Ladies and Gentlemen... The Smoking Popes

1/3/2014 -----Yesterday I spent nearly an hour talking to Josh Caterer. It was a magical moment for me. He was an awesome awesome gentlemen and he enlightened me in many ways.  He let me ask all of the questions I had and answered them all.  So this post is now completely re updated to show that. I added 2 more videos. Both  of which are great songs that I was able to talk to Josh about.  So please enjoy the redone. format. 

Smoking Popes

What do you get when you mix the hard pop punk edge of Green Day with the lyrical style of Robert Smith (of the Cure) and the voice of Bing Crosby?  You get the Smoking Popes- obviously; otherwise that question would be dumb to ask, given the title of this post.

Mrs. You and Me was the first Smoking Popes song that I ever heard.  It was on the soundtrack to the movie Angus.  If you remember my blog about the best soundtracks, then you remember the conversation. If not, go back and read it. (I don’t have the time to re hash it, plus I personally think that all of my blogs are great, here is a link to that specific blog {http://musicnotesfromthepast.blogspot.com/2013/11/best-soundtracks-ever.html} So if that didn’t make it easy enough for you then you have issues.)

So by the time I saw the movie and started showing interest in the Smoking Popes; they had already been around for 5 years, and would be breaking up in the next year.  But don’t worry, they are back together now, albeit with a new drummer; and they still sound as good, if not better than they ever have before.

In the beginning they were just three brothers. The Caterers: Matt was the oldest, Eli was the youngest, and the man with the golden voice Josh was in the middle. 

Of playing with his brother's Josh Caterer had this to say

                      "Being brothers made it easier because we started playing together  at a young age. We were able to develop a distinct style of playing together, a kind of musical identity very early.That helped with arranging music, we don't have to talk it to death. I can bring a song in and just play it  and they know what to do. I thought Capitol would have tried to use that and advertise 3 brothers in a band, but they never did.  It could have had a novelty appeal."


They formed a band together and called it Speedstick. They added drummer Dave Martens and soon after, Speedstick recorded a few songs, most notably, Brand New Hairstyle; which the Popes would later record. (This is a fantastic song that I get stuck in my head every time I get my hair cut.)

Soon after The band sort of changed styles, and names:  As Speedstick, they provided a little bit of a crunchier sound with a punk sort of feel; all whilst keeping your underarms fresh.  When they became Smoking Popes they got a little quieter with an indie folk pop vibe.  All whilst Still adding crunchy guitars and kick ass guitars when needed.

(For the record, at some point for a while Eli was not in the band, and is not noted as in the band for the first couple of EP’s, But I don’t know when he left, but it appears he came back in February of 92.  I am sorry I can’t find a real good History of the band, but while researching I did find this interesting article  http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/1762/in_the_habit_a_history_of_catholicism_and_tobacco.aspx#.Ur3JjPRDvAQ  )

Martens left the group, supposedly because he didn’t like the direction that the band was heading, and realistically, when you are in a band with a bunch of brothers, you probably get outvoted a lot. You can still hear him on tracks from the Inoculator EP. Check out Sandra, its hard beautiful, and is about Sandra Bernhard, and Ralph Nau.

Josh Caterer on how Sandra came about:

                    "This guy was a stalker and his main obsession was Olivia Newton John. He was from our area   in the northwest suburbs; so his picture made the front page of the local newspaper. His mugshot; and he looked like a total maniac in the picture. My brothers and I saw that and were amused by the crazy look in his eyes in the mugshot but it got us thinking about the concept of stalking.  I tried to get inside the mind of the stalker and thought that it would be funny to switch the object of that obsession over to a less likely candidate. It takes a very special kind of stalker to want to stalk Sandra Bernhard."








So while looking for a new drummer they ended up getting a cool dude by the name of Mike Felumlee; who is an awesome as hell drummer.  (If you can find a copy of the EP titled 2, listen to Under The Blanket, and not only is the song awesome, Felumlee’s drumming on that track is incredible.)

From 92- 94 the Smoking Popes would be one of the hardest working groups of dudes aspiring to be musicians recording EP’s of their own and adding music to compilations and split EP’s with other bands  and  in 1993 they released an incredible Debut LP titled Get Fired.

