Memories fade with time, but if you were ever lucky enough to catch OUT. live, you still remember that shit vividly! Their shows were legendary. Chaos seemed to follow them around wherever they were playing. But every once in a while at their shows, you’d get distracted from the violence going on all around you and just happen to notice that there was a group of kids on stage putting every ounce of energy they had into some amazingly powerful songs. A sound that obscured the lines between The Stooges, New Bomb Turks, Black Flag, Bad Brains, and even early AC/DC, with songs that were easy to get into, but impossible to forget. But then you’d catch a stray fist and snap out of it. But for those brief moments, you heard and saw something incredible on that stage. Something that stuck with you for life.
OUT. (stylized in all caps with period) formed in 1994 by guitarist Dave Bird and vocalist Chad Donnelly (who had moved to Louisville from Rhode Island a year or so previously). After some trial and error with their lineup, OUT. really hit their stride with the addition of Russ Pollard on drums and Tony Bailey on bass. It was with this lineup that the band entered Melody Hill Farm recording studios with recording engineer (and former Kinghorse drummer) Kevin Brownstein over Derby weekend in 1996 to lay down 14 tracks before heading out on tour. Twelve of those songs would be released over a year later on Louisville’s own Noise Pollution as Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Songs, OUT.’s only full-length record and a living testament to the intense power of the band in their prime.
Both Russ and Tony would leave the band not long after the recording of the album, but Dave and Chad soldiered on with various lineups before calling it a day in 1999. Sadly, Chad Donnelly passed away shortly thereafter in early 2001, followed by Tony Bailey in 2009.
Now, 30 years after the recording of this landmark album, Noise Pollution presents the re-release of Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Songs. Available on vinyl for the first time ever, the 30th Anniversary Edition has been remastered from the original mixes and features 2 never-before-released songs from the original sessions, newly mixed by original recording engineer Kevin Brownstein, as well as freshly reimagined cover art by original cover artist Catherine Irwin (Freakwater).
In celebration of the re-release, LEO Weekly reached out to Dave Bird for his take on all things OUT.
LEO: You’ve been in the Louisville music scene for over 30 years now and have played in several amazing bands, OUT. being only one of them. For those unfamiliar with you, can you give your musical resume?
Dave Bird: I’ve played with Hedge, OUT., The Ingredient, VRKTM, Speed To Roam, Fire the Saddle, Bad Blood, Health and Happiness Family Gospel Band, Bonnie Prince Billy, Sean Garrison and the Five Finger Discount, The Spurs, Brett Eugene Ralph’s Kentucky Chrome Revue, American Lesions, Bird/Trooper, The Web, Montag, Jaye Jayle, Windago, The Rebaba Group, Wink’s Band, Pink Nasty, George Stearman and Texas Toast, Whiskeydick, and Rude Weirdo, which is my current and longest lived band.
I think I’m forgetting some. A few years ago, I sat down and tried to list everything, and it was closer to 30 bands. It’s possible I could be forgetting something I was a part of for a long time. I’m epileptic, and it’s done very strange things to my memory. I hope I don’t hurt any of my friends’ feelings because I omitted something.
How did this whole reissue project come about?
Brandon [Skipworth] and Nathan [Smallwood] asked me what I thought about reissuing the album out of the blue; it really took me by surprise. I told them I’d probably cry tears of joy if they did it. That’s actually already happened a couple of times throughout the process of working on it. Chad and Tony are among the closest friends I’ve ever had. With both of them no longer with us, revisiting the record has had me pretty emotional at times. More than anything else, this project has been an opportunity to honor their memory, so it’s a really big deal for me.
Do you have any interesting memories from the recording of Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Songs?
I was impressed with Melody Hill from the second we pulled up to the place. It was a cabin in the country, very idyllic. If I recall correctly, we burned through recording the basic tracks pretty quick. It would have gone even faster, but halfway through recording, Tony decided he wasn’t getting the bass sound he wanted. He didn’t like the big open room his amp was in and decided he wanted to put his cabinet in the backseat of his car. Kevin wasn’t into that idea at all. They went back and forth on it for a while, and Tony wouldn’t let it go. Kevin finally agreed, but it took a while to work out setting his rig back up outside of the studio entirely. I did a handful of overdubs when we were done, and after that, Chad did the vocals. He and Kevin were both really meticulous, so that part took the most time. Kevin asked Chad to give him the lyrics so they could go through it line by line together. After all these years, he still had those handwritten lyric sheets Chad wrote out for him. It was exciting to have them in his own hand. We got to include them in the record, which I think is really cool. Kevin told me he loved working with Chad because he liked doing a lot of takes. I like knocking stuff out quickly myself. If you come in prepared, I think laboring over takes for hours on end is a drag that seldom results in better results. Both of those guys had strong perfectionist streaks, though. Takes all kinds. I think we did a good job of getting the best of both worlds at Melody Hill.
