City Pages | 080620 | The return of Airkraft

The return of Airkraft

COVER FEATURE

Wausau’s biggest rock stars from the 1980s are coming out with a new album - the first in nearly 30 years.

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Mitch Viegut can still remember the first time he heard a song he wrote playing on the radio. He was in his car, driving from Athens to Wausau at about 2 pm, tuned to radio station WIFC. “All of a sudden, there’s me, I’m the writer of that song and it’s on the radio,” Viegut told City Pages from his basement studio. “It’s a feeling you never forget. It adds motivation to keep pursuing music.”

Viegut was around 20 years old at the time, and that was the 1980s.

His band Airkraft, formed with another Wausau native, Dave Saindon, in Eau Claire in the 1980s, was just starting to take off. They were starting to play more shows further and further outside of Wisconsin, and as radio play grew from that first time Viegut heard his song play on WIFC, more and more radio stations throughout the Midwest started playing their songs. They eventually became a national level hair metal act through the 1980s, complete with the poofy hairstyles and tight leather outfits the genre’s musicians were known for.

Today, Viegut speaks to City Pages from his home studio in his historic home in Wausau. His house is filled with guitars, many vintage, but he’s more likely to appear in the paper or on the radio as a real estate developer. Viegut, along with Bob Ohde and Fernando Riveron, took over the Riverlife development project, after plans from two previous developers fell through. The first building, a high-end apartment complex overlooking Riverlife park with its bike bridge and bike/ped path along the Wisconsin River, is largely complete and the first tenants started moving in their belongings this past weekend.

But though a lot of his focus is now on development, that doesn’t mean Viegut has set music aside. Viegut plays with John Altenburgh in Johnny and the MoTones, which has recorded several of its own records. The band has been a staple of the Concerts on the Square series, at least in non-pandemic years. Saindon has been playing with them too more recently, Viegut says.

But the reason we’re in Viegut’s basement studio has nothing to do with the MoTones. Pulled up on his version of Pro Tools is a new Airkraft song — that’s right, Airkraft is back. Or perhaps more accurately, active again.

Airkraft technically never broke up, it just sort of fizzled, Viegut explains.

The song is every bit an 80s hair metal rock ballad as one might expect of them from the 1980s, with hints of bluesy undertones. One might think we’d taken a time machine and landed in a studio from the 1988, if not for the digital workstation and a mouse replacing the rows of fader switches and dials of huge mixing consoles. Viegut jokes that all the plugins are overwhelming, but thankfully he had many of the original electronic devices from his days owning a studio (Viegut was as much into the recording side of music as playing) so they’ve helped him navigate the digital world of audio production.

But if the new song previewed by City Pages is any indication, the new way of recording hasn’t added many modern flourishes - the sound is still very 1980s. And the fan base, something that also has persisted these many years, are more than happy about that. They’ll be happy to know that the first Airkraft album in 30 years will soon be available.

A changing scene

In 1992 Nirvana came out with its debut big label record, Nevermind, changing rock music. It took the rawness of Nirvana’s live show and tamed it with the production of Butch Vig, who Viegut knew well (and is also from Wisconsin), turning the band into an overnight hit. It paved

August 6–13, 2020

by B.C. Kowalski

the way for the Seattle sound, with bands the likes of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Husker Du. It also meant that the days of hair bands drawing arena-sized shows were slowly but surely coming to an end.

The band never stopped touring, and never really broke up. Airkraft just played less and less until they were hardly playing at all and everyone else had found other projects, musical or otherwise.

But that they had been huge was not in doubt. Mike Capista, who has run Inner Sleeve Records for more than 40 years, says their debut record was a huge deal. “It was kind of an event,” Capista told City Pages. “They were local guys, everyone knew them. It came out on record (vinyl) only.”

They were so big that they didn’t dare play under their own name when they came back to town, says John Altenburgh, who now plays with Viegut in Johnny and the MoTones. Since they knew no local venue would be big enough, and none could afford their Airkraft rates, they formed a band called Joe Fridays and their events would be pure chaos with local musicians jamming with them. “They’d come with a sound system that would take up half the bar,’ Altenburgh recalls. “It was so loud, so crazy. It was a blast.”

Radio worked quite a bit differently back then, said Dave Kallaway of WIFC. In the Airkraft days in the 1980s, bands would travel the region with their recordings to different radio stations to meet with DJs and drum up interest for their records. “Nowadays I rarely hear from artists — they try to put their music online or go through a record company,” Kallaway says.

“But it seems way more of a craps shoot to get airplay now.”

The music scene was much different back then, Viegut says. Viegut says he played live music since he was 15 and bars with live music in the 1970s would be packed to the gills. Places such as the Airway Bar in Marshfield would have 700 people jam-packed in to hear live music, Viegut says.

He’d played with Saindon since 1973, and while in college at Eau Claire in 1980 decided to quit school and play in a band full time. He hadn’t told his parents he’d quit school yet but the scheme was up when his report card beat him home by a day one semester. “I told them I think I’m going to quit school and play music full time,” Viegut says. “My parents were cool with it. They knew I had a passion for music.”

The band came out with Let’s Take Off in 1983, followed by Proximity in 1985. The band was touring the region, playing regularly. None of them ever needed to get day jobs. But when Airkraft signed with Curb Records and came out with its third album, self-entitled, the band really took off and became a national touring act. Their music even charted abroad in countries such as England and Germany.