No, not that Trump.
If I had to pinpoint one moment when the ’90s began for me, it might have been seeing Jesus Jones’ “Right Here, Right Now” on MTV before heading off to play outfield in Little League. And if I had to pinpoint another moment, it was probably watching the introduction to the first episode of The X-Files on Fox, which debuted on 10 September 1993. A more unremarkable moment was probably watching Dave Trump and a friend storming into the locker room at Paul J. Gelinas Junior High School one morning wearing Soundgarden t-shirts and singing “Spoonman.”
This was probably the first time I even became aware of Dave Trump’s existence. He sort of stumbled through the door of my life like Kramer on Seinfeld and would always lurk after that. I do not know the provenance of this branch of the Trump family. I assumed some Irish or Scottish connection because of his remarkable orange afro, which has since either fallen out, been shaved away, or remains hidden beneath a series of ‘Jimmy the Newsboy’-style flat caps.
Trump was mostly soft spoken, observant and intelligent. He had an older brother who also lurked. He was there, at the edge of the 7/11 parking lot in his red truck, listening to The Clash. The older brother was supposedly responsible for introducing many younger kids in the community to good music. According to lore, students even older than him had given him crackly cassettes of groups like The Specials. There might have been a chain of musical command stretching back deep into the 1980s. Remember, as I said before, the internet at this time was nascent. These kinds of personal connections helped to guide one’s development.
How else would you hear The Specials in the early-ish ’90s? Those were the Ace of Base days. The Specials never guest starred on The X-Files. Or did they? Did Terry Hall get abducted?
“A Message to you, E.T.”?
I must have missed that episode.
Trump was even the bassist for a ska band. But on the new Bern Band EP he is solidly rock.
D. TRUMP: “Why rock as a genre? It allows us to pull from all our interests, leaving space for interpretation while giving us common ground to land on. There is an opportunity for each instrument to shine. For me, variety of genres has always been key and if you do choose to work in one specific genre, the challenge is to keep it interesting without being too frenetic. I want to find a contrast of tone or rhythm or emotion to enhance a song’s starting position. Sometimes it works, other times we circle back to the original idea. At a minimum, hopefully this pushes us to find the core of the song. That tension has been a central part of writing music with Brendan through the years: we can push each other in a direction that the other might not have initially intended.
Trump has been playing with Brendan Hackett more or less forever. They are bonded by common experiences, lots of them, and a near perfect ability to recall any line from Top Secret. In the early Oh-Ohs, they were in a rock group called Runna Muck, which made a rather dirty form of rock music. Later, Trump was in a group called War Pigeon with drummer Cody Rahn.
They specialized in songs about birds and conflicts.
According to Hackett, the trio actually cut some tracks between 2006 and 2008 called the Brendan and the Bandolero Sessions. Rahn and Hackett also worked together with Wendy Johnson in the Wendy Hackett Band, which was an alt-country outfit. The Bern Band developed out of a desire amongst Hackett and Rahn to rock out smelly dive bars on the Upper West Side. “Bern” was a nickname bestowed upon Hackett by Microsoft, which autocorrects his nickname “Bren” to Bern. The first Bern Band EP, Just Not Today, was recorded by the trio back in 2020. As you can see, their relationship and indeed its chemistry goes back much longer than that.
I actually filled in for Trump on some shows in the late ’90s with Hackett. We played the Allman Brothers’ “Statesboro Blues” and drunk Class of ’97 high school grads even danced on a deck. That’s about all I remember. I also remember that Trump was reading Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut when we all went skiing back in ’96, and that was the moment when I first learned about Vonnegut. Like I said, those Trump brothers could turn you on to new things.
D. TRUMP: I’ve spent countless hours digesting records with these guys. Driving in vans, sitting in dorm rooms, hanging by train tracks — we shared songs that informed each other’s passions and what drives our creative engines. I hesitate to get more specific as influence lists can be be too on the nose, meant to impress, or simply buried too deeply to be clearly heard in the music.
Trump lives in Seattle these days, having moved to the City of Spoonmen long ago. This has presented recording challenges for the bicoastal Bern Band, but ones that have not been insurmountable and, indeed, may have led to unexpected bursts of creativity in the studio.
In the previous part of this review, I remarked on the first two tracks on the EP. Now we shall explore the next two songs, “Slow Siren” and “Only Alright.” “Slow Siren” has foggy atmospherics. As I told Hackett, it reminded me of the autumn mist that wraps itself around the trees and inlets of Long Island where we all grew up, but might as well be inspired by the rainy weather at Trump’s newer home on Puget Sound. Trump was mostly responsible for this tune, I’ve heard. The song’s structure is familiar, but the Wall of Sound created is really inspiring. The tune trails off with what could be a wail of feedback, like a wind carrying the music away with it.
According to Hackett, Trump has become quite the producer since his orange afro, singing Soundgarden in the junior high locker room whilst reading Kurt Vonnegut days, and has become a sound chemist, sort of like the Beastie Boys were in their peak, Hello Nasty late ’90s period.
“Slow Siren” is just one potion from the lab.
“Only Alright” follows it right up with this really lovely slow number. I don’t want to overemphasize the Petty influence here — after all Tom was stealing left and right from Roger McGuinn of The Byrds — but man, it makes me sad to hear anything that sounds like Petty these days. “Sometimes the worst it gets is only alright,” well yeah, but that ain’t going to bring back Petty, Hackett. “And in the end, no one wins, we all lose …” Thanks a lot. Are you reading my mind? And the solo is just what you need, as sugartasty as a slice of pie at an Oklahoma truck stop diner.
Not like I have ever had one of those, but I have read about them.
B. HACKETT: (For) the album No One Wins, because it was started in COVID, we had nothing but time. I would demo the songs on a Roland 8-track (because I loathe computers) and send them to Dave, he would make comments and we would go from there. He would do the same, send me something he was working on and so forth. Then Cody and I would go to the studio (The Bunker, in Brooklyn) and record the drums and basic guitars together and then bounce the track to Dave who would add bass, or guitar or synth, et cetera. It was not an ideal way to work but we were able to really craft the songs. I have never been prouder of a group of songs we have done than this last endeavor.
C. RAHN: This music takes me back to late 60s and 70s rock sounds and everything from Deep Purple to The Doors to Led Zeppelin and that kind of energy informs the sounds I go for with the drums as well as how hard I hit, what embellishments I choose, and where I consider leaving space for the other guys to get out front and play. I want the performance to harken back to the music that influenced us as kids and display how it informed the music we make today.
D. TRUMP: I think we all get pretty introspective about our parts to a degree that people outside the project might not care about or notice. We talk about adding a bit of Nashville lead before the lyrics take us to Texas. What about if Lemmy played bass on an AC/DC song? Is the giant cowbell too big? Early Sabbath…but Ozzy was from Long Island. Is that backing vocal too Lennon-y? Yes, the big purple drum kit is essential to the sound. Was that too much or too little? I feel like we do this for ourselves. We’ve built a catalog of music going back about 18 years. That’s gotta be worth something.
SIDE NOTE: If you are a bass guitarist, you’ll need to hear Trump’s lines on this record. There is not one misplaced note. Those of you from the Jack Bruce “I’ll play what I want and clean it up later” school, take note. This guy knows what he’s doing. I do not say this lightly, or out of eternal gratitude for Vonnegut. Honest.
north! 