Are there any reasons behind why “Missed Connection” and “Building a Better Monster” weren’t released until now?
I think the plan may have been to use those songs on another record down the line. Russ and Tony left the band though, so when it came time to record again, we decided to redo “Missed Connection” with the new lineup. We weren’t playing “Building a Better Monster” anymore, so it fell by the wayside to make room for new material.
The album title, Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Songs, I assume, was inspired by the B.J. Thomas song “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song”. Any particular reason this was chosen for the album title?
Chad came up with that one. We’d been mulling over names for a while. He asked if I was familiar with the BJ Thomas song and suggested it as a possible title. I grew up hearing it on the radio and always loved it. The title just really fit perfectly; that’s exactly what most of those songs are. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves, so we didn’t.
The inner sleeve picture was taken from inside a car that is about to cross a bridge. Is there a story behind that picture?
Well, we did a lot of touring, so for me it’s a nod to that. I really like the loaf of bread on the dashboard. I’m not sure we ever broke even on a tour, so things like peanut butter sandwiches were a staple. There’s probably a 50/50 chance that loaf of bread was stolen. We had several food scams; go to a motel in the morning and hit the continental breakfast. In general, third shift gas station clerks couldn’t care less if someone shoplifts food. Cracker Barrel just begs for it. You eat, then pretend you’re shopping in their little store and leave one at a time. You have to pay the tip, though. Cash on the table. If you were to try to do this stuff now, I’d recommend being a lot more cautious in today’s age of omnipresent surveillance. Anyway, I gave Nathan all the old pictures I had, and he selected that one. I think he picked up a kind of looking back thing going on in the image that felt appropriate. It’s pretty Double Nickels on the Dime, though I have to wonder if that’s what whoever took the picture was seeing.
In the liner notes of the reissue, you mention you have not spoken with Russ Pollard in years. Was he not involved with this reissue?
No, unfortunately, we weren’t able to contact Russ to work on the reissue with us.
Not too long after he left OUT., Russ joined Sebadoh and moved to LA. He also started a band out there called Everest that did really well and kept him out there for a long time. Neil Young put out a record of theirs and took them on tour. At one point, Russ sent me a picture of his band taking a bow with Neil at Madison Square Garden after everyone came out on stage to play “Keep On Rockin’ In The Free World” to close the show. It was cool as shit. We just lost touch over the years, which seems like a natural thing that can happen when you live across the country from someone, I guess. I actually did manage to touch base with him after the record was finished to tell him about it, which was great. He was excited to hear it. I didn’t get the impression he was upset that he wasn’t involved.
The band Hedge was a precursor to OUT. in that you, Tony Bailey, and Russ Pollard were all involved with that band as well. Yet, each of you played different instruments in OUT. than you did in Hedge. Given that the two bands sound very different from one another, was this done on purpose?
The reason the bands sound so different is that Ryan Stratton was the primary songwriter in Hedge. All of us switching instruments in OUT. wasn’t necessarily intentional. It started with me giving it a whirl on guitar, but there was never any discussion about everyone switching instruments. Tony, Russ, and I all lived together when Chad and I decided to start the band, so those guys joining happened naturally. Russ liked the songs and was interested in playing drums in a band. We played our first show with another guy on bass, but Tony was there. The other guy flaked a couple months after the show, and Tony offered to join. He played bass because we needed a bass player. Of course we jumped at the chance to have him. Since we all lived together and had a 24-hour rehearsal spot five minutes from our apartment, the three of us were playing together nonstop and got super tight really fast. When Tony came to his first practice with us I asked if he wanted me to walk him through the parts of a song. He said it would probably be easiest if we just played and had him join in. So we start a song, and he played the entire thing perfectly. Then we played the rest of our set, and he knew it all. This was after seeing us one time two months prior. He hadn’t heard a recording or anything; there was no recording to hear. That was the moment I realized he was operating on a different level than anyone else I knew. He had perfect pitch; it was crazy. I always tell this story…I was driving with him once, someone honked their horn, and Tony said, “Man, I love F#.” I thought he was bullshitting for a while, but it was legit. You could play any note, and without any kind of visual reference, he’d tell you what it was. The guy was a prodigy; he was 15 when we made Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Songs.
