Annals of music business are littered with corpses of promising bands. Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen is one of those bands and here’s their story (as told by a band member Larry Joe Treadway (a.k.a. Tread):
We broke up right as the tour was booked to support the thing on SafeHouse Records (Jad Fair, Southern Culture on the Skids, Lemonheads, etc.) we put out a rash of 7” and split CD with Plainfield…we played a lot with Cows, Hammerhead, Unsane, Laughing Hyenas, Mule, Glazed Baby, Jack O’nuts…fun times.
Our bust-up was amicable…3 of us had good stable day jobs, drummer was in flux, girl issue, he imploded, we were all good friends, decided to not go it without him, went off made a movie that made it to Sundance that following year and hated ourselves for not still playing music…bass player and I are best friends still work on projects together, guitarist moved up near you in Boston…drummer is now a cop…life is strange…here’s a photo…that is me looking aloof and rock starrrrry in my hat and glasses…(shepard fairey did our old band stickers and we used wear all that Andre shit before he became a superstar!)
We recorded at AmRep all live.
We played a show with Steel Pole Bathtub at the Uptown (I think) up there so Tim (Mac) could see us play live and get a feeling about how to record it…he choose live which is what we had already wanted to do. We first were going to Albini but AmRep had a place for us to stay (apt in the studio!) and Albini at the time had a small window of availability…so we drove to Minneapolis and played shows on the way up in Bloomington, Chicago, Madison and Minneapolis…which paid our tape bills at amrep….fun stuff.
Check out their track “Whorehopper“, which appeared on “Wreck Room: Safe House Sampler Vol.3” compilation, alongside tracks by Half Japanese, Southern Culture On The Skids, The Nails and others. Its a perfect slice of Jesus Lizard-esque insanity, with whiskey-drenched vocals bearing a striking resemblance to David Yow’s own strangled screams.
Currently, Tread runs his own photography site, which anyone is highly recommended to visit. You can also check out his Twitter page.