The Krueger Family Picnic

Headed by Bryan Leckie from his home-base in Owen Sound, Ontario, The Krueger Band weaves a unique blend of politics, prose and a gritty blues sound. The review below was written by Russell D. Brown (Pholk-Syke Records Detroit, Michigan) when The Krueger Family Picnic was first released in 2000.

However, it was the lyrical approach that really caught my ear. The poetry Leckie uses to describe the assassination of JFK back in 1963 speaks volumes in “To Kill Us All”:

The time travellers crowded into Dealy Plaza
You could hardly move
There were Rubys and Oswalds everywhere
Sifting through the crowd like threadbare shills
William Greer gripped the wheel a little tighter
As the limosine turned the corner
And slowly rolled into the Valley of Death
They watched Jack smile and wave for the last time
Zapruder’s camera quietly purred
As the umbrella opened and closed
Fingers squeezed triggers
And shots spliced the air into silent seconds
“My God, they’re going to kill us all”
Frame by frame by frame …. he fell
Until the final jolting thud that still sickened them
Even after all these years
The shooters vanished into the screaming and the smoke
And the cars finally glided beneath the underpass
Like old buffet tables.
The travellers gathered quietly
At the co-ordinates visibly shaken.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Good night Walter. Good night Dan.
Signing off from Disneyland.

Track Listing:

1) Not My Romeo
2) Mad Dog Blues #2
3) Wolfman Confessions
4) Highway Hotel
5) Elvis Appears on the Ed Sullivan Show
6) Until the World Explodes
7) Big Bo Bang
8) The Cow Said Moo
9) Charles Bronson Walks His Dog through the Streets of Paris
10) Time Travellers (A Mandlebrot Set)
11) American Movies Now Playing:
Screen #1: To Kill Us All
Screen #2: Hamlet’s Revenge
Screen #3: Vargas Moon
Screen #4: Spanking Veronica
Screen #5: Being Vincent Price
Screen #6: My Dinner With Krueger
Screen #7: The Man Who Never Was

The Krueger Family Picnic: The Critics Raved

A great many songwriters see the world through rose-colored glasses. Bryan Leckie is not one of those songwriters. Bryan Leckie sees the world as though it were reflected in a funhouse mirror.

His latest CD, made in collaboration with his superlative group of rag-tag irregulars, the Krueger Band, continues the trend he’s been following for the past few years. Where he once seemed content to put his own stamp on the writings of his influences, his music has evolved into something increasingly complex. Where others might have been satisfied with being labeled simply as folk-music revisionists, Leckie has taken what has gone before and expanded it. Undoubtedly, old-school folkies (this reviewer included) will revel in the fact that passionate, intelligent music in the spirit of the old Greenwich Village folk scene is still being made. However, potential audiences should make no mistake. The folksy core of the band’s efforts is wrapped in pure rock and roll.

Influences are plenty. The verbosity of Bob Dylan, the passionate concern of Phil Ochs, the insistence of The Fugs, all of these have been filtered through the medium of Leckie’s raspy vocal style. So what keeps this music from being mere homage? Simply put, Leckie is a writer for the new millennium. Whereas the music of those 1960’s heroes reflected a black-and-white world, where ideas of “Us” and “Them”, “Good” and “Bad” were clearly delineated, Leckie’s palette reflects a million shades of gray. He paints a portrait of a confused and alienated world. One minute, the enemy is hiding in plain sight in Dealy Plaza, the next, he’s a subway vigilante, the next, perhaps he never was at all. It’s hard to know who to trust or where to turn. The universe collapsed and sank, and the cow said, “Moo”.

Leckie takes great delight in making the familiar unfamiliar. The old institutions still exist, but in strange, misshapen forms. Heartbroken damsels may still wish that their suitors would deny thy father and refuse thy name, but that’s not my Romeo; that’s not my Juliet, and as far as Verona’s concerned, in Leckie’s hands, a town hasn’t been so utterly transformed since George Bailey plunged from the bridge. But who could blame him? In a world where a post-apocalyptic Disneyland defines family fun, even Clarence might rethink the prospect of earning those wings.

There has always been both a lyrical and a structural complexity to Leckie’s writings, with many of them functioning as prose (as much as poetry) set to music, but more and more, the able Krueger Band has conjured up a musical intensity to match Bryan’s words and concepts. From the insistent opening notes of Larry Dickinson’s bass to the final pulsebeat from the rotors of black helicopters 72 minutes later, the potent mix of woodwinds, horns, harmonicas, and guitars accomplish the one thing the sixties folkies couldn’t: the audience is just as likely to dance as it is to think.

Like another great Canadian songwriter before him, Band frontman Robbie Robertson, Leckie has the advantage of writing about the dominant culture as an observer. When Bryan sings in the chorus of the album’s opus, “I love American Movies / Bang, bang, bang, bang”, one gets the sense that the word “movies” could well be interchangeable with the word “culture”. Does this make him anti-American? Certainly not! But it does make him the victim of the same sped-up, fed-up, indifferent, apathetic world as the rest of us. In the final analysis, the funhouse mirror may be nothing more than the reflection in everyone’s eyes. If Bryan Leckie sings, it is only because he seems to have tapped into the collective subconscious. He has seen the enemy, and we, the whole round world of us, are they.