It's a sweltering 4:30 pm and Sweet Nasty is setting up at Coyote Joe's. There's a round of beers perched on the beer keg table, and Anton Teschner, the guy who plays both flamenco guitar and saxophone for the band, is eating a pizza. They're not playing until twilight and it'll be a hell of a show. But for the time being, the heat's slowing them down and they're happy enough to sit and chat.

Sweet Nasty players Anton Teschner and Anthony Fusco attack a Coyote Joe's open mike.

Every man in the band has a musical career stretching back 10 years or more, and they wear their history on their faces or, in the case of rhythm guitarist and Seattle refugee Johnny Low, inked on their arms. 

“Among all of us, we've probably played every genre of mainstream music,” said bassist Jimmy Stiles. That includes rap-metal, country and blues, to name a scant few.

What they've pulled together for their latest project is unapologetically fun to listen and move to. The band plays Latin-tinged sets when Teschner picks up the flamenco guitar; it spins more eclectically with Teschner on the sax. Danceable grunge ska might come close to their sound, but doesn't capture it. It's utterly enjoyable, which is what every member of the five-man band (six if you count Teschner twice) is going for.

“You can never go wrong with melody and groove,” said Stiles. “We all agreed on that.”

That they would meet in Prescott's microscopic and nurturing music scene was a foregone conclusion; the  synergistic chemistry among the five members was not. Teschner started the band with guitarist Anthony Fusco, and once they got a rhythm section in place they were off to the races. According to Fusco, the band got together after Halloween and was gigging two weeks after their first practice.

“Our second practice was on AZTV at 9 in the morning,” said Fusco.

Lifting a brew, bassist Stiles half-jokingly put on the hard sell.

"Download [the performance] on MySpace and friend us,” he said (for the record, their MySpace page is available here).
 

The urge to plug his band is as irresistible to them as the urge to grow as quickly as possible; their ambition is as infectious as their grooves. And so far, Stiles and his bandmates are smokin'. In about the same time it takes to grow a fetus, the men have built a catalog of 19 original songs, cut a 6-song album, Bread, Wine and Circus and begun planning gigs in LA. Their rapid ascent, they say, comes from being a  band of grownups.

And none of them are drug addicts, they tell me proudly. Then they clarify. No drug addicts, but the band does have two functioning alcoholics and four schizophrenics.

A joke.

Seriously though, Stiles said, "There's no baggage, nothing weighting us down.”

“We just bought $4000 worth of baggage,” one of them volunteers, referring to the mother-lode of new equipment that's propped up on CoJo's pine stage.

“It's stepping stones,” said Fusco.

“We figure we have limitless potential, so why f--- around?” said Stiles. And, he said, they sound great on substandard equipment, so imagine the potential.

For more info and performance dates, visit Sweet Nasty's MySpace page.

{Online Editor's Note: This version has changed from the original version with the addition of the sidebar, shortened title, and removal of dated elements.}