The story might have ended right here, but it's where this one starts. Thanks to a bit of good fortune, a sprinkling of brotherly help and whole piles of outright determination, The Hermans - OK, it's “the hermans,” sans capital letters as they prefer, but we're not granting any euro privileges here - are about to embark on a road trip that is a garage band's dream, a literary voyage that will see them pimping their new book in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and other major cities on a concert tour financed by a book publisher that believes in their story.
“It's taken a while for me to believe it,” said Pfeiffer.
The Hermans are not a punk band. They're not “indie rock,” a label they not just question, but challenge for others to define, since Schmidt figures “they're playing ‘indie rock' on McDonald's commercials now.” In fact, they tend to loathe every label that people - and the music industry - might want to assign them, except for one: “Rock band.”
“We're a rock band,” said Jones.
“Yep, rock band,” answered lead guitarist Chris Entz.
They love Yes, all of them. And Rush, Canada's heady prog-rock trio. And Ben Folds. And John Coltrane. And ... well, and everything they think just totally rules, which is anything they find original, groundbreaking, creative, fun and above all, uncategorizable.
Rock band is good enough for them, and it's good enough for Running Press of Philadelphia - Jones' hometown - which is publishing the soon-to-be-released “Stalking America: Journal of an Unknown Rock and Roll Band.” As the name not-so-surreptitiously implies, “Stalking America” - a riff on the band's sole album, 2006's “Stalking Matilda” - is a scrapbook of the early years of a band nobody knows, from a town a handful of people may have heard of, playing music that people may or may not like.
“Stalking America” will introduce The Hermans to America in a big way. In a week, backed by the Running Press, the band begins a concert-and-book tour that will have them playing in America's biggest cities, a nine-gig road trip from the East Coast to ... well, back to Helena, where the tour wraps up in early June.
The book deal: 20,000 initial copies in every major bookstore, including Barnes & Noble, where it will be featured up front in the stores of college towns, with a foreword by Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament. The gigs: A national audience in major cities.
That kind of exposure? Priceless.
How this happened begins with Dave Jones. His brother Greg, the editorial editor for Running Press and a former Missoula journalist, one day got a pitch from his little brother.
Something like: “You wanna publish a book about a nobody band from a small Western town?”
The book would be entirely based on the band members' journals, along with scrapbook materials - like the note about meeting at Flipper's, along with some scanned-in cigarette butts - and photos of four guys forming a band and making a go of it in the Missoula music scene.
“Greg came back to visit me, about a year after we'd been playing, and he read some stuff, like some of our lyrics,” said Dave Jones. “He went back to Philly, then he calls and says, ‘They're interested in publishing that little rock journal you're keeping.' ”
Dave's answer was an expletive, followed by: “Your company is not going to re-edit and change it like MTV.” (Jones, who is from Philadelphia, once heckled the cast of “The Real World” on the Philly streets.)
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