FIREWATER: The Backstory

Formed in 1995 by Tod A, Firewater emerged from New York City’s underground rock scene with an ambitious idea: take the energy of punk rock and crossbreed it with music from around the world. Tod A had been the bassist, vocalist and primary songwriter of the influential noise-rock band Cop Shoot Cop. But Firewater allowed him the creative freedom to explore klezmer, gypsy music, ska, jazz, cabaret, folk and a host of other traditions. The results were what some would later call ‘world punk.’

Their 1996 debut, Get Off the Cross, We Need the Wood for the Fire was followed by The Ponzi Scheme in 1998, a more finely tuned sophomore effort. Tod A envisioned Firewater as more of a musical collective than a conventional rock band. Those early recordings brought together musicians from across the alternative diaspora, including Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, Yuval Gabay of Soul Coughing, Jennifer Charles of Elysian Fields, and Hahn Rowe of Hugo Largo.

But what truly made Firewater unique was not the disparate genres the band embraced, but how they formed them into a new and cohesive sound. Eastern European melodies, Indian ragas, accordion and saxophone melded with distorted guitars, jagged, punky rhythms and Tod A’s sardonic lyrics. The music was at once dark and danceable. Tod A described Firewater as "a wedding band gone wrong.” As one critic put it, Firewater sounded "like a funeral procession that learned how to swing.”

The band continued to evolve through Psychopharmacology (2001) and The Man on the Burning Tightrope (2003). 2004's Songs We Should Have Written found the band reinterpreting songs by diverse artists including Johnny Cash, the Rolling Stones, Robyn Hitchcock, and Sonny & Cher, transforming familiar material through their irreverent musical vocabulary. Touring doggedly for nearly a decade, Firewater earned a devoted following on the European festival circuit and among American college-radio audiences.

In 2007 Tod A travelled though India, Pakistan, Thailand and Indonesia. The Golden Hour, released in 2008 was recorded with musicians encountered along the way, as well as with longtime collaborators, further expanding Firewater’s sonic palette. Travel had become part of the creative process. A critic summarized the shift as “less Brooklyn basement, more global back alley.” The band returned in 2012 with International Orange, continuing its mixture of punk, global rhythms, and politically infused lyrics. One review described it as “music for dancing while the world burns …”

Long before bands like Gogol Bordello found success melding genres, Firewater made musical cross-collaboration its modus operandi. Through its rotating cast of co-conspirators, Tod A built Firewater into a musical experiment, voraciously curious and constantly crossing borders.