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Softcore horns

California’s Mad Caddies fill Mountain’s Edge with good vibes

By Ben Salmon / The Bulletin

Published: November 06. 2009 4:00AM PST

This past weekend was a big one for Bend’s music scene, with several of our top-shelf bands playing Halloween gigs.

Unfortunately, this past weekend was also moving day(s) for me. I spent all day Friday and all day Saturday hauling my stuff from one house to another.

As you know, moving sucks. And it makes you tired.

So at 9 p.m. on Saturday, just when I’d hoped to be hitting the town, I was, in fact, drifting off to sleep on my couch, shins covered with bruises and a head full of bad-music-reporter guilt.

I felt like I ought to be out there, taking it all in. But I physically couldn’t do it.

So after a good night’s sleep and a Sunday glued to the couch and sports on TV, I was ready to assuage that guilt by checking out California ska-pop combo the Mad Caddies at Mountain’s Edge bar, formerly known as Timbers South.

The Caddies aren’t my favorite band, though I do find their easygoing mix of punk, reggae, ska and jazz more enjoyable than most bands of their ilk. And they play bigger rooms in bigger cities across North America, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see them in a small, out-of-the-way bar in my small, out-of-the-way town.

I showed up at Mountain’s Edge just as local ska band Necktie Killer — which partnered with the bar to book this show — put the finishing touches on its opening set. I wanted to see them, but game four of the World Series got in the way.

That’s OK. Necktie deserves one of these columns all to themselves.

After a very short break, the Caddies went to work in front of 100 or so folks, many of whom appeared to be die-hard fans. I can’t remember a show with such a high percentage of people singing along to every word.

The band rewarded them with several tunes off their earliest albums, including “Goleta” and “Mum’s the Word” from 1997’s “Quality Soft Core” and “Monkeys” and “Macho Nachos” from 1998’s “Duck and Cover.” All of them are fairly standard, friendly, SoCal pop-punk, but with a lot more horns and much stronger focus on melody.

Those are the two factors, actually, that set the Mad Caddies apart from the vast majority of the dorm-fave, white-guy reggae-rock bands that we see a lot of in Bend.

I don’t mean to slag those bands — they do what they do, some are pretty good at it, and they’re popular enough that they can tour through here a couple times each year — but there’s no doubt the Caddies reside at a different level as far as musicianship and songwriting is concerned.

Does that mean they’re brilliant? No, it doesn’t. But they are fun. They’re fun to listen to, and they’re fun to bounce along to live. Throughout the night, they sprinkled in some of their newer, mellower material that reveals a band developing nicely as it gets older.

“Reflections” rode a slinky, spy-music groove. “Coyote” had a little Eastern European flair. “State of Mind” and “Drinking For 11” were perfect, pure pop songs; the latter sounded like a blend of Sublime and Radiohead.

And, as if to show off just how far afield they can range, the Caddies took a mid-set detour for a pirate-style singalong (“Weird Beard”) and a deep, dubby jam that gave frontman Chuck Robertson a break and his band mates a chance to strut their stuff.

The whole night traveled atop reggae’s famous, off-beat rhythm — called the “skank” — that had everyone around me dancing all night long.

I find the skank incredibly enticing when it’s done well, and horribly off-putting when done poorly. And real reggae heads may scoff when I say this, but I think the Caddies do it well.

They’re not from some Jamaican slum, true, but they have the vibe, and they have the chops. And they deliver them both with an exuberance that’s hard not to like.

Ben Salmon can be reached at 541-383-0377 or bsalmon@bendbulletin.com.

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