Album Notes

Ugly Stick formed in Delaware, Ohio in 1989. Its members all came of age in this small Midwestern town, an odd crucible of cultures where terse independent minded farmers and defeated factory workers coexisted uneasily with imported east coast academics and collegians.

Here the band formed its unique cow-punk style and through expressive and evocative songwriting leaves a haunting document of a Midwest in decline. This, their final release, Absinthe (1993) demonstrates a bizarre range of moods from introspective self doubt to pure rage which capture the complexity of late adolescence in rural Middle America.

The listener can feel the ground shifting beneath the feet as the band rocks, rages and crawls through a dark valley - a landscape comprised of Indian mounds, carnival posters and small town life at its mystical best and oppressive worst. And the entire journey is framed by the tactile indifference of endless, endless farm fields.

“...Legendary early-’90’s underground-country rockers, Ugly Stick, a band whose reputation and infamy has only grown in the decade-plus since they broke up.”
-Rick Allen, The Other Paper, 2007

“Ugly Stick…. a band that blended ‘80s college rock scruffiness, drunken punk, indie-pop jangle and hillbilly hoot into what may be the indefinable defining rock sound of this town.”
-Eric Davidson, Columbus Alive, 2004


“Ugly Stick ...one of Columbus’s most beloved bands”
-Chad Painter, The Other Paper, 2004

“Ugly Stick was a bedrock of the Cowtown sound”
-Stephen Slaybaugh, Columbus Alive, 2005