Mavericks of Sound

Mavericks of Sound

Conversations with Artists Who

Shaped Indie and Roots Music

David Ensminger

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

16 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BT, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2014 by David Ensminger

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ensminger, David, 1971–

Mavericks of sound : conversations with artists who shaped indie and roots music / David Ensminger.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-4422-3590-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-3591-5 (ebook)

1. Alternative rock musicians—Interviews. 2. Alternative rock music—History and criticism. I. Title.

ML400.E57 2014

781.66—dc23

2014010002

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise noted, all photographs in the book are from the author’s collection.

To Julie Ensminger

My Muse and Love

Preface

These compiled interviews preserve and share much of the work I developed at periodicals like Thirsty Ear magazine. Based out of Santa Fe, NM, editor Mike Koster let me dig deep into the lives of country and roots rock mavericks for his regional free publication, which quickly gained notoriety and respect for its integrity, scope, and earthy style. Koster sought a Rolling Stone–style approach: the art of the interview was considered prime. He did not want to waste paper on drivel.

In my tenure there, I discovered my own appreciation for the subtly shaded substance of conversation. Moreover, I believe my research allowed me to probe careers without (I hope) becoming overly mired in nostalgia and sentimentality. Ideally, I wanted to make sense of lifestyles, attitudes, pursuits, and aesthetic choices, all while making artists feel like they also owned the conversations. They had something at stake, I hoped, beyond mere publicity. Sometimes they kept me slightly at bay, and sometimes I triggered their love of writers, obscure fragments of culture, or deep pockets of their past. Sometimes they were ready and willing, filling phone calls with enthusiastic memories or swigging drinks and gesturing as my microphone contended with bar noise, coughing and honking traffic, the echoing blasts of sound checks, and fellow bandmates chortling.

Some of the material reflects the raw goods of Left of the Dial (LOTD), too, a do-it-yourself, digest-sized, perfect-bound magazine I published from 2000 to 2005, which featured an all-interview format, along with prose written by artists. At the time, I felt that the MTV rat packs, punk-of-the-month bands, and indie rock clones were “tomorrow’s bargain-bin dust collectors, with a shorter shelf life than a corroded alkaline battery.” I sought out music that transcends genres, since people and art matter most, not the cult of the new espoused by faceless and warmed-over magazines that are often no more than industry mouthpieces full of hype, gloss, and a fake sense of careerism.

I burned with the desire to go beyond the common and expected. I aimed for those I once described on promotional postcards as “people who still have music on fire inside of them, rockers who are under the spell of books, and those people who don’t think music belongs to elite critics” (as well as pigeonholing purists). “Wits and raw talent are the message: LOTD is the transmitter. Now stake your claim because here’s the new heresy and rebellion,” I avowed, producing eight issues that melded roots rock, Americana, and rockabilly artists with hardcore, post-punk, and modern indie music.

All are defined by certain maverick qualities, including bucking trends, remaining resilient, maintaining a dedicated fan base, and forging very inchoate musical qualities. As the concerts of Austin City Limits pay witness, the fan base and crowds for the indie and roots genres often blur and overlap. The time is ripe to create a compendium that is equally unbound.

Whereas my recent collection, Left of the Dial, focused exclusively on punk performers, this volume is more open-ended, diverse, and inclusive. I believe this is wise, since younger buyers, especially, don’t necessarily abide by singular musical tastes; instead, they swap and share music while scouring a huge cross-fertilized library. I also believe the interviews, most of them rarely seen (LOTD print runs were tiny), offer conversations that remain penetrating, insightful, far-reaching, and imbued with a sense of history and heritage, pop culture and politics, and surveys of personal ideologies and worldviews.

I stand and deliver these to you, as is. These are interviews without fillers, adornment, and anything that might keep you at arm’s length from the words of the wise-blooded—the “rogues gallery” found herein from the ’zine that guided me from dive bars and taverns to buzzing phones in the midnight hour. Having spoken to these productive and potent “outsiders,” I consider myself lucky just to have been in their graces, if only for an hour, and to see the other side of musicianship away from stage glares, hand-scrawled set lists, and steady gazes. Dive into the marrow of the content, and you might be surprised by the musicians’ transparency and openness, their hidden hungers and long-held beliefs that go beyond the humdrum daily grind of reportage.

Chapter 1

The Song Is the Territory

Singer-Songwriters

These lauded singer-songwriters, from baritone Tom Russell to the bluesy Beat Generation–inspired Peter Case, explore the fabric and spirit of history though innovative and spirited narratives that bend and weave from personal observation to finely tuned close-to-the-ground research. These writers prove that the art of song—sometimes rustic, spiritual, and investigative—is alive and well, tucked in traditions that speak to newsprint issues and perennial affairs of the heart.

TOM RUSSELL: CHRONICLING HISTORY’S HEARTBREAKS

Portions originally published in Thirsty Ear, October/November 2000; Left of the Dial, 2000; and Popmatters, August 2011.

In a dark motel room below the steel fingers of Houston’s high-rises, Tom Russell slopes low in a chair, talking about his career like most men talk about women—molding and prodding every thought. “It’s really the most important record I’ve made,” he says about The Man from God Knows Where. Nominated in the early stages of the Grammy process for Best Contemporary Folk Record of 1999, The Man was Russell’s insightful if slightly mongrel collection of American voices and vignettes. The story line spanned his family’s migration from Norway and Ireland to America’s sometimes risky, cruel shores and included his father’s struggle with the sun-bleached California ranch dream gone bad.

With his larger-than-life baritone and rustic intelligentsia style, Russell is the kind of astute writer who can dig effortlessly into lore, history, and popular culture. Whether spinning songs about Navajo rugs, the Seine River, Nina Simone, Africa, or bygone Hollywood, Russell is a distinct brand of songwriter with few peers. Sometimes hard-bitten, sometimes softly sentimental, sometimes sardonic as hell, Russell mixes his past and present—sociology graduate, teacher, cab driver, writer, and painter—into a storehouse of song that some critics have likened to a melding of Howard Zinn and Walt Whitman.

Your work reminds me of the “camera eye” technique of John Dos Passos’ USA trilogy, and his other technique of stopping the narrative for a moment to write a poem on the life of people that were important to his view of the overall American experience, like Eugene V. Debs. Are you familiar with his work?

I know of him, but haven’t read him. It’s also Masters’ Spoon River anthology and even the influence of Sandburg’s poems, like “Chicago.” And the best of Beat poetry, some of Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and a guy named Lew Welch.

Who wrote a poem named “Chicago,” too, about being a cab driver.

Exactly. I was influenced by that, too, and still like the Beats, this alternative but personal “I was there” view of America. Like Kerouac’s “October in the Railroad Earth” and even down to Bukowski. I’m not one hundred percent into Bukowski, but I knew him a little bit and like his telling of “I’m an American spirit, I’ve lived through it, I lived through the post office and this is my story.”

John Fante, too? Another older generation of California writers?

I love Fante. And Brotherhood of the Grape is one of my favorite California books, and Leonard Gardner’s Fat City. But it came down to my father telling his story after he died, in the song “Chickasaw County Jail.” Like, this is what happened. I lost all the money and went to jail, and I’m going to win it back.

Is the quintessential American character always about the friction between the idea of America and the reality of America in terms of the great dream?

I think so, especially with the media being so heavy, and every three or four years the culture changes, and the TV, film, and major market radio is so strong in this country. Every five years people like Garth Brooks or some new form of movie casts a big mold over America, which doesn’t happen once you get outside of America, whether you’re going to Canada or Scandinavia.

The mold drops off?

You get a more objective look at what’s happening here with this culture that is moving so fast.

Recently, there’s been a plethora of concept records with song cycles, including Mike Watt’s The Engine Room, Richard Thompson’s Factory, Joe Ely’s Chippy, and Bruce Springsteen’s Tom Joad. What is so appealing about that form of writing?

Well, it’s cinematic, number one. Number two, I was not only raised on Bakersfield country, folk music, and movies but also on Broadway musicals, as corny as it sounds. I loved The Music Man; I loved some of the Rodgers and Hammerstein stuff. Even right on up to Les Misérables. Most stuff like Andrew Lloyd Webber I can’t take. But some of it is well written, and parts of which are sung by characters, that’s in the back of my head. Sometimes I mention that I saw Jerry Lee Lewis in a rock version of Othello called Catch My Soul, and it was amazing. He played the piano at the side of the stage in this real hick accent doing Shakespeare. It was bizarre, it was unbelievable, so I had that in the back of my mind when I had Dave Van Ronk do “The Outcast.” The black humor delivery is right out of Bertolt Brecht, a music hall thing. The scope was taken from that, from seeing stage plays and film and making a bigger statement. I knew I’d only have one shot at making a record that big. In a sense, it has done very well worldwide and gotten great press, but in a sense it’s intimidating for some people. I don’t know how many people will sit down and listen to the whole twenty-six pieces of music, one second less than the maximum time of a CD.

There’s a real landscape of sounds behind the music too, including Sioux tribal chants . . .

Those are field recordings that I got from the Smithsonian, and there’s circus music, an organ-grinder. I wanted to use more stuff, but I ended up just using a little, like the Walt Whitman piece, which most people weren’t even aware that it exists.

It’s on an Edison wax cylinder.

We grew up with an Edison wax cylinder because we had one of those Edison players. My brother still has it and it works. They had music, Sousa marches, and even some raps on there about a guy buying an automobile. Wild shit.

In the Sioux tradition, if I’m right here, the Ghost Dance consisted of a group of dancers in a circle, and one dancer spinning furiously until they almost collapsed in a trance. Soon thereafter, the lone dancer gathered him/herself back up and sang a song that was just learned from the spirit world. That is not totally unlike your approach. You take songs that were essentially already out there, these voices, and you let them sing through you. You enmeshed your family history with American history at this poignant point, the songs themselves.

I think so. And also, I knew I couldn’t stack one song after the other; it would be too much, too many words, too many stories. It magically came together with some of the instrumental parts. Besides the sound effects, I wanted some instrumental pauses, so not only could you think about a story, but there’d be a rest in between going on to something else. It doesn’t go A, B, C, and D. It’s kind of like a collage of voices and experience. And I wanted also to start with the sound of the Hardanger fiddle, which is a very Norwegian instrument, mixing with the sounds of the Irish pipe, representing the two sides of the family and then melting them together.

And there’s a Johnny Cash guitar line thrown in.

The basic core of Norwegian guys on the record is pretty freaky musicians. You can imagine how this record would have been if I recorded it in Nashville: it would have been very one-sided and straight. These guys think differently. They’re playing country and folk music as if it’s a Mingus thing—it’s floating out there on some different level. I mean the drummer is twenty-three years old and a lot of the time is playing with his hands, so it sounds like this very strange world jazz folk music.

It doesn’t sound like a Steve Earle record.

No, that’s a straight-ahead, country-edge sound. We were looking for bigger, broader strokes. Almost a symphonic sound. A soundtrack. And I told the producer I wanted to throw a couple of traditional songs into the mix for color, like “Rugged Cross,” which I thought was perfect for Iris DeMent, and “Wayfaring Stranger.” It blends very well with Irish and Norwegian melodies.

It’s been said that unlike Steve Earle, who’s coming from Nashville’s underbelly and plays roots rock, you actually have your finger on the pulse of what’s happening not just in America but in Barcelona, Glasgow, Oslo, and elsewhere, giving you a different kind of international audience.

There are two ways I differ from people like Steve and even Dave Alvin, who are so rooted in California and Nashville, and write from that. We’ve been touring over in Europe and Scandinavia for over twenty years. Though I came out of L.A., I’ve lived all over, including over there. I never felt an identity of being a Californian or Texan. I’ve felt more rootless in the way that I see myself. In doing the new record, I’ve probably come up with more than a few reasons why I’ve felt like this. It seems like my family came from Tinkers almost. My father was a horse trader deep down, and a gambler. And my brother’s that way, and my mother was a painter, writer, and artist. But as I trace back to what brought these people over, and why they were so restless anyway, I found out that they really just wanted more all the time. They were hustlers in a way.

One reviewer said, “This is the history that should be taught in high school.” In the end, is this kind of impact, the idea that you’ve made your mark in the way that somebody may see American history, more important than selling 40,000 copies?

That’s rewarding, and I get a lot of that, and not just from this record but also from songs like “Manzanar” (about Japanese-American internment camps in WWII). Grade school and high school teachers come up to me and say they played it in class.

As a teacher, I feel that kids long for a narrative, that dates and names aren’t enough. They want the stories behind history.

If people can use this record like that, like this is Tom Russell’s opinion, so take it or leave it, then kids might get into it. Kids have really good built-in shit-detectors. Out of all those twelve years of education, you, like me, can probably count those teachers I admired, or that moved me, on one hand. And songs have the potential to move people tremendously. A three-minute piece of work, like a Van Gogh painting, can move you by just glancing at it, and so can a song. That’s probably attached to being a songwriter instead of a novelist because a novel is such an unfathomable job that you have to write every day.

Not long ago, you heard from Robert Hunter of the Grateful Dead, who prodded you down this path over two decades ago. Did that mean more to you than a dozen generous music reviews?

Of course. Robert Hunter is one person in this business who really laid it on the line for me when I was a New York cab driver back in the 1980s. I picked him up late one night and sang him a song. He loved it. A few days later he got me up on stage and handed me his guitar and split. I’ve been on the road ever since. Never saw him again, until I heard from him about my last record, Blood and Candle Smoke. He dug it. Said some very nice things. You don’t get that kind of honesty anymore. He’s the real deal. He co-wrote a lot of songs on the last Dylan record. Robert is always on the frontlines of modern song.

Dave Alvin once told me that records sell when all wheels are moving—reviews, radio slots, gigs, label attention, etc.

I feel a full record of well-written songs is a revolutionary act in these days. That sort of collection will stand out in the era of single song downloading. We also tour all over the world and have a good profile in England, and much of the best music press and radio now comes out of the U.K. You’re talking magazines like Mojo, UNCUT, and the programs on the BBC. If the whole package is together and you can perform well, then you can sell records in Oslo or hell or the Galapagos Islands.

Does your cult of audience propel that success, those wheels, or luck?

I always look beyond any idea of an audience. I’m glad I have one, but I’d always like to reach out to new folks. I think people are desperate to hear a good song. Well sung. I think hard work is more important than luck. If you keep the shows fresh and try to reach new frontiers in your writing, your audience will grow.

Your eye for sociology has never dimmed, like examining the maverick actor Sterling Hayden. You seem to measure people’s worth on a different scale than most, with a tenderness for the outsiders and outcasts. Why?

Because I’ve always felt on the outside. Looking in. I never felt comfortable in a group. Maybe that’s why I got a degree in criminology, to find out why I felt so weird in this society. So, I might be drawn to stories about people way out beyond the margins. I think societies are changed by outsider artists like Van Gogh and Bob Dylan. When Dylan got up in front of a bunch of old liberal people in 1963, after Kennedy’s assassination, and said there was something about Lee Harvey Oswald he identified with, well the square liberals freaked. I know what Dylan meant. He identified strongly with the feeling of someone who was so hung up and outside he didn’t know what to do about it. I’m not saying (and I’m sure Dylan wasn’t) that you have to assassinate anyone. It’s just a feeling of not fitting in. There are a lot of outsiders on my newest record, especially Hollywood people and cartel soldiers in Juarez.

David Letterman has been a strong supporter of singer-songwriters like you, Warren Zevon, and Nanci Griffith. Do you think his audience, still 15 million, turns out for your shows, buys your music—do those limelight moments hold sway even in the current fragmented media world?

David has certainly been supportive. I’m sure those appearances have sold me a lot more records. I’ve sang a few radical songs on that show, like “Who’s Gonna Build Your Wall?” about the Mexican border wall. Always get a reaction and a strong shot of sales on Amazon. On the other hand, I don’t think it brings a huge amount of people out to the shows. Some people don’t get up off the couch for live music. We were on the show last time right after he had revealed some guy was blackmailing him. So, the audience was even bigger than usual.

Borderlands and Mexico are a constant theme in your work, like in “Goodnight, Juarez” and “And God Created Border Towns,” but savoring the culture has turned to dismay now too, since the “children disappear or hide underground” and the bullring is torn down as meth and men in masks roam. As you’ve witnessed the shift, what grieves you the most, and what seems to persevere there, despite the tumult?

The border is eternal. I grew up with it in L.A., and I live on it now near Juarez. It bothers me that I can’t walk over that bridge now and hang out and hear the mariachis. What prevails is that deep history which influences our culture, particularly the culture of the American West, from the Spanish conquistadores back to the Moors. The music also endures and carries with it the folklore and myth but also the current news carried in the drug corridos.

The Yard Dog Gallery in Austin, which also handles folks from the Silos and the Mekons, shows your paintings. You describe them as “primitive,” since you are a “colorist” and “fast painter.” How has painting shaded or shaped, if at all, your sense of songwriting recently?