Right off the bat let’s talk about the coolness of the title. Think about the fact that Josh Caterer croons like he is the son of Sinatra; he then releases a 60’s sort of titled album which reads “the Smoking Popes get fired”.  I don’t know, if you can appreciate how cool that is.  I can tell you for a fact that every song on that album is incredible and if you want honesty, I considered it for my list of Greatest albums, but because, I didn’t hear it until years after its debut I decided to cut it. (Sorry Josh)   The songs on the album range from the short but loud Let Them Die, to the long epic brilliant masterpiece that is Days Just Wave Goodbye.  But my favorite from that album is Off My Mind

A year later they were opening for Green Day who were actual fans of the band and invited them because they realized how good the music on Get Fired was. (Insert mean comment about Green Day here)  As 94 went on The Smoking Popes released another album which was titled Born to Quit. (Sure not as stylistically cool as get fired, but still about losing a job in a way.)

Born to Quit garnered some attention and ended up helping the band get signed to Capitol Records.  Capitol would soon re-release the album and focus on introducing the band to a national audience.  Songs were issued as singles and Need You Around was featured on the soundtrack to Clueless. Which helped DJ’s to play the song sporadically (If you get the joke kudos!)  Another song was on the Tommy Boy soundtrack and of course Mrs. You and Me was part of the Angus soundtrack.

Need You Around was the only song by the popes to ever chart and Born To Quit was the only album to chart. It reached #37  on the Heatseekers Album chart  (The Heatseekers chart is like a chart for new and up and coming bands and has weird rules, nonetheless, it is awesome for any artist to be recognized by Billboard)

So now the band had National exposure, they were touring with Jimmy Eat World, and Goo Goo Dolls and Jawbreaker.  Hell they now had me as a fan and the world was alright. Sure none of my friends enjoyed it, but these were the same people that were not ready for Pinkerton the way I was.  Sadly my friends were influenced by Rock critics and Rolling Stone. This meant that the critics were not ready for the Popes either.   (Writing that sentence literally caused an anguished feeling begat from anger and sadness in the Smoking Popes honor.)

In 1997 the band released Destination failure (this time not about job loss but still negative) Holy Shit is this a fantastic album.  It was produced by Jerry Finn for Christ’s sake, how could it not be a success?  This was a very pop punk album, and lyrically was beautiful. This album contains most of my favorite smoking Popes songs.   Pretty Pathetic, Megan, Paul, Let’s Hear it for Love, No More Smiles….. Ok, maybe I should just stop before I list every song. 

So if you have never heard the song Pretty Pathetic, read Stages of a Relationship Through Music.  That song is so fantastic,It truly is my favorite Smoking Popes song, and means the world to me.

 Josh Caterer explains Pretty Pathetic:

                 "Yeah that one was pretty autobiographical, more so than a lot of our songs. That song was very straight up in its depiction of a horrible experience in my life. It was difficult to write. There was a period of a couple months that I was stuck on that song. It was just within me waiting to come out. I sensed that it would be deeply personal and emotionally epic but it would also push the boundaries of my songwriting.  I spent a couple months grasping at straws trying to find it. I even went on a couple of trips by myself where I got into my car and for days at a time I just went off and stayed in hotels by myself where I just sat there with a guitar and a notepad and tried to come up with this song."

                 "I had given up on the idea, and then one night as I was going to sleep this idea just emerged in  my mind. The whole evening where I was trying to get back together with Stefanie came back to me, so I just wrote out in prose like a journal entry, because I had no concept of what the music would be and the next day I just put it almost  word for word to music. That's why the song just basically has a 3 chord pattern and allows the melody to freestyle over the top of it.  So it comes across as a stream of consciousness sort of thing."

                 "Now I have had a ton of people tell me that that song encapsulates an almost identical experience that they have had.  Which I am glad to hear because it is encouraging for me to hear that that sort of thing happens to a lot of people, and I think it is encouraging for other people to discover that it is pretty universal."













Also  check this one out, this one is also on the album….

This was the beginning of the end, as that song is a reference to Josh Caterer’s newly begun turn to Christianity. (Which I want to point out in a weird way I have always looked at this as a good thing, albeit for selfish reasons that I will explain later, so please do not think that I am knocking religion or anything at all.)

Capitol Records didn’t believe that there were any singles on the record so they were a little unhappy.  I believe the band made the above video on their own and that and Before I’m Gone (which is another awesome-awesome song) were the only actual singles from the album. Mostly due to the band pushing them out. 

So the band sort of just slowly waned out of the public eye due to Capitol not doing much with or for the band.  Capitol even rejected the album they recorded in 1998 titled The Party’s Over. (Another sort of negative title). But Josh Caterer says  they made the album in an attempt to get out of their contract with Capitol.

