Unveiling the curtans

Beef Curtans were formed by Kent Pendarvis (King Dick) and Perry Fulfs (Lank Badly) around 1991 or so. The 2 employed the 4 chords they knew and a footstool for the drums. They moved about the “open mic” scene slowly gaining a fan base. The two recorded a very lo-fi recording called Am I Your Clown? featuring the hit single – Domestic Violence - a song that gained and lost equal amounts of supporters.

A short while later they decided to enter the Big Red Rock O’ Rama in Lincoln, NE and for this petitioned Mark Wolford (Groovus Du) to join in as the drummer. Much to their chagrin, the band didn’t do half bad. A single judge summed it up “This band does not follow the norm and it is great to hear and see a group not putting rock n’ roll into a nice little box.” Thank you lady.

A short while later, the group was approached by Brad Dienstbier (D-evil Lovespear) who was interested in coming into the fold. Problem one, the band needed a bass player and he was a guitarist. D-evil said, no worries, I’ll just go procure a bass stat. Soon after they were gigging around Omaha, leaving the “open mic” nights behind and playing venues such as Kilgores, Howard St. and McFarlands.

They had a handful of songs to record and were lucky enough to have Mark’s brother as a recording engineer – with one caveat, he was in Oregon. Bill indicated that if the group could make it out West he could record the songs for $500 bucks. Done. A short time later, basically the only “real” album (well, cassette) was out, Brethren.

Gaining a bit more thrust they gigged quite often and sometimes pulling 2 nighters at Sharkey’s (and also permanently scaring the ceiling with pyrotechnics gone awry = Steve’s Flashpots, Inc.), some festivals such as Sharkfest and Floodfest, and seemed to being moving along quite nicely. Circa '93 or '94 the guys somehow gained the “6th Curtan”, Jim as the defacto sound guy, engineer and guitar smashing clown.

Well in no short order, as most band stories go, Mark felt he needed to move on and moved out to Seattle to see what that town held for him (zero). Enter Quinn Sikora (Clint Fuckworth) as the new skins man & human metrognome. With a new line-up, the guys holed up and started writing quite a few new songs and expanding the music out a bit beyond the 3 chord acoustic genre and not always for the better. They plugged in and plugged along and kept up with gigging for a short while. Once again, as band stories go, Perry was soon to have a son, a general malaise set in and the band fixed to call it a day.

Mind you, this is not a sad tale! The BC kept coming back every once in a great while to play a gig, birthday party and to do a bit of recording here and there with Jim at the board. Each member went out to do their own ouvre: Brad - Echo Farm, Rainravens, Me2 and GTG / Mark – Honky Meters, Hickey and Skywheel / Kent – Six Speed Universe, Masses of 7, and Drop / Perry – Bad Luck Charm and Freedirt / Quinn – Violet Ride and Echo Farm.

But as luck would have it (and support of great group of Omaha folks), no one has ever gotten over the Beef Curtan jones. So, when asked to play in Omaha one more time – how could the guys turn this opportunity down?

Random Fact:

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