I’ve always said there’s a deep affinity between songwriting and painting. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but a song is similar to a painting. You can visit the artwork or the song again and again and get something new out of it. The act of painting is a lot like songwriting. Some days you’re doing hackwork, and the next day you hit the ball out of the park. If you keep at the process, it leads somewhere. There’s a book of my art coming this fall on Bangtail Press, Blue Horse/Red Desert: The Art of Tom Russell. I have a long essay on art in there that I’m proud of.

Your longtime love of John Prine, Lucinda Williams, Dave Alvin, etc. is well noted, but you are not a huge fan of young songwriters. What does Leonard Cohen, who kept you spellbound for hours during his comeback, have that the younger folks seem to lack?

Deep character and passionate, heartfelt songs that resonate. I think younger writers are writing soundscapes these days, more than songs. That’s cool. I listened to a lot of new music before I made the last record, and the band Calexico really stood out. They play on my current record as well. But I have a hard time finding new writers that knock me out. I’m sure they’re out there. It’s easy to become an old fart and criticize new writing . . . like your parents saying the Beatles sucked and Sinatra would last forever. Both sides turned out to be right. I just want to hear a song that makes me pull my truck over to the side of the road and listen, and then shiver. I’m ready. I need a list.

A bit of sentimental love pervades on tracks like “Heart within a Heart” and “Love Abides” (a narrative with your daughter), replete with falling stars, morning frost, and Rio Grande souls. Are such tender sentiments important as you tackle topical fare? Even Bob Dylan wore his heart on his sleeve.

I think each of my albums has to have a song or two about love and hope. A turning point before you head back into the dark stories. “Heart within a Heart” is sort of a Gnostic Gospel trip of digging deeper into your soul when times get bad. Regina McCrary, who sang gospel songs with Dylan for many years, sings on it. “Love Abides” ends the record. Just me and the guitar. A resolution of sorts. We all have to cross our burning deserts, but love will get us through. Carry water, though. And a pocketknife.

Your sense of history, especially on tracks like “Mesabi,” includes a vital recognition of American diversity and interwovenness: polkas, Ritchie Valens, and Howlin’ Wolf. Do you feel the twenty-first century offers the same hybridity, the same sense of connection?

Not as much. But with the Internet and our own imagination, and a healthy thirst for digging down into the roots of music and culture, we can still discover new art. I’ve gone back and rediscovered some odd corners of jazz and flamenco, like the singing of the great Camaron de la Isla. His singing is as deep as it might get. I need to hear music like this when I paint. But the one problem with younger writers now might be they don’t have the firsthand knowledge of our musical folk and blues and jazz heritage that people like Dylan had. The guy must have known five thousand songs before he hit New York. And then you draw on that and build your own catalog.

How much of you is still that football-playing, Catholic, troubadour-to-be in Hollywood Park, the nephew of Uncle George, who played “The Star-Spangled Banner” for the Martin Luther King rally?

That’s still me. You never get rid of that stuff. I grew up playing football in Catholic school and hanging out on the back side of Hollywood Park Racetrack, where my old man played poker every morning with Hopalong Cassidy. And I could sit and listen to my Uncle George Malloy play piano for hours. He was the real deal. We have a new documentary coming out called Don’t Look Down that has some great footage of my Uncle George playing piano behind the jazz harmonica player Larry Adler. Very cool.

PETER CASE: THE MAN WITH THE FRAGMENTED GUITAR

Portions originally printed in Left of the Dial and Thirsty Ear, 2001 and 2005, and Popmatters, 2011.

One of the first interviews I held with Peter Case concerned his work on the Grammy-nominated compilation Avalon Blues, a tribute to Mississippi John Hurt. Tribute records often fall flat simply because they lack direction and wall-to-wall vigor. Even though the sincerity of the efforts is evident, when too many bands contend for cool digs on old favorites like Neil Young and Leonard Cohen, the albums end up juggling disparate styles until it all comes apart like unbound pages.

Luckily, Case honed in on something beyond flash-in-the-pan nostalgia and picked artists that deftly reinterpreted Mississippi John Hurt’s poignant songs of labor, spirit, and fortitude without losing a sense of his hard-pickin’ soulfulness. Hurt was the stuff of legend, made pure by his sacrifice and good humor. During the late 1920s, he made his mark recording in New York, but after the stock market fell, he disappeared back deep into the edge of the Mississippi Delta, where he played for two dollars a night until he was brought back to the Big Apple in 1963 by a couple of white blues musicians. Within three years, he recorded Today, The Immortal Mississippi John Hurt, and Last Sessions, gems remastered and re-released by Vanguard, which serve as a prelude to this tribute.

To me, Peter Case is the great inheritor, able to capture Hurt’s dexterous melodic phrasing and the push and pull of his picking, but Case also hones in on fecund American blues textures. His music is not a patchwork of overworked riffs and roots music clichés; it’s a wide-open descent into the heart of America’s still unreconciled black and white history, where artists like Hurt and Peter Case meet in the Mississippi heart of things.

Is it important that you have a shared community with writers like Tom Russell, Dave Alvin, Alejandro Escovedo, and others?

Yes, it’s a nice thing. It’s a lot better than in 1975, when you felt very isolated. Apparently Russell was up there at the same time playing the same folk clubs in 1973–74, but I didn’t know him then. I’m inspired by those guys, but I’m also inspired by a lot of things.

Your live songs are so different from their recorded versions, as if the songs have jumped out their skins.

I wonder if that’s been a problem for people; it might be confusing. I was trying to go out with a band this year, the same people I went out with in 1989, but we couldn’t do it because of this, that, or another problem. Most of them were economic or touring problems. The same reasons why Woody Guthrie probably didn’t take a band with him. Also, clubs are just as happy to see you play solo as with a band. Once you’ve been niched like that, like I have, clubs don’t want to pay any more for a full band. They’ll put you on a Saturday anyway, so you ended up playing with a band for artistic reasons.

And the money is spread five ways instead of one?

There’s no money in the first place.

On “Paradise Etc.,” from Flying Saucer Blues, you say that you’ve been on this road from the age of two. Are we to take this literally?

When I was around four or five, right as my sister was listening to rock ’n’ roll, I just really loved it. I don’t remember so well, but my parents do. I had a ukulele and was trying to play it, so I’d run around and bang it all the time. I was just home talking to my family about it, and they tell me these things, so apparently I had a calling for it then. Now when I say that in the song, I’m not necessarily talking about music, but the whole general road I’ve been on. It was more of a general, all-encompassing remark that I started the album and song with.

Your sister had Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry records, but was she the person who also turned you on to the blues?

I kind of got into that on my own. Buffalo, where I grew up, has a big local blues thing going on there, which I was part of. It was like Detroit and Chicago. A lot of people came up from Mississippi to work in the factories. It was a real northern city with a large black population that was relocated from the South. It was an integrated blues scene. There were people like Elmore Witherspoon that played local blues, who would come over from his shift at the Ford plant. The Band knew all those guys in Buffalo, and that whole style of music was passed down to younger players. I came up in the scene playing piano when I was fourteen or fifteen.

How did you even become aware it? By venturing downtown into those areas?

I left school when I was fifteen, before it was even legal, and was hanging out in bars. I’d be the youngest member of the bands; everybody in the band would be like thirty. They really didn’t have songwriters there to lead the charge, but they had the most incredible piano players and guitarists. Van Morrison would come through and pick up people. It was pretty well known, because at one point John Lennon was even coming over and looking at the bands because of Ronnie Hawkins. I had the good fortune of coming up through that. Back then it was not a unique form of expression; you played blues piano the way you were supposed to play in bands. There was a job for every instrument in the band. There was a whole way of playing it.

So what made you decide to hit the road for California?

I never felt like the scene was all that welcoming. It was pretty rugged. It was a thing I loved to do and I was playing it, but like most guys in the scene I wanted to take off. I had a thing calling me. All the people in that scene would blast off. The road was calling and I wanted to go to California. I had a lot of problems getting along, and it just wasn’t my scene anymore. So I was eighteen in 1973 and went to San Francisco.

You got burned out on the bar rock scene?

I was too young and wanted to go out and explode onto the road.

You consciously knew that you wanted a musical change, too, hence hit the road with an acoustic guitar?

When I was like fifteen or sixteen, I used to hit the road with an acoustic guitar. I just ran into a guy at my father’s funeral not too long ago who said he met me when I was fourteen walking down the street in Hamburg, New York, and asked me what I had been doing, and I told him I had been doing some hard traveling. [laughs]

Stuffing America under your belt?

I used to try to get twenty bucks in my pocket and go out and hitchhike, catch a ride to wherever it was going. I’d see how far I could go.

What music were you playing on acoustic guitar? Say, Kingston Trio? [laughs]

They were happening when I was five. I made my mother buy me every record. That was before the Beatles. They were fantastic. They sang songs about death, and being a sailor, and calypso songs. But the things that put me on the path I’m on now were the records of Mississippi John Hurt. In 1968, I heard his record Today on Vanguard.

What about Lightning Hopkins?

I was a huge fan of his. I actually took off from home and saw him in Boston. I was on the road and spent my last three bucks to see him sit down and play guitar, and he was just awesome. It must have been 1969 or ’70. With country music, I listened to Hank Williams, which really penetrated up to where I was. Then you’d go around the corner to Eden, New York, the farm towns, and go to the bars up there, and people were playing the country music of the day, which was also fantastic, like George Jones. The Byrds came out with their country stuff, and I was into that.

What about rock stuff like Jefferson Airplane and the MC5?

I was never an MC5 fan, though they were great.

Did you ever run into the black Beat poet Bob Kaufman, who in the early seventies came out of his ten-year vow of silence?

Sure, I used to hang out in bars and talk with him. He was at the Coffee Gallery in San Francisco a lot. He was great.

Did you see Joe Ely at that time?

Matt Groening actually turned me on to him in 1977. He was working at a record store across from the Whisky a Go Go, and I brought in some Nerves records to sell, and he turned me on to Joe Ely and Butch Hancock and gave me Life in Hell, the #1 issue. It was a cultural trade-off.

Ely’s 1981 live record won him so much attention.

I don’t understand how culture works. People talk a lot about that and his time with the Clash, but I don’t ever think of him in those terms. I remember the records like Honky Tonk Masquerade, but then the Clash took him on tour and kind of validated him in terms of youth culture. We’re a lot alike because we can both do rock and the acoustic thing. He’s a great acoustic solo performer.

When you hit the streets again after the Plimsouls broke up and played coffee houses up and down the coast, you practically self-started the unplugged movement.

When I did it, they had no idea. It was before Tracy Chapman had a hit. But John Hiatt was playing acoustic gigs, and X had the Knitters. I had a band called the Incredibly Strung Out Band at the same time with Victoria Williams around 1984.

What kind of vibe was it?

It was a string band, with Gurf Morlix, Victoria Williams, and me, with Warren “Tornado” Klein from the Fraternity of Man. We were the world’s foremost interpreters of Blaze Foley songs.

But your first record didn’t come out until 1986, with T. Bone Burnett and Mitchell Froom producing. How did you know them?

T. Bone came to me and asked me who produced “Million Miles Away” and used my producer on one of his records. The road ran both ways with me and T. Bone. He helped me out a lot. I went to him after my confusion with the Plimsouls to help me sort things out.

How much did they shape your sound?

I think those guys are powerful producers, perhaps too powerful. T. Bone’s a great producer. I came to him with this whole vision of the songs I was doing, and we talked about it and came up with the idea of tribal folk, meaning using acoustic guitars with a huge groove in the back, which only made it to the record on songs like “Three Days Straight.” Froom is a great technician and musician and knew some people to call. The fact is that I was deemed by the record company, and by Froom and T. Bone, as being too primitive to even play on my own record.

Does that go back to you being a rock ’n’ roll folksinger, a real rollicking force?

On the first record, there are a lot of slick arrangements. There are even a couple of cuts that I don’t even play on, I just sing. So when I made Blue Guitar, it was just me and Steven Soles producing, so it’s closer to my own thing and what I was trying to get across.

It’s much closer to a straight-ahead, Steve Earle–type record.

Yes, because I wanted what I was doing to be the center of the record, which is something that Steve Earle insists upon, and not about the arrangement of the high-priced session players. But that first record with T-Bone did make an impact, reached a lot of people, especially in the South, so I don’t want to bad rap it too much. It made me a lot of fans and pointed a new way for music to go. And we got a Grammy nomination.

Only Sings Like Hell seemed to capture your bare-boned live performance, and even then it’s rather subdued compared to your actual shows.

I’m still hoping to capture that. I love playing live, but when I go in the studio, I really try to nail the songs down in a way that people can listen to them over and over again. Especially with Andrew Williams (Full Service No Waiting, Flying Saucer Blues), we were trying to create a sound that is sympathetic but brings out a lot of the different things from the songs. I’m not the first person who has done this, but I can’t remember who the other person who does it this way is.

You’ve said that it’s hard to make the records feel alive?

It’s a different process. You want to make them feel alive, but because you have a small budget, you can go into a studio and flesh them out a bit. I love playing solo. I could name you my ten favorite solo records by people, like Thelonius Monk in San Francisco, though I love his Blue Note stuff; Bob Dylan solo, but I like Highway 61 Revisited, and so on. Robert Johnson didn’t need a band and was great, and Muddy Waters was great solo but was great with his band too.

Is it difficult to balance images in the songs with the pace or the momentum of the narrative?

The whole trick with songwriting is to say as much as you can with the least amount. It’s almost like sending telegrams in a weird way. It’s different than poetry, which is going to be scanned over again and again on the page. Poetry moves at a different rate and speed than songs, and songs have to live up to the land of song, the world of song. You can get away with certain things in poetry that you don’t want to do in song, like bog it down. You want to get a whole lot across quickly, and set up your premise quickly, and do it in as detailed a way as you can. There are different recipes for it, so you keep coming up with new recipes. When you have a story, sometimes those are the hardest songs because it’s a lot of work, practically a battle, while pop songs seem to just jump out.

Back in 1989, Bruce Springsteen said he was listening to you more than any other songwriter.

He’s a great songwriter. He came out to one of my shows in New Jersey. He was at my sound check and asked me specific things about my first two records. He knew all about them.

People like Richard Buckner slightly made fun of me for liking his work.

He should go listen to “Racing in the Streets.” How could a songwriter not know that Bruce is a great songwriter? I don’t understand that. Maybe it’s just his personal taste. Guy Clark played me that song on his guitar in an Athens, Georgia, motel room, and I thought it was his. It’s a great song.

So, originally the idea of doing the Mississippi John Hurt tribute was a casual remark to Kevin Welch, the head of Vanguard?

Yeah, we were out getting tacos on Pico Boulevard with another guy from the label. I was thinking about a lot of my favorite records from the past, and we were talking about different Vanguard records, and I said, somebody ought to do a Mississippi John Hurt tribute. And he said, why don’t you do it, and I said okay. And we just went back to doing our thing. But that started the whole thing going. I just started it the next day. I told him, I’m really going to do this.

Vanguard owns all the rights to Hurt’s 1960s material?

Well, yeah, they got the catalog rights to a number of the 1960s recordings, the really classic ones. They made really good recordings with him in the 1960s. They’ve got that. Yes, they also have the contacts and information. Man, I never undertook anything like this, putting together a project like this, and it was driving me crazy in a lot of ways because I have always been on the other side. I’ve never been the guy trying to pull together all these musicians.

How far back does Hurt go in your life?

I’ve been interested in Hurt since I was a kid, and to do this now just took me to a whole other level.

Had you recently been listening to Hurt’s records?

No, I’ve been listening incessantly to Hurt since 1967 and 1968; I’ve always had a place in my life where I was listening to him. I listened to the record Today every day before I went to high school; I mean that was ninth grade, because I dropped out in tenth grade. I was listening very regularly over that period of time. It’s been something that’s really important to me.

Who came up with the mosaic of musicians on the record?

The first list was people I had actually sat around in rooms with and played Hurt’s music with, that included Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Bill Morrissey, Victoria Williams, and Geoff Muldaur, who I know loved him, even though I hadn’t picked with him that much. That was the initial group of people that made sense to me. One of the things that I think the record has is the sense that it’s like one of the late-night kind of sessions where people are passing around the guitar. It’s got that feel to it when it finally came together, where people are playing music kind of casually and playing things they love. When I got through this initial list I had, we started contacting people I wasn’t so sure about but was interested having on the record. Then they started contacting me, like Bruce Cockburn called, then sent in this amazing version of “Avalon, My Hometown.” He’s not someone I would have naturally thought of in this context, but I can tell from hearing him do it that he really knows it. And Ben Harper really knows that stuff. Beck’s stuff is probably more faithful in a weird way than anything else on the record to the Hurt style. Hiatt maybe.

