One Sturdy Garage: Old Haunts and Their Dirty Punk

"IT'S STILL EXCITING, getting a chance to play every night," says Craig Extine, singer-songwriter for Olympia rock trio the Old Haunts. Of course, he's saying this on the phone from beachside San Pedro, Calif., reveling in his escape from the cold rain back home and having rocked a set the night before with former Minutemen bassist Mike Watt's new band, the Missingmen, in Watt's hometown.

"We're excited about a lot of the bands we're playing with on this tour," Extine says. "We like playing shows we would want to go to ourselves." On the road again to support their third full-length release, "Poisonous Times," the band is more or less scheduled to play every night for the next two months without a break. "It's a punk tradition, says Extine. "Touring is work, though — it's a risk every time."

The way he sees it, "the natural life span of a band is probably about a year or two." That's funny, because the Old Haunts are going on year seven. Despite a slew of lineup changes over the years, the band is still going strong with a new grrrl on drums, Toby Vail, late of Bikini Kill.

She joined the band recently after previous drummer Curtis James left to open a tattoo shop.

The core of the group, Extine and bassist Scott Seckington, impressively interweave sinuous string melodies in a garage-punk style that yields some great, rocking tunes. The trio's bare-bones ballads aren't bad either.

"We talk about things a lot less now," Extine says of his and Seckington's modus operandi. "We've developed a deeper interplay." Their string-slinging does live up to the band's many Television comparisons, but that's not all they've got going for them. True to its name, the trio's music has an almost haunted '60s rock sound.

Extine's vocals, urgent and strained, should be enough to prove the band's prowess Sunday when they headline the Red & the Black, far from San Pedro, miles from home.

Written by Express contributor John Rickman
Photo courtesy Kill Rock Stars