Two Cow Garage weathers winter storm on way to fest

It's a Monday afternoon earlier this month and Two Cow Garage drummer David Murphy has news of a rare sighting.

The sun.

"Yesterday was the first day any of us have seen the sun in a long time," says Murphy, 33, as he and band mates pull up for a gig that night at Will's Pub in Orlando, Fla.

The group -- singer-guitarist Micah Schnabel, singer-bassist Shane Sweeney and guitarist-singer and new member Todd Farrell Jr. -- left their home base of Columbus, Ohio, in late February for a tour of the East Coast. It was a trek that led them into the maw of the winter storm that covered that part of the country and forced them to cancel a New York City gig when they were stranded in Connecticut.

By the time you read this, however, the band will have made its way to warmer climes and gigs at the massive South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, before headlining a Sunday night show at Hot Springs' Valley of the Vapors Festival.

"It's really convenient," Murphy says about the festival and its scheduling. "It works out pretty well after South by Southwest."

The group, with its sweaty, raw and raucous live shows of heartfelt, blue-collar rock 'n' roll that is twinged with equal parts alt-country and punk, was founded by Schnabel and Sweeney in 2001. Murphy hopped behind the drum kit in 2011.

The band has recorded six albums -- Please Turn the Gas Back On, The Wall Against Our Back, III, Speaking in Cursive, Sweet Saint Me and 2013's Death of The Self-Preservation Society.

That last one was the first the band recorded for Little Rock label Last Chance Records, which is owned by longtime Two Cow pal Travis Hill and is the home of compatriots John Moreland, American Aquarium, North Little Rock singer-songwriter Adam Faucett and others.

There is a new Two Cow album in the works, but the band is taking a different approach this time. Instead of holing up in a studio and shutting down its touring operation, the group is releasing singles via Bandcamp.com and will compile them into an album later this year.

The latest is "Let the Boys Be Girls," Schnabel's hooky, fist-pumping anthem about acceptance, independence and rocking out that has been a popular live staple for the past year or so and can be found at twocowgarage1.bandcamp.com/.

"We feel we can keep everything moving better this way," says Murphy, who has been reading This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band, the 1993 autobiography of the Phillips County native during those long days on the road with his band mates. ("There are a lot of books in this van," he says. "Everybody's always reading something.")

"It's an experiment," says Hill of the new recordings. "We're trying some new things instead of the usual stuff."

Last Chance will also release a Two Cow Garage split single with Faucett this summer, Hill says, and 's Schnabel's solo EP, Not the Boy You Used to Know, has just been released on the label.

For the hard-touring quartet, who count Little Rock as a sort of home away from home, the addition of Farrell has opened up the group's live attack.

Hill says, "He adds another voice to the band. In the past, we didn't have enough hands and fingers to play some of the things [on our albums], but he gives us a lot more tools."

Weekend on 03/19/2015