THREE FINGER COWBOY

Daemon released Three Finger Cowboy’s record, Hooray for Love in 1999. Hailing from Birmingham, Alabama, TFC helped to define their community’s garage power pop rock scene. At the helm of the band was Katharine McElroy on guitar and vocals. Caleb Gentry played drums, Ryan Kirby played bass, and Jason Hamric was on lead guitar. Not long after they started, Hunter Manasco replaced Jason on guitar, and Hunter and Katharine began their long run of musical projects, including the Daemon bands, Nineteen Forty-Five and Snow Machine. Before their second Daemon release, Three Finger Cowboy’s bass player switched from Ryan Kirby to Craig Cerevolo, and the band’s line-up was cemented.

This is the original bio that came out with the release of Hooray for Love.

In the summer of 1999, the world was shocked and saddened by the death of a president’s son, men and women alike fell ill with “Ricky Martin Fever,” and crazed teens rioted at the Woodstock peace and love festival. That same magical summer, a quartet of youngsters from Birmingham, Alabama took the popular music world by storm with a simple ode to love called “Get Your Finger Out of There.” But at the very height of their popularity, the band threatened to crumble under the pressures of fame, fortune, addiction, legal trouble, accusations of lip-synching, failed health, and insanity. This is the story of a band with legendary talent and a notorious past. This is the story of Three Finger Cowboy.

The Three Finger Cowboy saga begins in the peaceful community of Bryan, Texas with a young couple named Russell and Brownie McElroy. Russell, an exotic dancer, earns extra money lap dancing so that his daughter Katharine may re-string her dime store guitar. Brownie, meanwhile, sells her soul to the Dark Lord so that Katharine may take some desperately needed voice lessons. In her early teens, Katharine shows promise as a guitarist and vocalist but a growing addiction to Pixie Stix and Smartees forces her to drop out of high school and enter a recovery program. In 1997, after years of stumbling in and out of halfway houses, she decides to form the greatest rock band the world has ever known.

Meanwhile, in Haleyville, Alabama, Hunter Manasco’s parents sell the family cock-fighting operation and move to Hawaii without telling Hunter. To battle his grief, Hunter begins freebasing over eighty grams of coffee crystals per day and mangles his left hand playing strip poker. Doctors at Hooperton-Moore in Baltimore reconstruct the hand using exciting new Spring-Lite™ technology, increasing Hunter’s guitar-playing speed to approximately 1,500 notes per minute. He meets Katharine while recovering from his caffeine addiction, and one of the great partnerships in rock is born.

While traveling the country as an acoustic duo, Katharine and Hunter encounter Caleb Gentry, the three-armed son of corrupt Alabama politicians. Katharine and Hunter convince Caleb to drop out of the state gubernatorial race and join their fledgling rock band. Caleb sells used Heroin to senior citizens and buys a 62-piece drum kit with the proceeds. He spends the next six months developing his innovative “Goat Venom” drumming technique, and Katharine, Hunter, and Caleb begin touring the nation as a three-piece.

On a midnight flight to Los Angeles, the trio meet Craig Cerevolo, a Canadian flight attendant with a glass eye. Immediately recognizing Craig’s amazing star-power and lady-appeal, Caleb holds the plane hostage until Craig agrees to sign on with the band. Despite his fear of low frequencies, Craig invests in a bass and some crotchless leather pants. Tempers flare when Hunter catches Craig lip-synching his own conversations, but the band reunites to help Craig heal after a near fatal flying accident.

With the band’s lineup completed, Three Finger Cowboy releases a critically adored debut album on Daemon Records called Kissed. They embark on a whirlwind American tour, playing multiple dates with superstar acts including Fastball and the Indigo Girls. Succumbing to the remarkable pressure of life on the road, Manasco serves a short prison term for writing his name in urine on a neighbor’s lawn, and Cerevolo begins drinking pancake syrup straight from the bottle. The band finally hits rock bottom when McElroy starts crushing and snorting Smartees again, and Gentry decides to sell all of his internal organs for money to buy origami paper. After 25 collective years and $976,000 spent on rehabilitation and legal fees, Three Finger Cowboy is clean sober, and healthy. Three Finger Cowboy’s sophomore Daemon release, Hooray for Love, chronicle their spiral into the depths of depravity and meteoric rebirth on the wings of rock.