The Players
Cable
Vic Szalaj: drums
Randy Larsen: bass/vocals
Bernie Romanowski: guitar
Peter Farris: vocals
Chris “Fish” Fischkelta: guitar
Other contributors
Steve Austin: Today Is the Day, producer
John Geldbach: Devil Doll Records/This Dark Reign
Christian McKenna: Slacks, Translation Loss Records
Aaron Turner: Isis, Hydra Head Records
”Never predictable, always interesting, and intermittently frustrating, Cable has been a long time enigma of the US heavy music underground. Though they have languished in relative obscurity for the duration of their existence, their roar n` roll has been greatly appreciated and loathed in equal measure by those that have been (un)lucky enough to encounter them in one or many of their multiple incarnations. Traversing the territories of noise fueled hardcore, damaged metal, and red eyed rock, Cable has never been shy of experimenting with and occasionally overhauling their musical persona, while always retaining a core that is unmistakably Cable. Though unbelievers may doubt their influence on a wide scale, those familiar with their bloody trajectory know that Cable has always been a step ahead of the majority of more recognized acts operating in the same arenas of aural battery. like many others with similar scars from brushes with Cable throughout the years, I consider myself lucky for having encountered and grappled with the unique and devastating beast known as Cable.”
- Aaron Turner
Variable Speed Drive
(1996, Doghouse Records)
"Steel Cage Match"
”I had just gone though a real shitty break up and all I wanted to do was destroy everyone and everything in my path and my weapon of choice was a Fender bass.”
- Randy Larsen
In 1994, bassist/vocalist Randy Larsen, drummer Vic Szalaj, and guitarists Matt Becker and Jeff Caxide formed Cable in Connecticut. Even before recording their 1996 debut album, Variable Speed Drive, they had already started their habit of break-ups and line-up changes, with Randy Larsen briefly leaving the band and Jeff Caxide being replaced by Bernie Romanowski.
Vic Szalaj: Man, I thought we hit the big time with this release. It was put out by Doghouse Records, who at the time and still is today a fairly large label. Back then they were putting out bands like Endpoint and Chamberlain; later on they would be known for putting out The Get-Up Kids and All American Rejects. We were young and ambitious, we did a five week tour of the US to support this album and an almost European tour which was aborted for reasons that some members of the band may differ on. I was 19 years old when we recorded this and barely 20 when we hit the road for it. Mind you, this was still the time of very DIY concert promoting, we booked the tour via telephone and US postal service, we didn’t have a booking agent or the internet. Tough shows for the most part, but I think we made a lasting imprint on the burgeoning “noise-rock” scene with this album and I’m happy to say it is still one of my proudest moments with Cable. Oh yeah, we met Felix Von Havoc in Minneapolis on the tour. His dog died that day and he was sad but came to the show anyway.
Bernie Romanowski: This was the first record I recorded with Cable after I joined the band in 1995. I joined just as the writing for Variable began, so I had really no time to acclimate to the band before committing my guitar work to tape. I left my former band to play in Cable. My past band wasn’t much more than insane amounts of feedback, fast guitar parts, crazy drumming and some pretty solid bass playing. Think Angel Hair meets Unsane.
Randy Larsen: We wrote this record very quickly. I had just re-joined the band after a five month leave and hadn`t even picked up a bass in like three years (I played guitar my first two years in Cable). I had just gone though a real shitty break up and all I wanted to do was destroy everyone and everything in my path and my weapon of choice was a Fender bass. We locked our asses in a shitty little practice space in Manchester, Connecticut and over the course of like two months we wrote like nine or ten songs and headed off to Sampson Studios in Tiverton, Rhode Island to record the album.
Bernie Romanowski: Writing for Variable made me structure my “thoughts” on guitar for the first time in my playing career. The sounds on Variable were completely different from anything that I used to play, and from anything I was listening to at that time. Drive Like Jehu, Jawbox, and Catherine Wheel were pretty much what I was listening to, and I like to think my guitar playing has always paid some homage to those bands that taught me to play guitar. We recorded Variable for about $500 in our friend’s basement studio, and my famous red Les Paul Studio guitar made its debut in Cable. I bought that guitar right before we went to the studio, and have since used it on every Cable record. I absolutely love Vic’s drum sound on this record. Listening to Variable now, I can hear how young my voice and Randy’s were.
Randy Larsen: I don`t think any of us really knew what the hell we were doing as far as getting the sounds and tones that we wanted. We left that up to the Keith Souza, the man behind the board at Sampson. I think he did a good job with what he had and the record came out okay. We tracked and mixed the fucking thing in one weekend, and for our first album, I think we did a good job with it. We were just totally happy to have a album coming out and a record label willing to support us. We felt like we had the world in our hands, not like all these fucking bands today who record a album, ride around on a tour bus, and open for Black Sabbath before they have hair on their balls!