So it kinda amazed me, man, all the different people that were into him. The theme of the thing, to me, became that there’s three or four generations of people that have been turned on to Hurt. Starting with Doc Boggs, who mentioned in the interviews he did in the late fifties with Mike Seeger, which is before the stuff came out on Vanguard—“If I played guitar, I would have played like John Hurt.” This is a guy who recorded in 1928, you know. And then go on to the generation of guys like Geoff Muldaur and Taj Mahal, then go on to the next generation like Hiatt, then finally Beck and Ben Harper. There’s been several generations moved by him; it just continues to move down. The whole idea of the record is to show that, and put the music forward in a real positive way, and maybe turn the whole wheel one more time on the deal and bring a bunch of people into it again.

What makes Hurt different than other classic blues people like Bessie Smith, Lightnin’ Hopkins, or even Muddy Waters?

Well, one thing about John Hurt is that he wasn’t just a blues player, he’s what they call a songster. That means he not only plays blues, but he’s also playing gospel music, fiddle music, which I guess you could typify as country music, breakdowns, popular tunes of the day, a lot of different things. And for one thing, his song sense separates him out from a lot of blues. A lot of blues isn’t song-oriented, it’s verse-oriented, it’s improv verses, pulled out of a huge pool of verses, an ocean of verses that they keep pulling up in different forms, it’s sorta passed on. Some of the people, including Johnson and Hurt, were very song conscious.

So there’s a whole different kind of structure to their songs?

I think so. With John Hurt, the pieces are very set; they’re extremely well put together. Mance Lipscomb is another guy. He’s from Houston and is the local version of that in your area and another really important singer that you could do an incredible tribute to. There are a couple different things about Hurt, though. A lot of the Mississippi guys really whacked their guitars, sort of a whacking, hollering kind of thing, you know. Like Taj says, Hurt plays more like a chorale player, he’s got a sweet lyrical sound. And it’s very subtle rhythmically; it’s got this really insistent groove to it that he gets with his thumb and he picks against it with his fingers. It’s very pure melodically, too, in a way where every note counts. It’s got an early jazz element to it too in certain ways. In a way, he was a minstrel, a lot of it was pre-blues, but then he takes it past that and grows up through the blues, so as you get to the later records the whole thing has gotten stronger. Like a lot of people, he stopped making records in 1928, when the Depression hit, just like Dock Boggs’ career stopped in 1928 along with a lot of other hillbilly and blues singers. Everybody kind of hit the wall in 1928. The whole business went under. Basically because people with less income didn’t have any money at all . . .

For entertainment.

People went home, or hit the road, but they didn’t have records. It was the end of the recording career for John Hurt, but his musical career was just taking off in terms of developing his music, which it sounds like he had been developing for years and years, learning a huge repertoire and playing locally, creating a subtle style, you know.

Do you think he would have been as important if all we had were his 1920s recordings?

I don’t know what important means.

Or stand out?

If you’re like a blues collector, he would have been extremely important, or if you were into guitar playing, he was extremely important for his 1920s contributions. I never heard that stuff myself until the 1980s when I got the Harry Smith box set. That stuff is fantastic music and is very strong, but all the 1920s blues records are fantastic. I don’t think there are any bad ones; I think some are more out there than others, and there are many different types, but it was just an incredible period of time for music, and it was very close to the source. John Hurt was like a virtuoso at the time and stood out at that point for the incredible guitar work. Yes, he was already in a whole other world and was already influential at that point.

But when he came back, music had changed, and he had changed a bit with it too. The recordings are changed, the tempos kind of relaxed. And there are other things happening with the Vanguard records that are very beautiful, pure, and strong. It’s an amazing contribution to his work; he didn’t simply go back and re-record all his earlier stuff. He came up with incredible new things like “Pay Day,” things he hadn’t recorded during his earlier career. Like “Casey Jones.” There’s enough material out there for a whole other tribute record. He’s a really important artist. There’s a whole world of fantastic John Hurt contributors that we didn’t get on there. But we did show the different generations of people that are into it, which explains, I hope, why a lot of people from the earlier generation aren’t on it. Man, I would have loved to ask Dave Van Ronk to be on it.

Besides Beck and Cockburn, were there any other performances that surprised you?

I knew Lucinda would do a great job, but I didn’t realize how much she would make it sound like one of her songs. That blew my mind. I knew Victoria would do something very interesting, but I didn’t know she would do something as interesting as she did, which is one of my favorite cuts on the album. Because in a way, it’s the most removed from John Hurt’s style, and in another way it’s the truest to the sensibility of the original music. So, I love her cut, and it’s got a great sense of humor to it. The Taj thing, with the Hawaiian feel, is an interesting twist, and the Gillian Welch track, well, I just really wanted her to do that track near the end of the record because it’s one of my favorite Hurt songs. I could really hear her doing it, even though she had never done it before. She did and did a killer job on it.

From scratch.

Yeah, I felt like I heard it in my head before they even did it. And they just nailed it, I thought. The amazing thing for me about this record is that you don’t have much control, really, as you put together a thing like this, like what the tempos are all going to be and how the whole thing is going to fit together. The trick was sequencing it so it worked like a record. It was amazing to me that I could sequence it and that it rolls through like a program like it does. It really makes sense. I know that somebody was watching over it. I just didn’t know. The first cut we got to hear was the Smither cut. Chris came in with that. I didn’t know before if I could even do a record like this, or what was going to happen; I didn’t know if it would be interesting or fresh enough that people would be interested. I didn’t know. When I heard Smither, I knew, man, that was the standard right there. That’s why the record starts with his cut, because it’s totally true to John Hurt; it has got a really strong groove, and so much energy and freshness to it that it stands right up. That to me is what the record is about, taking this old thing and making something really fresh out of it.

Why did you perform with Dave Alvin, instead of by yourself?

I just thought it would be interesting and a different twist. I just thought it would be an interesting combination, and it was. And I wanted to work on something with Dave. I’ve loved Dave’s music since I met him back in 1979. We’ve been friends for a long time but never really recorded together. I thought it would be fun; I had no idea what would happen with collaboration like that. But we had sat around and played all the stuff like that. I was like, let’s give it a shot. I thought it would be a different thing—a different format for both of us to be on a record like this. I also thought it made that song work. It sorta sounds like a Dave song, then the harmony singing sounds like one of my things, then it’s my band which played on Full Service . . . and Flying Saucer Blues.

Were these some of the songs you used to play during after-gig parties with the Plimsouls?

Totally. On this record I’ll tell you what was on my repertoire: “Pay Day,” “The Angels Laid Him Way,” “Candyman,” “Monday Morning Blues,” “Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor,” “My Creole Belle,” all those songs. Victoria used to sing “Satisfied.” But when I met Bill Morrissey, I sat around in a hotel room in Virginia, and we just started playing guitar. I started playing a John Hurt song, and he said, hey, I know some of those, so we sat there all night playing Hurt songs. He said to me one time, you know the thing about John Hurt’s songs is that they are as good as any writer today. The songs are amazing, very together.

Do you think we’ll see any new collections of Hurt’s work?

We might. You know the complete Vanguard sessions are out. They remastered it from the records, and it sounds a lot better. I had big complaints when I signed to Vanguard. I got the CD at one point and was like, “What the fuck is this? “What did you guys do to it?” The original vinyl today is so amazing sounding. That guy still works for Vanguard who recorded and mastered those. The same guy from the 1960s. He just hadn’t gotten used to the digital format in the early 1990s, but now he’s got it, and they sound really good. Yeah, I think you’ll see some more things. I feel that John Hurt’s in the air. Even before this record, I opened Mojo, a mag from England, and the box set is everybody’s favorite record of the year. And there was some English pop band that was touring the states, and the mag asked, “What were you listening to last year?” and they said, we’ve been listening to this guy Mississippi John Hurt. It was our soundtrack for driving around the United States. They were just some pop band from England. A lot of people have picked up on it.

For me as a teenager, and for Beck, and for a lot of people, and Morrissey as well, I know that they got into it at a really young age, and it was really something that opened up to me when I was thirteen and fourteen. And if you’re the kind of person who’s going in that direction, it’s an amazing doorway into American music. American music is African American music, you know the thing that makes America special is the African American thing. The people, the art, the whole sense and spirit that comes from black Americans is an amazing door that opens into American music. Hurt has really got it together, and it is very inviting, and you can just go in there, and there’s a whole world in there. That’s his gift. Another part of Hurt’s gift was that he was just a cool guy. That’s what everyone says who knew him. A lot of those blues guys were hard-asses, for a lot of good reasons. Skip James was kind of an egomaniac, but apparently John Hurt was just a really great, lovely cat who was really cool to hang out with. That’s what Muldaur and Taj tell me. That gets across this thing of love for him, that he was a guy you just loved. Really full of life, a fantastic cat.

This record, in part, crystallizes that too?

I feel that it does. I feel that coming through it. That’s part of it too. You hear it in his music. I think you hear what people are in their music. You can’t really hide. Your music is about your life. If you want to work on your music, you gotta work on your life, the way you look at everything and the way your spirit is.

How did T. Bone Burnett get you involved with playing on the Johnny Cash bio Walk the Line soundtrack?

I don’t know, man, he just called me up out of the blue. I didn’t even know that T. Bone even had my number.

But why did he pick you out of the blue?

Every few years, I do something with him, but I just hadn’t talked to him for a while. He called up and wanted harmonica. He wanted some harmonica part on this Johnny Cash song, “It Ain’t Me Babe.” So, they are cutting it for this movie, and they thought they’d have me come down and do that. It’s funny because it’s not really a Dylan-style harmonica. It really is this other kind of style, and it is like what I do, so he knows what he’s doing. So, he got me down there, and while I was down there at Capitol Studios, there was Reese Witherspoon. . . . God, who else was there? This actor Joaquin Phoenix was singing, then there was me. . . .

They are playing June and Johnny.

There was David Kempner and Tony Gilkyson (formerly of X) and different guys. The story was, well, they were doing the stuff on the old records, so I ended up playing some of the stuff like Johnny’s guitar. . . . Redoing it, you know. These versions are very cool. It’s interesting, because they are kind of bringing it up to date. Well, if anyone can re-record the Johnny Cash stuff and make it sound cool, it’s T. Bone. He did a pretty good job of it. It’s pretty fresh sounding. It sounds good.

And Joaquin has been singing Johnny’s part?

He sounds amazingly like Johnny Cash. When I first heard he was doing the part, I wasn’t into the idea of it. But they are both singing pretty good. It’s kind of amazing. Granted, there are certain problems. I mean, they’ve only been singing for a few weeks. I don’t know how those guys do what they do. But you know, I really don’t have the energy. . . . Well, I don’t really deal with actors that much in my life. About twenty years ago, I got a call to go meet Martin Scorsese. They were looking for guys to be the Apostles in The Last Temptation of Christ.

That’s right, Michael Been from the Call ended up being one of them.

Yeah, he wanted guys from bands. He was looking for guys from bands to be in it.

But why?

He figured they knew how to be apostles. They knew how to be disciples, work for nothing for a cause, be part of a team, you know. He interviewed me, and I talked to him for a few hours, man. We sat in this room over at this agency or something and we talked for a few hours. It was pretty intense. He asked, “Did you ever want to be an actor?” and I said, “I got to tell you, I never wanted to be an actor” [laughs]. I never wanted that. To me, it just seemed like the opposite of what I wanted to do. I just never had any interest in it. I know a lot of rockin’ guys do, rock players, but I never gave a fuck about it.

There’s no crossover for you between the mediums?

To me, acting seems the opposite of rock ’n’ roll. Like movies about rock ’n’ roll are never any good, because what’s good about rock ’n’ roll is that it is not acting. Do you know what I mean? It’s spontaneous.

But for you, there’s no persona on stage?

Just get in touch with who you are and fucking rock, you know. For some people I know it’s acting, but for me it’s not, it’s the opposite of acting. It’s really being completely yourself. Just doing your thing. That’s the way I look at it. It’s spontaneous. And it’s just your own. . . . Well, you’re not trying to contrive things. What you are trying to do is put something across. I don’t know. That’s the way I look at it.

But two of the Plimsouls did go into the “business,” one into animation and the other, pyrotechnics.

Yeah, they both went into movies, but it’s not like acting. They’re just doing jobs—blowing up cars and doing cartoons. I guess acting does have a lot to do with it, because like with Bob Dylan, I guess he’s like an actor when he’s out there acting like Woody Guthrie. I suppose there’s a certain amount of acting that goes into the stuff we do. I guess I shouldn’t draw such a fine, high line between it, but that’s always why rock ’n’ roll movies always seem to fail to me, because rock ’n’ roll exists spontaneously in the moment, and the movies are this faked-up shit. Movies, just by their nature, are faked up.

So, the Jerry Lee Lewis movie, which actually starred John Doe, was a failure to you?

Oh yeah, I thought it was a piece of shit. Didn’t you?

I think it’s like having a movie about a writer like Hunter S. Thompson, who both Bill Murray and Johnny Depp have portrayed. It’s hard to capture what makes an artist interesting, because the process, for instance, of writing a song, isn’t always that interesting.

Plus, there’s just no understanding of. . . . Well, the thing that’s great about that persona is its depth in the moment. Jerry Lee Lewis just rocks, and he’s such a piece of work, but you can’t just put Dennis Quaid up there and get the same thing. It’s like a fucking cartoon.

So it ends up a caricature rather than a depthy portrayal?

Yeah, a band’s caricature. The best rock ’n’ roll movie I saw was Backbeat, that Beatles movie. A couple of the guys in that movie got across what it was like to be completely nuts in some stupid bar on speed. I thought that was pretty good, I did. Sid and Nancy was pretty good, but it’s not really a rock ’n’ roll movie, but some of that stuff is just crap, man. The Jerry Lee Lewis, for one, I thought was the weakest one I had seen. Because those people just don’t fucking know, man, they don’t have it, man. Being a big actor and being Jerry Lee Lewis is just a different world.

Whereas you entrust someone like Nicolas Cage, who did hang out in the Hollywood punk scene during his days of Valley Girl, to be a rocker?

Well, in a movie, you have a whole chain of command, which is the other part of it, so you have the scene. . . . There are some actors that are fucking great, but they rarely play rockers in the movies. Movies about poets are always terrible [laughs].

You grew up like a teenage Yippie, but since the 2000s, your songs teem with a sharpened sense of politics too—was it the Bush years or the overall drift of the country?

I was unpolitical for a spell, even though I sympathized with international and U.S. social justice movements, etc. Those were sort of my drunk rock ’n’ roll years. Then, the Iran-Contra affair was a drag. And there was a huge homeless problem in the U.S. These got my attention. When Bush Senior ran, and when they impeached Clinton, that all really bugged me. That was the start of the renewed political awareness that reignited it.

With your songwriting workshop, ongoing blogs, memoir, and continuous cache of songs, you offer fans a deep look into your creative process. Does this stem from a Beat Generation, candid kind of approach or something else?

I grew up on the Beats, especially the work of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. They were very open about their selves and the process they used to write. So, I like that, but it’s dangerous to speak too openly too often about songwriting; there are secrets that need to remain in the shadows. Where the real songs come from is a mystery. And just because you call it a song doesn’t make it one. Songs communicate on a higher plane, and no one really knows how that happens.

What songs compel you right now that might surprise us?

I’m listening to the first LP by Bridget St. John, on Dandelion records. I heard it last month over in Glasgow, and it’s my favorite record right now. It’s just her and John Martyn. I dig Edith Piaf’s greatest hits. Mose Allison’s songs—I dig his attitude. And John Coltrane’s work: his struggle to be a real voice is something I relate to. He’s on the turntable a lot. Hendrix’s songwriting is underrated. He’s one of the greats, when he hits it. Early Duke Ellington records—I dig the tone of the band. And the songwriting of Robert Wilkins, also the Mississippi Sheiks, reminds me of my band the Nerves’ early work, though that’s hard to explain. But there is a similarity I feel. Of the current crop of songwriters, I feel Mary Gauthier is the best thing going. She writes songs that make a beeline straight for the fault lines! Chris Smither has a great original style I really dig, combining blues with some wigged-out wisdom.

DAVE ALVIN: CALIFORNIA SOUL

Originally published in Thirsty Ear, February 2001.

Calling a Red Roof Inn somewhere in Indiana at 8:30 in the morning does not necessarily put a journalist on the good side of Dave Alvin. Between forming the rockabilly-edged Blasters with his brother Phil, surviving a stint in X, and maturing during a fertile solo career, the man has been through more rock ’n’ roll drama than this wake-up call. With a voice as deep as the plumbing of a four-story building and percolating with boundless humor, Alvin is the thinking man’s garage-rock hero remade as gifted singer-songwriter.

When you write songs, you weave alienation and other modern anxieties into traditional forms, so do the Public Domain songs reflect these elements too?

Even by the choice of songs on this record. One of the things I wanted to show on this record was interconnectedness; maybe that’s part of the timelessness. For one, all the styles are connected, whether it’s a blues song or hillbilly ballad. All these songs grew up together, rubbed shoulders with each other. The other thing I wanted to show was that those folk songs are archetypal, and those archetypes are still around. “Blackjack David” may be driving a Camaro or some other muscle car and not riding a horse [laughs]. Or “Murder of the Lawson Family,” which is on the new record, is a very contemporary story to me.