OUT. was known to have some rather crazy live shows. Are there any particular shows that stick out in your mind for being wild?
I could tell crazy show stories all day long. A lot of them I don’t even like to recall; they were so violent, though. I look back on that stuff now with a little discomfort because I’m not a violent person at all. Really, I wonder how I managed to deal with how out of control things would get for as long as I did. There used to be a zine called Maximum Rocknroll that put out an issue every year called Book Your Own Fucking Life. It listed contact info for venues that booked punk bands in pretty much every city in the country. That’s how we booked our tours because we just didn’t know any other way to do it. It worked great, but it would also land us in some really sketchy environments. Chad was a really abrasive guy too, that definitely didn’t help. Someone threatened us with a shotgun in Houston once. Sometimes we’d be compelled to fight if we got booked somewhere we shouldn’t have been, then we’d have to cut and run before we got seriously beat down. It got really scary sometimes.
I busted my hand open before a show once, and playing really exacerbated the cut, so I was bleeding pretty profusely. There was a lady in the crowd going buck wild, and when she noticed my hand, she started licking the blood off. I worried about that one for a while.
After we played in Cincinnati once, we heard Mudhoney was playing across the street, so we went out to see if we could get in and walked into a full-blown riot. Some Nazis had assaulted some queer folks, and the shit hit the fan. There were cops in riot gear hitting people with batons and all that. Didn’t get to see Mudhoney, but Chad managed to sneak in with all the madness happening in the street.
There were a lot of crazy, in a good way, experiences too. Like just getting wild, people hanging from the rafters kind of stuff, but when someone asks for a crazy OUT. story, the first things that come to mind are pretty dark. It’s kind of embarrassing.
Road stories, I know you have some. Can you give us any from your time touring with OUT.?
I guess this ties into the last question, but here’s some more. This is actually a fun one. We played at a place in Austin that we didn’t realize was a gay bar until we walked in. Like it was obvious, there’s beefcake all over the walls, the bartender’s shirtless, leather daddies everywhere. With our name, that happened more than once. So we get there really early and load our stuff in and since we had a lot of time to kill, we decide to check out the town. Greg Livingston was in the band at the time, and he says he’s gonna stick around and just chill at the bar. The rest of us all leave. A couple hours later, we come back and Greg is pumped. He’s like “This show is going to rule, these people are awesome. Everyone is super nice, I haven’t paid for a single drink.” We were like, “Well, yeah, man, look around. This is a gay bar; they’re all hitting on you.” He had no idea. We watched as the realization set in; it was great. He was right though. It was an awesome show.
We toured with Pat McClimans’ band Tramlaw quite a bit. Those guys were awesome. I really love Pat. I used to ride in their van instead of ours because they were a ton of fun. They had a Nintendo and a vhs player in their van, so we’d be playing Zelda and watching Live At Pompeii while everyone was fighting in the OUT. van.
My friend Greg Wells recently told me a story that I never knew about because I was with Tramlaw when it happened. Greg used to tour with us and sell merch and do whatever else. Apparently, during a particularly nasty fight in the van, Chad and Matt Odenweller pulled knives on each other. That was as far as it went, but Greg was so convinced something catastrophic was going to happen that he left us when we stopped and stayed in a men’s shelter for the night. That was preferable and safer than being with us. It’s baffling to me now that we continued playing shows when there was that level of violence in the band. We were certainly all traumatized people. I think it’s possible that kind of shared experience bonded us as much as it kept us at each other’s throats. I don’t have any other explanations, really.
How/when/where/why the hell did OUT. end up on the same bill as Kid Rock? And how did the crowd react?
[Ed. Note: The Wikipedia page for Kid Rock’s Devil Without a Cause tour lists the date of this show as October 14, 1998.]
