The Quick & Easy Boys

The Quick & Easy Boys, The Pretty Poor Know, The Resolectrics
MAGGIE SUMMERS

9 pm, Saturday October 29 | $10
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St.

[FUNK, PSYCH ROCK] The Quick & Easy Boys are trying to get your daughters to dance and smoke weed and then dance some more. To categorize this band would be to do it a disservice, but a telling signifier of its sound is the band's rallying cry at shows: "Yeah, Bud!" The Boys' mix is a little rock, a little pop, a little soul and a whole lot of funk. Red Light Rabbit, the band's 2010 sophomore album, finds the band's energy level high and its sonic mix as intoxicating as ever. - Willamette Week

Check out all the most recent press for The Quick & Easy Boys at their website - The Quick & Easy Boys

The Quick and Easy Boys played their annual New Year’s Eve show in Eugene this year. But there’s no way they would leave the hometown Portland crowd hanging. Originally scheduled to play Mt Tabor Theater on New Year’s Day proper, something must have come up and they wedged themselves into an “opening slot” for Devin Phillips at the Goodfoot on New Year’s Eve Eve. But as far as I was concerned, I was forking over my 7 bucks to see just the Quick and Easy Boys as I had to go to work the next morning. And for 7 bucks I got more than my money’s worth – almost an hour and forty five minutes of danceable good times with one of Portland’s favorite bands.

We showed up pretty early, knowing the place was going to get packed, grabbed a beverage from the bar, and set up camp in the front row. The trio hit the stage a little after 10:00pm and played straight through until just after 11:30pm – a power set from this power trio. The small venue was still filling up as the Boys opened up the evening with a rollicking hard rockin’ blues number, Robert Johnson’s “Dust My Broom.” After their fingers were limber and a few more smiling (and somewhat drunk) faces showed up, they turned up the heat with a song off their newest album Red Light Rabbit, “Celebrate.” This tune talks about celebrating the seven days and getting down, which everyone in the room was definitely doing. The driving beat of drummer Mike Goetz had the band locked into a serious groove. I looked back to see the room was now basically packed, which would be surprising for a weeknight show for most bands, but not the Quick and Easy Boys. Honestly, I almost felt sorry for Devin Phillips and his band that had to “headline” after the Quick and Easy Boys’ set. I didn’t stay for their set due to work and I wonder how many people actually did.

The set rolled on and on as the band mixed it up with a nice variety of tunes. After the upbeat tempo of “Celebrate,” they slowed things down with an older funky tune called “Pig in the Pen.” But when things cooled off it was never for too long and next up was “Let Me Get Down,” which is a high energy affair sung by bass player Sean Badders. Sean is a big man and watching him sing in falsetto is always a treat. Not to mention some behind the head guitar soloing a la Hendrix from guitarist Jimmy Russell. At this point, the place was boiling over with a throbbing, dancing mass of humanity. And a few folks were obviously getting primed for New Year’s Eve by drinking and drinking…and drinking. A dude in the front row started bobbing up and down and walking right up to the monitors and even on stage with the band. He was teetering due to inebriation and several people helped pull him back when it looked like he would surely fall over on to the band’s equipment. It was obvious the band knew the guy, but also obvious that they were only mildly amused with his shenanigans. But when you’re playing a show the day before a New Year’s Eve weekend, I guess partying hardy is to be expected. In some way, it made the show feel quite festive!

The band then busted into their sing-along single off the new album called “Take Your Medicine.” This one has a serious hook in the chorus and upbeat tempo that makes the crowd dance while happily singing along. Next up was “Beam of Light” off their first album Good Decisions With Bad People that throws down serious dance party funk while lifting the crowd up and getting them high. And the band kept pumping out tune after tune, keeping it fresh and spicy with Quick and Easy Boys originals like “Boots On” and also throwing in a few choice covers like John Lennon’s “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” and The James Gang’s “Funk 49.” And as the set came to an end the energy and imbibing only increased to a point where someone kicked a glass and broke it, spilling beverage all over another guy’s suede coat. With broken glass, furious dancing, and a small confrontation beginning in the front row, I took it as my queue to recede to the back of the room for the last tune or two. Rock show!! All in all it was a high-energy affair perfect to kick off the New Year’s Eve weekend. One thing seems clear, the Quick and Easy Boys have just about outgrown the tiny Goodfoot and for good reason. These guys are on top of their game! - Jambands.com

When: Sat., Feb. 5, 9 p.m. 2011

The Quick and Easy Boys might be the only band in Portland to sport mustaches unironically and boast funkiness unapologetically. Essentially, these Boys do what they do with little regard to some mystical cool factor. They'd like you to think of their music as the celestial trinity of the Minutemen, Funkadelic, and Willie Nelson rolled into one. Thing is, they deliver—especially live. A power trio in the truest sense of the word, the Quick and Easy Boys keep it loose and dirty. Need a funky bass line? You got it. Overdriven guitars? There's plenty of that, too. Best of all, they have a sense of humor. These guys are the life of the party, and one day might wield enough power to make that bell-bottomed-overalls-and-cowboy-boots ensemble seem like a good idea. Unironically, of course. MARK LORE

- Portland Mercury

It’s a Friday afternoon in Portland and like so many others of us on this, or any other Friday afternoon, Sean Badders is trying to make it to happy hour in time.

