If you like your hard rock and metal music infused with a relentless intensity, insistent theatricality, and pulse-pounding passion, look no further than California’s Beasto Blanco.
The brainchild of veteran musician/songwriter Chuck Garric and enlivened by the evocative presence of vocalist/performer Calico Cooper, the band has released two well-regarded studio albums and a live compilation and has continued to accumulate an exceedingly fervent and ever-expanding fan base, since forming in 2012.
Garric is a veteran of the rock and roll wars, having spent more than 15 years in Alice Cooper’s band, as well as a short stint in Ronnie James Dio’s band. As well, his resume includes tenures with punk/metal bands Turds and The Druts, as well as a stint with both L.A. Guns and the Eric Singer Project. He also owns his own studio near Los Angeles.
Cooper performed in her father Alice’s legendary stage show for 11 years and has also appeared in numerous television shows over the past decade and is also now producing her own shows. Working together in Alice Cooper’s band brought she and Garric together in what is really Garric’s long held passion project.
“I had tons of ideas that were sitting around. I had written songs for either Alice or for other bands that I was writing for at the time. But I really felt that some of the songs were just for me; no one really could give the attitude to get the message across better than myself and better than the band I wanted to start. I had such a clear vision of what I wanted it to be and to look like and sound like. So, I just surrounded myself with creative people and people who could take my ideas and expand on them and make them even better. That’s been the whole concept of the band since the beginning,” he explained.
“Calico came into the mix when we needed background vocals for a breakdown for a couple of songs on the first record, but I always thought of Calico as more than just a background singer for Beasto Blanco. I knew she would add a lot to the story of Beasto, especially visually. So, I asked her to come in and to sing a little bit and try to sort of bait her with the songs and my concepts and see if she would be interested in touring and the rest is history.”
For Cooper, it was a chance to branch out in a new creative direction, and also give her a profile that was independent of the one she had garnered working as a featured performer in her dad’s band.
“I am an entertainer by nature. I love film and television, that’s what I do. I worked for my dad for 11 years and I love being onstage. But I felt I was missing that live audience after I moved into television and film work. I was missing letting my freak flag fly. Chuck presented an opportunity and a venue where I could go out there and, for lack of a better term, I could pull the ripcord and just shake up the juice and see what comes loose,” she said, adding that there is a sense of spontaneity and a frisson of peril that is enlivening for both her and the audience.
“We never really planned anything. He just played me the songs and I just did whatever they possessed me to do in the moment, and usually its something that works and something that everybody is excited about. The more that we toured the more it would get theatrical and I just have never stopped pushing the boundaries onstage. I really do think that’s the beauty of this band is that it started off with the idea of ‘let’s see what happens.’ Then when we all got together in the room, and I know this is such an overused word, but it really was magic. I never met a group of five people, especially five creative and talented people, where everybody is a yes person. We all say yes to any idea. And with the music, everybody’s musicianship really clicked. And since then the more we do, the more we write and the more we play, the more excited we are.”
Beasto Blanco’s debut album Live Fast Die Loud was released in 2012 on Rat Pak Records, and was followed by acclaimed tours of Europe, including Scandinavia and the U.K. For the next couple of years, in between Alice Cooper shows and Calico Cooper’s TV and film work, the band performed throughout the United States, including way up in Anchorage, Alaska. Along the way they were writing material for a second studio album, simply entitled Beasto Blanco, which came out in 2016 also on Rat Pak Records. More recently the band, which also includes lead guitarist and co-writer Brother Lathan, bassist Jan Legrow and drummer Tim Husung, launched the Live From Berlin CD/DVD, which gives the uninitiated a glimpse into the steampunk inspired, sublimely cinematic stage show of the quintet.
A Beasto Blanco concert is more than just a rock show: it is a visceral experience, full of frenetic energy, cascading emotions and a sense that everyone on the stage could lose their minds and send the show careening off the rails into shockingly uncharted territory. It’s an element of danger sorely lacking and sorely missed in today’s music industry.
In other words, they have taken the stagecraft and choregraphed theatricality of Alice Cooper and to a lesser degree Rob Zombie, and removed the choreographed part. Add in the fact that each band member – especially Cooper and Garric – immerse themselves fully into their characters and what you’re left with is powerful, memorable, and electrifying.
“It’s a departure from what we’re doing with Alice because in its chaos and amazingness, it is very choreographed and that’s because we don’t want anybody getting their heads chopped off for real. And that’s the beauty of a very structured show. I think that the danger of a Beasto show is that nothing is choreographed and it’s just as theatrical. You in the audience have just as good as guess as to what is going to happen as I do,” Cooper said.
“All of us kind of get taken over by the beast. And for me that means an unbridled violence and an unbridled sexuality and it just sort of comes out in big bursts of unpredictable behaviour. And then you add weapons on top of that. They gave me a Louisville Slugger with nails through it – a real one. So, you can imagine the chaos that ensued there. I’ve got a double-barrelled CO2 gun, I have a life-sized carbon copy of me onstage that I beat up and dismantle, but what happens on stage is never the same. It has to do with how I am feeling that now, how in to it is the audience. If you’re a badass then I will be a badass. And there are times when I get so lost in the adrenaline and so lost in those characters that I have broken fingers and ribs.
