AP/UPI Dispatch. Phoenix, AZ. Rolling Stone sources indicate a new and promising band is forming in the desert Southwest and includes a founding member of 90's supergroup Not Bad Oranges and southern California's traveling multi-instrumentalist troubadour Cleats Onionpocket. The band seems to have named itself The Mexican Rock Liver Orchestra (MRLO) or just The Mexican Rock Livers. It hasn't been determined as this article went to press. No US tour dates are set. Band leader Douglas Teever has been honing a new sound in a remote studio in Uruguay, South America. Early reports suggest a country influenced death-metal (Sepultra) with a twang approach to old standards (Haggard, Cash) as well as a repertoire of original Peruvian flute flourishes backed by steel-guitar-heavy whiskey songs (Slobberbone) with a resounding backbeat. The band is apparently based on the concept that in whiskey and noise there is wisdom and a great tune ready for FM radio. It's a farfetched bet, but D. Teever is seemingly willing to make it so long as a personal investment isn't necessary.
What set the independent rock world on fire recently was the addition of Cleats Onionpocket to the new band's lineup. Formerly of Loveland, CO and Wall, SD, Cleats OP (or COP as his friends call him), is an Oglalla Lakota with roots in Pine Ridge, USA. But Cleats is only half 'injun'. The rest is straight cornpone country and mortgage brokering swanky-tonk. When he's not fiddlin' with his juice harp or the galvanized barrel tub bass, Cleats adds a complete iconography of rugs and historical remembering to the Mexican Rock Liver Orchestra lineup. Cleats is why the band can use the word Orchestra.
Schooled carefully at home, and learned in the art of hunting big cats, Cleats became a Champion Okie Noodler before moving to Winchester, Kentucky in 1993 to pursue bigger fish. In Winchester, Cleats turned his job part-time oil vat overhead vent cleaner job at Krispy Kreme into a full time gig at Dunkin' Donuts, pushing java over the makeshift coffee bar. As coffee sales continued to lagg, Cleats suggested an "open-mike" night, thinking it might save his job. Trouble was, there wasn't any likely candidates for the three hour show Cleats proposed. So on night one, Cleats turned the coffee bar over to Clara Jane, his four hundred pound girlfriend, and grabbed a pair of spoons and commenced to make a racket while hollering like a coon dog fitted with an electronic bark collar. Some said it was liking listening to a rabbit die. Others thought it sounded like Leadbelly's Black Snake Moan. The ensuing confusion and near riot was good publicity and the next show was sold out.
It didn't take long before Cleats was asked to play a weekly gig at Starbucks and Starbucks soon released Cleats Live at Starbucks (www.starbucks.com) , a seminal work unparalleled in its intricate use of ordinary objects in tandem with Cleats signature wail. Some said it was like a wounded bobcat, others a bull elk in heat. With clicking and clacking and such cacophonous noise as to raise a ruckus.
Cleats' live CD began to sell well at Starbucks franchises and especially in airports in Minneapolis, Fargo and Miami. European sales were off the chart as they apparently believed the hype that Cleats was a coffee consuming American icon. Oddly enough, Cleats rarely took coffee. Sometimes he would eat a cranberry scone or an oatmeal raisin cookie, but Cleats preferred to eat and drink elsewhere. When it became known that Cleats ate his main meal at happy hour at Lee's Liquor Lounge and got his fruit at the Rad Dragon on Hennepin where the fruit drinks are made with Kool-Aid, Starbucks decided to cut him loose. They pulled the CD from their in-store kiosks and pushed Wilco and Bjork instead.
Cleats took a digger. Three months of Starbucks-based stardom and a steady income that didn't require stealing food from his employer had left Cleats unprepared for the reality of his artistic future. It did not look good for COP. It did not look good for his art.
In 2006, and living under an overpass in Orange County, CA, Cleats met Doug Teever. Teever is a musical archivist. He listens to everything and mostly the best fringe esoterica. He goes under and over the wall to find the best new artist. Teever found Cleats down on his luck but playing a tune that he hummed through the cellophane of a cigarette box. A lament. A call. Like a hobo stew.
Teever grabbed a broken comb and whacked out a beat on the concrete buttress. Cleats urged it all along with voice cracked by freeway pollution and hand rolled cigs made from leftover ashtray butts. Unforetunately, Cleats and Teever proceeded to get drunk with a plastic half gallon of Popov vodka and the tapes were lost when rain filled the diversion canal. these early tapes have never been recovered. It would be years before Cleats and Teever would meet again.
That meeting occurred at the Hobo convention held yearly in Moeville Iowa. Cleats had honed his chops and Teever had a grant from the Smithsonian. After a couple of bottles of Dickel's, the two made a pact. There would be a band. In time. Seems like that time has come for Teever and Cleats.
Doug Teever spoke recently about the addition of Cleats Onionpocket to the band, "When we got got Cleats, I knew it was a go. Cleats can twiddle a juice harp better than Woodie Guthrie. He can switch over to the jug bass and back to a shaker pan faster than a rat can find cheese. He will be the element that takes this project to the next level. What can COP (Cleats Onionpocket) do for this band? He can be our Eddie Van Halen without the tongue cancer, our David Bowie without the Spiders From Mars. He's the real deal. Like good Wisconsin sausage."
Onionpocket was unavailable for comment, but his publicist released this statement, in true Cleatsian style, "I, C. B. Onionpocket [due] do solemnly [swore] swear that i [I] takes this obligation full aforefront and within'out misgivins. I shall, on my [honer] honor play to the best a my [ability] billity unless drunk or hungry. Washte, kola"
Teever, who has spent the last three months on the road with Alejandro Escovedo before retreating to his mountain sanctuary, left Uruguay shortly after hearing Cleats had agreed to terms and the band expects an early August tour through Nogales, Winslow and Globe, AZ, Roswell, NM and then Yucca Valley and Desert Hot Springs, CA before a quick Canadian detour through Markham, Ontario and Montreal, Quebec where they'll join The Arcade Fire and Snow Patrol for an early fall European jaunt.
It looks like the Mexican Rock Livers are on their way. In tune with the building hype, Teever remarked, "This is it. This is the band I've always wanted because I'm in absolute control. Cleats is good, but he's still my bitch."