They are vehicles for truths that we already know?

“Blackjack David” is a classic British folk song, but on this record the songs are all American, and with a lot of them, if I were an educated man, I could make the case that they were reactions to the Industrial Revolution, which was a very traumatic period for working-class people. So you have songs like “Engine 143” about the death of the engineer. And the case could be made, if I were better at theory, or even awake [laughs], that a lot of these songs are metaphors for people caught in the transition between the pre-industrial age and the industrial age. Right now, we’re in a similar period in that people are similarly caught between the pre-technological age and the age of new technology. And in the same way that the industrial system created new classes of people, new sets of have and have-nots, technology is doing the same thing now. Any time that you have such drastic change going on, you have alienation.

Why such modesty? You did go to college, and you know poetry, sonnets, Shakespeare.

We’re damn good friends [laughs]. The band was discussing this last night, that none of us graduated from college. Chris Smither is opening the shows we’re on, and he said that he never graduated either. I’m just not well versed in critical theory. That’s a whole other language.

You consider yourself a blues man. Does that go back to your youth and seeing Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, and Howlin’ Wolf with your brother Phil?

It’s part of me, but hand me an electric guitar and I’m basically a thrasher. But if Lightning Hopkins was a thrasher, then that’s how I play guitar. The great thing about blues, and one of the reasons it has survived, is that it’s not a monolithic thing, though some people try to make it fit into a monolithic identity. It’s everything from a shuffle band playing Antone’s on a Monday night to Miles Davis and Jimmy Rogers.

The form itself is a poetic form like haiku or a sonnet. It all depends on what you do with that form. You can have a Shakespearian sonnet or a modern sonnet. In the hands of the right person, a sonnet can be a sonnet without seeming like it. Aram Saroyan did a whole book on twelve bizarre sonnets, but they were all in classical sonnet form, though you wouldn’t recognize it. It’s just a form.

There’re so many types of blues: there’s Texas blues, Delta blues, Chicago blues, Memphis, Chicago, St. Louis, and they’re all different. I tend to be more aggressive when I play guitar, which comes from the punk stuff, and because I’m not one of the world’s greatest guitarists, so I just turn up the volume louder so no one will notice [laughs].

You carry part of Los Angeles with you wherever you go?

I carry part of Downey, my hometown. You could drop me in Antarctica and I’d still be a Downey guy, even though I haven’t lived there in twenty-something years. With a lot of people, whether they’re songwriters, novelists, or painters, you carry those initial memories. My memories of my hometown bring our conversation full circle because it was an area in transition between the rural and urban. It’s about twenty miles from L.A., and when I was a kid half of it was orange groves, avocado groves, and bean fields. On the south side there were dairy farms as far as you could see.

So, I’m attracted to transitional zones, I’m attracted to borderlands—those places where things collide and people are caught. Usually when I’m writing a song or a poem, those are the images in my head. Something from childhood. I know it sounds loopy, but I think it’s true for a lot of writers. They create their own worlds, but they tend to look a lot alike, what they saw when they were young mixed in with what they see now. The L.A. scene between 1978 and 1985 was a great music scene because it didn’t care about the music industry that much, and it existed on its own and was an all-for-one, one-for-all kind of situation most of the time. For example, the Germs were the first band on Slash; they helped X get on Slash, who helped the Blasters, who helped Los Lobos and Rank and File. Everybody helped each other. It was a social scene that revolved around everyone feeling they were outsiders and didn’t fit in.

There were negative sides to the scene, like the heavy drugs and alcohol, but everybody did look out for each other, and when it died, like all scenes do, I was like a lamb thrown out to the lions. I suddenly realized that just because somebody plays a similar style of music doesn’t mean he or she is going to be like everybody back in L.A. There’re some real pricks out there, and they’re going to screw you over the first chance they get. I miss that about the old L.A. days and try to carry a little bit of it with me.

BILLY JOE AND EDDY SHAVER: MILES AND MILES OF HONKY-TONK SOUL

Originally published in Thirsty Ear, 2000.

Before the show at Dan Electro’s in Houston, Billy Joe Shaver, his white hair illumined by harsh porch lights, leans up against his plain white Ford utility van. He squints as ladies step up for photos. He eagerly draws them close, a kind of electricity making his cheeks wide and taut. Later, between sets, unhappy at the awkward, impromptu acoustic set, he puts a hand on a nearby fence. “I’m getting old, man,” he says, not because he can’t land the same musical punches anymore, but for other, more insidious reasons, like wrangling with record labels and fighting for recognition.

When his son Eddy, whose nimble, bluesy guitar is the core behind Shaver’s sound, ambles up with his heavy-metal hairdo drooping down over his shoulders, Billy relaxes a bit. In truth, they haven’t always been this close, but now there’s a very real sense of shared vision between them, like they’re beating around the old porch again, singing along to scratchy LPs.

And while Willie Nelson makes the front cover of Texas Monthly as artist of the century, Shaver—a legend in his own right who embodies the outlaw country subculture that gave rise to the likes of Nelson and Waylon Jennings—lives in a trailer in Waco, Texas. He is mostly alone and overlooked, without even a mailbox (he has keys to a church where he picks up correspondence). Yet, he is as candid and garrulous as a sixty-year-old maverick can be.

You first became interested in music from the kids who lived at the black settlement across from your grandma’s place in Corsicana, Texas?

Billy Joe: They were cotton pickers. There was pretty much always someone there playing music. They played a lot of bottleneck, mainly because their guitars were so beat up. I was influenced a lot by that.

Has black music influenced you in other ways?

Billy Joe: All the way, just about. You’d be hard-pressed to beat Willie Dixon or Muddy Waters. They’re about as good as it gets. We listened to more black music than anything else back then.

Are you a country band?

Eddy: They always ask us are you country or are you this because you know they want to bag you, especially since the seventies. But I like to play rock clubs, where the young guys can hear us play.

Critics and labels want to push you into a niche?

Billy Joe: That’s when you quit. We’ve quit many times, in terms of certain labels.

What’s a true honky-tonker anyway?

Billy Joe: I don’t even know where the word came from.

You’ve put out seven records in twenty years, which is not much for a country player.

Billy Joe: But when we put out the live record, Unshaven, critics noticed it and said it had more guitar firepower than most rock that year. Brendan O’Brien [the producer] from Pearl Jam recorded it. He just turned the tape on and let us play.

Eddy: That was the great thing about using him. Some producers wanted to bring in fiddles and stuff, but I’ve been playing the stuff for fifteen years and nobody’s going to mess with my live show.

It came out the same time that Jason and the Scorchers released their first record on Mammoth, which had a huge rock sound.

Eddy: Sure. There was a lot of influence, I believe, from people like Jason and us to get back to that sound. Each record breaks people’s expectations. You’ve done polished studio work, a live record, and an acoustic record. On Highway of Life and Victory we had a much more acoustic feel, and I felt it was time to really get out and slam again. And basically, since Tramp on Your Street, we’ve been successful in terms of getting to play the cool clubs.

But how do those clubs feel when you do pull out the quiet Victory material?

Eddy: They love it.

Billy Joe: We usually stick it in the middle, and it works well because the sounds complement each other.

Do you think when you made Victory you were taking a chance, perhaps even alienating some of your audience, because of its heavy religious overtones?

Billy Joe: I was supposed to do that record. It was a deal with God. But I wish I would’ve waited a bit, because it caused our last record, Electric Shaver, to sit in the can because they were made at the same time. It was supposed to come out first, but it ended up in the can, and everybody in Nashville listened to it because someone gets a tape every time. I’m tired of stuff like that because I wish I could make a record and put it out right then. Usually it’s fresh and different then.

In the past, you would stay up three or four nights in a row, because you were so full of songs. Even at sixty, you’re still brimming with songs.

Billy Joe: It’s so easy, I’m so full of songs. It’s like a hobby for me. I’m not really doing it for any other reason, except perhaps because it’s the cheapest psychiatrist there is. And God knows I still need one.

Eddy: And with him the unexpected is the expected.

Some say you haven’t gained a wider audience because you have simply made far fewer records than most country artists, and they have been quite different from each other.

Billy Joe: But we’ve self-destructed a lot, too, and stepped on a lot of people’s toes and gotten into trouble.

Eddy: We’re happy to be at a point where we can go to good-sized rock clubs but also still play smaller, more homey places and have full crowds. That’s a great deal for us.

Billy Joe: Some people in Nashville pay producers all kinds of money and even produce videos but don’t pull the same size crowds as us and don’t sell the same amount of records.

When New Country took over and kicked out the older generation, it left a lot of people stranded, especially older musicians. Do you think Nashville is ageist in this way?

Billy Joe: It’s true.

Eddy: But as Brendan said, we’re really the only power trio out there with a great country singer—there’s nothing else like it in the country.

Billy Joe: The closest thing is probably Joe Ely.

Eddy: Right. And we’re not playing huge places, but we’re happy, because we’re in that same cool niche as him, and that’s where we want to be anyway. I can go out and play my style of guitar to the crowds, and they understand it. Last year, we were playing venues with five to six hundred people all the time and really rocked it up, almost too much. We were going like crazy and burned some players out.

Billy Joe: Not me. But it ran some of the younger guys out. They couldn’t keep up [laughs].

Eddy: You spend twelve or fifteen hours getting to a place where you play for an hour and a half, and only have an hour in your hotel room between the sound check and the set, day in and day out.

Billy Joe: And we do it all in the van because we’re so broke.

Eddy: But that way, without buses and stuff, you come back with a little money.

When you knew that Eddy wanted to play music, did it thrill you or scare you?

Billy Joe: I was happy about it. Dickey Betts saw it more than I did. He gave Eddy two guitars when he was thirteen or fourteen, one that belonged to Duane Allman and the Strat he stills plays today. Eddy slept with them for two years! He fell in love with them, and Dickey said, “This guy is gonna be good.”

Is part of your success and productivity these past years due to your collaboration with Eddy?

Billy Joe: Yeah. And we draw to us world-class players. I mean, guys who play with me will go on the road for a long time and not get paid as much, just because they want to play with me, and they want to say that they played with me. Some of them stay for just a little while and go and get a real job. Eddy sometimes jokes that we should have called our band the Stepping Stones.

You’re a good reference?

Billy Joe: Yeah, we train them, and they always go and get themselves really great jobs.

Eddy, what made you commit to your dad?

Eddy: The music finally really came around to where I wanted it. We have tracks like “Hottest Thing in Town” that are great, driving tracks that are totally live, and you can tell they are three-piece songs—there’s no rhythm on the solos, you can tell I drop out and come back in for the rhythm part. This, in part, was the sound I was looking for, so I was happy.

Billy Joe: He started with me when he was about fourteen. I could have gone with what they call traditional music, but you know my songs are as country as they can be, and traditional just means you stick a fiddle or steel guitar in there and call it traditional. But we didn’t want to, because it didn’t feel right.

I loved The Apostle, with you and Robert Duvall.

Billy Joe: It was fun. He’s really easy to get along with, and he’s a fan, too, on top of that. It was my first movie and probably my last. First time I met him, at Antone’s in Austin, he was doing Lonesome Dove and brought a bunch of people to see us and I met him briefly. He’s a big fan of Waylon Jennings, who put out Honky Tonk Heroes in the early seventies. I wrote ten out of the eleven songs on that record.

He said he loved my work, and I thanked him and said what great work Waylon Jennings was doing, but he told me, “You’re the man.” About eight years later, he sent word to me to try out for the part. I went to the reading and sure enough, I got the part. The first thing he told me was, “Billy, every chance you get, don’t act.” Part of me was that character. As a director, he had the right character already, so I didn’t have to work too hard, I could just be myself. Role casting, I believe they call it.

Do you ever feel pressure, from the record companies or the public, to put out THE record?

Billy Joe: That’s when I walk away.

What’s the most important thing that happens when you make a record?

Billy Joe: Well, it all has to happen so fast because we always get such cheap budgets, we don’t get another swipe at it, so I have to make sure to do my part correct.

Do those limitations make it a better or worse record?

Billy Joe: In a way, I think it helps, because when you first write a song, it’s strong. And after you play it awhile, it’s not as exciting as it was. Jerry Lee Lewis, who’s done a few of my songs, if he doesn’t get it by the second take, he usually just says, “Next.” There’s something about that. And me, sometimes I get real upset with engineers, because I think I’m doing a take, and they haven’t begun to roll the tape. I give them everything I got the first time. I try to get it right the first time.

You’ve said that one of the greatest things for you is to hear others do your songs.

Billy Joe: I love it.

But do you feel neglected when Willie plays a 10,000-seater and does your songs?

Billy Joe: That’s just the way the cards are dealt.

What’s the most important thing you’re leaving behind, the idea of your life or your songs?

Billy Joe: I’ll never be as big as those songs. When I first came to Nashville in ’66, I knew they were bigger than I was.

How early did you start writing?

Billy Joe: I was just a kid when I started poetry and stuff, but you couldn’t let anybody know you did that ’cause they’d call you sissy and stuff. Even playing guitar and singing was considered sissy here in Texas.

But Texas was a hotbed for music, like Bobby Fuller and Buddy Holly.

Billy Joe: Not in my neighborhood.

How young were you when you knew you would be doing this?

Billy Joe: When I first started talking, I guess. When I was about five.

Was your grandmother, who raised you, supportive?

Billy Joe: She didn’t get in my way. I just sang what I knew. We didn’t have a radio for a long time, just heard the people across the track [the black settlement]. I just listened to them and sang what I knew without instruments. Everybody got a kick out of it. I used to sing and sell papers on the corner in Corsicana, Texas. I thought I would make it by singing. And then the songs started coming.

Has anything changed about the way you write songs in the past thirty years?

Billy Joe: No, not really. I always believe that simplicity don’t need to be greased. I stick with that because I know my limitations. I wouldn’t say I’m limited, but I stay in the simple thing that the most common person can understand. It’s real hard to do. It’s not easy to keep it simple.

Do you think that some people come to the shows and are uncomfortable about how important religion is to you?

Billy Joe: All I know is it’s just the deal I made. When you accept Jesus Christ you have to tell people about it. It’s akin to someone having really good dope: You don’t want to sit there and smoke it by yourself. That’s where it is with me; he’s the one that made us all number two. And I have to share that, but I ain’t gonna knock nobody around about it. I just lay it out there, and if they want it, fine. If they don’t, they can just move on.

What songs really stand out for you and never get old?

Billy Joe: Lyrically, I would say “Old Five and Dimers” is very close to Plato for me.

What about “Georgia on a Fast Train”?

Billy Joe: It’s fun. It’s a favorite of mine. I always thought it would be a big hit, but it never was. Tom Petty does it at live shows but hasn’t recorded it. And Bob Dylan did a really different version of “Old Five and Dimers.”

Did you ever meet Elvis, who also covered one of your songs?

Billy Joe: When I was seventeen, I met him on my birthday, and he ended up doing my song. He even died on my birthday, August 16. It was kinda strange. I wish I would’ve gone and seen him, it was always an open invitation. I knew I could, but I put it off.

Any more film work?

Billy Joe: I don’t know. Robert called me the other night and told me he had some stuff lined up. It would be fun working with him. But I don’t know if I could work with anyone but him, because he’s so down to earth and good at it. When I first got my role in The Apostle, it wasn’t that big, it just developed that way.

Who were your country heroes back in the late sixties?

Billy Joe: I loved Waylon Jennings.

What about Merle Haggard?

Billy Joe: Oh yeah. I’ve met him three times, but he never remembers who I am!

When you first went off to Nashville, had you recorded at all? Did you know anybody?

Billy Joe: I knew I was good with words and wrote poems and stuff. I left Houston with ten dollars in my pocket and tried to hitch a ride to L.A., but I couldn’t get one. Finally, I walked over to the other side of the road and caught a ride to Memphis.

You could’ve been a rock ’n’ roll star instead!

Billy Joe: Well, I don’t know about a star. The guy pulled around the city, because he knew it was too far to walk, and set me down in the direction of Nashville and gave me ten dollars. I said, “Man, you can’t do that, I don’t know if I could ever pay you back.” He said, “Pass it on,” which I have many times. I caught a lift on a truck loaded with cantaloupe and smelled like ’em for a day or two. But I got to Nashville, where I sang for drunks at a few bars and made some bills. I did that for a while, then went home to Texas and my wife.

JASON RINGENBERG: JASON AND THE SCORCHERS

Published in Left of the Dial, no. 1, 2000.

Jason and the Scorchers were the new music hurricane that upset all the old norms of Nashville, when lounge country sung by men in sparkly suits was still the norm. By combining outlaw country with the renegade spirit of punk momentum and mayhem, they were able to offer something fierce and fresh. By doing so, combat boots crowds could mingle with ma and pa porch singers. “White Lies” might have been their groundbreaking opus, but each of their albums still retains a potent musical craft, led by the aw-shucks sincerity of Ringenberg, an unlikely hero.

