The name might suggest some kind of internal struggle, but Battleme tries to keep things intuitive, says bandleader Matt Drenik. “Other people have these interpretations of the name: ‘Are you trying to battle yourself with your pop songs and your loud songs?’“ Drenik jokes from his home in Portland, Ore. “I’m like, ‘Not really. I don’t know what I’m doing.’” When listening to Battleme’s latest, Future Runs Magnetic (El Camino Media), the idea that Drenik doesn’t know what he’s doing sounds far-fetched, with his bedroom-pop sensibilities somehow finding common ground with the record’s brasher rock songs. But the first Battleme tracks were very different. While still a member of Austin stoner-rock band Lions, Drenik recorded some country/folk songs under the Battleme moniker for Sons Of Anarchy. Drenik will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand-new feature on him.
Drenik: Every once in a while a town pops up on everybody’s radar. “Oh! You gotta go! Check it out … It’s really like nothing else!” And usually when those types of sentiments come up, I automatically turn skeptical. At this point, it’s just reactionary. Maybe my age is starting to jade my personality. Cynic? So 12 years into my stint in Austin, my wife talked me into going to Marfa with her.
“There’s this place where you can rent Airstreams. El Cosmico.”
So we packed up the car and trekked eight hours into the deep nothing of western Texas until we hit the tiny spec of a town called Marfa. I’m talking about one traffic light with a few turns and a lonely looking courthouse. Donald Judd practically bought the town in the ’60s so he could turn it into a personal showroom. Then he died, and the rest of the world took notice.
We kept on for a quarter of a mile until we hit a cluster of Airstreams surrounded by a mass of open desert and mountains off in the distance. El Cosmico.
There’s something magical about sitting outside on a make-shift deck jetting off an old trailer with a glass of wine, peering up into a sky filled with so many stars it looks like the moon’s guts exploded and left you with a million presents to stare at.
“Look how big this is!” I pointed up.
The local radio station was playing a Townes Van Zandt song. I got up and danced around in a circle. I was barefoot, half-drunk in an Airstream near the edge of Mexico.
“I could do this,” I said. “I could check out here.”
Something about that sky made you forget where you came from. Maybe that’s what Donald Judd saw before anyone else.
And I figured this was it. In the middle of the desert. Townes playing just for us.
“You’re just a sucker for romance.” my wife said as we stared up into oblivion.