The Toy Tiger used to have shows on Wednesday nights, and we became a kind of go-to for the club promoter when they needed an act for a last-minute booking for one. We said yes every time they asked because it was so much fun playing there. In my mind, the Toy Tiger had Louisville’s all-time greatest room to see and play a show in. It sounded fantastic in there, and it had tiered seating, so even if you were sitting at a table in the very back, you saw everything. There was a dance floor in front of the stage if you wanted to dance or be right up front. I’ve never understood why that’s not the standard setup for clubs everywhere. Those Wednesday night shows usually had events like a wet t-shirt contest that would happen after the show, too, so the whole experience was a real bizarro and seedy spectacle. We played with traveling tribute bands there a few times. I particularly liked an AC/DC band called Hell’s Bells. They were spot on, and their Angus was like 6’8”, which filled me with glee for some reason. He had the schoolboy uniform and everything; it ruled. It was for one of these shows that we were asked if we wanted to play with this guy, Kid Rock. They were selling him to us as someone who was going to blow up as soon as his record came out. None of us had heard of him, but we didn’t need to be sold; it was a show at the Toy Tiger. The only thing I remember about it is that I didn’t make it through a single song of his. It was too embarrassing to watch, so I went home. The great Brian Schreck was playing bass with us then; he and I still laugh about it when we see each other. They were right about Kid Rock blowing up, though, he played Louisville Gardens his next time through not even a year later.
Any chance you’d get together with Russ and/or some other people to play OUT. songs again, even if it’s just a one-time thing?
Never say never, but I’ve already done it twice before. I’m guessing the first time was in 2006 or 2007. It was Matt Odenweller, Greg Livingston, Tony, and myself. All of us had played in the band, so despite Chad being gone, it still felt like a reunion. That show was bonkers. Someone smashed a bottle on the floor as soon as we started playing, and that set the tone for the whole thing. I spent half the show being picked up and carried around. Then, a few years after that, maybe 2011 or 2012, my friend Nick Smith contacted me and said he was looking to get a crew together to do an OUT. set, and he needed a singer. I didn’t know him at all at the time, which made it all the more flattering for me. He had assembled a great group, too. Tony Ash was playing bass and Matt Jaha, who we also lost too soon, was playing drums. Matt was having problems at the time and couldn’t make rehearsals, so we got Eric McManus on board. They all knew the songs inside and out, and we all clicked immediately. We had so much fun that we decided to continue on with new material. That’s how the band American Lesions started.
I considered doing another tribute set for the record release. I ran it by the Lesions guys, but Nick had a lot on his plate, and Eric moved back to Philly. At this point, I don’t even know who else I would ask that might be interested. I’m also getting up there in years. I read an interview with David Yow when The Jesus Lizard got back together, where he was saying these days he had to get in the gym and train in order to perform their songs correctly. That would definitely be the case for me doing an OUT. show anymore; it takes a lot of energy to do it right. I also don’t have any kind of rage fuel these days, thankfully. I wouldn’t want to risk tarnishing the name of the band by being a poser.
For you personally, is there a definitive OUT. song or songs that stand out amongst the rest?
That’s a good question. I’ll go with “You Destroy Me.” It’s probably the best example of what we called pinky rock, which just meant Chuck Berry guitar licks that require using your pinky finger. Picking it up and putting it down is all there is to it. It’s a Keith Richards and Johnny Thunders move. Any bonehead that wants to play guitar can play ass-kicking pinky rock within a half hour of picking up the instrument, so of course I did it all the time. When we started OUT., the extent of my guitar playing ability was three-chord folk songs I’d play in my bedroom. Guitar was just a vehicle for me to be able to sing old songs I liked. I probably never would have pursued it beyond that if Chad wasn’t really enthusiastic about the stuff I wrote. Discovering something so simple, effective, and definitively rock n’ roll in those early days was like getting the keys to the kingdom. So yeah, “You Destroy Me” really captured the spirit of the band.
Whether OUT.-related or otherwise, do you have any future plans or anything you’d like to promote?
We’re throwing a listening party for the record release at Surface Noise on January 30th. I’m on pins and needles looking forward to it. In addition to songs from the record, I’m putting together a playlist of songs from other projects that the band members played on. Between Russ, Tony, and myself, there’s a lot to choose from. Nathan, Brandon, and I are also going to be on Joey Mudd’s awesome radio show, The Deep End, to discuss the record and all things Noise Pollution.
Also, Rude Weirdo is playing at the Whirling Tiger on February 20th with Decline Effect and Devils. As always, we will be in accordance with the pillars for being a great band with a heavy focus on Amuse Yourself and Looks.
OUT.’s Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Songs 30th Anniversary Edition is available in both “Obliteration Red” and “Golden Forked Marble” limited edition colored vinyl, and as a digital download from Noise Pollution’s website at noisepollution.bandcamp.com.
A listening party will be held at Surface Noise Records (600 Baxter Avenue) on Friday, January 30 at 6:00 p.m.
This article appears in Jan 1-31, 2026.