The Muckrakes

On the Muckrakes last album, Grandiphonia, a wide variety of influences were smashed together in ingenious and surprising ways. On their latest release, Pill Shaped Void, the variety of influences are still there, but they have coalesced into a cohesive and distinctive sound.

When I heard they were coming out with a new album, I wondered if it would work considering the loss of Melissa Troutman, a woman with a voice that could draw a smile out of the most cantankerous curmudgeon. But sitting with new drummer Dave Jugenheimer (who does not play on the recording) and singer Jon Ownings before their gig last night at Hampton Tap, I started to get a sense that this was a whole new band. That any attempt to compare it to a past version of the band would be fruitless. I don’t know those guys very well, but there was an overwhelming sense of calm purpose to them. As if they had already played the gig and had pulled off a legendary set of music.

With the Junior League Craft Beer Fest and a wedding in Surry--congrats Caity and Will!--we were too tired to stay for the show, but after three listens this morning, I could not be more impressed by Pill Shaped Void and this new iteration of the Muckrakes.

“Heartache” is a genuinely disturbing and must-hear piece of music, but it doesn’t seem out of place with “Going Gone,” a warm blanket of a song in the vein of the Beatles “I Got a Feeling.” The graceful guitar work of Mike Turner is on full display on tracks like “Our Time on the Edge” and “The Way We Were,” and there is a solidity to the group’s playing that wasn’t necessarily lacking before, but it wasn’t as prevalent.

“Bored with My Life” is a Hawkwind-like end of the world jam that puts this album in line with Jonathan Wilson’s Fanfare. And while Wilson’s West Coast vibe may seem uncomparable to the Muckrakes more serious, emotionally-spent sound, upon closer listen they are remarkably similar. Wilson conjures red sand dunes for miles and miles, and the Muckrakes evoke a similar feeling, but replace the desert with a smoldering peat bog stretching far into the distance.

The only regret I have is not being able to stay up and hear the group play “On the Run” last night. Things happen, and a lot has happened to the Muckrakes since their last album, but one thing has remained constant: their dedication to thoughtful, innovative music. - Alt-Daily

If you can count yourself as a person who has seen The Muckrakes live, you know what they sound like live. Those of you who haven’t seen The Muckrakes live: this is what they sound like. And what they happen to sound like is, well, pretty awesome.


I don't know what kind of band to call The Muckrakes—maybe an alt/indie/Americana/rock band? Be that as it may, “The Muckrakes Live,” which includes seven songs from the band’s Oct. 8, 2011, show at the Outer Banks Brewing Station in Kill Devil Hills, NC, sounds better than any live EP should. It’s uber dynamic and crisp, and the song choices are well rounded. From the mysterious and trippy “Heartache” to the boot-stomping “Black Rock,” this thing keeps you listening all the way though. Giant buildups and long releases like those in the “More Haggard than Merle/Radio Medley” and “Bottle Rocket” bring to mind early ’70s psychedelic rock. Throughout the EP, Jon Owings and Cory Nealon deliver great vocal performances: they really sell it. Would it be wrong to throw an Allman Brothers reference in there? This is just one of those bands that has it together. So if that sounds like something you might like, The Muckrakes are offering a free download on their Bandcamp page. - YourMusicShow.com

It reverberates with sonic surprises that sound so natural, it’s easy to forget there were no trippy feedback effects back in the Sun Records days. Imagine Jack Clement twisting knobs all over a theremin. The strong dark wind of the dusty American steppe whips and howls through every track, but so does the musty heat of a dank ratskeller full of angry punks in jackets and jeans.

Parts of the album had me searching the Net to see if Chet Atkins and Pete Townshend ever played together, and if they hadn’t, why no one ever thought to put their guitar sounds together on a folk album. Parts of the album had me wondering if the Muckrakes spied on me during my last days in Chicago: “Drinkin’ in your neighborhood. Passin’ out before the sun goes down. More Haggard than Merle.” This line comes from the track “More Haggard than Merle,” which features short melodic instrumental sections that recall the grace and small beauty of Jerry Garcia’s finest work. This is combined with raucous, maximum rhythm & blues guitars and hard livin’ lyrics to form a song that should be played on every local radio station five times a day for the next six weeks.

The best problem an album reviewer can have is the inability to decide which songs to discuss. I had to narrow it down to six, but trust me when I tell you my choices were arbitrary. Every song on this album is good. “Long Cut” is the Muckrakes at their swinging finest. On one level it’s a song that makes you feel cool—as cool as Johnny Cash. But it is also a fine example of the use of various guitar sounds, vocal harmonies, and a simple start/stop format to give the technical listener plenty to delve into. Each verse brings back a teenage memory. One’s first dip of Skoal. One’s first Allman Brothers’ record: “Guitar solos I love most/Twenty-two minutes of the ‘Whipping Post.’” A ride in mom’s car. On the third verse the Frisellian bed of electric guitars drop out leaving acoustic guitar, mandolin, and pizzicato violin to compliment the vocals. In my ten years writing music reviews, it has been rare to hear such graceful orchestration on a band’s first album… or third for that matter.