Professionally, you’re comfortable, like Jimmie Dale Gilmore or Steve Earle?

Except they make more money. I just feel that in spite of the fact that I haven’t had any serious commercial success, I have a strong, loyal following. Plus, you make new fans by just being out there and doing stuff. I’m just happy to be playing music, and I have a chance to do it. There are a lot of people who can’t do what I’m doing. I feel very fortunate.

You feel both disappointed and grateful?

I feel a mix of both. I do wish of course that we would have had a big ol’ hit song somewhere in that twenty-year run, but it didn’t happen, so you have to accept things as they are. On the other hand, there’s such a strong reputation around the band that I have to be thankful for that.

In 1998 at Tramps in New York City, you said, “I am a grizzled veteran of the music business, and I’ve learned one thing in my travels, that a guitar works a lot better plugged in.” So why make an acoustic record?

What a question. That’s got me floored [laughs]. That’s a very good question. This is wonderful. Well, I wish I could come up with something. I’ll never top that one. This record is a record that I’ve wanted to make for a long, long time and never had the chance because the Scorchers are such a high-energy band. And I’ve always wanted to do a folk record. It’s a folk record, essentially, and I’ve always wanted to do that. It’s the music I grew up with, and it’s pretty much what I listen to when I sit around listening to music.

Although you tackle a rather moving version of Guadalcanal’s “Trail of Tears,” I was surprised that other favorites that you have played live solo before, like R.E.M., Gram Parson, and the Beatles, weren’t on this record.

When you make a record, it’s a completely different situation than playing a show. I come from the live tradition of Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan in that they are not afraid to do covers. That’s great. There are two types of people that do covers: people that do covers because their own material isn’t very good and they’re a cover act and they don’t have their own material, or people that are showing their heritage. I felt that I just wanted to accentuate my own songwriting. I think two covers are good enough for a record. That’s as much as I want to do, unless I was going to do a cover record, which I may do sometime. [The sound of children’s voices pervades the phone call.]

Has it been difficult balancing or reconciling your reputation of Jerry Lee Rotten with the demands of fatherhood?

[Laughs] How the hell can I talk now? [Laughs] I’m supposed to come up with the glib answers, but you have the great questions. Man, that’s great, Jerry Lee Rotten. This is a different interview than I’m used to. That character on stage is just the most extreme part of my personality, it’s like amplified by 800 percent. Energy just rushes through my personality when I hit the stage, so it just comes out. You can’t really do something like that thinking about it, it just sort of happens. It’s one of the few times in life that I don’t have to think about anything. I can just be that thing. The rest of my life I am not like that. I’m a pretty laid-back guy.

Like Dave Alvin and Tom Russell, you’ve spoken a lot about the richness of history.

Tennessee is a pretty historic place, and almost all places are, really. You just have to take the time to get to know them. I grew up in Illinois with long family heritage for me.

The family farm and the prairie are becoming rare in Illinois. Was your decision to buy a chicken farm, start your own small label, and make a stripped-down folk record part of your nostalgia for a more Norman Rockwell America? You could live in downtown Nashville and make rock ’n’ roll records.

I have made the decision here the last four or five years to live that kind of life and supply that kind of life to my kids. It’s disappearing at an alarming rate. It used to be just everywhere. It’s just what America was. Particularly up in the Midwest where we’re from, now it’s not nearly like that. I am trying to do that with my family life. My wife and I started a family here three years ago. It’s a different life than Nashville, no question about it. We’re buying Addie a pony next year. We have chickens and a little pig. It’s just really big fun. It’s a nice way to grow up.

Speaking of history, people in their twenties seem to associate roots rock with Steve Earle and the Supersuckers and don’t know about the Scorchers, as if the only thing happening in the 1980s was the B-52s. After the reunion, was it hard to connect with younger people, because your fan base was a bit older?

We made a real effort in the mid-1990s. We signed with a young label, Mammoth, and we really tried. One of our goals was to make our audience younger and try to get to those people who were buying Supersuckers and Wilco records. For some reason, it never quite hit. I’m not quite sure why, ’cause it should have. It didn’t. There are markets in Europe where we have a younger audience, but in the States our audience is essentially thirty to forty-five years old. You pick up a few here and there, but it’s something we just have to live with. Not getting the big credit is not something you can focus on too much. You have to focus on the credit you do get, otherwise it will really embitter you. The music business is so gigantic. You can’t expect to get everything you think you oughta get.

Most people take the easy way out and start slagging Nashville, but you don’t.

It’s got great heritage and history. It’s an ignorant thing to do, really. People come to Nashville and don’t get what they want out of it, but how many million actors have gone to Los Angeles and never made it? Does that mean L.A. doesn’t make good movies? How many rock bands went to New York in the 1970s and 1980s and didn’t get famous? Does that mean the Ramones aren’t valid? It’s a really silly way of looking at it. On the other side of the coin, you can look at what mostly comes out of Nashville in terms of the money acts, and yeah, it’s pretty sickening stuff. But there’s still great heritage and a lot of great talent.

As a seventeen-year-old cruising a small prairie town, instead of listening to Cheap Trick, Jefferson Starship, and Peter Frampton, you were hooked on Bob Dylan and Hank Williams Sr.

First, I’m lucky that I had older brothers and sisters that could play me that stuff, otherwise I probably would never have heard it. I guess it’s one of the things you can’t explain why it connected with me. It’s part of that genetic makeup. I come from a pretty artistic family, although they were all farmers. There are a lot of amateur artists in that family, just artsy-craftsy kind of folk. I guess I just got those genes.

What ever triggered the thought that you could meld the New York Dolls and the Ramones to Dylan and Williams?

I think that if I could take any credit for anything in the music business, I can take credit for the fact that I had that unique and original idea, although now it doesn’t seem that original. There are a thousand bands doing that kind of thing. But boy, I tell you, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were maybe two or three [laughs]. I was one of them who had the idea to take roots music and kick the hell out of it. That’s why I came to Nashville, to do just that.

That’s real insurgent country.

I had that in my head when I moved to town, and while there I ran into Warren (guitarist) and Jeff (bassist), and whoa boy, I got more than I ever bargained for [laughs]!

There were alcohol and drugs, and other dangers, but could you have those great albums like Lost and Found without that side?

No, I don’t think so. When the band cleaned up, it was just as good, and in some ways it was better. I’m certain that if the band had their heads on straight we would have gotten bigger, and not necessarily done better music, ’cause it’s hard to argue with Fervor and Lost and Found, but we could have done better overall.

Why were you initially opposed to a reunion back in the early 1990s, especially after a broken marriage and less-than-sterling solo record?

It was kind of a trip down memory lane, and I had a lot of bad memories [laughs]. That lane, at that point, was polluted with a lot of bad memories. I didn’t feel like it was something I wanted to do. And obviously, I’m glad I changed my mind.

Like Todd Snider and Billy Joe Shaver, there’s a lot of outspoken faith in God in your recent music. Do you think it rubs off on people, or do people listen in spite of it?

I think it depends on how you present it. I’m real careful about that, because I grew up and came of age in the height of the “born again” movement, which is what they called it in those days. That stuff really turned me off when people were so pushy about the whole thing. I really try not to be pushy about it. What I believe is what I believe, and I sing about it. Folks get whatever they want out of it. It’s cool with me.

If Hank Williams were alive today, would he make a Jason and the Scorchers record or a Jason Ringenberg record?

I think that at times, if he came back today, it would be a Scorchers record, if he were in this world today. I’m able to do this record because I have done the other stuff before. If I came out right now with this record without the Scorchers’ stuff, I don’t think it would get nearly the attention it has. It’s juxtaposed against the wild Scorchers’ heritage.

Like Springsteen said regarding the Tom Joad album, he couldn’t have made that record without making everything before it because he would not have had an audience for that acoustic record.

I agree with him completely. It would be so hard to get people interested in something like this. There have been a few people who’ve made this kind of music and gotten it off the ground, but for the most part, it’s really difficult to sell this kind of music.

Is the tune “Last of the Neon Cowboys” about a certain fondness you have of old Nashville singers like Ray Brand even though they weren’t probably supporting the Scorchers?

No. What I was going for on that song was a very specific kind of country singer, real people. There are four or five of them that make up the composite character in that song. They were guys down in the Lower Broadway section of Nashville, which is now a big money place with NASCAR and Planet Hollywood and places like that, but twenty years ago it was full of seedy, rundown honky-tonk places that had been there since the 1940s. All these ancient old bars had all these ancient singers that had sung there every night for thirty years: “Curly” Putnam, Ray Brand, guys like that who I don’t even know if they are alive anymore.

They would just sing these songs, maybe there was a single record out twenty years before, and they had these ancient guitars with their names engraved in the neck from some little record deal years before, hair greased back, long sideburns. They made a hell of an impression on a kid from Illinois coming to Nashville and seeing that, and I was seeing it all alone because there was nobody paying any attention. They played for tips to six or seven people. They weren’t tourists either. They were down on their luck. Then there were a few kids like me. It was quite inspirational to see those guys sing their lights out and giving their best.

Was it a victory for you when the Scorchers, Nashville’s biggest rebels, were the first modern rock act signed from the city?

Absolutely, there was no question at the time that it was a radical thing to be happening in Nashville, a rock ’n’ roll band breaking out of there. Nashville was such a little provincial town in those days, a cowtown that happened to have the music business. Country music was all Nashville had at the time. It wasn’t like it is now. We didn’t come through any of the channels that were set up here. We just made our own channels, we made our own records and put them out ourselves, and heck we had a review in Rolling Stone before we even had a record contract. It was pretty exciting times. Everybody in Nashville knew about the band and was talking about it. Either they loved it or didn’t like it, got it or didn’t get it, but everybody was interested in it.

Was playing “White Lies” on the Conan O’Brien show the band’s swan song?

It was the high point of that period of the band, there’s no question about it. The period of the live record, and Jeff left the band in 1996, so when we put the band back together, that song was the high point of what that band was.

“Addie Rose” is a very tender, personal song for your daughter. Did you ever hesitate about putting it on the new record?

I think that if I was a bigger artist, I might not have done it. I would start worrying about weirdos and creeps and stuff, but Addie is now like famous in her own way. She’s just that kind of girl. She makes a strong impression no matter what, and having a song out there about her makes her even more so. It’s really a lot of fun hearing her sing it, like she goes to shows. She doesn’t sing it on stage but sings it around the house with me. When I’m in my sixties, and she’s in her twenties, I’m sure she’ll play that for her friends and they’ll say, wow, what a cool thing.

Are you content knowing that there are some disadvantages to small record companies, like the record may not get everywhere?

It’s funny in the music business. You think those big things really help, but most of the time they really don’t. The only time the real big company with money can help an artist like myself is when everybody is 200 percent behind you, because otherwise it works against you. It’s harder to make the bigness work for you. I don’t think that putting it out myself on my own label has hurt me much. I still have people hired to work it, and they do a pretty good job.

How did George Bradfute (former Webb Wilder player) and Fats Kaplin come to play on your record?

The whole thing was pretty organic. I didn’t think in the spring of 1999 that “I am going to make a folk record.” I just started moving in that direction and having fun writing songs for the heck of writing. Some of those songs were just gifts, like “Addie Rose” was for my daughter, while “A Pocketful of Soul” was a birthday gift for my wife. When I started thinking that maybe I have a record here and maybe some people should hear the songs, then I started thinking “Who?” George is a real underground character. He’s a talented, musical genius that can play anything. I’ve known him for years and enjoy the way he plays and him as a person and the way he lives and the way he records.

Bric-a-brac everywhere?

But it’s not a planned thing, like “I’m going to make this cool place.” It’s just him, like, “Excuse me, I have to move this 1935 Martin so you can sit on the couch.”

Twenty years after going to Nashville, are you still the oddball kid in the family?

They are still very supportive of it, but they have been through it as well as I have because as a parent, and you don’t realize this as a kid, but your dreams are their dreams too. As a parent, when your child wants something, you want them to have that. And they really wanted me to be a success in the music business after I committed to do it, and they really got into it. They were a huge help all those years, very supportive. The flip side of the coin is they felt all the disappointments as keenly as I did. They felt the triumphs as big, and the valleys as bitterly, as I did. So, now they are happy that I’m making music because they know how happy it makes me.

ROBERT EARL KEEN: THIS AIN’T NO PICNIC

Originally published in Left of the Dial. Introduction culled from a text originally commissioned by Keen’s record label as a publicity bio by me.

Delving into Texas songwriters and trying to put a new spin on such ingrained lore in a few soon-to-be-crumpled pages is like trying to tell the gist of the Old Testament while munching on popcorn and fingering the remote control. You are bound to miss some crucial folks, and Robert Earl Keen might find himself beneath the radar, despite nine seminal Americana albums and tens of thousands of fans flocking to his shows with the fervor of Deadheads. Fact: music moguls’ zealous fetish for newcomers far outweighs their commitment to honest, close-to-the-ground talent. That’s why both Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash recorded for indie labels during the past ten years, and Keen himself has surfed between labels despite numerous TV appearances (Conan O’Brien, Today Show), magazine articles (Playboy, Men’s Journal), and constantly having his songs covered by the likes of the Dixie Chicks and Shawn Colvin.

Keen will forever be known as the guy who can cover the likes of Dave Alvin, Peter Case, Townes Van Zandt, and Johnny Cash, evoke the world of tough immigrant workers and dead politicians, and simultaneously appeal to baseball-cap-wearing college kids without losing his own poetic magnetism or sense of self. While others drift quickly toward anonymity, flash-in-the-pan cut-out bins at the local Kmart, or hopelessly make banal copycat Keen songs and try to serve them up as fresh pie, Keen delivers literate, rich worlds by letting go of squabbles and egos and embodying an earthy resilience that is more and more uncommon in the dot-com millennium. There are no hillbilly hoedowns, white trash mockery, or ad-lib mock blues on his record, but instead what Keen does best: lyrical and cinematic wordplay, raved-up rocking, and masterly country thumbing that makes the road feel like a bit of black tar heaven. Or as Keen offhandedly ruminates on one track, “The truth is all I’m looking for.” Undoubtedly, he has found part of it.

Texas Music once said that you were the “Hillbilly Shakespeare” of the next century.

That’s a nice compliment but . . . Shakespeare was a genius.

But the hillbilly angle seems maybe a bit demeaning?

Selling it short? Singular dimensional. Yeah, I’m not a hillbilly. That just sounded good to the writer as far as I am concerned. I am by no way the genius that Shakespeare was, and then I am not a noble savage. I’m educated. I try to use some of the stuff, or reinterpret things that I have read in my life and think and try to put them in a song. It is a very multifaceted process. It in no way compares to gigging a frog.

Do you think you have more in common with your favorite writers like Larry Brown (who wrote the big article on you for No Depression) than with, say, Buck Owens and Dolly Parton?

I can’t write those kinds of songs.

But do you even tell those stories?

Do I tell the Larry Brown–type stories? Yeah, I think I do. I like as much as you can cram into four minutes of a song. I like a lot of characterization. I really love characters. You can get the right word to it or the right spin, you can color that character, it can be very dark and shining. . . . The whole thing about characterization is really interesting to me, and that does not relate in any way to how much you tap your foot or remember a chorus.

Jack Kerouac said you should only stop writing in order to see the picture better.

You mean typing all those sheets of paper together?

Do you overflow with the stories?

I think that’s different. That’s writing prose, and I am writing songs, which is closer to poetry.

Are you writing every day, spilling over with it?

No, no. It’s like an attic for me and it stays dormant and dusty for a long time, then I go up and visit it every once in a while and I open up all these trunks and turn on all these toys and look at all this stuff and start thinking about them and then something happens. When I am strumming my guitar, this melody, it connects with this old wooden Indian doll that I picked up in the attic in my brain and I think, okay, this has a groove, or work with this image and you start riffing on this image, and when I do that. . . . Well, because I am not as extemporaneous as some people are, I get this outline in my brain and then I start nit-picking how it would fit better, how it would be cleaner, how it would sing better with the melody. Would it improve the song if it were more melodic or would it be better if it were more rhythm-driven?

Do you feel that your characters reappear in the songs in different names or personas?

That’s a great question. I do tend to, and I’ve said this before, I tend to focus on down-and-out type characters.

Somebody called them a rogue’s gallery.

Rogue, yeah. But I don’t think it’s the same character. I think I am looking for somebody different. The only thing I can connect to that is I noticed that in some movies, some writers and movie people really write the same plot over and over, and they just stick in a different character but it’s the same plot. And it really works, and you don’t think, ah, they just ripped off their own idea. Actually, it puts a whole different spin on it. It’s a little different and it works. I have a hard time doing that because I feel that I. . . . Well, I really try to change them up to some degree, although I do constantly focus on the down-and-out characters because they are more interesting.

But not as surreal as Gravitational Forces?

