Volk “Cashville” 2021. Romanus Records. Very limited pre-release* edition, liquid filled colored vinyl, cover hand-drawn by drummer/singer Eleot Reich, signed by Reich and guitarist/singer Chris Lowe. Cow punk from Nashville, Volk’s debut LP is so freaking amazing! It’s big, thundering power out of the hard-working two-piece with a sound like the White Stripes spent a month jamming with Dolly and Waylon in a down-south garage. I love the whole album, but my top songs are “Welcome to Cashville” (with a lead-in from Romanus’ Chris Banta on the audio and video), the wicked-high energy “Honey Bee” (with another Banta cameo), “I Fed Animals” which is dark and menacing (a sound I’m particularly fond of), and their cover of Ray Wylie Hubbard’s “Snake Farm” which is hilarious.

Volk performed all of those songs (and more!) at the show we saw this past week up in Green Bay at the Lyric Room. Volk puts on a killer show, super high-energy. They’re on tour with Electric Six and though the Six is a dance rock band, the combo totally worked and I danced pretty much non-stop for over 2 hours. (Volk will be back in Wisconsin for Mile of Music in Appleton at the beginning of August and we can’t wait to see them again.)

Volk and Electric Six played in Milwaukee the following night at Shank Hall (we chose the Green Bay date because we don’t like Shank) and the band crashed at our house. They finally got a chance to see the liquid-filled variant, which they hadn’t seen before, and signed our copy. Great folks, Volk!

*The official release on Romanus came out at the end of May and we will be getting another copy of Cashville, this time of the limited edition literal cash-filled vinyl variant as soon as it goes through production.