“Not Gonna Fall in Love” makes me fall in love with Melissa Troutman’s voice, though listening to Grandiphonia so many times in these past few days has me swooning for all the Muckrakes: Jon Owings, Mike Turner, Jason Russell, Cory Nealon, Billy England, and Dave Jackson. “Wandering Souls” is full on Americana with banjo a picking, harmonies a blending, and crescendos a growing. The song would sound right at home on a Pete Seeger album, but it would do the same on a Widespread Panic album. “Young and Crazy” is Springsteen at his windswept finest. “Trailer Park Love Story” has Melissa Troutman in the spotlight again, this time sounding shades of Emmylou Harris and Jenny Lewis.

You can tell a lot about a band by the way they handle the rigmarole: the starts and stops, the changes, the bridges, the intros, the outros, the logistics of music. What shines through all of these things on Grandiphonia is a band that really enjoys playing with each other, a band that gets excited about each others’ parts, a band focused solely on the music. Clearly getting off on playing, you hear the heart and soul, grit and grime of a collection of individuals. Grandiphonia is a paean to guitars, to mandolins and banjos, to shuffles and stomps, to polyhpony and rhyme. Grandiphonia is a straight-ahead American music record well worth your evenings and dreams.

- Alt-Daily

It reverberates with sonic surprises that sound so natural, it’s easy to forget there were no trippy feedback effects back in the Sun Records days. Imagine Jack Clement twisting knobs all over a theremin. The strong dark wind of the dusty American steppe whips and howls through every track, but so does the musty heat of a dank ratskeller full of angry punks in jackets and jeans.

Parts of the album had me searching the Net to see if Chet Atkins and Pete Townshend ever played together, and if they hadn’t, why no one ever thought to put their guitar sounds together on a folk album. Parts of the album had me wondering if the Muckrakes spied on me during my last days in Chicago: “Drinkin’ in your neighborhood. Passin’ out before the sun goes down. More Haggard than Merle.” This line comes from the track “More Haggard than Merle,” which features short melodic instrumental sections that recall the grace and small beauty of Jerry Garcia’s finest work. This is combined with raucous, maximum rhythm & blues guitars and hard livin’ lyrics to form a song that should be played on every local radio station five times a day for the next six weeks.

The best problem an album reviewer can have is the inability to decide which songs to discuss. I had to narrow it down to six, but trust me when I tell you my choices were arbitrary. Every song on this album is good. “Long Cut” is the Muckrakes at their swinging finest. On one level it’s a song that makes you feel cool—as cool as Johnny Cash. But it is also a fine example of the use of various guitar sounds, vocal harmonies, and a simple start/stop format to give the technical listener plenty to delve into. Each verse brings back a teenage memory. One’s first dip of Skoal. One’s first Allman Brothers’ record: “Guitar solos I love most/Twenty-two minutes of the ‘Whipping Post.’” A ride in mom’s car. On the third verse the Frisellian bed of electric guitars drop out leaving acoustic guitar, mandolin, and pizzicato violin to compliment the vocals. In my ten years writing music reviews, it has been rare to hear such graceful orchestration on a band’s first album… or third for that matter.

“Not Gonna Fall in Love” makes me fall in love with Melissa Troutman’s voice, though listening to Grandiphonia so many times in these past few days has me swooning for all the Muckrakes: Jon Owings, Mike Turner, Jason Russell, Cory Nealon, Billy England, and Dave Jackson. “Wandering Souls” is full on Americana with banjo a picking, harmonies a blending, and crescendos a growing. The song would sound right at home on a Pete Seeger album, but it would do the same on a Widespread Panic album. “Young and Crazy” is Springsteen at his windswept finest. “Trailer Park Love Story” has Melissa Troutman in the spotlight again, this time sounding shades of Emmylou Harris and Jenny Lewis.

You can tell a lot about a band by the way they handle the rigmarole: the starts and stops, the changes, the bridges, the intros, the outros, the logistics of music. What shines through all of these things on Grandiphonia is a band that really enjoys playing with each other, a band that gets excited about each others’ parts, a band focused solely on the music. Clearly getting off on playing, you hear the heart and soul, grit and grime of a collection of individuals. Grandiphonia is a paean to guitars, to mandolins and banjos, to shuffles and stomps, to polyhpony and rhyme. Grandiphonia is a straight-ahead American music record well worth your evenings and dreams.