Looking back I would have loved to take a little more time getting sounds and doing overdubs. I hope this record will be remastered and get a re-release soon, seeing how it is out of print and not many of the newer Cable fans even know it was recorded.
Steve Austin: In the future, Variable Speed Drive will be an instruction manual on how to rock.
Gutter Queen
(1999, Hydra Head Records)
"Clinton St. Blues"
”I was living on Clinton Street with some friends of mine, living the real fucking sex, drugs, and rock and roll life, Randy was taking a lot of Vicodin and driving a primer gray $300 Monte Carlo with a six pack on the floor, and Bernie was banging coke whores. Life was good.”
- Vic Szalaj
Even though the band once again broke up after Variable Speed Drive, Cable still managed to sign a record deal with Hydra Head Records for their sophomore release, Gutter Queen. While it was a period that not many of the band members can remember clearly, the end result stands as Cable`s first definitive work, with the band starting to experiment more with their sound. Among the admirers was future Cable vocalist Peter Farris.
Peter Farris: Gutter Queen was my gateway record. I was a sophomore at Yale, living in a quad with three baseball players, and hating life in some unidentifiable way. I was just stumbling on to bands from the New England area, the Hydra Head "scene" as it were - Isis, Botch, Converge, Coalesce, Jesuit, etc - but it was Cable`s Gutter Queen that did me in. I read that they were from Connecticut, and as my adopted home, I headed for Cutler`s in New Haven and there it was. Seriously, the first record I bought that was on Hydra Head, the first record like that I ever bought period. It floored me. I pored over the layout, the liner notes. The band picture of Bernie, Vic, and Randy looking pissed and overworked. Strung out. I was nineteen and eager to find that level of depravity and Gutter Queen seemed to suit that need. A watershed, really. The people that made the most honest music were damaged human beings and I, in some weird way, wanted to be a little damaged, too. Fact is I was a bit damaged and perhaps listening to Gutter Queen affirmed the fact. I realized a lot of things with that record. That there was amazing music being made by bands and musicians and it was way below the surface of things, music with total disregard for everything. I used to drink 40 oz King Cobra`s and listen to that record in my closet-sized bedroom. It made me feel good. I found out about Deadguy, Today Is the Day, and Buzzov*en because of that record. I found out about Isis and Kiss It Goodbye and Neurosis because of that record. I found some dudes with as weird a fascination with the state of Montana as I had. Underground music today is way above ground, huge even. But back in `97 - `98 it was something pure, extreme, noisy, and enjoyed by a handful people. I`m glad I was in that handful.
Vic Szalaj: Fuck, I can hardly remember the music around this era of Cable. We were all on strange trips - I was living on Clinton Street with some friends of mine, living the real fucking sex, drugs, and rock and roll life, Randy was taking a lot of Vicodin and driving a primer gray $300 Monte Carlo with a six pack on the floor, and Bernie was banging coke whores. Life was good. We signed to Hydra Head Records in the Summer of 1997 and didn’t really begin working on this for a spell. We had played various arrangements of some of these songs a year earlier, so it didn’t take too long to put the meat in the middle and get into a studio. Our pal and former bassist, Jeff Caxide, signed on as producer - whatever that means - and we nailed the record in a weekend at Samson Studios in Rhode Island. I truly think this record captures the depression, anger, and uncertainty that we were all feeling at the time. This was the real deal.
Bernie Romanowski: My favorite Cable record, and one of my favorite all-time records by any band. Some bands have that defining moment when everything is just right in the studio, and you can do no wrong, and Gutter Queen was that moment for Cable. This was our debut as a three-piece band and our first record on Hydra Head. Despite having a $5,000 budget to record this record, we chose to use Keith Souza’s studio again, and this time decided to get a little loose with the purse strings and spend about $600 to record. Don’t even ask where the extra $4,400 went. Hydra Head was incredibly cool to us.
Randy Larsen: I don`t even know where start with the making of this one, seeing how this was written and recorded during the most fucked up and dysfunctional time in the Cable history. Yes, all the stories from this time are true – alcoholism, drug abuse, unpaid taxes, coke whores, primer gray Monte Carlos, broken tuning keys, Hydra Head record contracts on dirty napkins, broken noses, Clinton Street Blues, being banned from Rhode Island, and so on. It was the most money we ever got paid to do and album and close to the least we ever spent on a recording. Getting any real money to make a record was new to us and we found some pretty great ways to spend it all - just not on the Gutter Queen recording.
