Real America: The Gear Daddies are Back, Maybe

Real America: The Gear Daddies are Back, Maybe

by Abe Sauer

They’re getting the band back together. They’re getting the band back together! They’re getting the band back together?

The last few months have seen a random spate of Gear Daddies shows (Chicago, St. Cloud, Fargo, Des Moines and, of course, Lutsen). But the schedule has been spotty at best. After the mid-April show in Waconia, it disintegrated altogether. Will there be more shows? Are the Gear Daddies really playing together again?

Who are the Gear Daddies, you ask? Only the best band to come out of Austin… Minnesota.

The Gear Daddies peak (says conventional wisdom) was playing Late Night with David Letterman in the early ’90s when both they, and Dave, were relevant.

Between 1988 and 1992, the Gear Daddies released three albums, “Let’s Go Scare Al,” “Billy’s Live Bait” and “Can’t Have Nothin’ Nice.”

Then, POOF.

Who knows why they broke up or how popular they really were. Hell, somebody should write a book.

It shouldn’t be me, though. I am not well-studied in Gear Daddies history. I’m not even entirely sure where they came from. I note Austin, MN because that’s what the Internet told me. I’m certainly completely ignorant of what the individual members have been up to since the brand’s mid-1990s break-up. Wikipedia says “Randy Broughten is currently a teacher at Dakota Hills Middle School in Eagan, Minnesota.” One assumes in music, but who knows. Martin Zellar upset many Gear Daddies fans in 2004 by briefly chairing the Mower County Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

But then, most Gear Daddies fans aren’t deeply steeped in the band’s history nor do they care. And that is ok. They know all the lyrics and choruses. And they sing them… loud… without being asked… even at weddings.

Had the band blossomed in the age if the Internet, might things be different? It is not a stretch to envision Martin Zellar warbling onstage at The Music Hall of Williamsburg. A drunken slurry of fake-New Yorker Midwestern kids nostalgically bawling their eyes out about home and saying they’ve had it with this shitty not-what-was-promised rat-race.

How to introduce the Gear Daddies to the unfamiliar? It’s a significant challenge, as cultural soundtracks rarely have huge cross-over appeal and suffer from “you had to be there” characterization. Then again, if you get drunk a lot and consequently fuck up your life, think all your best years are behind you and enjoy self pity, the Gear Daddies just might be your new favorite band.

The band’s sound is kind of rockabilly, kind of country, kind of jam band, and kind of garage rock folk. Their lyrics are all country. Minnesota country.

Those who do know a single Gear Daddies song probably know “I wanna’ Drive the Zamboni,” a drunken revel about the dream of driving the iconic ice-rink tank. The song is regularly played at hockey games and is a staple in hockey-themed movies such as The Mighty Ducks and Mystery, Alaska. As songs go, it’s dumb fun and perfectly captures the dream of all young hockey-town kids.

But for Gear Daddies fans, “Zamboni” is a rare listen. More popular are the tunes specific to a certain Midwest geo-economic demographic. For example, “Dream Vacation”:

Been saving now for over a year
Let’s pack the kids get outta’ here
We’ll leave behind our troubles for a week
We’ll borrow the pop-up from Phyllis and Steve
Just tell the boss I gotta’ leave
Be the best week of our lives as I can tell
We’ll take our dream vacation in the Dells

The Dells is Wisconsin Dells, which, before becoming a well-developed tourist mecca with draws like the monolithic Kalahari Resort and Casino and a robust meth community, was a simple regional wonderland of water slides, duck rides and after-hours teenage shenanigans. The perfect vacation spot for the humble Midwestern family that didn’t dream too big for its britches. It continues:

And at night when the kids is all asleep
Then off to the lounge for a nightcap we can sneak
I know our lives they ain’t the stuff of dreams
But for one full week we can live like kings and queens
So let’s board the dogs lock the door
We’ll roll down Interstate 94
Be the best week of our lives I can tell
We’ll take our dream vacation
in the Dells

This idea of being content with a life that didn’t quite go the wonderful way of youthful expectation is a common theme. “She’s Happy” is a perfect companion piece to “Dream Vacation.”

