 by ROB VAN ALSTYNE
PHOTOS COURTESY OF UNDERTOW MUSIC
Although located less than 40 miles from the Nashville glitz and glamour show, Joey Kneiser’s life in the decidedly more hardscrabble town of Murfreesboro, Tenn., bears little resemblance to the exploits of Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw. For What I Don’t Become, the chronicle of hard-luck Southern life delivered by his band Glossary, might as well be from a different universe entirely.
 “Rock
music has sort of moved away from a having real connection to the South,”
says Kneiser, singer/guitarist for the six-piece group which comes off as a
potent fusion of deep-fried country and bristling indie rock, à la Lucero
and Slobberbone. “Rock music doesn’t have to apologize for anything;
it has no conscience. The rock ‘n’ roll singer goes out and gets
drunk and flips everyone off and doesn’t care. The country singer goes
and gets good and drunk too, but then he goes home and feels guilty about it.
I think I relate a little more to that.”
As reflected through its great artists, the American South has always been a
deeply conflicted place where the sacred and profane inextricably meld. It’s
a tradition Glossary uphold on record, spinning tales of characters with “one
foot in heaven and a dirty mouth” and creating a lyrical world driven
by spiritual themes of redemption, hope and selflessness. As Kneiser explains,
even though he isn’t overtly religious, life in Tennessee is going to
be informed by Christianity whether you like it or not. 82 percent of the state
self-identifies as practicing Christians.
 “I
go into work and am a couple of feet away from people that are very religiously
conservative,” explains Kneiser, “people who firmly believe that
we are on the verge of the end times. Having to deal with that up close a lot
of the time is a constant challenge—it pushes the way you think and it’s
not something you can just ignore. Right now there’s a lot of this new
pop-fundamentalist-patriotic-Christianity out there. I see that and it makes
me think about the other ideas Christianity has to offer; the very liberal Jesus
who’s all about helping your neighbor, the idea of second chances. So
I realize that even though I think of myself as in some ways opposed to the
dominant Christian culture here, a lot of the songs I write are still really
struggling with what Christianity means.”
The soundtrack to Kneiser’s struggle is varied and engaging, deftly encompassing
both raucously charged testaments to life near the poverty line in “Poor
Boy,” and pedal steel-led mid-tempo meditations on mortality in “Headstones
and Dead Leaves.” There’s a coherence and unity to the album’s
vision that can at least partially be attributed to Kneiser’s unusual
songwriting methods. “I just viewed it all as one giant piece of music,”
says Kneiser. “I wrote all the songs at the same time, in bits and pieces.
I had finished one song, ‘Days Go By,’ and I just realized that
it was too dense, that I could really make a whole record just out of the themes
in that one song. I just kind of ended up modeling the album around it, having
all of the songs inform one another as they were being written. They all came
back to the title of the record, which is really about trying to figure out
who you are by knowing what you don’t want to be.”
 Although
Kneiser’s cracked keening pseudo-twang instantly recalls Westerberg in
his “Aching to Be” mode, what truly makes Glossary acolytes of the
‘Mats school of hard knocks are Kneiser’s lyrics, all centered around
big-hearted cock-eyed optimism in the face of long odds. Like the songs on its
predecessor, 2003’s outstanding How We Handle Our Midnights, the
10 tracks that make up For What I Don’t Become are long on passion
and short on artifice, straightforward chronicles of perseverance and loyalty
amidst workaday people. This may sound incredibly cheesy on paper, but when
delivered with the kind of authentic grit rustled up by Kneiser’s simpatico
backing band—guitarists Todd Beene and Greg Jacks, drummer J.D. Reager,
bassist Bingham Barnes and marital/harmony vocal partner Kelly Kneiser—it
just feels life-affirming.
“I used to write songs and worry about what indie rock kids thought about
it,” admits Kneiser, 31, whose band began life a decade ago in a very
different form as a more overtly college rock act featuring two other singer/songwriters
who left the group in 2001. “I don’t care about that anymore. What
really matters is, how do you reach out to people, any people? Not just middle
class white kids who already know what records are cool. I try to write things
that are very human and simple that everyone can relate to. The music I really
love, I think it can help you live your life. It can connect that strongly.
It’s so easy to overcomplicate music. I just try to keep it simple and
make it matter.” ||
Glossary perform on Thursday, August 10th at the 400 Bar with TBA. 9 p.m.
$5 adv/ $7 door. 21+. 400 Cedar Ave. S., Mpls. 612-332-2903. For more information
on Glossary check out their official website at glossary.us.
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