Vic Szalaj: A favorite memory of mine during this period is when I spent $400 that was advanced to us by the label on strippers and booze for Jeff’s 21st birthday, and the time we did a weekend in Vermont and Canada with Isis, Drowningman, and Overcast. That was fucking insane.
Bernie Romanowski: The guitar sound on this record was the best sound I’ve ever had. I’ve used the same setup on every recording; my Les Paul through a JCM800 half-stack. No effects, no pedals. For some reason, the guitars on this record were bigger and noisier than I expected, which was much closer to our live sound. While Variable had some noisy parts, they were subdued by the recording. Gutter Queen was the first Cable record that had any guitar overdubs. Variable was recorded 100% live with no overdubs or extra guitars - just two live guitar tracks throughout. On Gutter Queen, I started experimenting with overdubs, but not on every song. “Work Related Injury” is the only song with an overdubbed guitar the whole way through. If you listen closely in “Both Barrels,” you can hear the extra guitar come in about halfway through the song before the heavy riff at the end. I wish that whole song had an extra guitar on it.
Randy Larsen: We started writing the album at our new practice space at Big Bern`s Basement in East Haddam, Connecticut. After about a month, we had to let (guitarist) Matt Becker go. That knocked us down to three-piece, and we decided to press on and scrap the four or five songs we had written with Matt. We started from scratch and I swear we wrote like 12 or 13 songs in the next few months, with the help on some Rolling Rock and Tequilia shots, courtesy of Big Bern himself. We scrapped about half of those songs over the next few weeks and were ready to make the trek back to Sampson Studios to record the damn thing.
We decided it would be good to have another set of ears in the studio with us and asked Jeff Caxide to come in and co-produce the album with us. He agreed, and it`s a good thing he did, because the three of us were so fucked at that time I`m not sure what we would have come out of that studio with. It scares me to even think about it. Jeff pushed us and had some great ideas, and I think we made one of the most unique records of our career.
Bernie Romanowski: Jeff offered me a lot of good ideas for overdubs and noisy guitar parts. When we came to the studio with “Work Related Injury,” it was going to sound like every other song on the record, but Jeff convinced us to keep repeating the high guitar parts on the beginning riff, and then to flip the reels in order to record my vocals backwards. We recorded all the music, then flipped the reels so I could record my vocal parts on a backward reel. We returned the reels to their correct sides, and Randy cut his vocal parts forward. The result is backward and forward vocal parts on the same recording, with no fancy computer-shit involved. Analog recording is a dying art today, and that song is a testament to the skills of a good engineer. The end result is my favorite Cable song of all time. The main voice on “dot.com” is our original guitar player, Matt Becker, who did not play on this record. The core members of Vic, Randy, and I were solidified on this record. Since then, we’ve been the three consistent members on every future Cable CD.
Randy Larsen: I don`t remember a lot about the recording but some things that stick out to me are Vic`s 20 minute vocal track on the original version of "She Is Here" and our recording of Black Sabbath`s "Planet Caravan," which all of us plus Mr. Caxide recorded live in one take, with all the lights out in the live room and many bottles being passed and sticks and picks being dropped. I still think it was one of our best albums, considering all the shit going on at the time it was done.
Bernie Romanowski: Jason Hellman and I invested at least 30 hours doing drafts of that layout, and I think it shows. Hellman kept getting more ambitious with the pictures and text, and of all our records, this is the layout that best captures the vibe of the music.
Northern Failures
(2001, Hydra Head Records)
"The Big Rock"
”The change in musical style was a very organic change that wasn’t forced or even talked about. Through practices, we just evolved into a very different sounding band almost by accident. Vocals, however, were the same as ever. I was pretty much extremely drunk while recording all my vocal parts.”
- Bernie Romanowski
Northern Failures was the next step for Cable and it ranks as the overall fan favorite. The more jagged, angular sounds of the first two records were smoothed over and a more rock and riff oriented groove crept in. Yet it still remained distinctly Cable and decidedly heavy. It was also the start of their collaboration with producer Steve Austin.
Steve Austin: In the early `90`s music had taken a strange shape. The underground had an identity crisis and really, not that many bands surfacing were trying to do something new. I discovered the legendary noise band Cable while touring in the Northeast with my band Today Is the Day. We were playing shows and seeing the USA as kids for the first time and when we hit Connecticut, we were in for quite a surprise. Cable always seemed different than everyone else. Their music is varied and has an honest straight-forward sound that is based on realism and not musical gimmicks. Furiously heavy and hard handed as hell, the guys in Cable represent and stand for something so often lost today.
Rockin`. Feelin it. Trying to shake off those blues while the whole time mesmerizing everyone with powerful musical prowess, sweated and worked out like a group of factory workers drivin` that last fat `57 Caddy down the line.