                  "We had one more album that we were obligated to make with our contract to Capitol.  So we went in quickly recorded this album and submitted it to Capitol expecting that they weren't going  to be satisfied with it, and they weren't.     So they said we don't want to put this out so we said OK can we get out of our contract and they said yes. "


                   "We had recorded it on our own so they never owned the masters but they didn't hold onto     those after we gave them  to them. so we were able to release it on our own"

It was a cover album of some great songs ranging  from Burt Bacharach  songs to Broadway musicals, Willie Nelson, all just great lyrically inspiring music, that the Smoking Popes did in their own sort of way. And I will tell you something Capitol made a huge mistake in my opinion (The band would later release the album on Double Zero records, which was basically their own label.

Truthfully the album title was fitting as the party that was the Smoking Popes was over.  Josh Caterer has stated that the popes and his Christianity just didn’t gel together.

Josh Caterer on The smoking Popes break up:

                   “It was a drug related incident for me that kind of was the turning point to get me started on my   road to Jesus. I think we toured with Morrissey after that happened, and I was coming into this relationship with God through Jesus Christ and re assessing my values in life.  So I had this perspective about the fact that the goals that I had been striving for and Morrissey was the embodiment of the same goals that I was going for. But I noticed that he didn’t seem any happier or more fulfilled than I was. That’s just the universal truth that fame and success and money don’t really make you happy or answer any of the big questions in life.

                   “The break up ultimately was because of my conversion to Christianity. I would put it all under that heading. That’s something that happened in May of 1998 I put my faith in Christ and tried  to incorporate my faith into what the Popes were doing.  I would give these mini-testimonies and then play I know That You Love Me acoustically and that’s how I closed out the set. After about 6 months I felt like that wasn’t being received well. I felt that instead of not doing those testimonies I needed to quit the band and focus completely on my relationship to Christ, so I announced that in January of 99."

The end of the 90’s saw nothing new from the Smoking Popes, and Caterer became more and more involved with his church activities and he became involved with the group World Relief.  I even think that he put out a short EP of Christian music in early 2000, but don’t quote me on that.

Then in 2001, it happened.  No the Smoking Popes didn’t get back together, but they kind of did, Josh Caterer and Mike Felumlee and a rotating cast of 3^rd men including Eli Caterer,  recorded and performed as a group called Duvall.  

 Caterer reflected on Duvall coming together-

                   "This was back in the day when people actually wrote letters. I had a PO Box and at that time I was just playing in my church in Chicago.  I would get these letters from other Christians that would ask me to talk to their friends about Jesus, because their friends wouldn't necessarily listen to them, but they might listen to me. I got alot of these letters and thought it could be a good thing to come out of hiding and play music again." 

Want to know the coolest part.   I saw what I believe was their first major concert.   They opened for Tenacious D and Weezer in Madison, and I was in the front row.  I was like 15 feet from Josh Caterer and it was amazing.  I will tell you this; I don’t remember their set at all.  I think they did a few popes songs but I could be wrong.  I clearly remember loving every minute of it.  

Josh Caterer on playing that concert

                      "Can you believe that we were even on that bill? That was a last minute thing for us. The Popes had played with weezer in the past, and we had met a couple of those guys. Rivers actually came and saw us in Minneapolis one tiime, so he was kind of a fan of ours.  But he had to settle for this new version of the Popes called Duvall. But looking back at it now it seems funny that a Christian Rock band would open for Tenacious D." 

 I thought I bought their EP there, but I can't confirm where I actually bought it. . But I do have it it was a split EP with the band Seville. Each band has 4 songs on the CD and it is very worth the listen . 

Either way Duvall made a full CD called Volume and Density and it was a killer CD a little slower than Popes music but still as good and still very true to the heart. Caterer’s lyrics have never been crappy or cliché, always on the sleeve and great.  The Cd even had a cover of True by Spandau Ballet on it.  You can’t go wrong there.  But being a Wisconsin boy I always liked the song Racine.

That alone was enough to keep me happy for a while, even though they never made another album. I at least had some music to enjoy for a while and had finally seen Josh Caterer sing live.  (To this date, that glorious day in Madison has been the first and only time that I ever got to see Josh Caterer live.)

Josh Caterer thinks that Duvall never took off because of what it really was.

               "The idea was for Duvall to be a Christian version of the Smoking Popes, but we were on the fence of being in the general market and the Christian music market, but we were too much in the middle of those things to really succeed in either market."

But then it happened.  Yes in 2005 the Smoking Popes came back.

Josh Caterer sees it like this

                "After a few years of Duvall, I felt ready to do the Popes again, Now that I had been in the same clubs that the Popes had played and gotten back into the swing of being in a rock band, I had gotten over my issues of Rock music itself that made me renounce it and walk away from it."



