WEE BEASTIE
ON THE RECORD
NOTORIOUS FRONTMAN GOES SOLO BY JASON YANG
I
t used to be a familiar sight in Denton bars and music venues: A 5-foot-8 man, wearing nothing but a soiled pair of women’s underwear, roaring into a microphone and moving every inch of his hairy, husky body to an ecstatic punk rock song. Unfazed, his band – a standard guitarbass-drum punk outfit with an added brass section – plays on as their sweaty frontman, gasping for breath, charges into a crowd of enthusiastic fans, gleefully hopping and slamming into each other. Richard Haskins, designated rabblerouser for the notorious Denton-based WeeBeasties, rarely dons his frontman outfit these days. Haskins, 27, said the Beasties are currently on hiatus – the group has played about 50 “last shows ever” since forming in Denton in 2000 – because of a lack of band members and “questionable,” highintensity, occasionally violent performances that have caused venues around the country to ban the group from performing. Instead of underwear, Haskins wears 10
a trucker hat that hides his buzz cut, a sleeveless T-shirt showing off a tattoo on his upper arm, a pair of torn-up and faded blue jeans and a pair of black boots. His entire wardrobe fits in a laundry basket. He sleeps on his friend’s couch. He doesn’t have a car. Depending on the day, he works as a handyman or a dishwasher at UNT. Even with all the odds against him, Haskins isn’t surrendering his punk rock roots. “Mike Wiebe [singer for Denton-bred punk band The Riverboat Gamblers] once said, ‘Richard Haskins is a rocker and he’ll do this for the rest of his life,’ and he’s right,” Haskins said. “It’s the only thing I know how to do and want to do.”
Elvis howling of lead singer Glenn Danzig and Co. drowned out the classical music. His guitar-playing took on a different slant after that. “With punk rock, I discovered my guitar can cry and scream for you,” Haskins said. Together with a few close friends from high school, Haskins formed the Wee-Beasties in 2000. The name is half-joke, half-tribute to Los Angeles punk band The Germs and scientist Antoine van Leeuwenhoek, who discovered the first bacteria under a microscope and named them “beasties.” The band went on tour and recorded in the summers of 2003 and 2004 before taking a five-year hiatus after a long series of lineup rearrangements and near-break-ups.
Early Days Born in Sherman, Texas, and raised in Denison, Haskins moved to Denton when he was 10 years old. His grandmother, Edna Mae Glover, taught him piano, but when a bus driver gave the young and impressionable Haskins a Misfits CD, the fast-paced guitar riffs and punk-
Success and Fall During the hiatus, Haskins opened the Black Bottle recording studio in Denton, but repelled by the idea of spending the rest of his life in an office, Haskins and the Beasties reunited in 2009. CONTINUED ON PAGE 16 JULY 2012