Mechanical musical ideas juggernauting along a crooked path of late nights with no sleep, worry on your mind and too many drinks left behind. There is something about the band that makes you look inside and ask how you are doing? How do you feel and what are going to do about it?
Vic Szalaj: This is probably my favorite record and period of time in the band. We worked really hard on arranging this record, and we rehearsed our asses of in preparation for the recording. This was the first album we did with Steve Austin and easily my favorite recording by our band - it came out exactly how we wanted. To rewind a bit, the band had broken up after Gutter Queen. Bernie moved to Colorado for a year without telling us and didn’t contact us for at least six months after moving, Randy and I were starting to get the itch to do something again and BOOM - Bernie moved back to Connecticut. Randy and I took a ten day trip to the White Mountains in New Hampshire, ate some mushrooms, drank a lot of cheap ass gin, and starting coming up with ideas for the yet-untitled new album that we didn’t know we were recording. Most of the songs on this album have something to do with the trip from the title, to song titles to lyrical content - it all really happened. I’m still not sure where “Black Leather Mustache” came from, but we are sure it was from that trip... just forgot which day. Hydra Head agreed to put it out and once again we recorded it in a weekend, mastered it a few months after because we broke up again, and then got back together again. Same old Cable story.
Bernie Romanowski: My second favorite Cable record, and the biggest shift in style that Cable ever made. We were still a three-piece, but we decided to tune the guitar and bass to C for this whole record. This was inspired by Randy’s time playing in Isis, and our recent tour with Isis. Isis has the best live guitar sound of any band I’ve ever seen, and their tunings are fascinating. Changing to C wasn’t technically hard, but it had a major effect on our songwriting and the dynamic of the recording. I found that Randy and I were playing fewer and fewer high notes, and the songs were getting into much more of a rock groove, rather than technical, fast parts. I found C to be an incredibly melodic tuning, which allowed me to sneak in tons of layers and interesting chords into the songs. If you listen to “Wings of Hope” and “Black Leather Mustache,” you’ll hear what I’m talking about. If the vocals were taken away, some of the guitar parts are very similar to bands like Hum and older Quicksand.
The change in musical style was a very organic change that wasn’t forced or even talked about. Through practices, we just evolved into a very different sounding band almost by accident. Vocals, however, were the same as ever. I was pretty much extremely drunk while recording all my vocal parts, but my vocals on “Homewrecker” are my favorite vocals on any recording. I had a very serious agenda in mind when I wrote those lyrics, and some very specific imagery in mind. Despite all my planning, I have no idea what I was singing about. The phrasing came out pretty damn good, but God only knows where the words came from. Around 1:25 in “Homewrecker,” you can actually hear me slur my words. Seeing Steve Austin doing vocals at the end of “Wings of Hope” was the best moment of 2000. This was the first of three records we recorded with Steve.
Vic Szalaj: We did a short ten date tour of the east coast and Midwest for this record. it was a lot of fun and I think we realized that some people actually cared about what we were doing. If you are ever driving on the Kangamangus Highway in New Hampshire, pull off on the official NH campground called Hancock, walk down the hill, take a right, go down about four sites until you see the one with a big rock on it, that’s where this record was born.
Peter Farris: Damn, I wish I knew the guys back then. I would have loved to lay down vocals on this bad boy. Especially the Marshall Tucker cover. A record I love not only for it`s simple, all-black layout, but it`s absurd, heavy-as-sin rock. The guys never sounded so cynical, so weird, and getting to know them as brothers, the truths behind this album slowly revealed themselves. But it`s one of Steve`s finest moments behind the board, and obviously the turn in the road for them sound-wise. It defines them perfectly and, to me, probably the most creative Cable record. It`s big rock, Carhartt, whiskey, camping, fire pit, blackout, Marlboro, blue collar, New England blues. Like Gutter Queen, I hope this is a record a couple years down the road when all this shit cycles through, they`ll be some kids looking for that sound. The no frills rock. Something heavy and unique, loose and raw. I hope they`ll find Northern Failures. I really do.
Skyhorse Jams
(2001, This Dark Reign)
"Whiskey Drinkin` Woman"
”I bought Skyhorse at Tower Records in Atlanta on my last trip home before graduation. I really thought these guys had lost their fucking minds.”
- Peter Farris
2001`s Skyhorse Jams stands as the odd man out in the Cable discography. Their first of two releases for Devil Doll/This Dark Reign Records, it`s their all-out rock album, and at the time of its release, it drew unlikely comparisons to bands like Dixie Witch and Halfway to Gone. Not surprisingly, the band has mixed feelings on the album.
