Keeping a band together for 10 years is no small feat. Many a great act has burned out fast due to personality differences, drug problems, delusions of grandeur, etc.

St. Paul’s Kruddler is proving to be the exception to the rule. This trio has been refining and improving their blend of hook-filled garage pop for more than a decade now, and they are still having a blast doing it.

The original members of the group consist of singer/guitarist Shane Gallivan and drummer/vocalist Tim Baumgart. Baumgart and Gallivan were classmates and started playing together in high school. “It was mostly covers,” Baumgart said. “Beatles, Stones, U2, REM and so forth.”

After honing their skills by playing others songs, including a stint by Gallivan in an “honest to goodness metal cover band,” the two school friends, along with bass player Andrew Rennie, recorded their first EP as Kruddler, “Think About It Buddy,” at the renowned Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minn., the studio where Nirvana recorded “In Utero.”

The group began to find its musical voice with 1997’s “On The Lamb” and 1999’s “The Fall Of The House Of Kruddler.” The latter was the first time the band recorded with Mike Wisti of the Rank Strangers, a relationship that has lasted through all of the band’s subsequent releases. This was also the first time Gallivan noticed the name of another group that was recording a lot at Wisti’s studio.

“We were down there recording and Wisti’s always has a calendar of who’s playing what date and I was like, who are these Manta Rays?” he said. “They seem to be playing in your studio all the time. Wisti told us we might like ‘em.”

That was prophetic. Two years later, the Manta Ray’s bass and guitar player, Tony Zaccardi and Ben Hayter, respectively, joined Kruddler. “We were looking for a second guitar player,” Zaccardi said. “Ben and I weren’t doing anything since the Manta Rays had broken up, so Ben joined Kruddler. Tim had wanted to round out the rhythm section and I wasn’t playing in any bands at the time.”

The newly minted quartet went into the studio in 2001 and released the explosive “Pet Stains.” The addition of Hayter and Zaccardi helped the band’s sound congeal and “Pet Stains” put their previous output to shame.

The band continued their winning streak with the 2003 effort, “They’re There.” The album also marked a move to Amphetamine Reptile offshoot Learning Curve Records. “Rainer Fronz Learning Curve head said,” ‘I’ll put out a Kruddler record, let’s do it,” Zaccardi said. “He got it to a lot of places out of state and different punk rock web sites and bigger magazines we probably would never send something to.”

Shortly after the release of “They’re There,” Hayter decided to leave the band in order to pursue his own musical projects. They all remain friends; however, and Kruddler served as his backing band for a gig in Lawrence, KS., earlier in the year.

Once again a trio, Kruddler had to decide if they wanted to find another guitar player.

“We’d practiced as a trio before; at the end of Ben’s tenure in the band he wasn’t really at practice all the time,” Gallivan said. “So, we’d already been writing songs together as a together, but I was totally thinking, we need to find another guitar player, but I really liked the way we were working as a three-piece, and either I got drunk and forgot we needed to find another guitar player, or I just thought,

‘Ben is a great lead guitar player, but I think Shane’s got such a strong personality to his guitar playing that he can carry a trio’,” Baumgart added.

This is certainly true on the group’s newest CD, “Tuesday Night Lie.” Hands down their best effort to date, the trio sounds extremely comfortable together, combining a more stripped down, raw feel to their usual melodic hooks.

The group still has a lot of fun playing together, as was evidenced by a recent Milwaukee’s Best Light fuelled practice session. The guys ran through some original songs, as well as tossing in covers from groups as varied as Chicago, The Beatles and The Replacements, all the while joking around with one another.
“We’re pretty blue-collar about practice, which I’m proud of,” Baumgart said. “We have our Tuesday and Wednesday night dates and we only break ‘em if somebody really has something going on.”

Gallivan also testifies to the joy of regular practice sessions. “Even sometimes when I don’t want to be there , I usually end up having fun at practice,” he said. “There’ll be times when I won’t feel good and I’ll feel better after we practice. The beer helps, but I also feel like we accomplish something.”

Keeping things fun and enjoying each other’s company, as well as being happy with just being a moderately successful local band, are keys to Kruddler’s longevity. Or as Zaccardi puts it: “Shane and Tim are very close friends and now these two are some of my best friends. Mostly we get together and drink beer, then we play shows and get free beer, get some money to put out another record and make T-shirts. We’re not concerned with how cool we look and all that crap.”

www.kruddler.com

www.learningcurverecords.com