 They got a new drummer but hell it was still the Smoking Popes.  They announced a show at The Metro and sold out the show in a little over a half an hour.  I was raising a 10 month old, and wanted to go really badly but it just didn’t fit in to my schedule, but lucky for me they recorded the show, and the dvd is spectacular. 

Then the Popes started hanging out with another band I loved, Bayside.   They even went on a tour together with, another new drummer. And they started to play new songs and in 2008 they got another new drummer and more importantly released Stay Down; their first new album in like 10 years.

Stay Down (still sorta negative) is killer and it picks up literally, I mean literally right where they left off they rock hard they pull at your heart strings, they tell of love, they sing of life, and they added a lot of cool harmonies.  Welcome to Janesville is a great song and Wisconsin based too.  Grab Your Heart and Run could have been on Born To Quit.  It’s just a great album.  Caterer’s voice hasn’t changed a bit.  And check this out.

So the band is back in full swing, touring and playing Lollapalooza and Riot Fest and has released another album called This is Only A test( Not quite as negative, but seems less serious)  This is only a Test is a little louder than previous releases, but it is fun as hell. 

The album is a concept album whereby in which Josh takes on the persona of a Teenage boy, It is actually a really cool idea, and It made me feel young as hell again.  There are some experimental sorts of songs that are awesome, and a little different than anything the popes have done.  Excuse Me Coach is hilarious, Punk Band is fun, and about rocking Honestly every song is good.   But College actually pulls at my personal Heart strings and still brings a tear to my eye.

The band recorded a session for Complete Control sessions by SideOne Dummy records and it is awesome as hell.  2 songs I have not heard and sick new versions of Grab Your Heart and Run and Writing A Letter.  I am not going to lie- Writing a Letter sounds better than the original.  They also did this song….

The Smoking Popes are currently getting ready for their New Year’s Eve performance with Jimmy Eat World at House of Blues in Chicago.  If you are in the area and have the cash I say check it out. I sadly will not be attending but I wish I could. (If anyone wants to get me a late Christmas present, some tickets and a place to stay in Chicago for New Year’s would be an incredible gift) but check it out you can find more info----here.

So that is the history of the Smoking Popes as to the best of my knowledge, now I want to say a few things about them. 

The Smoking Popes music has never changed; it has always been true to itself and to its fans. Unlike weezer, I have never waited for them to make an album “like they used to.”  Sure they experimented on This is Only A Test but that was good, and from the point of view similar to most of their music.

All of their album titles as I noted, had a somewhat negative connotation to them, and I always thought that was a hilarious tongue in cheek gesture, I never knew if it was a stab at themselves or at the music industry, but I always like it. I await for their next album and who knows what it will be called, but it will probably have some self deprecating humor involved.   

And so another thing that I need to go back and discuss the fact I never faulted Caterer for finding spirituality. I think spirituality is a good thing and I was once a very Catholic boy, and just as I was falling out of love with God; Josh Caterer was finding him, and maybe it did lead to the initial breakup of the band, but really it was a hiatus. 

I think that had they not gone on hiatus, they would have hit the big time.  But in a bad way.  Honestly. I mean they were signed to Capitol Records; one of the greatest labels of all time.  They were touring and befriending bands that were heading to the top. 

They are a great band, and in my opinion in the early 2000’s their music would have been the backbone of the pseudo emo era. Many bands of that era list the Smoking Popes as influences.  But they stayed quiet until late 2005, and at that point that scene had died out, most bands of that era being obscure and forgotten.

So I am glad that that didn’t happen to the Popes.  When weezer put out the song Beverly Hills, it was a fly by night success and soon the concerts that I loved to go to were overrun by 12 year old girls and their aged parents doing Sudoku in their seats.  

That never happened to the Smoking Popes, and that means a lot to me.  So for that I am so so happy.  The Smoking Popes came back when they needed to and they were still “mine”

But now I share them with you, I hope you love them the way that I do. I hope you try to live out their songs the way I have. I hope you connect to them and I truly hope you find them in your heart and look them up and let them become a part of your life.

If you are looking to get more Josh Caterer in your life. You can find him every Saturday at the Village Church of Barrington.  As far as the Popes he says they only play when asked and aren't really touring at the moment. So if you really want to see the Popes, invent a festival, I will help you promote and we can invite them. Also you can read more of Caterer's thoughts on his website. 

I hope their music makes you want to Do Something, makes you want to scream makes you want to throw stuff around.


  Do Something