Given MAGNET’s detailed coverage of the end of the Mendoza Line—a beloved, ragtag countrypolitan bar band that went up in flames in 2007—it only seems fitting that we have plenty of access to the formation of the Jescos, the new group featuring the Mendoza Line’s Timothy Bracy and Wooden Wand’s James Jackson Toth, as well as Bracy’s wife, singer Elizabeth Nelson. Bracy has found his rambling pub-rock foil in Toth on the forthcoming Remembrance Of Things Trashed, a debut album that guts it out for rock ‘n’ roll glory. Read our Q&A with Toth and Bracy.
Timothy Bracy (And Elizabeth Nelson): The overarching point of this book is to address the culture wars between fundamentalist Christians and bleeding-heart liberals that pretty much threaten and plague our nation. Tom Perrotta’s real gift is his ability to conjure what is so dull and disappointing about the human condition and to demonstrate how most people do not, regardless of political or existential philosophy, ever really change. He makes a world mostly bereft of hope deeply amusing, laying bare our faults by marshaling the details of an existence so familiar to limn the tensions within the white, middle-class American experience.