- Alt-Daily

Here's a run down on some of the other awards presented Wednesday:

Best Metal/Hard Rock: The Kill Circuit

Best Garage/Punk: The Unabombers

Best Indie Pop: The Aragona Project

Best Rock: The Fighting Jamesons

Best Hip-Hop: J. Pharaoh and the Manhattan Project

Best Americana: THE MUCKRAKES

Best Country: Gina Dalmas and the Cowtippin' Playboys

Best Blues: Jackie Scott and the Housewreckers

Best Experimental: Carousel/LoLa

Best Cover Band: The Deloreans

Best World Beat: The Dharma Initiative

Best Gospel: Alex Holt & Free Worship

Best Busker: Phil Roebuck

Best Open Mic Night: Colley Cantina

Best Music Video/Film: "Hardcore Norfolk: The Movie"

Best Local Music Blog or Website: HardcoreNorfolk.com

Best Major Music Venue: The NorVa

Best Music Club/Bar: Jewish Mother, Virginia Beach

Several other special awards were presented.

Bruce Gray of Tango Storm and the Jailtones among other band was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award. WHRO-FM "Out of the Box" host Paul Shugrue won Veer's Industry Award.

While Peninsula artists didn't exactly dominate the winners list, there were a few notable victories. Williamsburg's Dharma Initiative pulled out a win in the Best World Beat category. While blues award winner Jackie Scott is from Norfolk, much of her band resides on the Peninsula. Also, The Muckrakes, winners of the Best Americana prize, includes members who live and work in Newport News.

Winners were selected by a combination of Internet voting and votes cast by a panel of local music industry experts. - WDBJ

If you guys don’t know the Muckrakes, you’re living under a rock. They’re one of our most fun and prolific acts. My favorite thing about them isn’t even their easy Americana/country sensibility (which I think is everyone else’s). It’s how consistent they are with every performance I’ve seen. - Groove Advisory

He was sitting at one of the sticky black tables that fill the floor of Colley Cantina in Ghent last week. He was drinking a pre-show beer and chatting me up. As we talked the rest of the band set up on the small, makeshift stage.

“Everything he has said so far is bullshit,” the drummer, Dave “Gravy” Jackson, said as he pulled up a chair.

I liked Gravy right away. There was something relaxed and natural about the way he spoke, like he was somebody I already knew. I asked him about the origin of the band’s name.

“The Muckrakes is a double entendre for investigative journalism and a farming tool,” said Gravy, whose day job is buying machinery for aircraft carriers. “With seven instruments, we had to learn how to not sound like a muddy mess.”

The audience at Colley Cantina was, fittingly, varied as Tidewater itself, from old men wearing flannel to young, trendy women with chic hairstyles, from draft beer drinkers to mojito sippers. All seemed a perfect fit for the random décor of the bar, as the complimentary purple and yellow walls created an ideal backdrop.

According to England and Gravy, the Tidewater area seems to spawn a disproportionate amount of cover bands to bands that do original stuff. With the transient lifestyle that comes with all our military bases, maybe it’s just that bands don’t have a chance to build relationships with the region, and cover songs are safer. In my experience people here in Hampton Roads have a way of being trendy to the point of seeming false. How can a band find their niche in a place where tastes change so often?

“We base the music on the energy of the crowd,” said Gravy. “Twenty percent of what we do are obscure covers and eighty percent are original songs.”

Something about this excited England. “We could be playing The Cure up there and you might not even know what we’re playing,” he said, his hands fluttering around his ever-smiling face.

Soon the time for talking was over and England and Gravy took their places. The five male members—there’s actually six male members, but one was missing, which happens with a band this big—of the Muck Rakes took up most of the stage, leaving a corner of light near the speakers for the petite, auburn-haired, lead female vocalist, Melissa Troutman.

Troutman actually stood the guys up before her first audition (found on Craigslist) to be a Muck Rake, not sure about being the only girl in the club. It took a second Craigslist ad—and a willing friend to come along—before she showed up and was offered the gig. Soon enough she warmed up to this group of guys who ended up being more fraternal than frat house.

“These guys are like my quirky second cousins,” she said of the band, which has been together for a year as of yesterday. “It’s the perfect Petri dish for creating music.”

Without pomp or much of an introduction, they started playing. After the energy of Gravy and England, and just by the sheer number of instruments in this relatively small room, the music, which they describe as “alt-Americana,” was surprisingly mellow. Maybe it’s because it was a Tuesday and I was tired from a day of teaching. Or maybe it’s just they played so harmoniously together. Maybe it’s because I could still hear what my friends were saying, or the way Troutman so casually took pulls from her PBR the moments she wasn’t singing.

It was a little rock, a little country, but all groovy. And I liked it.