Well, yeah, there are a couple of them. They’re not exactly spoken word. They’re not exactly just a song either. It’s just kind of fun with lyrics, and you know the thing I’ve done since we started this process is like, if we get to a point anywhere in this process where it is not fun, we’re going to quit for the day. We’ve been having fun, because that’s what . . . well, I felt like all the records I really liked, the ones I can look back on and say, yeah, that was really fun, I had a great time doing that.

Would you say that as much great art comes from fun as it does from duress?

Yes, I think that can be true. Yeah, as much as duress, sure. You don’t have to be the brilliant, alienated artist with Phil Spector putting a gun to his head. I think so, and I think that some of the really good songs and music that work for a long time doesn’t come from a catastrophic experience. I think it comes from that “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” attitude as well. John Prine once said you can put anything into a song as long as you keep the attitude. You would know this, being a writer. You just feel what’s honest within your own character and when it comes to a point where it just sounds like bullshit, you just go, I can’t do that, that’s not me. That might be somebody else, but it’s not me. The attitude is pretty easy to keep as far as I am concerned [laughs].

So, even if you visit different styles, say a ballad, and then a honky-tonkish song, or yee-haw fun song, all of it has that Keen attitude to it?

Well, I definitely feel like I put my. . . . Well, when I write a song, I really try to steer clear of, like, any other song that I can think of. There are bits and pieces of every form of music in what we do, and like Fred Eaglesmith always says, we all borrow from each other, and that’s true too. As far as writing the songs, I just try to make something, make it some way unique. And the unique part is the thing I would say, as opposed to just somebody saying let’s just write a song for whatever artist, but let’s not throw anything in there that would scare anybody away. Scaring somebody away is not a problem; someone hearing a song and going sure, that’s fine, that’s a problem for me.

You fear mediocrity?

Sure. That’s what I do as a writer. I am not a great singer, I’m not a great musician, but I do feel that I have a true talent as a writer. I just didn’t stumble into it; it’s just there with me, so I try to make it as interesting as possible, and the filter that I go through is my own filter, so I make sure to stick with my choice of words and also make sure that it doesn’t sound like somebody else.

Prine also said, “Always sing other people’s stuff, otherwise you end up getting really selfish. You get stuck in your own world and your perspective is all crooked.”

I didn’t make this up. I didn’t make songwriting up. I didn’t make singing, playing the guitar, performing up. To me, it was always first. I learned songs and I played songs, and I started writing songs. So, I think that is part of growing as a writer, musician, and performer, always trying to learn other people’s songs. In fact, I try to remind myself every year you need to learn, even if you are not thinking about it. If you are not just falling into learning a song because you like it, you need to go out and find songs that you like, and then learn them. My friend Fred Cohen, who has written songs in Nashville for years, says there’s no output if there’s no input. I think Fred has written a bunch of songs for John Prine.

Woody Guthrie once said that your “ballads will be lots better and sound plainer and clear when you stop all kinds of hiding, hiding from your people, hiding from your own self.” When you first started, did you have a natural tendency to hide, and as you got older, the songs got a little more daring and you became more honest, or have you always been that way?

That’s the thing [laughs]. That’s a tough question. That is a really tough question because some songs are like riddles, and I throw stuff in there just to, well, maybe little messages to maybe one person. I like that secretiveness of it. At the same time, when I try to write a song that would be somewhat expressive of my real feelings, I try to strip them down as raw as I can get them to make sure I am telling the truth.

I ran into a song recently on a Greg Brown record. He’s doing a sort of stream-of-consciousness thing, and it’s so funny because he gets to this point where he’s talking about all these images he’s seeing while climbing up this mountain or something, then all of a sudden, and it’s so great because he writes it into the song, it just sounds like this point of frustration, and he says, “What am I trying to say?” Then he says, I guess it’s this, you know. Right in the song, it follows the melody line, follows the cadence of the lyrics, and he doesn’t overdub it and shout it out. He just says it in the lyrics: What am I trying to say? And you do feel that while he is going along, you feel like, yeah, you’re saying something, now get to the point.

Then he says, “What am I trying to say?” and you’re like, that’s so good! That’s what you are—you’re digging for things, and you’re like, what am I trying to say here? There’s a certain amount of building things in a song, where you’re just throwing in images and putting together little plotlines, little characters together, then you go, “What I am trying to say?” at that point. That’s when you say to yourself, look, it’s either got to be really, really interesting, or it can be really honest.

Does the song ever come to you as a whole, or does it take shape as you go?

Mine definitely takes shape. I start with a general idea or a picture and then I start describing it and things take shape and where I end may be way off from where I started, but. . . . My feeling is, or the writers that I like I feel do let things take shape. The ones that are extremely seasoned are able to let things take shape then go back and edit and move things around to where they have this great sense of clarity and foreshadowing and things like that. Those are the really great writers. Those are the ones that their first draft is just the beginning, it’s just a start, it’s just scratching the surface, and maybe they go ten drafts into it before they are finished.

How important is the first line of a song to you? Does it set the tone, pace, and attitude of a song?

I’m not real bold or hit them over the head with that first line stuff. I kind of slide into it. And I think that’s a function of the process because I kind of slide into the idea at the same time. I kind of hurtle and drone some sort of vague idea, and as you said before, it takes shape, and generally I don’t go back and re-create that first line to catch your attention, because I think particularly in a song process, catching one’s attention has to do with drawing people in with little sparkles of bait that draw your attention and bring you in. [You can be] tapping your foot and hearing the lyrics and listening to the sound of the voice or guitar, then you go, ah, there’s some meaning here as well.

Lyrically, you might pull from the same river, but in terms of production, you have pushed the envelope, especially with albums like Picnic.

I’ve gotten to where I am somewhat self-indulgent in the studio and I like to hear things in a new way, and certainly every time I go in to make a new record it has a whole different feel in terms of memory as well as in walking through the front door. It’s a different feel, and I have become even more sensitive to it as time goes by. I’m thinking that I’m making this kind of a record now. Now, this is the antiquated idea that I may be shackled to, but, I think in terms of writing, or having an entire record, it doesn’t have to have a certain thing, but it has to have a certain feel, and sometimes the whole feel has to do with the music you are surrounding it with. If it’s a lyrical theme, then maybe you could do something where you are just playing an acoustic guitar and singing the song and do twelve songs and that would work. In general, I am doing a mixture of both, so I go in and start making these songs.

Like with Farm Fresh Onions, I was thinking very consciously, I have a real limited sort of scope [laughs] musically, and I am going to get out of this four-note range I have been messing with for the last nine records. I am actually going to use six notes this time and do something fun and get out of it. That’s part of it, so if I lose fans, and I don’t want to lose fans, but at the same time it would grind to a screeching halt if I did just the same thing over and over again.

Is the West consciously a point of reference in your music?

It’s more than just a point of reference. It’s in my dreams. It’s where, if I think, well, if I could imagine myself in the world, anywhere in the world—whether it would be nice to be there or maybe things are just so funky that I want to get away from something—and I could just transport myself, my picture of that place is always this vast, desert-like landscape with some really bright full moon shining down and the sky almost being an indigo color. Rocks are sparkling like gemstones. That’s an image that’s in my head. All the time. So, am I supposed to be in the West? Yeah. Am I a twang master? No.

You’re like Beatrice from Dante’s Inferno, but instead of hell, you’re guiding us through the trailer parks and dusty roads of the West, not overwrought, like you putting on a fake southern twang and leading people through all the clichés of the West, but the real West.

I feel comfortable where I am now. I feel comfortable when I go to Lordsburg, New Mexico, which people say is a hellhole. When I flunked out of college at A&M for the second time, I got out on the highway in the middle of the night and I was hitchhiking to El Paso and I had never been to El Paso. I just wanted to go there. But I never made it. When people ask me why I wanted to go there, I’d say, I don’t know. It just seemed like the place to go. Since now I have been there, I love it. I don’t know what they would call it, but I’m sure there’s a word for it—it’s an island in the middle of land. I mean, there’s nothing around it, nothing for miles around. It’s just this place, and you could be surrounded by water as easily as surrounded by desert. It’s also like those border towns, where they are the last vestige of civilization before you eat dust and dirt. I don’t know why I like it. I couldn’t tell you why I like it. I just like it a hell of a lot better than any pine tree.

You’ve said, “I’m not good at navigating the major label waters very well. I’ve accidentally stepped on some toes.” How did you step on people’s toes and how have you not navigated those waters well?

The standard line is, oh, corporate America, corporate music sucks, and all that Nirvana stuff, and I’m not sure that’s really it. I just got into a place with different groups of people and found out in the major label world there is such a focus on deadlines and marketing and what is radio-friendly that I feel that they don’t hear a record as it is. For instance, with Gravitational Forces, the record I turned into Lost Highway, I told them when I walked in there and played it for them, I said, look, this is kind of a sleepy record. I think these are really good songs, but this is not like, “Hey, how are ya doin’, this is Robert Earl and the party boys record,” this is like some really good lyrics, some really nice, cool, smooth production, but it’s not like a hit-you-in-the-head-with-a-hammer kind of record.

They had promised you full artistic control over the record . . .

And they did, and I had full artistic control, but once I handed it over to them, they didn’t know what to do with it, so they hit me up for, “Can we put the ‘Road Goes on Forever’ on the record?” And I was totally against it. Here’s my job as an artist: I feel my job is always to keep creating, no matter what. Even if it’s lame. Instead of going back and redoing songs and re-cutting, I like to move on to the next stuff. I like to move on into different phases of my life. If I get stuck on doing the same songs over and over again, to me I’m committing career and artistic suicide. So, I’m trying to get things going. They came back to me and said, “We’d really like you to re-cut the ‘Road Goes on Forever.’” Well, I was of two minds. First of all, I want to get along with these guys; I want to go, yeah, alright, fine, so I go okay, I want you guys to pay attention to me, and I don’t want to be the hard-ass, ridiculously prima donna–oriented artist. I want to say, hey, we can make this work, and at the same time I was like, this is a mistake, and everything in me said this was a mistake.

At the time, you told reporters that you wanted to do it because you had only recorded a live version on No. 2 Live Diner and an early version on West Textures. Were you toeing the company’s line?

That was my own rationalization. That was my own bullshit. I mean, that was me talking me into something. Ultimately, it’s kind of like the whole Mike Dukakis thing. Mike Dukakis put me in that tank; well, Robert Earl put that song on the record. So, I take responsibility in the end, but the fact is, there was that whole pressure, and I felt sad that I was under that pressure because I felt like basically what somebody said is, I listened to this whole record and it doesn’t work.

Was it a reminder or echo of what you felt those few early years you spent in Nashville, when you were cutting demos that both you and the record companies were not happy with?

Well, it definitely did echo that same sentiment, although I felt like I had learned so much that I was smarter about it. It was . . . I don’t know. It’s hard to say. It was the same kind of party, but just a different group of partiers. I didn’t realize it, you know.

At the time you were making Gravitational Forces, you thought you were making a country record, even said, “It’s as country as it’s ever going to get.” Yet, it’s not at all a country record. Did you really believe that?

I started out believing that and I started out with that intention, but you know, I tell you what, one of the reasons, and I think the whole good and bad in my artistry, is that my filter is so weird and off that when I try and do something . . . well, I’ll give you an example. One time I tried to write a song like, well, when Bruce Springsteen was the man, the boss, whatever, I just tried to write a Bruce Springsteen song. I’ll never tell anybody, but never in a million years could anybody guess what song I came up with that I thought was like Springsteen, and it’s so off that you couldn’t even guess. There’s no way you could guess. It’s so weird. It’s like my wife says sometimes, “Oh now, don’t start any of that Robert Earl Keen oddball thinking,” and I am like, okay.

But isn’t the track “Gravitational Forces” an example of just that?

I was having fun, man.

But then to title the record that?

Because I liked it.

But it was like commercial suicide.

I know, but I liked it. I really liked it. I wanted to put it as the first track. I love that. I just thought it was really fun, and we had a lot of fun tracking it.

But it’s not fun like “Five Pound Bass” or “Merry Christmas from the Family.”

No, it wasn’t that at all. It was just fun for me.

But is it reasonable a record company would hear a track like that and then look at you and say, why aren’t you doing something like the songs on Picnic?

I don’t know. I felt like . . . well, in some ways, I really just don’t have an answer. I was really just trying to make a record. I am always trying to make something interesting or creative, you know. To me, it’s sleepy and kind of odd.

You’ve said before, “I used to think I was this dysfunctional hero, particularly for college kids. That’s why I try not to think about what I’m putting on my records because if I played just to that audience, I think I would just wear out and put out yee-haw songs.” So were you basically just asking for trouble or dismissal?

I’ll tell you this. I thought the record was a little disjointed. I think it sounded pretty good. Sonically, it was good. Lyrically, it was disjointed a bit, but I didn’t feel it was as much then as I do now. I actually thought there was enough to sink your teeth into to let me slide by the shit I really wanted to do. Evidently, I was just wrong.

After the record, you mentioned to reporters that you might go on sabbatical for a few years and play some acoustic shows by yourself.

Where did I say that? My God. We get to where we play 120 shows a year, and sometimes you feel that you are getting repetitive. There’s always a certain amount of freedom that you have as a solo artist. When I first started playing, that’s what I was, and I really, really enjoyed it, and I had a lot of fun. Then when I got more popular I needed a band, and we needed to put out a lot more sounds because of the places that we were playing. In the end, I really like the band thing, and I do really well. Sometimes I miss the freedom of being a solo artist, and that was an option for me, but I am not really considering it right now.

Joe Ely does it every once in a while. You’ve been in situations with twenty thousand people in the audience and you’ve actually felt like unplugging so the crowd would concentrate on the music. You even got into a stir with Emmylou Harris because your crowd kept chanting right into her set. So, now she won’t even let you open up with an acoustic set. Do you ever feel boxed in?

Yes, it’s the “tail wagging the dog” thing, and I have never been one to feel like something else is in control of me, so when I feel like the whole audience is in control I tend to go in a bowl. Well, it became a problem. I’ve gotten to where I am just grateful for any audience. It was after the 9/11 tragedy. I mean, the whole world changed, everybody’s world changed, but the world of entertainment really changed. It got weird and scary. Gravitational Forces came out on that date. I got to where I thought, well, I certainly don’t want this to go away. Sometimes I felt like it was swallowing me and that I was out of control and I didn’t know how to handle some of the, well, audience overpowering the show, but I’ve got to where I can deal with it, whatever’s happening is happening. In general, we haven’t had much trouble like that anymore. We have great shows, and somehow it got a bit quieter. I don’t know what the deal is.

In terms of your own career, there might not be as big an audience for your softer songs if you had never written the “Road Goes on Forever.” Do you feel that your quiet songs are overshadowed?

Absolutely, but here’s the thing. At the root of it all, I want to entertain people, so I wrote those songs for the whole deal about, you know, I know how to have fun, I know we’ll all have fun together. I enjoy doing these on stage, and all that. There are times where artistically and lyrically I have a pretty broad palette, and I want people to hear it. It just becomes frustrating at that point; however, it’s best if you feel like, well, you just take the good with the bad. Here’s the deal. So, I grab a bunch of party people who are screaming and yelling “The Five Pound Bass” and “The Road Goes on Forever” and stuff like that, and they’ve got friends who say, well, I just don’t get it. But they listen to it enough that all of a sudden they are the ones who actually start going, “I don’t like much, but I like this.” For instance, I was saying how when Gravitational Forces came out I was like, listen, there are some really cool songs here.

The placement of these songs is not my business, but I am just trying to give you the best way I can do it. Then a few months after I put that out, Shawn Colvin sang “Not a Drop of Rain” on one of the KGSR compilations, the radio station here in Austin’s deal, and they put it out on their sampler record. So, for my money, that’s a really great song, one of the best songs I have written in five years or something. To me, it’s like I hear the song. If you want to listen to the song, it’s there. It’s really quiet, and to go play it live, it just doesn’t work at all. People don’t want to hear it. It just backs down to nothing almost. It’s so lyrically driven that you’ve got to be paying attention. You can’t have somebody go, “Hey, you want a beer?” and boom, you missed the song. But the people who do listen do get it, and that’s nice, and you are right. That’s exactly what is happening—you draw them in with a certain thing, but you grab a lot of other people with the other stuff.

When people think of Texas songwriters, especially West Texas songwriters like Joe Ely, Wayne Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, they think of the big sky, dust, and flatness in all directions, but you grew up in Sharpstown, a suburb in southwest Houston. When I hear your songs, they don’t seem to signify that experience. Where did you pull in the idea of the people and place of your songs, like College Station?

As a matter of fact, something like College Station, that doesn’t have as much visual beauty or much to offer recreationally, is a really great place to think about songwriting. It’s like the classic story of the kid that became a cartoonist, or the famous book writer who was kind of stuck in a little dank environment with nothing happening. That allows your fantasy to blossom. College Station definitely was a big part of my growth in terms of writing and thinking about being an artist.

