No Gentleman

Jon, Josh and I started playing together just about 10 years ago. Since then, we’ve played dozens of bars and clubs, to empty rooms, curious passer-bys, the belligerent and hostile, and our friends. No Gentleman has had two other drummers, and one other bass player, but this is the original line-up. This is the first time we’ve recorded together since the first full-length we put out, “This is Radcore” in 2011 (Josh was also on 2015’s “Get Happy Stay Happy.”)

I wrote most of these songs while I was away at grad school. I thought maybe I would write songs for some kind of solo project, but as often happens with those, I couldn’t really get anything satisfying down. Then we did the No Gentleman reunion in 2016 with Jon, and I thought it would be fun to do another record with him. I wrote about 5 or 6 songs, thinking we would do an EP. I was thinking about calling it “D-Beats and Open Chords” since I was still working somewhat in the open chord songwriting style, ala “Get Happy.”

Then Donald Trump got elected and I got inspired to write a whole albums worth. For awhile I was thinking about calling it “SJW” as a sort of sarcastic reclaiming of it from being a pejorative by the Right, with a drawing (maybe by Ayaka) of Marina Ginestà, a lady communist fighter and journalist in the Spanish civil war. And since a lot of the songs I was writing, especially pre-election were dealing with social justice issues.

As you can probably tell, this is not a full length. The realities of trying to do a band while spread across three different towns over an entire state became too much. I’d say this is about half of the songs I wrote. I may release the other songs someday.

It has been an absolute privilege getting to play music with these fellas again!

-Chris, 2018

Chris Cox - vox/guitar
Josh Lambe - bass
Jon Glender - drums/vox

Portland, OR