styrofoam winos
photo by Hilary Bell
A decade ago, three employees of JJ’s Market and Cafe became Styrofoam Winos. Lou Turner, Trevor Nikrant, and Joe Kenkel bonded over their mutual adoration for Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, and dollar bin country records. They amplified each other’s enthusiasm, freaking out over every new song they came across. After a friend moved and left behind a drum set, all three Winos learned to play the drums. Early experiments in group songwriting were born from jam sessions and erasure poetry, blacking out words in old books to generate new poems. They all sang lead and swapped instruments regularly. Seeing Michael Hurley for the first time left a lasting impression and provided the band with one of its creative north stars. Years later, Snock himself would send the Winos his blessing to release their cassette of covers of his songs.
Styrofoam Winos have always gone with the flow, which makes Any River an apt title for their new album, the follow-up to 2024's Real Time. Their playful approach is bolstered by the chops of seasoned musicians who have performed many hundreds of concerts, both together and as touring members of Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band, MJ Lenderman and the Wind, and as solo artists. This is one of their key strengths that can’t be overstated: they are extremely good musicians! When three talented people develop such a deep level of chemistry, the result is nothing short of majestic. Each song on Any River came out of jam sessions at Turner and Nikrant’s home studio, and a shared Google doc of lyrics soon followed. They recorded in Louisville—their first album made outside of Nashville—with Roadhouse bandmate and Equipment Pointed Ankh mastermind Jim Marlowe. Marlowe’s understated production kept the band’s unique synergy on full display. He also proved invaluable when it came to bringing their wackiest ideas to life, exemplified by the very committed use of talkbox on a few tracks.
This leads me to another point I find essential about this band. They manage to strike a perfect balance between reverence and irreverence for the musical traditions they’re working within. Their knowledge of the canon is scholarly, but such knowledge is always followed by a wink. No moment on the record encapsulates this more than the trumpet solo on ‘New Friend’. It’s a deft performance, but the way Kenkel dips down below the tonic before resolving the solo’s final notes is hysterical. Performed live, he plays the solo note for note on a kazoo while playing the drums at the same time. Elsewhere, there are nods to woozy lounge music on ‘Off My Mind’, the pulsing rock of the B52’s on ‘Somebody Wants to Send You a Message’, and the dusty nobility of Glen Campbell on ‘Just For You’. This music is that of experienced shapeshifters, defying easy categorization while remaining instantly recognisable.
Any River takes its title from the opening couplet of ‘You’ll Never Take Me Alive’: “I set sail on any river/I run wild through any shopping mall”. It’s one of countless allusions to water on the record, a fixation that slowly revealed itself over time. There are ruminations on excavating pearls from briny depths (‘Pearls’), slow drives across Texas with a boat in tow (‘Just For You’), cathartic plunges into open ocean (‘Swimminin’), a sidewalk crack drinking morning dew (‘I Felt You’). The cover photo, taken near the studio, shows the band in front of the south fork of Beargrass Creek, an inlet of the Ohio river, dwarfed by large concrete walls. The creek is only barely visible, but that speaks to themes of adaptability the group has explored since their earliest recordings. The shape of the vessel may change, but the water held within changes with it. Water both matches and eludes form. The Winos, in kind, match and elude the many musical forms they work within. As a band from Nashville, they can go toe to toe with any of the regulars at the Lower Broadway honky tonks, but they’re also right at home in songwriter circles at their favorite dive, The Springwater. There are a few lines from their song ‘BBQ’ that really summarize this quality of the Winos for me “Like a barbeque in the hospital’s new parking lot/In the barren clay we can grow forget-me-nots…Feeding the bonfire/You’re always gonna rock my world”.
Emphasizing the live component is essential to identifying what makes Styrofoam Winos a Great band. The way they switch instruments is almost dancelike. LT’s behind the drums, which means the song will be propelled forward with featherlike precision. The pocket has deepened, meaning Trevor’s back on bass. Joe’s been handed a guitar, so you can expect a mind-expanding solo full of little nods and reverent gestures. Repeat these anecdotes for every possible player/instrument combination and one begins to understand this band’s power. It’s the alchemy of three deeply creative musicians playing in service to each other. Being a fan of the Winos is not dissimilar to being a sports fan. Half the fun of it is understanding –with increasingly greater nuance– the subtleties of each member’s contribution, then trying to predict how these forces will meet to perform miracles.
-Michael Cormier-O'Leary
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