A new book by two Wichita State University English professors traces the origins and evolution of postpunk in Kansas, from the days of The Embarrassment and Bampots to latter-day acts like Vitreous Humor and Kill Whitey.
Darren DeFrain and Francis X. Connor authored “No Choice But Action: The Kansas Postpunk Revolution,” published by the University of Kansas Press.
The book features scores of stories and recollections about the people, venues, and songs that populated scenes in Wichita and Lawrence, as well as Manhattan, Valley Center, Shawnee Mission, and Topeka.
Given that many of the bands featured in the book had recorded for small local and regional labels — or perhaps only issued their music on cassettes that were circulated among fans — it seems appropriate that a two-LP vinyl set accompanies the release. Titled “No Choice But Action: Kansas Postpunk 1978-1994,” the collection was made possible in part by a grant from WSU, with digital mastering occurring at Shocker Studios, Wichita State, and Midtopia by Lucas Gill.
Released on the Black Site label, the record features 24 songs from a wide range of acts, including Blivets, Get Smart!, Zoom, and The Buckthrusters, serving as a potent primer of the music Connor and DeFrain write about.
There are two events planned to celebrate the release of the book and LP. The first is at Barleycorn’s in Wichita on Friday, with performances by the Blivets (reunited for the first time in over a decade), The Embarrasmen (a reconfiguration of The Embarrassment, led by that band’s guitarist Bill Goffrier), and Kansas native Freedy Johnston and the Heidi Gluck Band.
The second takes place Saturday at The Bottleneck in Lawrence and will feature performances by Get Smart!, The Embarrasmen, Truck Stop Love, and Other Geese.
DeFrain and Connor recently discussed both the book at the LP.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What was the genesis of this book?
Darren DeFrain: [Fran] and I had this shared interest in these bands, and there wasn’t a lot out there on them. We write about a lot of bands. Not all of them are at the same level, necessarily, but the ones that really produced some good and what I consider lasting music, there wasn’t a lot written about them. It became a matter of, “Why not?” We put the book proposal together and put it out there. I think we’d initially talked about [different publishers] that specialize in these kinds of books. It just so happened that KU Press was visiting campus, and I struck up a conversation with the editor, who said, “That sounds interesting. Send us your pitch.” It seemed like a good fit with the publisher and the subject matter, even though it’s not typically something that they handle.
I’m guessing that there was a lot of discussion about who you would cover in the book. How fraught with anxiety and tension was that process? [Laughs.]
DeFrain: I wouldn’t say that there was tension, but I would definitely say there was some anxiety, in that I thought, “Let’s cover everybody. If they did anything, let’s put it in the book.” So we ended up with 900 pages in the book initially. The press said, “No, it needs to be much more focused than that.” That was helpful for us. The editing process was saying, “We’re going to have to winnow this down.” The other thing that was helpful was that we kept the boundary Kansas. There was a lot going on in Kansas City, and I’ve already heard from some people there, saying, “Why aren’t we covered here?” and I have to say, “It’s in the title.” There were decisions like that that kind of took care of themselves.
Francis Connor: The way I did it was kind of like old-school record collecting. I’ve always been the sort of person who, if there’s a band that I like and they’re on an indie record label, [I want to know] what else is on that label, and I trace things that way. For this, I would start seeing [Lawrence independent label] Fresh Sounds [Records] or seeing a recording that [Wichita musician and engineer John Salem] worked on. From that you would get these little family trees. Fresh Sounds takes you to The Micronotz [AKA The Mortal Micronotz], The Embarrassment, and Get Smart! All the Lawrence guys. John Salem gets you some of the Wichita guys.
Once you get to The Embarrassment then you get to The Buckthrusters. So it is kind of like a family tree structure. You find names and follow the names. One of the first things that we did was get all of the bands that we found and made a spreadsheet and a timeline of all of those groups. But of course as we went along, we found other people as well. [It also helped to talk to people], part of it is an outgrowth of how I’ve always listened to music and how I’ve always found music, by looking for names of musicians and producers and record labels.
You have to reach out to bands, and maybe there are some people who aren’t easy to reach or others who have passed on. Tell me about that process.
DeFrain: Fortunately, most of these bands are my age and older, so they’re on Facebook. I was able to reach out to people that way. Once you reach out to someone who was in the band or related to the band, they say, “Oh, I’m still in touch with so-and-so.’ That’s one of the wonderful things about a scene. People maintain those friendships over a lifetime. Honestly, there were maybe two people who I really wanted to speak with who just said, “Nope, that’s a phase of my life I don’t want to go back to,” for whatever reason. I respected that and worked around those folks. Everyone else was really happy to talk, and they had a lot of great stories, stuff that I wish we could have found ways to keep in the book or work into the book. That was the thing: We did not want to write any kind of salacious book. Some of those stories definitely came up, but it was more about the scene and what established the scene and the stories of the bands.
There’s also this double vinyl release that accompanies the book. Was that always in the works?
DeFrain: That was later on. I was able to get an internal grant. Maybe that was my “Why-not-ism” getting a little out of hand. I applied for an internal grant, and I was honestly very surprised that WSU granted it, because the next step was getting all of the legal stuff sorted out. There was a lot of stuff for someone who [knew little about the process]. I know a little bit about record producing now. Prior to this I knew nothing, and it showed. But fortunately I was able to connect with Sean Saling at Black Site Records up in Kansas City, and Sean was amazing, and he was all there for it. He’s sunk some of his own money into this up front, and he’s been promoting the heck out of it, and he’s taken a pretty active hand in making sure that it came together really well.
Connor: Once we had our first monster draft of the manuscript, I think Darren got some money together, and I think it kind of started in earnest there. So it’s an obvious next move, too, because one of the problems with this book is that we’re really writing a lot of words about bands who are, at least when we started, not easy to find. Some of them are on Bandcamp now, but when we first started, Get Smart!’s catalog was nowhere, a lot of The Embarrassment was really out of print and the Micronotz were out of print. That’s changed a bit now [but a lot of that music was hard to find], so putting the vinyl together [changes some of that].
The vinyl was really Darren’s baby, and he did an excellent job of wrangling people together to do that. I think we chose songs very well on it, (songs) that represented the bands that we talked about.
