Spindrift: The Legend of God's Gun
by Jim Welte • December 3, 2008
It's 1965, and Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone wants to screen his new film, A Fistful of Dollars, in the United States. But instead of introducing the spaghetti Western in Hollywood or New York, United Artists makes the rather batty decision to screen it at the Longshoreman's Hall along Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. The venue has been hosting a series of Acid Tests held by Ken Kesey, and Leone and the studio agree that these intrepid trippers are exactly the demographic that can quell Hollywood backlash of Leone's campy take on the Western formula.
Fact check: Leone and United Artists did no such ludicrous thing, as marrying gunslingers and LSD would seem like a debacle waiting to happen. We'll never really know how well A Fistful of Dollars or Once Upon a Time in the West would've played to the likes of the Merry Pranksters. But such an improbable nexus—spaghetti Western meets Acid Test—was the light bulb that sparked musician Kirpatrick Thomas and filmmaker Mike Bruce to come up with a modern film and soundtrack that melds those two seemingly disparate worlds. The Legend of God's Gun, out on DVD and currently making the film festival rounds, is as weird and campy as old-school spaghetti Westerns (and may be loosely based on Gianfranco Parolini’s 1978 God’s Gun, although there’s nothing official saying so), and yet is also spliced with shards of psychedelia and digital delusions. Backed by a soundtrack that Thomas wrote before the film was even an embryo, it is truly an otherworldly affair.
The film and the soundtrack have propelled both Bruce and Thomas' band Spindrift to greater heights. Bruce has been tabbed by the Dandy Warhols as their music video director and has been holed up at the band's Odditorium studio in Portland, Oregon. Spindrift released its latest album, The West, on the Dandys' imprint, Beat the World Records, just last month. Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino got his hands on The Legend of God's Gun and liked the music so much that he put the Spindrift track "Indian Ride" on the soundtrack for his forthcoming movie, Hell Ride.
For Thomas, the ride started in 2001. A native of Newark, Delaware, Thomas fronted his own post-punk outfit, Spindrift, for more than a decade, but was searching for a new sound and a fresh identity. His band had developed a loyal local following, self-released a few albums, and played gigs in a few of Delaware's big city neighbors to the north and south. But for all the opportunities offered by those cities, New York, Philadelphia, DC, and Baltimore also stifled the smaller scenes around it, like in Newark.
"I just needed to get out of there after a while and try something else," Thomas says.
"Something else" would originate from a screening of Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West and its vaunted soundtrack of trumpet blasts, surf guitar, and haunted bass by composer Ennio Morricone. "It just absolutely blew my mind, and I became obsessed with it," Thomas says. "I wanted to find a way to incorporate those elements into what I was doing at the time, which was more of the shoegazer sound."
Fueled by a desire to meld Morricone with My Bloody Valentine and the cinematic prose of Jim Morrison, Thomas dug in and began writing. Serendipity kicked in along the way. In the midst of a cross-country move to Los Angeles in 2001, Thomas stopped at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, which had a John Lennon exhibit at the time. As he roamed the exhibit, Thomas bumped into—literally—enigmatic Brian Jonestown Massacre frontman Anton Newcombe, who was being pushed around in a wheelchair by bandmate Frankie Emerson. Newcombe, an infamous instigator whose antics were immortalized in the 2004 documentary Dig!, had broken his foot in a melee at a gig the previous night. A BJM fan, Thomas hit it off with Emerson and they agreed to keep in touch after Thomas arrived in LA, and Emerson and his bandmates returned there after their tour. Thomas ended up joining BJM on a subsequent tour, working the merch table and later playing guitar.
By 2004, Thomas was immersed in his new sound, crafting demos and sharing them with Emerson and fellow BJM-ers Dan Allaire and Dave Koenig, among others. By all accounts, the trio loved the sound, encouraging Thomas to keep honing it and agreeing to work with him between BJM recording sessions and tours.
Thomas began to experiment with the visual side of his concept, loosely crafting a storyline of a preacher-turned-gunslinger who vanquishes his enemies. It was a soundtrack and an idea just waiting for a filmmaker, which Thomas certainly was not. Serendipity struck again at the CMJ Music Marathon in New York, when Spindrift shared a bill with Low Flying Owls, a since-defunct Northern California rock group that contained guitarist Mike Bruce, an aspiring filmmaker. The pair later connected when Bruce moved to LA after his band's demise to pursue film work.
