What began as a surf-rock band for a Portland house party in 1992 has developed into a longstanding vampire-caped institution

Satan’s Pilgrims just wanted to have a good time at home. Then they got famous. 

It was 1992, and all the members of the newly formed five-man surf rock group lived in the same house in Ladd’s Addition in Southeast Portland — a pipe-dream today for a handful of broke musicians in their 20s.

“I think now [the house] sold for millions of dollars,” laughed Ted Miller, the band’s drummer.

The gang was getting heavy into early ’60s surf, as well as some more modern takes on the genre, like Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet and Phantom Surfers. They wanted to throw together a band that could play those kinds of tunes at their house parties. 

The band’s members had found some success in other bands before Satan’s Pilgrims (Miller and Scott Fox’s run in pop-punk trio Crackerbash, for example), and were already pretty established players in the local scene. “We’re band guys,” said Miller. “We had played with various combinations of people. But I think we all looked at each other and realized we had this group of five — never mind having one or two people you like to play with — we had this group of five where we all listen to each other and play off of each other.” On guitar are Fox, Bobby McAnulty, and Dave Busacker in an ensemble cast of rotating lead and background dynamics. John Cox complements Miller in the rhythm section, bringing a bass talent that Miller described as a “quiet mastery of his instrument.”

With a group of like-minded musicians now formed, the next question was obvious: What to wear? For a genre known more for imagery of beaches than iconic faces, the guys wanted to make their personal presentation more memorable. Pilgrim costumes were the first idea. But the buckled shoes and goofy hats turned out to be tougher to procure (and more expensive) than the group expected — so instead they donned their now iconic cheap vampire capes, white jeans, and red shirts. But the unmanifested costume concept lived on in the band’s name, and in the matching faux surnames the guys donned (Bobby Pilgrim, Ted Pilgrim, etc.). Thus Satan’s Pilgrims was born, riffing off the name of the 1969 biker film Satan’s Sadists. 

“We actually had no intention of playing clubs,” said McAnulty. “We had the intention of it just being an informal party band.”

It didn’t take long for the group to outgrow their own idea. At a winter shindig in their early days, near the new year, Portland was covered in a foot of snow. “People were not driving. You had to walk. And still like 200 people showed up at the house and just about destroyed it. And that was when we were like, ‘Ok, we probably shouldn’t play house parties anymore,’” said McAnulty. Miller chimed in: “At least at our own house!” 

They transitioned into small venues then, at a time when Portland’s music scene was blossoming. The late ’80s saw a burgeoning platform for punk/grunge/DIY that Satan’s Pilgrims embraced. “I honestly had a feeling that something cool was happening,” McAnulty said. “It definitely felt like a family, like people supported each other. When you hear about that, read about that in articles, I nod my head and I remember what it was like to play benefits for the X-Ray [Cafe], play the Satyricon on a Tuesday night or La Luna. It was a pretty tight-knit, small community then.”

The guys reminisced fondly on a network of musicians with a wide variety of sounds and personalities — playing regularly with Washington-based Mono Men, Girl Trouble, and Gas Huffer — drawn together through a shared enthusiasm for building music in the region. Surf was by no means the predominant genre in the mid-’90s (McAnulty said it wasn’t even popular enough to be called niche), but Satan’s Pilgrims saw an opportunity to bring a new tone to Portland music.

“It just wasn’t fun to go to shows anymore and get the crap beat out of you in a mosh pit,” said McAnulty. “We definitely wanted to bring the energy that was present in the music at the time, but not the same aggression.”

“There were fun bands then — grunge could be fun — but there was a different vibe there. We weren’t taking ourselves too seriously,” said Miller. “To be honest, this is like teenage music. And even though we keep getting older, we want to keep it having that feeling. We don’t want to get super virtuosic and turn it into some kind of guitar technique clinic. There’s that edge of barely keeping it together, walking the tightrope, keeping it rock ’n’ roll teenage surf instead of becoming all polished and mature.”

The group showed off a sense of play from their first releases, beyond just the vampire capes. Their 1994 debut album, At Home With Satan’s Pilgrims, kicks off with a ripping guitar lead pulled straight from a California beach. The splashy riffs and heavy reverb compound through the album, cresting into a fast-paced 40-minute wave of their signature “spooky surf” sound. The group’s live shows capture this energy and elevate it — with three guitarists sharing the stage, Satan’s Pilgrims shows are loud, and the fact that they don’t have a vocalist lets whoever is riffing in that moment sing the song and set the mood.

“It’s like, who’s the lead guitar player? All three of them,” said Miller. “The Tacoma sound is where Bobby really shines. He’s kind of our soul, little bit bluesy, keeps us Northwesty. Dave has got the California sound and the theory. His mom was a music teacher. Scott is kind of the riff master. They each have their own thing that they bring.” 

“We all have our own ways of playing the guitar — getting to that same place from a different angle,” said McAnulty. “From that standpoint, I think that’s what’s kept it interesting over the years. Sky’s the limit.”

Sharing the stage also keeps personalities in check. There’s no Robert Plant or Mick Jagger hogging the spotlight, just five guys working off each other. 