Vic Szalaj: A good indication on where this record was headed was when Steve Austin invited us to a BBQ at his home a few months before recording and our guitar player at the time, Ben, puked into Steve’s bathtub and passed out on the bathroom floor. We recorded this record not long after Northern Failures, and I think we just wanted to have fun with it, play some shit that we might have, subconsciously at least, been afraid to play. Ben Cowles was and is a marvelous lead guitarist and I think his sound really defined this record to a larger degree than some in the band would give him credit for, the kid could fucking wail, and we just went along for the ride. A lot of Cable “purists” - if there is such a thing - were scratching their heads. I remember Aaron Turner of Hydra Head Records telling me flat out that he hated it and some others said the same. On the same token, there were a lot of folks who appreciated the record and patted us on the back for taking a chance. We are, however, a band that isn’t afraid to experiment with sounds and we can’t record Gutter Queen and Northern Failures over and over. In true Cable fashion, the recording session was a blur, this whole thing was recorded, mixed and mastered in seven or eight hours, if that. Then we broke up. I love it, I listen to this one from time to time when I’m having a few beers or grilling meat in my backyard.
Bernie Romanowski: My least favorite Cable record, but this was also the time I began to look at Steve Austin as a friend and as a peer. This record had great songs, awesome lyrics (some of our best), but this was the most uninspired guitar playing I ever recorded. I had every intention of going bullshit crazy and bringing the band back to a Gutter Queen era, but I fell flat on my face. We began to work as a two-guitar band again, and that was the beginning of our departure from being a strictly hardcore/noise band. The next two second guitarists that joined the band didn’t have the musical background the rest of us shared, and they didn’t have the experiences of playing garages and basements and lacked the DIY ethic that was central to the band. Despite being technically great musicians, they introduced sounds and styles that eventually limited our tendency to wander during songwriting. I’ve now realized that wah-wah pedals have no place in Cable. Period.
Peter Farris: I bought Skyhorse at Tower Records in Atlanta on my last trip home before graduation. I really thought these guys had lost their fucking minds. Then I realized "Buy Me a Drink" is not only the greatest drinking song ever written, it`s one of the finest songs ever written as well. Probably my favorite guitar solo for sure and some of Randy`s finest lyrics. I met the guys shortly thereafter at a Melvins show in New Haven. Randy and I wound up talking all night. I told him about my obsession with Montana and he showed me his tattoo and his lovely wife, Tonja, rolled her eyes. I met Bernie, too. He was heckling Buzzo and I was slipping him Beam and cokes. I recall being invited by him on a camping trip where people might or might not have been arrested. I think a black bear made an appearance. Glad I passed. I bought Randy a couple drinks as he did me. He wound up puking on the way back to Hartford. Great first impressions all around. Not long after I was at Randy and Tonja`s new home in Willington getting drunk and eating barbecue and I knew I was in the company of good people and the lyrics to a song called "Missoula" were taking shape. I find myself listening to Skyhorse the most lately, though. For reasons I`ll keep to myself.
John Geldbach: Hands down, Cable is one of the most influential, yet unrecognized bands in extreme music history. Easily, these cats were running circles around their peers and up-and-comers, but they never caught a break. Not one! It seems everyone else did, just not the dudes in Cable. What a goddamn shame. That always broke my heart because they were and still are one of my favorite bands on the This Dark Reign roster.
When a mutual friend (Steve Austin) put us in touch with each other, I was already a fan of what they were doing on Doghouse. They reminded me a lot of what was happening with AmRep. It was a no-brainer for me to work with them. The coolest thing for me was to hear the band start to come into their own with the release of Skyhorse Jams. They were clearly forging an original sound and setting themselves apart from the pack and Austin really captured that on the EP. The guys were really on their way to refining what would become their stand out release (in my opinion) with Never Trust a Gemini. An album that almost didn`t get made...
Thankfully, I`m glad it did.
Never Trust a Gemini
(2003, This Dark Reign)
"Coming Up Spades (Part 1)"
"Bad Luck Highway"
”Our music is rather limiting for a singer - there’s not much room to do more than scream your ass off most of the time. Pete made the most of it and wasn’t afraid to inject his own style into the songs, which isn’t easy to do with a band that had been established for eight years.”
- Bernie Romanowski
Never Trust a Gemini stands as my favorite Cable record. There`s something so honest and raw and wholly unique about it. They incorporated the rock from Skyhorse Jams into the discordant brilliance of their past material. And like Peter Farris (who made his debut here) says, “Tennessee” is the band`s greatest song.
Vic Szalaj: This is the record that almost didn’t happen. When I called Hydra Head and told them that we were back together and wanted to begin work on another album, Aaron and Mark basically said, “That’s good for you but we don’t want it.” I didn’t blame them, we were notorious for being on-again off-again and just genuine pricks sometimes. The album was up for grabs and we decided to take an offer from the now defunct Berserker Records in California. They worked with a few bands we dug - Weedeater, Totimoshi, and Sour Vein had all recorded for him, so we figured it would be a good fit.
