Dead Rock West revives rock and roll music at Thunderbird Cafe

Rock isn’t dead.

Not on the East Coast, and certainly not on the West, according to Cindy… Rock isn’t dead.

Not on the East Coast, and certainly not on the West, according to Cindy Wasserman and Frank Lee Drennen. They’ll prove it when their band, Dead Rock West, plays at the Thunderbird Cafe on May 20.

Vocalist and guitarist Drennen created the band name after reading an article in Spin magazine claiming that rock is dead on the West Coast.

“We thought that’d be a great name for a West Coast rock band, like a middle finger saying that rock is alive and well,” lead vocalist Wasserman said.

Although a native of L.A., Wasserman is no stranger to Steel City, having toured in Pittsburgh several times before.

“I’m happy that we’ll have a day off in Pittsburgh. I’ve never gotten to explore the city much,” she said.

Dead Rock West has previously toured with John Doe, Wilco, The Knitters and Mark Olson. Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers will accompany the band at the Pittsburgh show.

Wasserman said she defines a great concert by “the energy of the audience. If I feel like we’re really connecting with them, that’s what makes it explosive for me. It’s like a back and forth of the energy, and it’s really neat.”

Wasserman acknowledged that her band mates might say something different, but to her, Dead Rock West’s style is best described as “Johnny Cash meets Tom Petty. We know how to rock [as a band], but we also love to play stripped down as a duo.”

Dead Rock West formed as a five-piece band in 2006 and made its first record, Honey and Salt, in 2007.

Because all of the members also tour with other bands, Dead Rock West tours in various configurations, sometimes as a duo act with just Wasserman and Drennen. This summer, the duo will play as a full band.

“We take the same songs and adapt them. Sometimes with a band, we focus more on our rocking kinds of songs, and when we have a configurations that’s more stripped down, we focus on other songs,” she said. “But the core songs say the same, give or take.”

Wasserman elaborated on why the Californians decided to incorporate a distinctively country southern twang into their music.

“The country flavor just comes from all of us just growing up listening to that kind of music, and it got infused into our rock ‘n’ roll music,” she said.

She also cited the band X, old country singers like Hank Williams and ’70s punk as being large influences, not to mention her personal favorite — The Beatles.

“We’re like big sponges. All of them are in there like a tribute to the things we love, but make our music our own,” she said.

The band will record its second record when it finishes its summer tour. It has also completed an album, Bright Morning Stars, which Wasserman described as “classic spiritual songs done with a Dead Rock West twist. It’s a gospel record that sounds like a rock record, almost sort of disguised. It’s a record full of hope.”

“I hate to even call Bright Morning Stars a covers record because people probably wouldn’t even realize that the songs are covers because they’re so old,” she said. “There’s nothing past the 1950s, and most are from even earlier than that.”

Bright Morning Stars was produced by Grammy Award-nominee Peter Case and includes performances by guest artists John Doe, Exene Cervenka, D.J. Bonebrake and Mark Olson.

The gospel album was initially recorded just for fun, but the band members said they felt so pleased with it that they wanted to release the songs on a Dead Rock West album. But well aware that gospel fans aren’t quite a rock band’s standard audience, they won’t play many songs from Bright Morning Stars on their current tour.

“[These songs] cater, I think, to a very specific kind of a listener, so for this crowd I think we’ll focus on Honey and Salt,” she said.

Band members said they hope to find the band in the unusual position of having two full records in the can by next fall, both the gospel-covers album and an original album.

“We’re going to have to decide on a whole new plan of attack,” she said.