Don’t wanna be sedated

Silver-haired and bearded, sporting jeans and a cowboy hat, Tommy Erdélyi is a living-legend punk in Farmer’s Market clothing.

Tommy Erdélyi is shadow of his former self, but maybe that’s a good thing. illustration by Ethan Clark

Only the true fan would be able to squint and see in 55-year-old Erdélyi the features of his late-‘70s alter ego Tommy Ramone: drummer, producer, manager and, now, only surviving original member of The Ramones.

“Some people do [recognize me],” says Erdélyi/Ramone. “But I look so different now that most don’t, although now [that I’m playing] with Uncle Monk, more will know what I look like. I like my anonymity—but it is also nice to be recognized.”

Erdélyi’s appearance isn’t the only thing that’s changed since his leather-jacket-and-belly-shirt punk days. If you couldn’t have guessed from the mandolin, Uncle Monk is a far cry from the brat-beating, glue-sniffing, power-chord rock of The Ramones. It’s what Erdélyi calls “an indie-bluegrass band,” in which he plays the mandolin, banjo, Dobro and fiddle with Claudia Tienan (formerly of punk band The Simplistics), sharing vocal duties and playing guitar. Says Erdélyi: “Uncle Monk was originally a trio, and we formed in the early ‘90s. We were an electric jam band with a drummer. This evolved over the years into an acoustic duo, as we got more into old-time and bluegrass music. We just enjoyed playing the bluegrass instruments.”

While Uncle Monk certainly aren’t the first punkers to notice the genre’s correlation to its great-uncle, folk music (look up Kent Priestley’s “Folk the System,” published in the June 28, 2006, Xpress, if’n you don’t believe it), it’s nice to see this sentiment so widely acknowledged that it’s embraced by one of punk’s founders.

“I think that punk and bluegrass and especially old-time music have a lot in common. Punk is folk music played very loud and fast. Bill Monroe,” Erdélyi points out, “had the temperament of a punk.” (This may surprise casual fans who picture the late “father of bluegrass” as a folksy front-porch picker. In fact, Monroe was an antagonistic character who did things his way at all costs.)

“And he loved to play fast,” adds Erdélyi.

Many acts—Against Me!, The Pogues—have walked the line between the pogo and the do-si-do, but continued to keep their music mostly rooted in punk, a trend from which Uncle Monk refrains. In the nine original, straight-up bluegrass numbers on their self-titled debut album, they avoid any gimmicky nods of the cowboy hat to their punk roots. There’s no screaming, no audible glue-sniffing, no “onetwothreefour!” And, when asked if they perform any Ramones songs, Erdélyi laughs and says, “Well … no.”

He goes on to explain that “as far as the music goes, the creative process is a continuation of what I have been doing all my life. But in every other way it is totally different from The Ramones.”

And yet, due to the simplicity of both subject matter and composition, the Uncle Monk songs, which Erdélyi says are based on personal experiences, could easily be revamped and slipped gracefully into The Ramones’ set list. Take, for example, the chorus of “Mean to Me,” in which Erdélyi wonders: “Why are you mean to me/ Why can’t you let things be/ Let us be friends/ Maybe I’ll call you up/ We can go have a talk/ Maybe a dinner for you … and me.”

Somehow, “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” and “I Don’t Wanna Walk Around With You” don’t sound so far off.

[Ethan Clark is an Asheville-based writer and cartoonist.]

Uncle Monk plays The Grey Eagle (185 Clingman Ave.) on Thursday, May 3, with the Forge Mountain Diggers. 8:30 p.m. $8. 232-5800.