We began writing the album and as we got about two weeks away from hitting the studio, I called the label guy over and over again and didn’t get a call back. We needed money to pay Steve for the studio time. Long story short, Berserker went bankrupt and decided to wait until zero hour to tell us. We had to cancel the studio time and once again shopped the record around, and finally decided to do it with This Dark Reign/Devil Doll, the label that released the Skyhorse Jams EP a year earlier. All was set up and we hit Austin Enterprise in December 2002 and did what we do - in one weekend as usual. Things didn’t quite sound right after the first mix, so Randy and I went back a week or so later for another weekend to remix, it snowed like a motherfucker that day. One of my favorite aspects of the record is the second vocal by Peter Farris, a guy that we met while he was going to school in Connecticut, transplanted from Atlanta, Georgia. Pete sang for a band called The Farwell Order - they were a cool band but we wanted him with us so we stole him. “Bad Luck Highway” is my favorite on this album, I always loved playing it live. We only did a handful of shows to support this release, but they were some of the best times. We could tell some crazy stories, but we may get into trouble if I did that. Then we broke up.
John Geldbach: Gemini solidified Cable as a band finally comfortable in their own skin.
Again, Austin captured that on this release like a appendage growing naturally through evolution. Gemini just stood out on its own and it was obvious this was the band`s pinnacle work. I say this because it was literally two weeks after this album was recorded I would get a call from Vic telling me they had decided to call it quits! Thanks guys!
Regardless, the album is very personal to me because I still believe it was Cable`s birthing. These guys took it all in. The love, the hate, the frustration, the anger, the fun, the aggravation, the spite, and even the sheer for the fuck of it and chewed it all up. What finally came up was Never Trust a Gemini and this, folks, is a pure work of genius.
Bernie Romanowski: Our third and final record with Steve Austin as engineer and producer. Pete Farris was a brilliant addition to the band (on vocals) at this time, and I still remember the first time he came to practice. We all sensed he was a fan of ours and that he was treading lightly in his conversations with us before practice, but that was all gone after he sang the first song. Pete has an incredible stage presence, and our practices were no different than live shows for him. Our music is rather limiting for a singer - there’s not much room to do more than scream your ass off most of the time. Pete made the most of it and wasn’t afraid to inject his own style into the songs, which isn’t easy to do with a band that had been established for eight years. Pete’s lyrics are brilliant and he’s much more intelligent than people realize.
The drum sound on this record was different for us, it was more “canned” sounding and a little less live than our past recordings with Steve. I appreciate the sound because it was a little different than what other bands were doing with the doomy, muddy sounding drums, but the drum sound on Northern Failures was the benchmark for the band.
Peter Farris: My favorite record mainly because I consider it my best vocal/lyrical performance. The months leading up to that time weren`t the best for me. My band had broken up, I`d just been put through the wringer with a bad relationship, and I was working a shitty job in a shitty town. My introduction to those guys couldn`t have come at a better time. Everything clicked. The music I heard for the first time at their practice space was exactly what I wanted to hear. They were channeling a noisy, depraved brand of rock that was uniquely Cable. And even though I was a bit nervous not only meeting a band I had admired from a distance, but also putting my voice on their new album, Randy and Bernie seemed to dig my ideas and Vic just laughed at me and drank his beer. After a dozen practices, a session with Steve Austin, a scattering of shows, and many drunken nights in Willington, I consider the guys some of my best friends, and I look back at the Gemini period as one of most fun of my life. That and “Tennessee” is the best fucking song ever written. With “Missoula” a close second.
John Geldbach: The bottom line is I am very proud and lucky to have been given a chance to work with and release two projects from such talented individuals. I hope in time that they will be recognized on a wider level than they have been for the importance of their music and the contribution they made to extreme music. Long live Cable!
Pigs Never Fly
(2004, Translation Loss Records)
"Human Landfill"
”It`s not the best sounding record we’ve done, but it’s not bad at all. It`s real stripped down and honest.”
- Vic Szalaj
By the time the band had staggered to their ten year anniversary, they weren`t in the best of shape. Their unfortunate habit of celebrating each release by breaking up prevented them from making any real inroads in terms of promotion. Yet while they still remained on the outskirts of obscurity, they were still determined to soldier on for at least one more album.
Vic Szalaj: Once again…Randy and I get the itch to start the band back up after a fairly nasty falling out with the other dudes in the band at the time.
