The Rogaine Jesus Story

Social Iso have never been a “real” band. 

They’re three guys–-Will Shirey, Cameron McClendon and Alex Levine–-who stumbled into a garage with instruments and no particular plan. Every now and then, they’d scrape together enough songs to crash a house party. No ambitions. Just an excuse to take turns on the drums and make noise somewhere between slacker indie rock and teenage skate punk. 

Their first album only happened because trading half-finished songs over text seemed like a better way to fill time during Covid lockdown than baking sourdough. They didn’t mean to make a record. It just sort of happened.

When Will left Austin for good in 2021, it felt like the natural, quiet end of Social Iso. A conclusion confirmed by a single disastrous attempt to revive the magic in an impaired studio session that produced an unlistenable track called "If You Wanna Make It in the City You Gotta Shake It", and an accidental viral 3 a.m. Reddit livestream from the studio control room that somehow pulled in 80,000 viewers. An inexplicable career high, and a fitting epilogue, they thought. The brothers Iso had a good run.

Life rolled on. Will had a kid, Cam got married, Alex started a business and became a digital nomad. Important grown-up things. The idea of Social Iso quietly faded into the background—a hilarious thing they used to do.

And then, out of nowhere, Alex sent a song.

It was a balls-out rock anthem with layers of Boss Metal Zone bass guitar, over an 808 drum loop with some strange space cymbal sample and a kind of operatic, Serj-from-System-of-Down-esque vocal melody.

“I have no idea what this is, but I made it, so sharing with the fellas,” the text read.

Cam sent back a voice memo of a brooding chord progression on acoustic guitar with lyrics about the various items he could see in his living room. Like Brick from Anchorman.

Will sent a hasty interpretation of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Andata”, overdubbed with a listless lyrical monologue concluding that the song was a dead end and it was time to go to bed.

They were ALL dead ends, but the boys were back. The ideas started spilling out again—scrappy garage rock, strange electronic experiments, and half-shouted anthems about the mundane realities of getting older.

They booked time at their old home base, DUP Studios in Burnet, TX—this time with actual songs and a modest sense of purpose for a new project code-named “Cheeseburger Rock.”

They banged out four tracks in a marathon session, then stayed up all night shooting a delirious music video with a set of camcorder night vision goggles they found buried in a drawer of their prepper ranch Airbnb in Bertram, TX, down the road from the studio. They walked around blindly, moonlight reflecting off of their ridiculous matching Social Iso windbreakers, pointing at things. The song was about a balding homeless man whose wife left him after he lost his job, but against all odds, was still living his best life. It was here that the group found their unlikely mantra and album title:

“What would Rogaine Jesus do?”

The next morning, running on no sleep and worse judgment, they drove to Inks Lake and jumped into the Devil’s Waterhole in the late February rain. Three friends throwing themselves headfirst into something absurd and unnecessary. Just like old times. 

With newfound momentum, they hauled themselves to Charleston, SC and holed up at The Space, local drummer and producer Wolfgang Zimmerman’s studio. It rained for days. The humidity was so bad none of their guitars would stay in tune for a complete song. In rehearsals, they couldn’t settle on arrangements for key songs and spent a good portion of their time preparing old material for a prospective opening set at Royal American with visiting Austin friends The Mammoths. Mercifully, the invite never materialized. 

When they finally got into the studio to record, Jet Rodel, the group's long-suffering producer and engineer, had to navigate a barrage of technical issues including Will’s indulgent obsession with recording everything to quarter-inch tape, and the grueling, disorganized late-night sessions that had become a hallmark for the group. For the first time, frustration crept in. At one point, while fighting to finish a particularly elusive song, the thought crossed everyone’s mind: Maybe we’re just bad at this. Maybe this was a bad idea. Is this a waste of time?

They finished their session, bounced the recordings, and drove straight to the airport in silence, the questions hanging in the thick, wet Charleston air.

Over the ensuing weeks, the doubts remained, but the group kept writing, and when Jet eventually sent the latest mixes back (proving he did, in fact, still like them a little), something magical had crept into the collection of songs—themes of home, focusing on the important stuff, and ultimately learning to live with all the weird contradictions of adulthood. The songs were rough around the edges, filled with background hoops and hollers, little flubs and imperfections. They were unpolished, but they were unmistakably Iso. 

With a few late song additions and plenty of finessing by Jet, the record was ready to be shipped off to Vic Vace at 512 Studios for the final master.

The guys from the garage—now all dads and dads-to-be, living across the country with realistically more important things they should be doing with their time, managed to get together again and make something special; a raw, unpretentious album that sounds like David Berman got a pep talk from John Prine before writing songs for Alex G.

“Rogaine Jesus” isn’t about trying to reclaim youth or run from growing up. It’s about the messy, rare beauty of getting older and still finding space to be vulnerable, ridiculous, creative—and most importantly, connected to the people who knew you before you had to pretend to have it all figured out.

Social Iso might never be a “real” band, and the music they made probably won’t ever mean much of anything to anyone other than the guys who made it.

And honestly?

Rogaine Jesus wouldn’t have it any other way.

Press Inquiries:
Will Shirey
QuarterTurnRecords@gmail.com
830.385.4095