One of your teachers liked a little bit of Roger Miller, and there was some John Prine here and there, but were you aware of ZZ Top and AM/FM radio in general?

I listened to country AM radio when I was a kid. When I kind of got with the program I just listened to a lot of bluegrass, and of course I listened to Willie Nelson when I got into college, those classic Texas singer-songwriters, but in general, I was just a regular everyday guy. I never was a musicophile. I heard whatever was on the radio, the Beatles, Cream, Marvin Gaye. Everything everybody else liked.

But how did you come upon songwriting? Was it an extension of your love of books? You were an English major at A&M.

I could always write rhyming poetry, from the time I was about five years old, or the time I could first write. I did, and I liked it, and it was fun. And when I started playing guitar, which was when I was eighteen, it just made sense. I played these songs, I played these chords, and I thought, well, I can write these poems, so it all came together. It made sense for me to write songs.

Were you reading lyrical ballads?

I was just making up little things. I wasn’t very lofty in my goal.

You weren’t trying to copy Wordsworth?

No, not at all. But my English background really helped me a lot.

You graduated in 1978, which was a really interesting time in Texas music. What did you think was your potential as a young songwriter in College Station?

Being hip has never been a problem for me because I didn’t even know what it was. I never even had a clue [laughs].

Do you feel that Corey Morrow and Pat Green are living off your style and sound without giving credit where credit is due?

You know, whatever they’re doing is cool. I’m totally cool with what they are doing. I am frustrated with some of the articles that I read, particularly about Pat, in that he gives me some credit. He doesn’t even get close to what all he was involved in as far as how many dozens of shows he came to, how many times he was standing backstage in my dressing room when I stepped off a stage dripping wet with sweat and the first thing I dealt with was some guy I didn’t even really know talking to me about songs and stuff, and how I was doing all the numbers that were published about him five years before. I opened up so many markets for those guys. I used to call people, say, around 1995, and I’d call my friends in Nashville and say, man, you guys ought to see all the people coming to these shows, it’s unbelievable, and they were like, yeah, yeah.

I would tell the journalists, we’re talking about six thousand people at Billy Bobs. There were people standing out in the streets at the Austin Music Hall, or we did three shows in a row at Rockefellers in Houston, then wanted to do six because every show was sold out. We did two shows a night and never stopped, man. I’d push that number thing, because the way I looked at it was, if someone didn’t care for my music they heard on the radio, maybe they’d like the performance, because a lot of times people would come to me, in fact fans still to this day say, your records are okay, but I can imagine your performance, and I am a total fan now, and I love it, because they came to a live show. So, we were just killing them at live shows, had a great band. Still pretty much have the same band.

Do your ticket sales outstrip your number of CD sales?

I don’t know, because I’ve never put those numbers together, but I’m sure they do. You know, I have nine records and they’ve sold somewhere, well, the aggregate is somewhere around a million records, and I imagine I have played to around five million people over the last ten years or something like that. I’ve played to a lot of people. I used to say that same thing about numbers and nobody gave a shit. Like when I read about Pat Green, it’s all about the numbers, how many people. You know, five thousand frat boys can’t be wrong—well, hey, they can! But I am not going to be the first to say it. The fact—it’s not just about numbers, it’s about music. My focus was on the music, and also there were venues that didn’t play anybody but national touring acts, and I turned national, but I was considered a regional act, and I opened those doors. I went and found the people that ran those places and said, I can do this. I opened up those doors and those guys didn’t have to do that. They walked in right behind me and said, I’m like Robert Earl Keen, and they were like, okay, fine, and they’d take a chance, and a lot of the same people would show up.

But they talk about their numbers.

Right, they talk about their numbers, so the answer is, yeah, I don’t think I get enough credit. I should at least get credit. I should at least get acknowledgment, but you know, it’s weird. I am in a weird space. I can’t even describe the space I am in, because we kill them at shows. We still sell out most of our shows. We sell tons of records, lots and lots of people record my songs, but as far as the industry, I’m barely a blip on the radar, and as far as even the stuff that goes on in Texas, I have become this legendary mystery status, and I don’t even know what that is.

You first toured with Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt, who both certainly had carved themselves a similar space. They are known, respected, but lacked a huge audience.

Right, but there is a big audience. Guy and Townes had that “I’m in awe of you.” These other guys have the “numbers.” I don’t have the awe, and nobody listens to my rap about the numbers. Really, lately, this is my whole new philosophy: I don’t care about anything but writing songs I want to write. If anybody likes them, fine. If they don’t like them, too bad. I’m just going to keep pushing that creative button until I run out.

But you’ve said, “I don’t want to die up onstage,” and, “It’s like when someone gets put in prison and becomes a Muslim or has a heart attack and turns his life around. I want to say that I had the balls to make my own choice rather than have to wait for that heart attack.” How far would you push yourself to maintain that artistic integrity?

Are you saying I am going to be so left field artistically?

You might be butting up against a wall, or give yourself a stroke after being on the circuit another ten years trying to . . .

I just want to make the best songs I can make within a certain . . . well, I’m not going to create some new format or something. I just want to make really great songs.

But you’re saying it takes balls to do that, to write something that has integrity and is not fluff?

Right, I think so, to keep going and to keep pushing it. Not repeat yourself.

In a recent song, you evoke the memory of Langston Hughes, Caesar Chavez, and Woody Guthrie, who are probably not the cultural heroes of audience members like President Bush’s daughters, yet in songs like “Mariano” you do evoke similar sentiments through the storyline about an immigrant laborer.

That particular song is about the loss of cultural heroes. In this climate today, where’s a cultural hero? Somebody sticks their neck out and says something dissenting towards anything going on right now, they get their head chopped off. I mean, it’s ugly. It’s necessary in a democracy to have cultural heroes. You know, Seinfeld doesn’t do it. The Osbournes don’t do it. Right. Howard Stern does not do that. You need somebody who can stand up and say there’s an alternative way to think about this and take the hits. I don’t think there is; that’s all that I am saying. Those ghosts are around, and they will reappear somewhere. Right now, they are just sleeping.

But it seems, in terms of your audience, you might be shooting yourself in the foot, just like the song “Gravitational Forces” might seem a bit whacked out for them. I think that many of them might be uncomfortable with those cultural heroes.

Probably. At the time that I wrote that particular song, I was just thinking about that, and I forget what books I was reading at the time. I’m sure they had something to do with that. I just wanted to put that out there. The great thing about songs is you don’t have to explain things to people, you can just build enough of a picture to provoke some thought. That’s what’s going on there. I wanted to provoke some thought. As far as do I think it worked or do I think I was doing anything for my career, absolutely not. It was just what I was doing. I am not a visionary, so when I did stuff like the records that really sold well or got a lot of attention, I wasn’t doing anything that I didn’t do with Gravitational Forces. I was just writing songs and putting them on a record and hoping that people liked them.

So it was just a coincidence that they did well.

It was just a coincidence.

You don’t approach it any differently than your first album in 1993?

I don’t think so, except I am just trying to get better at writing songs.

What would be better?

Clearer. More clear, more clean lines, more shimmering images, things that just like, “Sonofabitch, that just kills me.”

So when you hear a classic Marty Robbins song like “El Paso,” and then you look at one of your songs, do you feel your songs pale in comparison?

Uh, I don’t feel that I have ever written anything as heart-pounding as “El Paso,” but I think that I have written stuff just as strong. I mean, I have not written that kind of song, and I don’t think I could write something that well, but I’ve written some good songs. You know, I can write the songs. And I can write you any kind of song. I’m just hoping that it’s my good judgment finally that takes me to the right place, so people understand it, and I am not wasting people’s time. But also, I don’t have to put everything on somebody’s plate for them to like a song, because people like songs for all kinds of reasons.

JOHN DOE: NOT AN EVERYMAN

Unpublished, September 2013.

X was the kind of band that critics often dream of during bouts of boredom. Writing fiercely literate songs with barbed insight about feral youth lurking in the shadowplay of decrepit Hollywood, the band’s cutthroat melodies and rockabilly-clogged music contrasted the gnarly noise of their contemporaries. They peppered songs with lust, love, confusion, and loss, revisited exuberantly like brushstrokes on each record, which tilted toward Americana music by the mid-1980s. By then, telltale songs like “The Have Nots” smashed punk’s empty ennui by marrying country bar-stool poetic license with barely submerged punk nerve endings. Agile, purposeful, and trawling bits of the style of Bukowski at the time, John Doe looked like an everyman but somehow ricocheted with unfettered cool, too, like a 1950s film noir actor. As X teetered on the edge of extinction for years and Doe’s film and television career kicked into gear, he started making compelling solo records that eschewed simple formulas as well. Instead of thinly stretched style wandering or cutting and pasting bits of X, he pursued a sober flashlight effect: stoic, somber songs like “Kissing So Hard” shone a fresh light on the entanglements of aging, marriage, and sense of place. Working with the likes of Aimee Mann, Jill Sobule, and ever-present cohort Exene Cervenka, with whom he has reignited X for the last decade, Doe has maintained a unique style that speaks volumes about resilience and vision. Indeed, he is top-notch and singular—not an anonymous John Doe at all.

You once said, “An angry old man is a drag.” How do you avoid being that man?

Everyone has their own technique, I guess. I personally work towards some small amount of satisfaction and being grateful for what I get to do, and that can be in any line of work. There is some quote, “You should like who you are at forty because you will be twice that at sixty.” I don’t know who said that, but how do you do that? You accentuate the positive. It’s hard work; well, it’s not hard work. It’s good work. I’m not a Jerry Lee Lewis. I’m not a genius. I’m not a one of a kind. I’m more of a journeyman. On the other hand, I don’t have to suffer what geniuses do. I don’t have to suffer like Billie Holiday or some of those people. I want to live a long, full life. I mean Ramblin’ Jack is a good example. After a while, people say, it’s not good enough. It may not be good enough, but it doesn’t mean you have to take it out on yourself. It’s like a talk therapy type of thing, I suppose. I think it started in 1998, when we did the first X anthology. I started listening to all these tapes, like live tapes, because we didn’t just want to have a “Best Of.” We wanted it to be more like unreleased tracks. I thought, fuck, this band is good, so no wonder people were saying, “You should listen to this band.” Because we were good, and are good. At that point, you can kind of take stock of everything. And I see some friends and acquaintances that are still grumbling about something they didn’t get, but so what? Are you going to take it out on everyone else or take it out on yourself? That’s fucking bullshit because if you’re unhappy you’re probably not fun to hang out with. How many times have you hung out with someone that says, “Oh, I feel so old.” Well, maybe you are. You can be old at forty.

Your dad played classical piano; your mother sang opera. Throughout your career, do you ever have flashbacks—being introduced to music—or does it impact the way you write at all?

I remember him playing around the house when we were at home and listening to classical music, which I will do on occasion, driving or something like that. I think I also started listening to classical music through Charles Bukowski. He’d always write to it, but he’s not so much of an influence anymore. Getting introduced to music was through folk music, actually. They gave me my own records: folk music like Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, and “Cisco” Houston. One guy that my aunt actually knew was Sam Hinton, who was a biology teacher in San Diego, kind of a musicologist. It was all stories and had the roots of music. These were the building blocks.

Did it provide a kind of political consciousness too?

Probably not. The songs that were on those records were less political. I don’t know if “Bourgeois Town” was on the kid’s record. And I also listened to a lot of show tunes, which I definitely don’t feel the influence of, or maybe I do. Maybe it influenced the melodic stuff because I love melody, and I think that set X apart.

Your mom taught you to sing from the diaphragm?

Yes. That was just learned from watching my mom sing. She didn’t do it in performances. I took a couple of vocal lessons.

Three things seemed to attract you to the West: the weather, a “go West, young man” kind of ethos, and a love for writers like Nathaniel West; meanwhile, New York City seemed closed down? What made L.A. seem so open?

At the time, at the end of 1976, there wasn’t really a scene. There was a scene sort of starting, like the Pop, the Motels, and the Dogs. They were all in L.A. and doing some shows, but there wasn’t a scene like there was in New York. It just seemed there was something magic about the light and the space, and you could start seeing it in Texas as it starts opening up in the plains and things like that. It was easy to live, too, and obviously it was hard to live in New York City. Exene’s sister lived there, and we heard from her, and we went out and visited her when we played. My brother still lived there. Baltimore was a wasteland. Anyone that wanted to do anything got out of there.

But you loved filmmakers like John Waters, from Baltimore.

But that was still scratching out a living. I didn’t have any illusions I was going to L.A. and becoming a different person. I hoped we would be as big as Patti Smith or the Velvet Underground. I knew John Waters then and hung at the same bars, and we’d talk. But he was very specific, and you couldn’t do that in music, or maybe you could have, but it didn’t seem like, well, I wasn’t brought up with that. He was born and raised like that. You say the weather, but that’s a big deal. Sun is a big deal. Like I said, the light is sort of Mediterranean, not that I have been to the Mediterranean more than a little bit. You can say, yeah, this is sort of similar, there is a pink color to it, and you see mountains. Soon after going to L.A., I met Exene too and realized there is some sort of scene and it’s just beginning to take hold. It was about being fearless and “Who gives a shit. You can’t tell me what to do. I’m not doing this for the money. I’m doing this to change the world. I am doing this to try to make art. I am doing this to, at some point, make a living.”

You saw the Heartbreakers and Television in New York City. You knew what this new music was, and you had some songs written before you went out West. Were they in the style of punk, or was that something you honed once you got to L.A.?

I think it got honed when I got out there. I wouldn’t say I copied stuff, but I sort of took the feelings and rhythms. Everybody started influencing everybody else. Definitely, I was influenced by the Ramones, Fear, and Nick Lowe a little bit, maybe Elvis Costello. I give Billy and Exene a large amount of credit for making X’s sound original because of Billy’s rockabilly style. He was the first person, except for maybe Robert Quine, who did those kinds of guitar parts. He knew how to play guitar really well, he knew how to play that style of guitar, and he was the first person to put rockabilly into punk rock. And Exene’s style of singing, and the two of us together, set us apart. Nobody else had two lead vocals, and even now a lot of people you can point to hear that. I borrowed a lot from the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, and a little from Iggy and the Stooges, but I didn’t know them. That Modern Lovers record was really influential to a lot of people. That seemed to be on everybody’s turntable.

What were the Venice Poetry Workshops, where you met Exene, like?

There were a few different people that taught. Jack Grapes was one and Jim Krusoe was another. I think Kate Braverman taught a bit, and Bill Mohr. They would just lead it. There would be a dozen people there, maybe less, and everyone would read, and people would critique it. Sometimes it was nice, and sometimes it was not nice. I had been in poetry workshops prior to it as well. I had studied poetry at Antioch in Baltimore, which was a totally hilarious college experience. All the classes were at night. The “campus” was the second floor of an insurance building, and the students were mostly domestic help, or as they were called back then, cleaning ladies, that were studying black history. You could get a college grant by signing your name, by filling out a one-page document. Here you go, college grad. I guess Antioch College was famous for having a zillion satellite campuses, but there were two writing teachers. And you could take courses at the Maryland Art Institute. They had some sort of sharing system.

Did you talk about Bukowski at those places, or did you discover him on your own?

At the MAI, they’d have classes on Yeats or Gerard Manley Hopkins, or people like that, American literature, which was sort of a history-of-literature kind of course. At Antioch, the writing courses were private tutorial poetry, and the woman Grace Cavalieri I had, I owe a great debt to. I learned how to write better. She was very kind, and she was a terrific teacher because she would say this is where you are doing something beautiful and true; this is something that is your voice, I can see it and hear it; and this is less so, so let’s accentuate this good stuff and forget about the other stuff. The material was academic, but, she said, read the new stuff. Read Galway Kinnell or Anne Sexton. Read Diane DiPrima. Read new people. Don’t read anything that was published before World War II because the vernacular, the rhythm, the style, and the way of writing of some of that stuff can be so impenetrable, so musty.

In the past, you’ve talked about concentrating on the small details in writing songs. Does that reflect back on the compression of poetry? If you change any one thing in a poet like Ezra Pound, it can alter the meaning.

I try not to be so anal about it. I don’t pick it apart. If it feels good and sounds good. . . . But what I think I meant when I was talking about changing small things were the connecting words. They can make lines that much more clear, and you realize how much they do change things, like an “and” or “with.” I’m not like Elvis Costello, a real wordy wordsmith. I like to write in a more economical way. And I don’t have the wordplay that Exene does, who I think is an incredible writer. One of the best, ever. She continues to write every day. Everyone gets what he or she deserves, but Exene hasn’t got the recognition she deserves as a writer.

What’s it like to step in and sing her songs? Is there an amount of interpretation?

Sure, the one that comes to mind is “The Have Nots,” because she wrote a lot of that. Usually, she’d sing her song, and I’d sing mine, but at that point we were so in tune it didn’t matter, and I love being her chorus. I love that “I’m just here to support you,” but it’s more than that, because it’s more equal in the way that it is mixed. Everyone interprets it his or her own way. I love stepping into her shoes. At that point, she was writing for me, and I was writing for her.

