Fits and started playing gigs in Tampa. It was around this time that ZZ met the people he would start the band Cult Ritual with: David Vassalotti who now plays in Merchandise (a successful pop outfit with an upcoming LP on the legendary British independent label 4AD), Tommy from the Ukiah Drag, and Dan Rossiter. From around then until the end of the final Cult Ritual tour, after seeing the older wastoids who hung out at shows, ZZ and most of the people he was hanging out with were straight-edge. “We were angsty and just wanted to skateboard and throw rocks through windows and break into churches. But we were just sober.” Sobriety also left them isolated, angry, and bored, which, along with being young, are fairly obvious when you listen to that band.

Cult Ritual, who ZZ wrote the majority of the music for, was at the head of a roughly 2008-2011 trend in hardcore punk, more or less jokingly referred to as “mysterious guy hardcore.” It felt ridiculous to say that term out loud then, and it feels ridiculous to write that term down now, but it nonetheless encompassed a certain group of popular touring bands at that time. Preceded by early Fucked Up (on an aesthetic level at least) and Sex/Vid, these bands included Total Abuse, SQRM, Vile Gash, Raw Nerve, Slavescene, Nazi Dust, and a few more. It was associated with the label Youth Attack, known for its elaborate record packaging and eBay bidding wars to snag each limited release. These bands were part of overlapping local scenes, and shared similar violent, dark, and noisy vibes, accompanied by a vaguely “mysterious” aesthetic regarding art, persona, and (probably exaggerated) anti-social tendencies. When certain members thought the frontman of Cult Ritual started taking this line of thinking a little too seriously, they disbanded. But not before these young kids got a glimpse into the world of successful touring, playing to enthusiastic audiences, and bringing home profits from their shows out of town.

On an early March 2014 evening, after a few days of larger concerts with the Men, two of the ex-Cult Ritual dudes transfixed a more intimate audience at the Ukiah Drag's record release show at Death By Audio, one of the true DIY venues in Brooklyn. Ukiah knew they were on it that night; that the crowd was excited to see them, and that the band's performance controlled the room. The twang was there, the swagger was there, and the execution was there. They played six songs that, as of today, have not yet been recorded. Right after their spot-on set, an attendee told me that he couldn't look away from stage: “I haven't been watching a band while being completely unaware that I was in an audience full of people in a while.”

Just like it always is for the Ukiah Drag, that show existed in a very specific moment while part of a very specific and overarching context. They are a band that is always on the move, but always present at the same time. As the band has added members and relocated to a new city, their sound has progressed and filled out. “As we've played together, we've found a spot and started digging at it. And from there it's been expanding and expanding. It's a matter of exploring different aspects of an aesthetic, elaborating on a feeling,” says ZZ. And of course, it will continue to expand. According to Brian, Ukiah has “been coming into our own as a writing entity a lot more. The batch of songs we have now is really good, and I think it's going to come into fruition that much more when we're writing consciously as a five-piece. I think that will be where things get really strong.”

ZZ continues: “It's 2014. Every riff has been used. Everything has been taken. It's not like we're trying to write anything brand new and have the hottest freshest thing. It's more just fine tuning a handed down past. Rock ‘n' roll's been around forever. The blues is music that people's grandmothers and grandfathers played sitting on a porch. We're taking aspects of it and making it into our own. And I'm taking cues from influences that are not just music. At this point, I'm not fucking around anymore. This is what I want to do.”

The Ukiah Drag are in some ways, a distant band. They will shake your hand and smile, and they will hang out drinking beer all night, but the more time you spend with them, the more you begin to feel their seclusion, and an air of deep-seated isolation. One might even say they are a little bit mysterious. But when they do happen to be right in front of you, you know that they are. When ZZ was a kid, he spent a lot of time by himself, wandering through the swamps. Now he spends a lot of time by himself too, wandering around in his head, in his girlfriend's bedroom, and on his guitar. If he had a million dollars, he would buy a house in South America, not have a care in the world, and write and record songs with his band. For now, they've got the Northeast, a great line-up of musicians, and the road in front of them. And that ain't bad.

Reed Dunlea is the host of Distort Jersey City on WFMU. Follow him on Twitter - @RealDeedRunlea The Ukiah Drag tour dates:

6/13: Bottletree - Birmingham, AL #

6/14: Zanzabar - Louisville, KY #

6/15: Schuba's - Chicago, IL #

6/16: Jumbo's - Detroit, MI #

6/17: Horseshoe Tavern - Toronto, Ontario #

6/18: TURBOHAUS - Montreal, Quebec #

6/19: The Great Scott - Boston, MA #

6/20: Flywheel - East Hampton, MA #

6/22: Saint Vitus - Brooklyn, NY #

6/26: Morgan's Pier - Philadelphia, PA #

6/27: Metro Gallery - Baltimore, MD #

6/28: Pinhook - Durham, NC #

6/29: The Earl - Atlanta, GA #

# - w/ Merchandise