Spirit of '68

CHEAP TIME is a garage rock trio from Tennessee that brings a healthy dose of glam, punk and power pop to the garage rock wheelhouse. At the heart of the band is Jeffery Novak, who started as a Tennessee teen playing in punk bands the aptly named Jeffrey Novak’s One Man Band and the now defunct Rat Traps. He fell under the wing of the late Jay Reatard who encouraged Novak in music and in life.

“It was like immediately meeting a brother,” Novak told the LA Times. “He was four or five years older than me. He’d figured some things out, and he gave me so many tips. A lot of things. That’s something I’ll have to carry around with me for the rest of my life. He was a big influence, whether he died young or not.”

Another influence on Novak and the infancy of Cheap Time was the music of early Redd Kross and The Runaways which weighed heavy on the raw music of the burgeoning band formed with moonlighting Be Your Own Pet’ members Jemina Pearl on bass and Nathan Vasquez on drums.

Lineup changes brought with them new influences, looking to power pop acts like The Quick and Sparks for inspiration and releasing an eponymous LP on In The Red Records. The solidified trio of Novak on guitar, Stephen Braren on bass and Ryan Sweeney on drums hit the road with Yo La Tengo, Jay Reatard and Guitar Wolf, releasing a string of 7” singles along the way culminating in last years In The Red Records follow-up, Fantastic Explanations (And Similar Situations) which finds the band embracing their power pop ya-yas.

“We didn’t know what was going to happen to the record for a couple of months,” Novak told the LA Times. “It was like, ‘Wow, we spent a lot of money and this record’s never going to get done.’ But then we got the tapes back and mixed it with [Sparks guitarist and Runaways and Concrete Blonde producer] Earle Mankey and that was a cool experience unto itself. It was an upbeat way to end a record that was kind of tragic.”

Cheap Time plays The Bishop Thursday August 25 with Heinous Orca and Vacation Club.