It was just myself and Randy again and we needed a guitarist so we recruited a local guy named Aaron Lewis, who lived literally two blocks from Randy. We stared jamming, teaching Aaron some old songs but things didn’t sound right, we were missing another guitarist. After several phone conversations and a meeting or two, Bernie came back to the band, and we started writing new songs that would become the backbone of Pigs. It took a while to get our rhythm, but once we did, we hammered out all of the songs and were once again on the prowl for a label to release it. Aaron had a home studio so we decided we would demo the album and shop it around. We tracked the entire demo in one night, went to the bar, got drunk, woke up and finished overdubbing. Pete flew in from Georgia and did vocals with Randy the week after, I believe. We were doing a ten year anniversary show in Hartford when I met Ed Ballinger for the first time; he was playing bass in Slacks and he also ran Infernal Racket Records. I asked him about his label and if he had any interest in releasing Pigs, he said they were pretty much done with putting out records, and I figured that was it. A week after the show, Ed tells me about his friend`s label, Translation Loss; they’re new but good people and put me in contact with Christian McKenna.
Christian McKenna: Slacks had a show with Cable on May 8, 2004, in Hartford. I was not in the band at the time, but my fellow band mates Mick and Ed were running their own little money pit, Infernal Racket Records. Vic was interested in putting out Pigs Never Fly with Infernal Racket. Right around that time Mick and Ed had decided they had enough of running Infernal Racket, so Ed passed the word along to Vic about Translation Loss and gave me Vic’s phone number. I gave him a shout a couple days after the show. I was a huge Cable fan and was extremely excited of even being able to fathom putting out a record by the same band that had written such classics as “The Sunday Driver” and “Steel Cage Match.”
So I called Vic on a Saturday and we just shot the shit for an hour or two. We discussed everything from fishing to the Grateful Dead to Neil Young. We didn’t talk about Cable at all. At the end of the conversation I told him of my interest in releasing the record.. at the time Translation Loss only had three other releases. I asked Vic what they were looking for. He replied with “Three grand.” I told him we couldn’t do that. I sheepishly replied that we could basically press the record, make it look nice, and run an ad or two. The deal was done. I think the record that came out was basically supposed to be a demo. The fact that TL was broke and that they were lazy probably led to the record sounding the way it did… shitty but honest.
Vic Szalaj: We discussed the record and those guys basically said they didn’t have the money to pay for a good studio so we paid for the mastering at M Works in Boston and essentially released what was a demo as an album. It`s not the best sounding record we’ve done, but it`s not bad at all. It`s real stripped down and honest.
Peter Farris: A strange, interesting record for sure. I flew up from Atlanta, they finished tracking, and Randy and I made plans to take it easy the night before we did our vocals. We drank a fifth of Jim Beam and probably a dozen beers between us. Promises were made to record an acoustic concept record about the great state of Montana. We smoked a pack of cigarettes each and contemplated a run to the liquor store at five in the morning. I think we ate. I remember smoking butts from the ashtray. At about ten in the morning we decided to get serious and we listened to a crude recording of Pigs Never Fly from a practice tape and jotted down some lyrics and worked on some phrasing. We might have had some really good ideas but I don`t remember them. I think we ate breakfast at a diner in Willington, and then we finally went to sleep about one in the afternoon. It`s amazing how resilient the human body is. We woke up about five and tracked our vocals that evening and they, to me anyway, sound as authentically shredded as our livers and throats and minds were. So much for taking it easy.
Bernie Romanowski: This was an interesting one. I had left the band for an extended period a while after recording Skyhorse and returned to find a three-piece Cable with a guitar player already lined up. In hindsight, I think we should have gone on as a three-piece and kicked out the new guy, but we didn’t. The songs on this record are solid, and Pete was an incredible addition to the vocals. Pete’s the most intellectual individual to ever be in this band, and he has an awesome ability to produce lyrics with imagery and a style that was exactly what I wanted. I believe he wrote them with Randy the night before recording them.
I was very satisfied with my playing on this record, but the guitar sound isn’t quite what I’d like it to be. We were on a very tight budget on this record, and our recording equipment was what it was, so there was no option for upgrades or a fancy studio. I do have to give Aaron (our second guitar player and engineer) some credit for his guitar ideas on “The Reason I’m Poor.” If you heard this song one week before we recorded it, you wouldn’t even recognize the finished song.
Pigs was also our debut on Translation Loss records, and our final full-length CD. It’s unfortunate that our best lineup and the best record label came together near the end of the band’s life. I often wonder what would have happened if we all found each other back in 1995. In my mind, the essential Cable lineup is Vic, Randy, Bernie, Pete, and Fish. Steve Austin would record everything and Translation Loss would release every record.
Vic Szalaj: We made some seriously good friends in the TL guys and company. We took a chance giving a new label a record but they took a chance in releasing a record by aging, jaded, rock dudes. Good vibes all around with this one - kinda gives one hope that there are still good people with ethics running around in this crazy business.
