The Rebel Is A True Original

There's no stopping The Rebel. For over 20 years the alter ego of Country Teasers' Ben Wallers has been writing songs that drip with scathing satire and a bold and gnarled sense of humour.

As well as being a great songwriter, the Londoner who is usually dressed in camouflage and a cowboy hat, is a genius provocateur with lyrics inspired as much by Kool Keith as William Burroughs (the above photo is of Wallers visiting Burroughs' grave).

"Can I Pass", a song delivered with a healthy amount of self-aware irony, is lifted from his new album Poems With Water Trilogy, the sixth Rebel release put out by Austin label Monofonus.

Wallers told NOISEY via email that when UK playwright and former Country Teaser, Simon Stephens was looking for a song for a production he went into the Royal Court Theatre to record "Can I Pass". "I had a quarter bottle of scotch to do the vocals; recently I've tinkered with some of the awkward rhymes. ….. I've changed "knee" with "me"; and instead of "the poison rays which hit me were not gamma/It was wine, beer, whisky, gin and cider" I now go "But it wasn't Gamma rays that hit me/ It was cider-beer, gin-wine and whisky".

Despite the changes it retains all the hallmarks of a Wallers original.

'Poems With Water Trilogy' is available July 28 through Monofonus.

The Rebel and Spray Paint Europe 2017:
Aug 15 - London at The Lexington
Aug 16 - Kortrijk at the Pits
Aug 17 - Charleroi at Rockerill
Aug 18 - Gothenburg at Truckstop Alaska
Au 19 - Stockholm at Human Audio
Aug 20 - Paris at La Mechanique Ondulatoire
Aug 21 - Mannheim at Kurzbar
Aug 22 - Berlin at Urban Spree
Aug 23 - Copenhagen at Den Gra Hal
Aug 24 - Berlin at Astra Kulturhaus