Plenty left in the tank

Fetal Pig plays at Tally’s in Beaverdale on Saturday, Dec. 13.

There’s a concept in regards to athletes that is best summed up as, “It is not the years, it is the mileage.” If a major league pitcher is getting up there in years, but was lightly worked earlier in his career, scouts say, “Sure he is 37, but it is a young 37.”

To that end, Fetal Pig is a young band.

Formed in 1993, Fetal Pig is the brainchild of the Brothers Hutchison — guitarist/vocalist Dan, and drummer Jeff.

“We only did a couple of shows with our original line up,” Dan recalled. “When our original bassist quit, we couldn’t really find anyone who fit. So we found another guitar player, and I switched to bass for most of the ’90s.”

The band wrote a bunch of songs and put together a roughly-produced EP, but by the end of the decade, Fetal Pig was slowing down. Other projects were starting to take greater priority, and the band went dormant for the better part of a decade. Dan formed the band Why Make Clocks in 1998, and Fetal Pig became something of a fall-back.

“We played like one show in 2000, but that was because it was a show that Why Make Clocks was supposed to play, but the whole band couldn’t make it,” he said.

Four years ago, however, things changed to Fetal Pig’s benefit. Dan’s wife had a party at Vaudeville Mews and decided that she wanted Fetal Pig to perform. Dan and Jeff, along with Why Make Clocks bassist Chuck Hoffman, put the band back together and performed all of Fetal Pig’s old material and a couple of new tracks. They had so much fun, they decided it would be silly to reunite for just one show, and they have been off and running ever since. The following year, Fetal Pig released its debut album (20 years after its first show) and have been playing regularly ever since. More material has been written, and another album is probably in the not-too-distant future.

It has been a long time since Fetal Pig first started gracing the stages of Des Moines. But Hoffman and the Hutchison boys attack the band’s hard hitting, post-punk sound like it is fresh out of the box. Fetal Pig started 21 years ago — but the band is a young 21. CV