Since the 2005 release of Funeral Dress, each successive Wussy album has been hotly anticipated and enthusiastically celebrated. The Great Divide, the band's imminent eighth studio album of new material and quite possibly their best album yet, follows that general blueprint with a few significant diversions. The six years since 2018's What Heaven is Like represents the longest gap between releases in the Cincinnati band's 20-year history, which can be partially attributed to COVID/lockdown interruptions (although band members Chuck Cleaver, Lisa Walker and Mark Messerly worked through the pandemic by streaming 60+ living room concerts).
While Wussy actively celebrates the release of The Great Divide with their standard blend of cautious optimism, hard-won cynicism, nudge-wink pragmatism and self-deprecating pride, the festivities are slightly muted. There is a missing face at the feast; the sudden and unexpected death of pedal steel master John Erhardt in May of 2020 dealt the band a crushing blow that could easily have ended their spectacular two-decade run.
As the band notes, Erhardt was more than just a member of Wussy's estimable ensemble. He was a pedal steel ninja whose noise-to-melody ratio and Kryptonic intensity transformed the band's sonic profile. He was also an emotional Zen sensei/shaman who was somehow the perfect complement/counterpoint to every diverse personality within the Wussy family.
"John had this weird connective thing," says Messerly. "The way he played connected everything."
"And it wasn't just his playing, it was John's presence," says Cleaver, who met Erhardt in a writing class at the University of Cincinnati in the late '70s and formed the Ass Ponys with him in 1988. "It was the same in the Ass Ponys. John was kind of our ballast. He always had that calming effect."
"It was like, 'Dad's here. Everything's going to be okay,'" Messerly concurs.
Drummer Joe Klug recalled a classic Erhardt moment from one of Wussy's UK tours. "Mark and I went out for a delightful brunch and Chuck and Lisa were losing it a little bit, like they wanted to go home. Mark and I went back to the hotel and John was pacing back and forth in the parking lot, back and forth, and we were like, 'What are you doing?' And he said, 'Thinking about what I'm going to say to Chuck and Lisa in a few minutes.' Like he was rehearsing it in his head."
The anecdote elicits gales of laughter from the rest of the band, likely because every Erhardt story sparks an additional 10. This is the path of mourning that Wussy has charted; to mollify the pain of his passing by celebrating the staggering impact he had on the band, individually and collectively.
When the band began working on what would become The Great Divide, one of the first considerations was the songs to be included on an album that would inevitably form a tribute to Erhardt. Although they had written songs in the immediate aftermath of Erhardt's death, they didn't have the specific tone the band required ("I wrote three or four, and they were good, but I think it was more therapeutic," says Cleaver). As it turned out, they already had everything they needed.
"We had two records worth of songs and Lisa gathered what songs would make this thing," says Messerly. "And I think it was Lisa's idea to find some of the songs that John played on so he would have a voice on this record."
"We had a grouping of songs and it seemed like there was sort of a break point, maybe not lyrically but feel-wise," says Walker. "It did seem like it made sense to put them together."
As Messerly notes, The Great Divide is a mid-tempo album, as befits a tribute to a beloved fallen friend. Given that the tracks on the patently excellent set all predate Erhardt's death, songs like the hair-raising "The Ghosts Keep Me Alive" and the eerily prescient "Please Kill Me" pack an even greater emotional punch. The most improbable fact about The Great Divide (and its most Wussyesque characteristic) is that it's a record that mourns a death that hadn't yet happened when it was written; to that end, Erhardt's contributions are featured on two songs, "The Night We Missed the Horror Show" and "Days and Hours."
The Great Divide features Wussy's famed blanket of sound, a sort of Americana-tinged My Bloody Valentine, which is something that Erhardt helped to solidify.
"It's so cool when it sounds like there's an extra part being played but no one's actually playing it," says Messerly. "It's some weird artifact of all the instruments."
"We like to blend so you can't hear the mistakes," Cleaver says.
The next order of business might have been difficult, but Wussy has, from its very inception, taken an organic approach to personnel decisions. At one point, they decided Erhardt was irreplacable (he will continue to be listed as a member of the band on all subsequent recordings), and then somehow, everyone began thinking about Frontier Folk Nebraska guitarist and veteran session musician Travis Talbert.
"When Dawn (Burman) left, all of us said, 'Think Joe will do it?' Everybody," says Messerly. "And even though we didn't talk about it, we didn't set out to have a pedal steel player. We didn't know what we wanted to sound like, what we wanted was to work with Travis. It was uniform."
"One of the joys of being in a band is learning how each other plays," says Walker. "It's fun because now I get to learn how Travis plays and I get to learn how to play with and around him. It's one of the greatest joys of life for me. And it's not just somebody's ability to play and sound good. It's about a spiritual connection too. Do I feel comfortable and safe being vulnerable and creative around these people? 100% yes. (Klug and Talbert) are amazing players and you feel like family around them without having to spend a lot of time together."
"Plus, in practices, you have to be able to talk about stupid shit for an hour and a half and play music for half an hour," says Cleaver, revealing his personal litmus test in the Wussy clubhouse. "That's important."
Talbert was influenced by Erhardt before he even sat down with a pedal steel. "John was one of three people who played pedal steel that made me want to get one. When he first started (with Wussy), I remember he just kind of made a sound, and I thought, 'That's what I would do with it if I played pedal steel.' I've always gravitated toward that idea, like I'm playing the Hammond organ."
Wussy has never done anything by half measures, so naturally their first full audience live set since before lockdown was opening for Guided By Voices back in April. They considered adding in songs from The Great Divide and then reconsidered.
"We practiced like three or four of the new songs, but one by one, they got axed," recalls Talbert.
"We knew if we didn't play a rock set, we'd get buried," says Cleaver.
In any event, that gig firmly established that Wussy is beyond prepared for this next chapter in their saga. The Great Divide will drop later this fall, along with two EPs, one a full band release with two songs that didn't make the album, and the other a two-track set from Cleaver and Walker's side project Wussy Duo, a teaser for the full length slated for early 2025.
And there are still a record's worth of Wussy songs waiting to be recorded, as well as things that are being written now that Talbert is in the fold. The band doesn't know and honestly doesn't care how their work is ultimately judged, they're just thankful they have an outlet for release through Cincinnati’s Shake It Records.
"Darren (Blase) is like our patron saint," says Cleaver. "People still ask, 'How did you get on Shake It?' And I say, 'I don't fucking know.' I walked into the store and he said, 'I heard you guys are recording, I'd like to hear it.' I took him three songs and he said, 'You want to make a record?' And I said, 'Yeah. Duh.' And it's been that way ever since. Never signed nothing or any of that horseshit. And he puts out every godddamn thing we make. That's amazing to me."
It sounds just right to us.
Wussy’s forthcoming album, The Great Divide, is set to be released in the fall. More info: wussyworld.com.
This story is featured in CityBeat's Aug. 7 print edition.
