IN THE LATE 1600s, restless settlers began pushing into the heavily wooded region west of the Allegheny Mountains. Loners by nature, they blazed idiosyncratic paths of destruction and built crude, rough-hewn shacks and poorly planned, unremarkable towns. Their rude and antisocial nature was fueled by cheap homemade whiskey, which also made them quarrelsome. Indian warriors sometimes ran roughshod over the territory. Every so often a war would break out with the French, the British, or both. And let us not mention the ruthless Québécois.
FOLLOWING THE REVOLUTION, an uneasy peace turned to ennui. General grousing escalated into the Whiskey Rebellion, which had to be put down by George Washington and some 13,000 federal troops. In the confusion, much of the whiskey was consumed.
THE NEXT YEAR, the region's inhabitants sheepishly asked the Continental Congress to establish a 14th state, to be called Westsylvania. Congress later claimed the request had been somehow lost in the country's early, rudimentary mail system.
DECADES PASSED. Generations of disagreeable Westsylvanians gave way to more refined, polite, and sober Westsylvanians, who birthed new generations of godless hell-raisers, who somehow raised thoughtful, even-keeled, hard-working types (the drinking gene, it seems, tended to skip generations).
IN 1988, a new generation of Westsylvanians began making an unholy racket. Though most live in exile, irregular meetings continue to the present-day. A thousand or more recordings are said to exist, yet only two studio albums can be confirmed: Allegheny Front and Dusk Falleth, both released on the estimable Twolick Recordings label.
WHILE ITS MEMBERS ARE LEGION, three Westsylvanians are keystone. Matt Calvetti lives in Pittsburgh. Joel Huzinecz lives in Ohio. Jeremy Lloyd lives in Tennessee. They take an inordinate amount of pride in how quickly they respond to e-mail sent to the following address: westsylvanians@gmail.com.
