Collectively, the four guys in Caliche Burnout have amassed a century’s worth of experience playing in local bands. With a resume of past acts that reads like a who’s-who of North Texas heavyweights (Ghostcar, The Gideons, Suiciety, Suntouched, J. Charles & The Trainrobbers), the Fort Worth quartet has definitely paid its dues on the scene.
The Burnout’s musical formula is simple: straightforward, guitar-driven, whisky-soaked rock ’n’ roll in the vein of classic bar bands like Thin Lizzy and The Supersuckers.
The current lineup of Scott Feille on drums/vocals, guitarists Cory Wells and Linc Campbell, and Chuck Rose on bass/vocals have been playing together a little more than a year, but the band started to take form two years ago.
Feille and Wells were gigging in a cover band together when Wells threw out the idea of starting a group of their own.
“I was getting tired of playing covers and [Feille] had all of these songs written,” he said. “So I suggested we put together a band to play originals.”
The two enlisted Rose and Vorvon’s Rick Sharp as a second guitarist, and Calichie Burnout was born.
“We weren’t looking to break any new ground or blaze any new territory,” Feille said. “We just wanted to play rock ’n’ roll.”
Feille spent most of his musical career on the throne, never thinking that singing lead was an actual option.
“I didn’t even really write in complete sentences until I was in my 30s,” he said. “I was always writing, but as a drummer and an untrained musician, I just started recording to express my ideas.”
In past bands, Feille “never contributed to songwriting, and then [Wells] was like, ‘Yeah, let’s play your songs.’ ”
Wells considers himself more of a song editor than a songwriter.
“See, I don’t write songs, so songwriters are very important to me,” Wells said. “A lot of the time, [Feille] will write a song on guitar and record a demo of it, sort of Texas singer-songwriter style. Then he will bring it to me, and I’ll try to make it sound like the New York Dolls or whatever sound I think fits.”
When Rose joined the band, he also wanted a voice in the songwriting process.
“I kind of hosed my way into that,” Rose said. “I was pretty much done with playing with guys that write all of the songs and decide the direction of the band. So when [Feille] was trying to get me to play bass, I asked if I could contribute to the songwriting. He had no problem with that, so I was on board.”
Eventually, the time commitment became a problem for Sharp, who decided to leave the group. The remaining three members turned their attention to finding another guitarist.
Campbell “was the first person who came to mind,” Rose said. “I had seen him play with a number of bands over the years. I wasn’t sure if he was even available.”
Adding Campbell to the fold proved to be a turning point for the band.
“If this was VH1, that is where the music would start to swell,” Feille said. “That was the moment this really started to come together.”
“It was like when AC/DC fired their first singer and got Bon Scott,” Wells added.
Campbell was quick to realize he would be a good fit for the group.
“One of the things that drew me to the band was that, regardless of who had written each song, there was a definite cohesiveness to the sound,” he said. “I was drawn to that immediately. If you didn’t know who was singing at the time and just heard the songs, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart from a songwriting point of view.”
Rose and Feille draw inspiration for their tongue-in-cheek songs from four main topics: whiskey, doing your best, old girlfriends, and snakes.
“We could write a career’s worth of songs about those four things,” Rose said.
“At some point we might branch out from snakes to all critters in general,” Campbell said. “But that is really up to Scott and Chuck.”
While 2015 was somewhat of a breakout year for Caliche Burnout –– the quartet’s “Out Here in Eternity” was nominated for Best Rock Song in the Fort Worth Weekly Music Awards –– the band has a couple of specific objectives for the new year.
“We want to start playing more out of town,” Campbell said. “That and recording are the main goals for 2016.”
[box_info]Caliche Burnout
Fri, Dec 18, w/Invisible Signal, Night Gallery at The Grotto, 517 University Dr, FW. 817-882-9331. • Sat, Dec 26, w/The Gideons, The Me-Thinks, The Foo at Lola’s Saloon, 2736 6th St, FW. 817-877-0666.[/box_info]
