You write enough songs, and eventually you’re going to want some of them on the record, if only for posterity. At least, that’s what Mark Bestul and J.D. Kuskie of Lincoln-based Weldon Keys found.
After playing together in multiple projects, Bestul (guitarist) says he and Kuskie (vocalist/guitarist) never had the opportunity to put their songs to record. With that in mind, they put together a group of musician friends to help them catalog some of their old favorites.
“It began kind of as an archival project,” Bestul says. “That’s what the impetus was.”
Where the group could have parted creative ways, they found chemistry and instead continued on together. Soon, Weldon Keys had written enough songs together to put out a classic roots rock-inspired record.
On Thursday night at Vega in Lincoln’s Railyard, they’ll release a self-titled, nine-track album. The lineup will also include Jeazlepeats and A Ferocious Jungle Cat.
Together, Weldon Keys has a simple goal: straightforward rock music, reminiscent of the early '70s, with limited instrumental effects. “Sofia (Part Two),” with its three-minute runtime and distorted anthemic guitar track, plays as a testament to the younger days of rock and roll. Bestul calls the recording a faithful example of a Weldon Keys live experience.
“(The song has) very simple instrumentation, no real effects on anything, just guitars and amps and drums,” he says. “It has a real pure sound to it.”
But where Neil Young’s 1968 Everybody Knows This is Nowhere has both “Cinnamon Girl” and the country-kissed “Losing End (When You’re On),” Weldon Keys similarly gets in touch with its own country roots on “Old Letters," which features Steve “Fuzzy” Blazek, a local pedal steel player, for the second time on the album.
Bestul says his appearance on the album was almost accidental. For both “Old Letters” and “Questions,” the other track featuring Blazek, a more traditional Weldon Keys arrangement exists — the ones with the straightforward guitars, the ones Bestul says audiences will likely hear live.
But, as Bestul puts it, the band was “a little bit stumped on the arrangements” they had come up with for “Questions” when they asked Blazek to come in.
“When Fuzzy was there recording the song we had asked him to record, we thought it’d be nice to have him on another song,” he says. “So we stripped out all the electric guitars from that and had him just come up with something on the spot.”
Bestul and Kuskie ditched the electric guitars originally intended for “Old Letters” and instead played acoustic.
“That was kind of accidental more than anything. It turned out to be a really great song.”
While Bestul says homages to '50s country and the presence of a pedal steel won’t be a part of the Weldon Keys live set, he says the band was eager to have a chance to record with those sounds.
“Everything else on the record is what people can expect to hear live,” he says. “But the record is nice because we can explore some of that stuff we like and enjoy but may not have the opportunity to do live.”
Jacob Zlomke is Hear Nebraska’s editorial intern. “A Musician’s Wife” is his favorite Weldon Kees poem. Reach him at jacobz@hearnebraska.org.