Tear the Whole Thing Down: DVD Review
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Page 1 of 3 Gray Family Films / 2009 / 81 Minutes / Unrated / Street Date: January 5, 2010
The Powerhouse Pub in Folsom, CA looks like it's a helluva place. The way the establishment is presented in Matt Gray's Tear the Whole Thing Down, a rock documentary about country-rock band Joe Getty and The Dead Flowers, it looks homey without being run-down, well-worn but not dive-y. Much of the music performed by Getty and the Flowers in Gray's film takes place at this mid-sized bar and showroom, and to say the band's ragtag onstage camaraderie and jangle-fuzz sound matches perfectly with their surroundings is a spectacular understatement worth raising a glass to: Whether this honky-rock band has arena-sized aims or not, at the point in time they're documented in Tear the Whole Thing Down, they're completely in tune with that Powerhouse Pub. It's as if they were sent specifically to that place in order to teach its patrons once and for all what good, old-fashioned rock and roll is all about. But Tear the Whole Thing Down isn't all dimly-lit bars and crunchy guitar solos - this look at a band hitting its stride and finding its voice is an astute, engaging look at grown men with wives and kids and houses who nevertheless manifest the kind of primal rock and roll spirit that most twenty-something hipsters wish they could channel. Joe Getty - one half of the wildly popular Armstrong and Getty radio program based in Northern California - makes no qualms about being a family man first and a singer/songwriter second, but one of the many things Tear the Whole Thing Down really gets right is the presentation of how the guy goes out of his way to balance that 'maturity' with earnest, balls-to-the-wall love of music (especially jangly rock and roll). And the dude has a crackerjack band. The Dead Flowers go through a rhythm section change or two over the course of this 80-minute doc, but whatever the permutation, the boys lay down a solid primer coat for Getty's rhythm guitar and vocals, as well as the band's secret weapon, Richard Austin, a quiet, handsome, unassuming axe-man who is soft-spoken and relatively reserved during Tear the Whole Thing Down's interview sequences, but who roars to scorching life whenever the band takes the stage. Joe and the Flowers don't push the envelope as far as their music is concerned - at one point Getty refers to the band's sound as "twangy, Stones-y rock....kind of" - but in the world of rock and roll, why bother reinventing the wheel when a band sounds this solid? These guys are a loosey-goosey locomotive of a four-piece (sometimes five-piece) who go far beyond typical country-rock G-turns-to-D chord changes - they have a feel and a sound onstage. Long story short: These guys really have something.
You won't find topless groupies or remnants of cocaine dust on recording booth tables in Matt Gray's film, but those are the kind of lascivious acts best left to other bands. These are guys who - pardon the cliche - really just care about the music. There's an honesty to Joe Getty and the Dead Flowers that made them instantly intriguing to me upon first popping this disc into my player (and I'd never heard of them before). Getty talks about the heartbreak that fueled the construction of a couple of the band's tracks showcased here (especially the excellent "Things You Can Live Without"), and when Richard Austin describes the personal hells he was wading through as he wrote "Losing Everything" (another standout), the film takes on a sheen of sad yet redemptive melancholy. These guys may not look like your prototypical hot-rod rock stars, but they do what every great band does: They work through the challenges in their lives through their music, and there's no way to deny that kind of emotional power. What makes Tear the Whole Thing Down such a left-field surprise - and the best rock movie I've seen so far in 2010 - is the act of discovery newcomers can find with it. If you are familiar with the band and their residence at the Powerhouse and other Sacramento-area locales, you already know of the Dead Flowers' hole-in-the-wall charisma [Editor's Note: The Powerhouse Pub is indeed a Sacramento area institution - a great place for live music and a cold one], but Tear the Whole Thing Down offers the uninitiated an opportunity to experience some solid Americana-rock under the guise of director Matt Gray's steady hand. In fact, the director's fly-on-the-wall presence is observant without being pretentious or preachy - his film is neither kiss-ass nor muckraking: He lets the music tell his movie's story. The result is a short, sweet gem of a rock doc about a group of dudes playing in a band not for fame, fortune or larger-than-life notoriety: They play because they want to. And at the end of the day, there's nothing more rock and roll than that. For more info, visit the official site of Gray Family Films. |
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