“So, it is kind of performance art but its always driven by the music. The songs are what spawn the theatrics. If the songs weren’t there, then we would be rockin’ out to garbage. I just think the songs are so moody and so rock and roll and so rad that you can’t help but create these wild characters and this amazingly unpredictable show.”
Cooper is a seasoned and adept stage performer, actor, model and also owns her own production company, so she comes at Beasto Blanco with a rare combination and training and a skilled creative repertoire, which coupled with her ability to create and inhabit her onstage character, makes for a truly revelatory experience for audience members – particularly females in the audience. The sense of strength and power that is exhibited by Cooper is seen as a powerful source of inspiration.
“I am an odd side of the face of the feminist coin. I am the only girl in the band and I am used to that. I was the only girl when I was touring with Alice. And I think it made me an amazingly well-rounded person, a well-rounded performer. I never get told, ‘you can’t do that, you’re a girl.’ Or, ‘be careful, you might get hurt.’ That was never part of my vocabulary. When I first started constructing the character that I play on stage, I felt that men are obviously going to respond to her. I am seven feet tall in these boots on stage. I am armed, and it’s a lot to look at. But I get more women coming up to me afterwards saying they feel so empowered. I feel, selfishly, that I have been able to broach that fine line between celebrating who you are, and unleashing your raw, naked personality. Mine just happens to be a seven-foot, bruised-up cavewoman,” she explained.
“I am so aggressive, and I celebrate it onstage. I tell you, I am just so encouraged by the women that tell me they are going to dress up as me for Halloween or ‘oh man we’re going to do a maternity shoot and I am going to dress as you with the baseball bat.’ It’s so cool. It’s so great to inspire women in a powerful way. If you want to wear next to nothing, then wear it and own it – own the hell out of it. That’s something I have always been about – owning who you are. And it’s the credo of Beasto Blanco too. The ‘beasto’ inside you is that thing you would do if you could but you’re just too afraid to be that guy or girl. We are living that credo and when you come to the show you get fired up to do that too; to be that person you never thought you could be.”
For Garric, his inner ‘beasto’ is the part of him that always wanted to be a frontman and to be able to express his deeper, darker aspects of his personality through music. That character of Beasto Blanco’s lead singer and primary songwriter is that aggressive, anarchic, blisteringly intense, gothic inspired purveyor of a kind of metal music and metal show that was unheard of.
“It’s me stepping out of my comfort zone. I grew up as a bass player and only played guitar to write, but never really playing it onstage. And then I decided to take the leap into this role of lead singer and songwriter and pretty much the frontman of this band. And trying out this brand-new idea, which was always just an idea in my head. It went from nothing to something and now here we are on a tour bus and we’re doing it, we’re making it happen. So, the Beasto for me is sort of my Wolfman or my Hulk if you will. I know that I still have a little fear and being worried that I am not good enough and how are people going to perceive me,” he said.
“It’s a lot easier for me to step out with Beasto Blanco and turn that fear into courage and going about my business and doing the best I can. And it’s been a lot of fun and has been a great growing experience because it does take a lot of courage and a lot of patience and taking risks to have an idea and to see it through. A lot of people have great ideas, but they don’t make anything of it. I decided one day that I am was not going through life that way.
“Beasto, for me, is an attitude. I want people to feed off that attitude and understand that if you want something, you’ve got to go out and go after it, and it’s going to take balls, it’s going to take some failure. You’re going to break down at the side of the road sometimes, but then the payoff is at the end of that road, and the payoff doesn’t have to necessarily be financial. It’s the payoff of finishing what you started. I think a lot of kids and a lot of adults – everybody out there – has that inner beast inside them that they just need to tap into and stick their foot inside the circle and see what happens.”
Although the stage shows are a study in chaos and the extremes of live showmanship, the commitment to excellence in that performance and in the music – in fact of all aspects of Beasto Blanco’s brand, is undeniable and steadfast. There is a level of professionalism and seriousness of purpose that characterizes the way Cooper, Garric, Lathan and the rest of the band go about their craft. Like elite level pro athletes, they believe in giving 110 per cent each and every night, regardless of how they’re feeling.
Cooper said she learned that lesson from her dad, whose career is as vibrant and dynamic as its ever been, five decades from its beginnings.
“The size of the show or the size of the project is not the issue, it’s the integrity of it. So, if Beasto is playing for 200 people in a club, or 20,000 people in an arena, it’s the same show, the same level of energy and the same level of commitment to excellence, because this is our job. We’re lucky enough to be doing what we do for a living, so I am going to give that audience everything I’ve got,” she said.
“I have never seen my dad once phone it in. When he is doing the Alice Cooper show, he shows up and blows it out of the water every night. And I know that he has been sick and tired, and he’s got his kids and his other businesses and his restaurants, it could be easy for him to say, ‘well, let’s just put it in neutral tonight, the fans will love the show regardless.’ But he never thinks like that. He always puts on the best show possible. And I can see it in his eyes before he goes on stage that no matter what’s been happening during the day or how he is feeling, that he is ready to kill.”
The same attitude prevails within the musicians comprising Beasto Blanco, as evidenced by rave reviews garnered by the band during its recent whirlwind tour of Europe, which saw them play four shows in three countries.
Starting July 19, an intense eight-show run will see Beasto Blanco back in the U.S.A. for shows in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Oklahoma.
For more information on the band, visit www.beastoblanco.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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