The Craigslist ad said, “We’re putting together a band and looking for like-minded individuals,” and watching them play, I couldn’t help but think they found each other. “Goulash,” is the word for the band that Gravy used, a metaphor that could be easily applied to the transient Hampton Roads area; band members are a mixture of local musicians and transplants, and they work a wide variety of day jobs when not jamming at night.

Like the blending of our local, brackish waters and the diverse Hampton Roads population, The Muck Rakes, who are on a mission to “clean up bad music in general,” as Gravy said, truly embody the spirit of the Tidewater population. - Alt-Daily

He was sitting at one of the sticky black tables that fill the floor of Colley Cantina in Ghent last week. He was drinking a pre-show beer and chatting me up. As we talked the rest of the band set up on the small, makeshift stage.

“Everything he has said so far is bullshit,” the drummer, Dave “Gravy” Jackson, said as he pulled up a chair.

I liked Gravy right away. There was something relaxed and natural about the way he spoke, like he was somebody I already knew. I asked him about the origin of the band’s name.

“The Muckrakes is a double entendre for investigative journalism and a farming tool,” said Gravy, whose day job is buying machinery for aircraft carriers. “With seven instruments, we had to learn how to not sound like a muddy mess.”

The audience at Colley Cantina was, fittingly, varied as Tidewater itself, from old men wearing flannel to young, trendy women with chic hairstyles, from draft beer drinkers to mojito sippers. All seemed a perfect fit for the random décor of the bar, as the complimentary purple and yellow walls created an ideal backdrop.

According to England and Gravy, the Tidewater area seems to spawn a disproportionate amount of cover bands to bands that do original stuff. With the transient lifestyle that comes with all our military bases, maybe it’s just that bands don’t have a chance to build relationships with the region, and cover songs are safer. In my experience people here in Hampton Roads have a way of being trendy to the point of seeming false. How can a band find their niche in a place where tastes change so often?

“We base the music on the energy of the crowd,” said Gravy. “Twenty percent of what we do are obscure covers and eighty percent are original songs.”

Something about this excited England. “We could be playing The Cure up there and you might not even know what we’re playing,” he said, his hands fluttering around his ever-smiling face.

Soon the time for talking was over and England and Gravy took their places. The five male members—there’s actually six male members, but one was missing, which happens with a band this big—of the Muck Rakes took up most of the stage, leaving a corner of light near the speakers for the petite, auburn-haired, lead female vocalist, Melissa Troutman.

Troutman actually stood the guys up before her first audition (found on Craigslist) to be a Muck Rake, not sure about being the only girl in the club. It took a second Craigslist ad—and a willing friend to come along—before she showed up and was offered the gig. Soon enough she warmed up to this group of guys who ended up being more fraternal than frat house.

“These guys are like my quirky second cousins,” she said of the band, which has been together for a year as of yesterday. “It’s the perfect Petri dish for creating music.”

Without pomp or much of an introduction, they started playing. After the energy of Gravy and England, and just by the sheer number of instruments in this relatively small room, the music, which they describe as “alt-Americana,” was surprisingly mellow. Maybe it’s because it was a Tuesday and I was tired from a day of teaching. Or maybe it’s just they played so harmoniously together. Maybe it’s because I could still hear what my friends were saying, or the way Troutman so casually took pulls from her PBR the moments she wasn’t singing.

It was a little rock, a little country, but all groovy. And I liked it.

The Craigslist ad said, “We’re putting together a band and looking for like-minded individuals,” and watching them play, I couldn’t help but think they found each other. “Goulash,” is the word for the band that Gravy used, a metaphor that could be easily applied to the transient Hampton Roads area; band members are a mixture of local musicians and transplants, and they work a wide variety of day jobs when not jamming at night.

Like the blending of our local, brackish waters and the diverse Hampton Roads population, The Muck Rakes, who are on a mission to “clean up bad music in general,” as Gravy said, truly embody the spirit of the Tidewater population. - Alt-Daily

The Muckrakes, one of the area's top alt-country bands, returns with an album that shows a group starting to stretch beyond its roots. "Grandiphonia" mostly documents a sound that the band has pushed beyond.... - Daily Press

"The Muckrakes stand tall and stomp strongly through weedy stagnant undergrowth with deftly articulated songs, lyrical stories wrought from heady memories, and true music-craft.Do yourself a solid; hit a Muckrakes show. Listen to them Live. Refresh your soul. Snap out of it. "--fan from MAGIC HAT
Murphy - Magic Ha - Magic Hat

I am happy to report that The Muckrakes are a great addition to the Hampton Roads Music Scene. Their rustic sounds shows that they have a bright future....

- Toggle Switch

I am happy to report that The Muckrakes are a great addition to the Hampton Roads Music Scene. Their rustic sounds shows that they have a bright future....

- Toggle Switch