Christian McKenna: I’m known for always throwing my two cents in, so the only thing I suggested for the record was to not have the first track be “I Love It When You Crawl,” because it is a seventeen minute track with eight minutes of noise and feedback at the end. I liked the song but I thought it would exhaust people. They told me to go fuck myself.
Vic Szalaj: After a show or two, Bernie quit the band and we were once again looking for another guitarist so we found the fish. Chris Fischkelta was friend of a friend from Randy’s old hometown of Putnam, he was and is the perfect match for our band. He is our brother.
Chris Fischkelta: For me at least, a great album is one that when you hear a song it brings you back to a point in your life. There are so many Cable albums that I can say that for, from just simply being a fan of the band’s music to listening to them and actually trying to figure parts out.
Vic Szalaj: We played five or six shows with that lineup, our last being our final show ever at CBGB at a benefit for Solace drummer Kenny Lund, who at the time and probably still is paying for hospital bills. Then it all ended.
Last Call CD/DVD
(2006, Translation Loss Records)
"It`s My Right To Be an Asshole"
”We started the project the same way we ended it… shit faced.”
- Christian McKenna
Not long after Pigs Never Fly was released, the bottom once again fell out of the band. The band toyed with the idea of keeping it as a three piece with Vic, Randy, and Chris, but in the end, they decided it wasn`t worth the effort. Cable was finished. But not without one last song - “Last Call.” Of course, it had to be done in typical Cable fashion.
Christian McKenna: When we started Vic didn’t have a kid… when it was done he had a six month year old son named Rider. Lots of arguments over this one. Half of them were probably my fault. There were times when I didn’t think it would ever get finished. The project was off and then it was on and then it was off again. Ed (Slacks) pissed everyone off. I pissed Vic and Randy off. Randy hated Aaron Lewis. Randy’s grammar sucks. Ed and I got shitty with Vic and Randy a bunch.
Vic Szalaj: A little while after the dust settled from our permanent breakup, Translation Loss called me with a few different ideas for a “final” Cable release. It started out being a live CD and morphed into a CD/DVD. We had some great audio and video from our last show so it all made sense. Ed Ballinger filmed the last show and wanted to direct a documentary film on the band and we were more than happy.
Ed and gang made several trips to Connecticut, and we gave him our treasure trove of videos and interviews. In the meantime, we picked the songs that would be on the CD. Aside from the live tracks, we wanted one song from each album. Needless to say with a project of this size, we bickered and bitched at each other for quite a time and at one point canceled the whole project. Luckily with help from people like Ed, we were all able to kiss and make up and get this fucker rolling. It took almost two years to get it all done, and all I can say is “Wow.” It came out better than I’d hoped and made us all feel really proud to have been part of this project with such kind and considerate folks. The time we all spent in this band was precious, we sacrificed a lot in the early days, never received any credit for a lot of things, and burned more than one bridge in our career. We were straight up assholes at times, but we did it our way, under our terms and fuck you if you didn’t get it.
Christian McKenna: We started the project the same way we ended it… shit faced. The band stepped up to the plate and delivered one of their best songs ever - “Last Call.” The whole thing came out amazing. Ed directed, I produced (whatever that means) and the band gave us ten years of kick ass music. Last Call came out amazing. Whoever disagrees can eat me. It’s about time that they got their dues.
Steve Austin: I love to see real people living it and playing it from the heart and Cable has always shown only truth in their playing. In the studio it was always 110% good times and we never had a crossing moment. We seemed to all be on the same wave and ready to ride it higher.
The records Cable have made and the musical importance and the legacy that they will leave behind one day will be monumental. Because the music came from the right place. The darkest and most beautiful part of the heart. The guys in Cable became very close with me and are still some of my most treasured and best friends I have made during my 20 year career in music.
Chris Fischkelta: Without a doubt the coolest part of this whole ride was being able to write and record Last Call with the “real” Cable (or at least what I’ve always known them to be) - Bernie, Vic, and Randy. While playing with the band was one thing, but for me not playing with that classic line up made it hard for me not to feel like a scab. Having the opportunity to do Last Call with that classic line up - with the addition of Pete “Motherfucking” Farris - was my chance to be a part of what turned out to be an amazing song with unforgettable memories. On top of all that being able to record with Steve Austin was a trip in itself, I’ve always been a huge fan of the work he had done on past Cable records, especially Northern Failures. I don’t think there is any one out there that can capture the true essence of Cable like Steve Austin can. I’m really proud to have been a part of this amazing release, hope y`all like it.
Vic Szalaj: I hope this release speaks for itself. I don’t want to say any more except “Thanks” to all involved. We are forever bonded.
