In MKE Music Rewind we revisit notable Milwaukee music that was released before Milwaukee Record became a thing in April 2014. In this installment: John The Savage’s self-titled 2012 album.
There are certain Milwaukee bands who possess the uncanny ability to transport listeners to another place and time. For me, John The Savage is absolutely one of those bands. Within nanoseconds of hearing a song—literally any song—by the genre-melding sextuplet, I’m suddenly whisked away to the back room at Frank’s Power Plant, the upstairs of G-Daddy’s BBC, or Mad Planet before it exclusively hosted dance parties.
I’m drinking a Louie’s Demise, a Lakefront White, or maybe giving the newly rebranded Schlitz another try before reverting back to High Life because bottles are $3 tops. People are smoking inside and I hate it. If I didn’t score a ride or appoint myself the designated driver, I’ll try to get a taxi home after the show, which will ultimately fall through and leave me to sober up at Midwest Diner or Ma Fischer’s. It’s any weekend in the late aughts or the early 2010s and John The Savage is the soundtrack.
While John The Savage was a touchstone of a very specific time in Milwaukee music, I honestly think they could’ve existed and thrived locally at any point in the last 40-plus years. Had they been around 20 years before their heyday, they could’ve easily shared a bill with Wild Kingdom. If the band started today, they might even be considered a grimier Midwest complement to Geese. With a catchall “indie rock” foundation, John The Savage ably integrated elements of psych, punk, and even dashes of classical-tinged and spaghetti Western-inspired instrumentation to forge something wholly original and altogether special.
In 2007, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Michael Skorcz enlisted musically inclined roommates and other friends in the local scene to join him on a new and decidedly different aural adventure. The following year, John The Savage’s debut album, Kitchen Voodoo, was released. Between the impressive cast of members, the eclectic range of influences and sounds they employed, and the feeling of controlled chaos that permeated their live performances, word spread and John The Savage quickly ascended to local music ladder.
Apart from some brief and sporadic touring, this incomparable outfit primarily existed as not-so-well-kept secret amongst Milwaukeeans. There were some notable local support slots—opening for the likes of Electric Six, Cursive, and Detroit Cobras—through the years, but beyond that small handful of quasi-significant opportunities, John The Savage existed and flourished in the back rooms of bars and on two-foot-tall stages of small Milwaukee clubs playing to a few dozen captivated souls who were fortunate enough to recognize what they were watching.
Talk to Milwaukee music fans of a certain age for long enough and John The Savage is bound to come up at some point. Bands come and go, but projects composed of 20-somethings accenting abrasively art-y indie rock with accordion, cello, synth, piano, upright bass, trumpet, and auxiliary percussion—all executed with beyond-their-years musicianship—have a way of sticking with you. Skorcz’s ability to build and topple worlds in a span of three to eight minutes with dark-yet-poignant lyricism and a harsh, emotive howl that landed somewhere in the valley sitting between Tom Waits and Mike Patton has a way of sticking with you.
As different as John The Savage was, their end was similar to that of many of its contemporaries. Members embarked on other projects, including Skorcz, who toured with a later officially joined Jaill. Live outings dwindled, production slowed, and other aspects of individual members’ lives got in the way. The writing was on the wall. As Skorcz told Journal Sentinel‘s Piet Levy in the days leading up to the band’s conclusion, “If we couldn’t really give it our all, I wouldn’t really want to do it at all.”
In 2012, mere weeks before calling it quits, the band released its second, final, and all-around greatest album. The self-titled John The Savage was the product of four years worth of writing, live workshopping, and recording. It’s also the only release in which all members had a major hand in the songwriting process. The time, attention, and collaboration are all apparent throughout the nine-track, 50-minute effort. I’ve said it all before; it covers so much sonic terrain of a glorious, at times garish world the band carefully constructed and set to tremendous music. At the risk of oversimplifying things, it’s just awesome.
If you weren’t there in to see it at the time, rest assured that John The Savage (and especially its self-titled swan song, John The Savage) still absolutely holds up. It might not be able to transport you back to Milwaukee circa 2010, but it’s worth a shot. Even if it doesn’t, you’ll be enjoying an exceptional album from an irreplaceable band in local music.
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