Brian McGee and the Hollow Speed swing through the Seacoast

It was 1997, and aside from a handful of reunion shows a year later, Pennsylvania’s pride of the punk rock community, Plow United, had broken up. From the band’s adopted home of West Chester, Pa., the trio had forged an intense following, toured nationally, received glowing press in major punk publications and famously fended off major label inquiries from A&R reps searching hard for the next Green Day.

Since forming as teenagers in 1992, the lightning fast, sharply intelligent and musically gifted band showed many young Pennsylvania outcasts the full power and glory of punk music: Creating something extraordinary out of almost nothing and building community in a place as starved for meaning as the Philadelphia suburbs.

And then it was over. The band’s members went their separate ways, scattering across the country, while guitarist/vocalist Brian McGee, now a budding folk rocker about to embark on a short tour through New England with his new band, The Hollow Speed, was pretty much lost. He worked odd jobs, briefly joined two other Philadelphia-area bands, and even toured with one, but was clearly missing something.

“I didn’t really know what the hell I was doing with myself at the time,” said McGee, now 32 years old and living in Asheville, N.C. “I guess I felt like I was on band rebound. I had a blast because we were all friends already, but I wasn’t emotionally attached. As much fun as I was having, I felt like I was kind of faking it.”

About a decade later, Brian McGee and The Hollow Speed, an old-country band infused with the spirit of punk, has become McGee’s new vehicle, and it’s surely a worthy successor. The band, with McGee on guitar and vocals, Darin Gentry on fiddle, Chad Hildebran on drums and Joe Edel on bass, plays serious country music, barroom Americana with a rockabilly edge. McGee’s voice is raw and passionate, and the rest of the band’s traditional chops are outstanding. It is a band that would sound good anywhere—a crowded bar, your mom’s basement, an empty bar, or your bedroom as you’re trying to fall asleep.
Touring on a self-titled full length album that came out in February, three of the four band members will start out in Rehoboth Beach, Del., on Saturday and begin a string of Seacoast shows on Monday, June 23, at The Red Door in Portsmouth, as part of the Hush Hush Sweet Harlot Series.

Things turned around for McGee about a year after Plow United broke up, when his then-girlfriend began applying for a work-study position at the John C. Campbell Folk School, in the mountains of North Carolina. McGee, who had been playing banjo for about a year, decided to apply, as well. He got in, she didn’t. He decided to go anyway.

Over the next several years, McGee studied country music, played backup guitar at contra dances and square dances, and generally immersed himself in the traditional music and culture of the south. It was one of the best times of his life, he says.
“It had nothing to do with the punk scene, which was totally great. Nobody knew me, they knew nothing about me. It was really refreshing,” McGee said. “My going there was coming at a time when I just needed something else to do that was completely different.”

He put the earliest version of the new band together in the late fall of 2005, and they played their first gig in January 2006.

As a student and performer of country music, McGee says he has found plenty of similarities between punk music and traditional music. To him, the two styles have more in common than not, even though he admits getting some funny looks when playing shows around Philadelphia, where he is known as ex-Plow United.

“You don’t want to underestimate what people are into, but when you show up with a fiddle and a big stand-up bass when people are used to seeing you as something else, it’s like, ‘OK...,’” McGee said.

Generally, however, he says people from the old scene have been completely accepting of his new band. There is no doubt that much of what made Plow United so beloved—sincerity, realism, unbelievably catchy songs—are equally pronounced in The Hollow Speed, though channeled in a slightly different way. As they say, you can take the kid from the punk, but you can’t take the punk from the kid.

But it is something less obvious, something in the way McGee continues to bring people together through music, that is most familiar.

“I think a lot of the crossover is in the fact that for old-timey, folk music stuff, it was just another part of people’s lives and it wasn’t necessarily performance or anything, it was part of what they did. To me, there is a real honesty in that,” said McGee. “In punk and in old-time stuff, it’s all based on three chords, a verse, catchy choruses, a verse. It’s easy for people to jump into and sing along to. And a lot of it is just as fast as punk music.”

This will be McGee’s second trip to New Hampshire. He came up with his fiddle player two summers ago for some bar shows and busking in Portland, Maine. This time with The Hollow Speed, he will play alongside a strong slate of the area’s best folk musicians. The Red Door show will feature Durham’s Mary Dellea, a friend of McGee’s from folk school who will fill in on bass that night, and David Wax Museum, a Cambridge, Mass.-based Americana group.

The following night, McGee will participate in a bluegrass jam at The Stone Church in Newmarket and on Thursday, June 26, the band will play at the Speakeasy Café in Durham. On Saturday, June 28, McGee’s band will play at the Barley Pub, in Dover, with local favorite Elsa Cross. Then it’s back home to North Carolina for more local shows, some of which will also feature Cross as she heads south on a small tour.

With a second full-length album being planned, McGee says things appear to be settling in for The Hollow Speed. Unlike when he recorded his first album, McGee now has a consistent lineup backing him. He already has half of a new record written.
“With this particular lineup now, it’s been really good, it’s just been really strong, really a whole lot more forceful than some of the earlier versions of the band,” McGee said. “So it’s kind of at a high point right now.”

Brian McGee, Mary Dellea and David Wax Museum will start their New England shows at The Red Door, 107 State, St., Portsmouth, on Monday, June 23 at 8 p.m., $5 suggested donation, 603-373-6827.