“There’s no one person in our group that feels like a frontman — no person that the spotlight should be on more than the others,” said McAnulty. “At any time, there’s room to put a spotlight on any member of the group during a song. But at the same time, I don’t think any one of us feels like we’re any more important than the others.”

Considering the way an ego can ruin a band, this has no doubt helped keep the gang together for nearly three decades. Their run has stretched long enough to accumulate such a stack of loose songs and archived tracks that many were bound together on the 2015 Frankenstomp compilation. Their singles include some homages to their namesake — “Pilgrims Workout” and “Plymouth Rock” — beach parties, and the more sinister monster-themed tracks that have become a staple of their output.

A five-year hiatus beginning in 2000 was motivated by logistics and circumstance, rather than any interpersonal drama. Miller was moving to Memphis (where he still lives), and things were changing in music and in Portland.

“It seemed countrywide, not just in Portland, things kinda dropped off. Also a lot of the audience was around our age, and people started having families — we also did,” said Miller. “It was a perfect storm of a lot of different stuff.”

It was also still legal to smoke in bars in town, the guys noted, and that was no small hang-up for McAnulty, who has asthma.

“It felt like I was getting bronchitis on the weekend,” he laughed. “When they finally banned smoking, that made a huge difference. I couldn’t take it.”

“Once we played after the smoking ban was lifted, we all realized how bad it had been, especially if you’re playing an energetic show for an hour and a half,” added Miller.

So cigarettes, families and the early 2000s dance-music takeover led to Satan’s Pilgrims making a split, one that — at the time — seemed like it could be permanent. But by 2005, everyone had settled into their new lives a bit and technology gave them an opportunity to reach a broader audience.

“2005 is when the internet really caught on, as far as the whole surf community coalescing in one place — the people who knew about us, and this whole new generation of fans we’ve gotten since then,” said Miller. So he flew back to Portland and they threw together a show at the Doug Fir Lounge. The response was tremendous and the crowd was packed in like sardines.

“We all just looked at each other like, ‘Whoa, OK,’” said Miller.

Since then, Satan’s Pilgrims tries to get together at least once a year and play a high-energy, high-volume show for a crowd of old and new fans. The last few years, they’ve hosted a Christmas show in Portland, with 2019’s accompanied by the release of a seven-inch of “Feliz Navidad” and “Greensleeves.” This summer, they planned to play Surforama in Spain (which is now cancelled due to COVID-19). But wherever they move, play, or tour, they always feel most at home back in the Pacific Northwest.

“All along, we’ve been lucky to have such a great following in our hometown. There are lots of great Portland bands that don’t necessarily pack them in at home,” said Miller. “I love coming back and I love still playing with these guys but in a weird way it probably made us still be around. If I’d just stayed, I don’t know if we’d still be as active. It made me realize how important it was to me. If you’re sitting in your own pile of shit for too long, you take it for granted.”

Age has brought some wisdom in the business side of things too. The band hopped mostly between two labels in the ’90s (Estrus Records and Empty Records) with two further releases on MuSick Records, but since 2009’s Psychsploitation, the guys have been putting out new material on their own label, SP Records. Their latest full-length, Siniestro (2017), was recorded in an abandoned masonic lodge. “That was probably the most ‘us doing it ourselves’ recording we’ve ever done,” said McAnulty. That one was all us.” Having no idea how the acoustics would sound before they got there, and recording and mixing themselves without an engineer, Miller said their experience in the old wooden lodge gave them a sense of control over their sound they hadn’t experienced before. Thematically, the songs are nestled on familiar turf for the band — from “Satan’s Twist” to the “Graveyard Stomp” — but with the aid of the lodge’s natural echo, Siniestro is their fullest-sounding record to date. “Finally what we’d been hearing in our heads was somewhat realized,” he said.

Musical autonomy was always a priority for the band, stretching back to their early albums. The band alternated labels in the ’90s to better match the pace of their writing and creating.

“It was always about artistic freedom. Not necessarily doing exclusive agreements with one label gave us a fair amount of freedom, and obviously recording ourselves does that too. I think that’s something we have in common with those first generation surf bands,” said McAnulty. “That idea has always appealed to us, doing it ourselves as much as we could.”

With the band currently separated by the miles between Portland and Memphis — and the ramifications of a nationwide pandemic — it isn’t clear when they’ll be together next. The guys are playing around with long-distance recording, sending tracks back and forth. “Even though we’re apart, we’re in touch. We keep things alive that way,” said Miller. And after nearly three decades, it’s hard to imagine that anything could keep these five apart for long.

“It feels like we’re family,” said McAnulty. “That might seem obvious, but those relationships we’ve had for so long, we feel like a family. But if you’re a musician, it’s pretty rare that you have a group of people that get along so well, but also that artistically are so talented.”

It’s unusual enough that a band started for a house party made it to a bigger stage, but it is truly unique for the same group of five musicians to make it out of three decades, a cross-country move, countless smoke-filled clubs, and a handful of international trips without falling out with each other. For Satan’s Pilgrims, all the mileage and challenges have only made their hearts grow fonder.

“I think it makes it a little more of a special occasion. It’s kind of like, grab these guys now, because who knows?” said Miller. “There have been stretches where we’ve stopped or not been as active and those times have made me realize, I can’t not do this. It’s part of all of our lives.”

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