When Camper Van Beethoven formed in 1983, genre-splicing was the exception rather than the rule.
There weren't any Celtic-punk, alt-country, rap-metal, slacker-rock or stoner-blues sections in the record stores; for the most part, bands fit nicely into one genre.
Then came this Santa Cruz, Calif., sextet to mix things up. Country and punk could co-exist. Folk could move to a ska beat. A violin or mandolin could create psychedelic licks as wildly as any guitar. And world music had its place in the rock vocabulary.
By mixing and matching musical genres like no one had before, Camper Van Beethoven helped pioneer the indie-rock genre, paving the way for countless bands to tread into the unknown.
"We didn't think it was so weird at the time. We thought what we were doing was making a new classic rock for our generation. We didn't see ourselves as a hyphen band," explains frontman David Lowery. "We'd rock around and tell our friends we wanted to be like The Beatles or Led Zeppelin."
Camper Van Beethoven released five schizophrenic albums between 1985 and 1989. Lowery went on to form the cult rock outfit Cracker, while his bandmates worked in projects such as the Monks of Doom, Hieronymous Firebrain and Sparklehorse.
Throughout the '90s the band members found themselves drifting together on various projects. They played as Camper Van Beethoven at a one-off show in 2002. One show begat another and another, until it snowballed into a full-on reunion that has been getting rave reviews from the old fans.
For Lowery, however, the reunion isn't such a big event.
"Bands don't break up unless they are not getting along and it's somewhat musical and personal. But after producing records off and on for 15 years and after watching the Dig! documentary, we realized we weren't that bad of a band," he laughs, referring to the film about the notoriously unstable Brain Jonestown Massacre.
They celebrated their return by once again confounding their fans, releasing a song-for-song cover of Fleetwood Mac's Tusk album they recorded on a lark in 1987.
They followed it up with last year's New Roman Times, a concept album about a Texas teen who joins an anti-government militia after serving in the army.
"We felt that it would be very Camperesque to do a concept album. If anything, we have a tendency to get too diverse and wander off the map sometimes, so it just sort of helped glue everything together and it was a quirky thing for us to do. But lo and behold, Neil Young and Green Day did concept albums," Lowery laments.
Like many cult acts who break up and reform, they find themselves more popular than ever, thanks in part to their 1985 song Take the Skinheads Bowling, used as the theme in Michael Moore's film Bowling for Columbine.
"That helped," Lowery acknowledged. "We released a record at the time so it worked out naturally and as an accident. I think we're probably played more on the radio now than when we were together.
"We didn't necessarily become bigger, but our songs are everywhere, in Citibank commercials and used as bumpers in ESPN spots."
Their songs will be everywhere for the next couple of days in Birds Hill Park. Camper Van Beethoven will play one show together tomorrow at 4:15 p.m. on the Green Ash stage, while each of the members will also appear in different workshops. Lowery performs his debut solo show at the Shady Grove today at 3:15 p.m.