But he’s not rushing to grab a cheap beer and some discounted hot wings. Rather, Badders is en route to meet up with the two other members of his band, The Quick & Easy Boys, at the Laurelthirst Public House. This is where for the past year the band could be found about once a month, playing to the sort of crowd that likes to, as Badders puts it, “dance at six o’clock in the afternoon.”

For the past couple years, people have been gladly dancing and drinking along to the sounds of The Quick & Easy Boys in Portland as well as the other cities through which the band has toured. They’ve become, in a way, the ideal bar band – a three piece rooted in rock and roll that wears its funk and honky tonk influences on its sleeve. Maybe this is what the Hold Steady would sound like if they came up in Oregon and not New York City.

But does Badders agree that The Quick & Easy Boys are a great drinking band?

“Well I guess so. If we say ‘yes’ to that it can pigeonhole us, but we definitely are – that’s just the music that comes out of us,” says Badders, pulled over on the side of the road, in lawful respect to Oregon’s new no-cell-phones-while-driving law.

“We totally embrace the party aspect of it, but I like to think we have some stuff that’s not just full-on party,” he says.

There are, indeed, plenty of Quick & Easy Boys songs that aren’t “full-on party.” On the band’s 2008 record, Bad Decisions with Good People, there is plenty of party to be found, but there’s also some earnestly artistic songwriting in the mix. And it should also be noted that the band is a rare act that plays funk without a shred of cornball-ishness. Many of the band’s songs are strong rock numbers, or even honest-to-God country songs that slowly funkify upon takeoff, with all members contributing vocals. They’ve called themselves a “power trio” in the past and that’s exactly what they are, oftentimes packing a sextet’s worth of sound into their three-person lineup.

The band has finished work on their next full-length album, tentatively titled Red Light Rabbit, which is set for a mid-spring release. Badders says the album, while sticking to the band’s roots, is a bit of a departure from Bad Decisions with Good People.

“This is more of a cohesive rock and roll album, but at the same time it still goes from a trancey blues thing to an afro beat song to straight up rock and roll,” says Badders.

The group’s material is the kind of stuff that can even shake the asses of Portland’s most hipster crowds and has earned itself a nice following in the relatively musically saturated city. In fact, recent Quick and Easy Boys shows at well-known PDX haunts like the Goodfoot Lounge and the Doug Fir have sold out.

“It’s a pretty good music scene where you can befriend different bands and musicians and even though we don’t sound alike, we still get along,” says Badders, whose day job finds him working as a substitute teacher, primarily with autistic children.

While they may have attracted a following, Badders realizes that what his band is doing is a bit different than what might be going on in the nationally known Portland indie rock scene. And he seems just fine with that.

“It’s kind of nice having the outsider status,” he says. “You’re kind of the underdog that way, ya know?”

The Quick & Easy Boys

7pm Thursday, January 28. Three Creeks Brewing Co., 721 Desperado Ct., Sisters.

9pm Friday, January 29. Silver Moon Brewing Co., 24 NW Greenwood Ave.

by Mike Bookey - The Source Weekly

Quick & Easy Boys
Sept. 26, 5:30 p.m.
Howler’s Coyote Cafe

Think quick and easy boys.

Now, get your mind out of the gutter and put an eclectic punk-rock band in the previous image’s place.

The Quick & Easy Boys are “a power-trio from Portland, Ore., that creates its own brand of rock ’n’ roll by mixing together honky-tonk, funk and a DIY punk attitude,” according to its MySpace page.

And if anyone wants to even try to fathom what its sound is like, its MySpace also suggests imagining “the Minutemen, Funkadelic and Willie Nelson rolled into one.”

The band members themselves first came together as a couple of young guys just looking for something to do together.

“We all started off playing in different bands in Eugene, Ore., where we met going to college,” Michael Goetz said in an e-mail interview.

The three band members were all around age 24 at the time, added Goetz.

“As we were all supporters of local music, we would [frequently] cross paths, and we finally formed the Quick and Easy Boys as [a sort of] collaboration,” Goetz said.

Since that day in 2005, The Quick & Easy Boys kept in line with its moniker and quickly made a name for itself in Eugene, Ore. Eventually the group traveled together to Portland and began building a fan base there, as well.

“It was nice already being in other bands as far as getting our name out,” Goetz said. “We all had different groups of friends that were brought to the table.”
These days, those first performance areas still hold a strong allure for the band because of fan loyalty.

“We have the largest pull in Portland, Hood River, Eugene [and] some other surrounding areas. Denver [and] Flagstaff [ Ariz.] are pretty good as well, but we love the home turf. On the road it seems to be pretty consistent,” Goetz said.

These days band players Jimmy Russell, Sean Badders and Goetz each have stage names, as well. Russel becomes guitarist Elvis O’Reilly. Badders is bass player Bon Shatsters. And Goetz himself is drummer Uncle T. Wankster. Each band member functions as a vocalist.

