Ugly Stick
SPB: Describe in your own words the “Columbus Sound” and what it means or has meant to you and your musical output.
David Holm (vocals and guitars): As it pertains to Ugly Stick I would say it's kind of an amalgam of punk rock, country, and classic rock. It's kind of jittery and sometimes funny and sometimes kind of melancholy. I don't know that there is a consistent "Columbus Sound". I think there are a lot of punk rock bands that sound like punk rock bands and a lot of Americana bands that sound like typical Americana bands and I feel like what Ugly Stick does is try to straddle this line between those things and come up with something original. We strove for originality over being part of some existing way of playing or of doing things.
Al Huckabee (guitar): I think the term "Columbus Sound" was coined by journalist and man about town Joel Treadway and he touches on these same elements that the predominant sound in Columbus was lo-fi and punk and scrappy and it drew on garage-y and "alternative" sounds. We got a lot of reviews that described our music as not terribly classifiable in terms of genre. I always took that as a compliment for the reasons Dave described; we've always tried to make cool music and have not been super worried about how the albums got filed at the record store. A tight definition of the Columbus sound seems elusive, but I think if you listen to Ugly Stick and acts like Scrawl, New Bomb Turks, Tim Easton and Lydia Loveless you can hear a throughline that can link it all together.
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The band's first, self-titled LP from 1989 was just reissed on The Good Times Rock N Roll Club.