Like any band truly in tune with the region, the Gear Daddies are straight forward. When the band covered fellow Minnesotan Prince’s “Little Red Corvette,” the song almost feels like it’s no longer about a women but an actual red sports car.

The most resonant Gear Daddies songs have alcohol solidly at their cores. Specifically, the Daddies’ focus on boozing is on the over-consumption, loss of control, destruction, broken promises and ultimate self-pity of the addiction spiral. And yet, listen to “Drank so Much (I Just Feel Stupid)” and it’s hard not to desperately want a drink:

I didn’t go out planning to get this drunk
I guess my plans to get up and look for work are sunk
I know tomorrow
I’ll regret all these things I did
I drank so much tonight
I just feel stupid

God only knows why I do these things
God, won’t you tell me why it always ends the same?
Still…

The band’s song “Cut Me Off” is even more frank:

You can knock me down
You can pick me up
You can leave me out
But you know when the lights come on / And the beer is gone
It’s still got a hold on me

And nothing matches the redemption pleadings of the weak in “Gonna’ Change…”

I’ve been laying off the booze
So babe, what do you got to lose
Cause I’m… Gonna’ Change…
Just not today.

…and the bleak resolve of “Strength,” in which the singer wants to change “this fucked up life of mine.”

Less angst-ridden than their late-80s peers from neighboring Wisconsin, The Violent Femmes, the Gear Daddies were nonetheless well tuned in to how love can be shit. In songs like “Stupid Boy” and the somber “Boys will be Boys,” the band points the finger squarely at whose fault this usually is:

Well boys will be boys and they’ll always be jerks,
and from what she’s seen this is how things work.
They come in sweet and they go out cold,
and you know this seen must be growing old.

She’s fucked again and she don’t know why.
She’s loves him still she’s just keeps on trying.

When speaking from an asshole boy’s point of view, the band is no more sympathetic. From “Color of Her Eyes:”

Well, I woke up this morning
With my face to the wall
And I said a real quick prayer
Oh, please dear God when I turn around
Let her not be lying there
But I felt her bare skin touching mine
And the blood run from my head

And I tried to think what I’d say to her
And I wished that I was dead
Cause I can’t remember her name….

This idea of better times, memory, apologies, inability to change, self pity and the cycle of regret and nostalgia crops up again and again. A desire to be a better man but an honest admittance of an inability to become him.

The ultimate question for Gear Daddies fans is: why listen to music makes you feel like crap? Are they part of loving the band? Maybe. Just another damn thing to be melancholy and a little disappointed about.

Maybe if you’ve done just enough hurtful, regretful things in your life, and maybe if you’re just the right level of shitfaced, and just the perfect amount of alone (possibly because of the first thing), and you’ve come to realize it’s never ever going to be as good as it has already been, you might just shed a tear at the melancholy lyrical heart of “Don’t Forget Me:”

This used to be my town
Now I feel I’m losing ground
They used to know my name
At least I had a taste of local fame

Hey, don’t forget me
Please don’t forget me when I’m gone

The band does have a Facebook page, where a few of the latest shows have been posted. It’s an orgy of appreciation and the kind of nostalgia one would expect from the band’s fans:

“It’s been a very, very long time. You guys were the first bar band I ever saw, snuck into Steb’s with a fake ID, partied with you afterwards and have been hooked ever since!”

Will there be more shows? Who knows. Random years you can catch them in Minneapolis at the Sate Fair and the band always plays at least one show during Christmas at the Fine Line. The only clear event one can find is a Minnesota Zoo fundraiser on June 19, where the band will play alongside a time-machine-inspired posse including Blues Traveler and Los Lobos. If you’re a fan or full of alcohol-abusing regret, tickets are still available.

Also, you can catch Gear Daddy leader Martin Zellar, who during solo shows often plays a selection of the band’s hits, at the free Minneapolis Riverfront Park project grand opening on June 26.

Numerous attempts to contact the Gear Daddies and frontman Martin Zellar for this piece went unanswered, maybe because Zellar now lives in Mexico off “Zamboni” royalties.

Abe Sauer just wanted you to know.