The 2008 release of the band’s album Bad Decisions With Good People has left people raving about its unique and vibrant sound.

“The album is kind of a funny story,” Goetz said. “There was a different drummer originally, but after he got a woman and became increasingly hard to get ahold of, the band contacted [me] to help get the album done. And since that moment, [I] became the new drummer.”

For the band, recording the album was not a fancy task.

“It was a very low budget, basement record and was kind of thrown by the wayside and not really pushed,” Goetz said. “Since then ... [the album has received] some attention, and [we] are currently working on another with a bit more push behind the it.”

The Quick & Easy Boys are currently on a headlining U.S. tour — a change from merely performing as an opening act for other bands.

When asked about what sort of insanity has happened on the band’s tour, Goetz wasn’t sure how to react.

“That’s kind of a loaded question, and we usually roll by the motto what happens on the road stays on the road,” Goetz said.

“But other than that, I would say the craziest and most unfortunate moment was in Denver. We had been partying with Lewis Black all night and hopped in a cab to go home when we were broad-sided by a drunk driver. [We] spent the night in the ER. The drummer suffered some pretty severe wounds and was out for about four months.”

And what if the band didn’t have music to keep it occupied?

“If we weren’t performing, we would probably be crying and holding each other, planning our next move,” Goetz said.

“The world is a scary place, but we’ve recently heard that the mortuary business is always crackin’, that and concrete,” he added.

“We are definitely happy with the progress we’ve been making. We would love to eventually go abroad, and that’s something we are looking into,” he said. “Playing music, traveling and meeting colorful people is our passion, so if we’re accomplishing that, we are happy.”
- Pittsburgh News by Larissa Gula

Self-describing your band as a hybrid of the Minutemen, Funkadelic and Willie Nelson is a hell of a burden to place on yourself, but the three mustachioed dudes in the Quick & Easy Boys—who, in a festival full of musicians and audience members sporting ironic facial hair, were probably the only trio to rock their ’staches genuinely—brought a serious ruckus to the 2 pm outdoor stage, tearing through a set of vaguely countrified funk-punk anchored by the hyper-trebly, nimble-fingered fretwork of guitarist Jimmy Russell. A little more aggression would put these guys over the top, but there probably isn’t another band in Portland that sounds like this. - Willamette Week

Maybe Bootsy Collins wasn't listening to Farmer John when he said the Funkadelic bassman could sleep in his barn, because it appears Bootsy did have relations with John's daughter, and out popped Portland's The Quick & Easy Boys. Honky-tonk ain’t never been this funky, and funk ain’t never been this close to a cornfield. Riff-heavy and driven by a stoned-out beat wrested from the Mothership, Quick and Easy's sound is a one-of-a-kind cerebral treat. Maybe this is what it sounds like when Willie Nelson puffs extra purple herb. - Willamette Week

Portland has a dancing problem. Is there something in the water / beer / coffee here that paralyzes the colon and renders the locals unable or unwilling to dance? Did the City Counsel pass a “no dancing” ordinance? Or is this city just generally too jaded and self-consciously Caucasian to cut loose on the dancefloor?

Whatever. The Quick & Easy Boys have the problem solved. The locally-based power trio had the crowd at the Mt. Tabor Theater moving in a frenzy Saturday night with their special brand of home-cooked, Honkadelic funk. Aptly described as a cross between Parliament-Funkadelic, Willie Nelson and the Minutemen, The QEB’s served up a greasy gumbo of relentless FUNK with distinct stoner-country and rock flavors.

Tonight’s QEB show had two parts: the first, an abbreviated, exclusive QEB set; the second, a torrid collaboration with openers, and present tour-mates, The Bridge, a soulful five-piece from Baltimore. The two outfits complemented each other nicely with The Bridge filling out some of QEB’s standards such as rump-shakers like “Take Your Shoes Off” (with its call and response of “Shit / Goddamn / Get off your ass and Jam!”), “Take Your Medicine,” and “Void,” along with some surprise covers, including torrid versions of the Acid-funk classic “Changes” by Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies and “Wipe Out” by the Surfari’s. Show openers, 4 on the Floor, delivered a solid set of Newgrass originals.

Portland has a lot of fine guitar players: No problem there. However, The QEB’s Jimmy Russell IS one of Portland’s best guitarists. Whatever style of guitar you are into, if you appreciate exceptionally fine picking, check him out. Russell is one inventive Mutha-funker with jaw-dropping chops to spare. Rounding out this undeniable Power trio are the equally amazing Sean Badders on bass and vocals and Mike Goetz on drums. Remember the names, because this band ain’t long for the skunky confines of the Mt. Tabor, Laurelthirst or The Goodfoot. I predict that within a couple of years, the band’s rallying-cry, “Yeah, Bud!” will be on a lot of bumper stickers from Beaverton to Bonnaroo and beyond.

In case anyone was wondering whatever happened to Portland’s Jamband scene (Was there some forced relocation to Boulder, or did folks just get lost on the way back from the last Rainbow Gathering?!), The Quick and Easy Boys’ brand of So-Po funk is a welcome reminder that the scene is as vital as ever.

by P Vaughn Shaver
Feb 21 2010 - Oregon Music News