During the heyday of punk, were you listening to Woody Guthrie and the Band?

No, not at all.

Was it a year zero thing, where you cut yourself off?

Everybody I knew drew a line. I can only speak for myself, but I drew this line and said, that was then, and this is now. All the things I have learned, I might use, but I am not going to bring them into the foreground. But it happened pretty quickly that it did. By 1982/83, when we were doing Under the Big Black Sun or More Fun in the New World, there was a little more Americana style, like the songs “New World” or “Come Back to Me,” with Billy playing sax. We felt, again, we were trying to be fearless.

Who opened that door of possibilities? Was it bands like the Blasters?

Yeah, I would say the Blasters had a big effect on showing everyone what rockabilly should be. The Stray Cats did to a degree, but the Blasters seemed more Southern California and more tied to Leo Fender. But we were all listening to country and western music, and I listened to a lot of blues and folk music. I began to think, these are all the same: these are the same chord changes. The melodies are simple, so let’s bring some of that stuff in there. The Gun Club was certainly part of that. It wasn’t like you needed permission. Billy was doing that stuff from the beginning. He was putting a Chuck Berry riff before “Johnny Hit and Run Pauline” as a sort of wink to “Johnny B. Goode.”

Did you feel X was a bridge between Hollywood and the East Side scene, led by bands the Brat and the Plugz?

Oh yeah, we saw this subculture that was completely different from anything we had experienced. It was rich and blowing our minds. It had these crazy kids, but they played great. It was kind of scary. We’d go to backyard parties and someone would pull out a 45 pistol and shoot it off into the air, and we’d be like, fuck, I guess we are bohemians now! [Laughs]. We’re shooting dope and people were pulling out 45s. All right, we’re living! I think the Plimsouls had some of that too because Eddie was Latino. We certainly felt kinship to the Brat because of the people in the band, and the fact they had a woman as a singer, and that was a big part of punk rock—women were equals. It’s really astounding nowadays that it didn’t really stick. It really kind of reached a peak in indie rock, with the Breeders, Throwing Muses, and Kirsten Hersh. Those were great strong women. Mavericks, if you will. Maybe the riot grrrl scene to a big degree too. I don’t know what happened. But I just saw the Breeders two or three months ago in San Francisco, and they were fucking great. They are doing the twentieth-year anniversary of Last Splash. I was thinking, what the hell? This is a great band, where is that kind of band now?

I suppose bands like Cat Power, the Gossip, and others . . .

Neko Case does well, and Aimee Mann is doing well. But bands today just don’t seem as integrated as what was happening in punk rock, and that was definitely one of our goals. It wasn’t like we had a manifesto, like you must have a woman in the band, but it just happened because of this sense of equality and everybody pulling together.

Exene has mentioned the audiences at the Masque would consist of people of color, gay people, etc. Did the hardcore era begin to shut that diversity down?

Totally, but that sort of started happening early on. I mean, when was the first Black Flag single, 1978 or something? It happened pretty quickly, but it didn’t gain much power until 1980 and ’81. That was something that Darby Crash certainly felt. There wasn’t all that much acceptance of gay culture. There was a certain amount of, “Yeah, but . . . ,” which I found a little strange. Everybody was too busy trying to figure out how to make this thing work.

You’ve called yourself the traffic cop in the band. What do you mean by that?

Like I said, I think Billy and Exene have this great originality, and I guess I have some creativity and maybe more attention to melody and song structure, so I would take Exene’s lyrics, then put a piece of music to it, and we’d refine that melody as we worked on it. We did a lot of rehearsing. I would suggest drum parts to DJ, and of course he’d alter that. “Do we need so many cymbals?” was one of our trademarks. We’d try to use floor toms and things like that.

Like on “Hungry Wolf.”

Or “We’re Desperate.” There’s a bunch of them. It wasn’t like being the leader but like taking the responsibility to make sure what time to be somewhere.

The levelheaded one?

Hmm, sometimes. I had a really bad temper. Really bad.

What pushed that?

I don’t know. I just got rid of it. But what would push my button? I don’t know, just someone pissing me off. I got in some fights.

Peter Case of the Nerves told me about playing some rather outrageous places, like Randy’s Rodeo, just to be able to play during the late 1970s.

We played Tony Alva’s birthday party on the fucking beach. People that liked Van Halen were throwing stuff at him and us. Tony had to sorta step in and go, hey man, these are my fucking friends. You know, we drove from L.A. to New York in 1978 and played three shows, then drove back.

Detroit or Chicago?

We didn’t know where there was to play. We didn’t have the brains to figure out maybe we could call somebody. We didn’t have a booking agent. Actually, we played one other place, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, like where one of the 9/11 planes . . .

Went down . . .

If you believe there were planes. Somebody said, there’s a show here, and we probably made $150. By the time that Los Angeles came out, we were touring. We sort of had a booking agent. She wasn’t a professional booking agent. She was just calling around figuring out where we could play. In Texas, thank god, we discovered the Big Boys, and they gave us a great hand figuring out where and how to crack Texas. We were not road dogs by any means. We’d do maybe two tours, maybe three months total, spread out, then we’d go back home and write more songs and record another record, then did it again. For the first four records, it was like a record a year, and even Ain’t Love Grand was only like a year and a half apart. That was the time that Exene and I split up. It was pretty hectic in the creative process, but there was a lot of stuff going on. Exene and I were just in tune with each other, and loved each other, and understood, well, the whole band was in tune in terms of how we wanted X to sound and bring all these different elements into it and still have it sound like X.

In hindsight, what do you think of the band’s portrayal in Decline of Western Civilization and The Unheard Music?

I don’t want to bag on the Decline too much, but it was sensationalized. There was so much more going on than what they portrayed. They just wanted to make it sensational so they could get it released. Every documentary has to have a point of view, so it was true, but the scene was not as nihilistic, wasn’t as violent, wasn’t as single-minded, and it was a lot more fun than the way they portray it. They filmed us after we had played two shows at the Whisky, unloaded the gear, then met back at Exene’s and my place at two in the morning. Well, of course we thought, this is a perfectly good reason to snort some speed. Because we are going to be doing a movie, we’re going to be filming all night. The reason they stopped is because the sun came up and the light was ruined. We were drinking and snorting speed. You only need to do that once, at the beginning of the night, or in the middle of the night. It’s not like cocaine. That’s why speed was so much better than cocaine. It was clearly a superior drug because you only had to do it once and you were up for ten or twelve hours. You’re invincible, and that was good. You could drink as much beer as you wanted to, and it didn’t have any effect at all. When they filmed Darby, they had someone score him some dope, so he seemed like a complete fucking idiot. Darby, on the surface, was not a genius. He was a complete enigma because he seemed like an idiot half the time. I think it portrayed a small side of punk at the time.

But what about your film?

The Unheard Music is a great movie. I think it’s a really good documentary: it’s got a little too much music video type stuff in it, but that was a whole new art form at that point, so it’s excusable. It’s as much about the social impact of our music, or of the whole music scene, as it is about our contribution to it. It goes into what the record companies were thinking . . .

Or not thinking . . .

They had thoughts, but they were just limited thoughts. No one can really go back in time to get that feeling of what weird repression there was, the Ronald Reagan era. You’re in Hollywood, but meanwhile if you just look a little bit odd, you get called a fag and something is thrown at you. It’s like, I’m on Hollywood Boulevard—this is the place to be weird. This is THE place to be a fag, if you want to be outrageous. That was kind of mind-blowing.

If the first record, Los Angeles, evokes this lurid landscape of L.A., the decaying houses and youth out of control, See How We Are seems to be an elegy for such a city. By the time you wrote those later songs, had you begun to think very differently about L.A.?

Hmm, that’s a very deep question. And as a matter of fact, I was thinking about the decay . . . [half-joking].

It seems to be about the human condition, like the kids with no shoes on their feet.

That’s because I went to Mexico and had seen that. We certainly grew up a lot in that time, in those years, from ’77 to ’86. That was the point at which, since Dave Alvin was playing in the band, and we had done a lot of Knitters gigs, and Exene and I had looked a lot into country and folk music, “See How We Are,” and maybe “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts” would be the two places where folk music stepped into our world. We missed Billy, but Dave felt he was locked down by Phil, and we felt we were locked down by Billy. We had this feeling, like we could do whatever we want: we can have our best friend in the band. This is really cool. But the fact is that Billy would say, “That is not music, it has too many chords. You need something else there. It needs to be harder.” You got to have a frame for your picture. You got to have some boundary, or else it’s limitless. There’s a good point and a bad point to it. See How We Are, the record, was like, we can play whatever we want.

Do you feel the post-punk roots-rock phase of Los Angeles music, like Blood on the Saddle, Gun Club, and other bands, has been overlooked or fallen to the margins?

I guess they didn’t have a good name. I’m serious. Cow punk sounds like cow pie. It’s unfortunate because Blood on the Saddle, Tex and the Horseheads, and Rank and File were all really good bands. They didn’t have as cohesive of a scene or style. There wasn’t time for that, and the L.A. punk rock scene wasn’t big, but it had some impact. It almost went right from there to the hair bands. It was defined enough. The Beat Farmers were also part of it, although they were from San Diego. It was like taking the Rolling Stones and letting them play country music. It was country rock kind of stuff. It was terrific. They didn’t have a leader or one band or one songwriter that took it to the next level, if that’s not too cliché. I love Tex and the Horseheads. I just saw Texacala last night in Austin.

Does it surprise you that Ain’t Love Grand was the biggest-selling X record at the time?

Yeah, because it has horrible production because we released the reins, and that was a mistake. We were sort of seduced by the little success we had with “Wild Thing,” and then thought, well, let’s give this a try. The production is very impersonal. There’s no discovery. We had pretty much demo’d those songs exactly the way that they were and had kind of written out the drum parts and things like that and then recorded it. That’s a terrible way to make a record. It’s so lifeless, but with bands like the Scorpions, with the people that Michael Wagener worked with, it didn’t matter. It was all about bombast. “Burning House of Love” was a really good song, and we had a good video with that. All the work we had done up to that point finally started taking hold.

Is working with Allison Anders on film like working with a really good music producer? Is there a correlation between making music and acting?

Well, yes, because I trust Allison and she gives you real information and advice, like try this. I love that, like “That’s not as good,” but you don’t feel you’ve done a bad thing, you just need something different, and Ray was like that too. Ray Manzarek was incredibly positive and mystical. He would have no fear talking about weird, crazy, floaty stuff, but he’s still the captain of the ship.

He’s still steering.

Yes. We had so much respect for him. Exene and I loved the Doors, and even though the Doors were not Billy’s favorite band, he saw Ray as a guy that knows music. And his band did have some fucking big songs. They were kind of an incredible band. You take different things from different art forms. You can get more violent and more out front in a film by using what you do on stage, and then you can get more internal and more romantic or quiet from what you’ve done in a movie when you are recording a slower, quieter song in a studio.

What draws you to people like Jill Sobule, Grant-Lee Phillips, or Neko Case?

The advantage of getting to record records every two or three years is that you meet people, and you work with them, and you like them. Like, “Aimee Mann and I enjoy working together, and she would be good on this song.” And Jill is just fun. I have played with her so many times, and sometimes I have to go on after her, and she’s so fucking adorable and the audience loves her so much, and not in a phony way, because she’s so hilarious and politically astute and amazing, and then I’d have to go on, and I feel like a big lead balloon. I’m like, we need to work out a whole set together because I am not going to go on after you.

You’ve talked about writing “unbridled romantic songs” but stemming from “earned romanticism”—does that mean not wishy-washy?

They have to be real. You have to know of what you speak. You have to have failed and done stupid things, and done things the wrong way, in order to really figure out how to do them the right way. And that goes back to what we talked about in terms of being grateful and to be able to continue doing this. At this point, everybody in X, because we have seen people fall away, we’re happy with this. To sing a romantic song you have to be pretty brave, and maybe that’s a reiteration of being fearless. You have to pick out the details that are different and specific and hope that somebody else can relate to those details even though theirs may be different, so they can invest romantic feelings into those elements, like physical items.

On “Love Can Be a Tragedy,” you talk about walking across the floor on your hands and knees, and it doesn’t sound wimpy, it doesn’t sound fake. It sounds very honest, like “this is a trial and tribulation.”

I am trying to do that less [laughs]. Trying to be nicer and just enjoy it. There has to be some sort of edge to it, otherwise it is just wishy-washy. It has to have some gravity to it. It should be a little, well, not pretentious, but have some epic quality or at least some weight to it.

A few years ago you said that everybody should have a little focus on politics—they should be atop something so they perhaps don’t get cheated or manipulated. Do you still feel that way?

How I feel about politics right now is liked armed insurrection. It’s so fucked up. I’m feeling a really dark presence in America’s politics right now. And it’s not just Obama: it’s the fact that he represented something, and it is obviously not coming true. And it’s the powers that be . . . I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I don’t know. Yes, I think that people have got to be involved, but it’s getting harder and harder to see where you can have an effect, and how many things are out of your control, and how incredibly backwards and conservative this country is—it’s like, oh my god, really? Like the motherfucker Ted Cruz. And it’s not just him. Ron Paul is a kook too, but I sorta agree with libertarianism because government is so ass-backwards there is no reason for them to save any money. You’ve got to spend all the money, unless you want less money. It’s really hard to know where to put your political money and power, or lack of power.

I know Allen Ginsberg contacted the band in the early days. Is he perhaps a kind of model of how to marry sexuality, poetics, and politics, while living happy?

Yeah, I only met him once. He wrote us a little letter and wanted us to do a song, something to do with Santa Claus. It was really silly, but we thought, we don’t know if we can do that, but it’s Allen Ginsberg! Yes, he was a great person and a role model for that. My political thing now is to try to do environmental stuff: oceans, wild horses, and wolves are my thing.

You’ve said, “I believe in nature, but I don’t believe in God.” Is that a kind of transcendentalism akin to Henry David Thoreau?

Sure, I believe there is a spirituality, more so now than I believed in the past. I can’t explain it. My intuition is better. I can sense things, and I can feel the spirit. I don’t know what it is. It may be the clearing away of some of the angry bullshit.

Are you as satisfied writing a song today as you were in 1979?

Much more satisfied because they are a little harder to come by, number one. And I don’t think in 1979 that I realized the value of them. On the other hand, I know when we first rehearsed “The World’s a Mess,” when we went through the song the second or third time, Exene and I looked at each other and said, “That’s a good song. That’s a keeper.” Nowadays, it is still a great thrill to play a song beginning to end and know in some ways that’s the best it’s going to be. And you are grateful for the way you can turn and twist things, and you can simplify, you can make yourself be simpler if you become too fancy; unless, that is, it comes out as a fancy song with an intricate story, plotline, and all that sort of stuff, then great. But if you have to beat it and hammer it and carve it . . . though sometimes you can whip it into shape.

More like, “First thought, best thought”?

Right. Letting it go, letting it come out. Listening to it and paying attention to it when it starts coming, like, “Don’t do something else. That feeling may go away.” As you get older, you become more thankful for what you can do. If you can get out of bed at ninety, you’re happy as hell, like “I’m alive.” Ask Ramblin’ Jack about that.

Chapter 2

Rockabilly and Honky-Tonker Renegades

Sometimes construed as bastardized forms of rock ’n’ roll and hillbilly music, rockabilly and honky-tonk have thrived as global subcultures because purveyors like Junior Brown and Deke Dickerson retain a sense of unfeigned authenticity, adept musicality, and stylish thrills. In an era of hyper post-production values, such stripped-down “purist” music seems to transcend time and place, delivering uncompromising tunes that feel renegade, not merely retro.

JUNIOR BROWN: HONKY-TONK SAVIOR

Originally published in Thirsty Ear in fall 2001.

Junior Brown’s deep truck-driver baritone is the perfect antidote to all the fakeries of pop country. With guitar chops that rival those of rock ’n’ roll masters and a love of earthy, down-home, rust-bucket style, he meshes the worlds of Jimi Hendrix and Tennessee Ernie Ford in an easy-to-swallow Americana hybrid blend that doesn’t lose sight of underdogs and working people, the grain of American music, or the avid artistry of backyard mixed and matched songbooks.

Can you tell us about Mixed Bag?

It’ll come out in the middle of July on Curb. Well, the title is Mixed Bag and that’s exactly what it is. There are quite a few different kinds of music. I’ve written most of it. As I do with most of my albums, I write most of the songs. It’s very strong on the lyric end; there are some very good ballads on there, and then there are some sorta different things like a river boat shuffle, called “The River Boat Shuffle,” an old New Orleans jazz song. There are some horns. I went down to New Orleans to do it. So, there are a variety of things on it. There’s a blues song.

Was the album itself recorded in many places or just that track?

It was recorded in several different places because I’ve been working on it for two years. In some ways, some disparate sessions were reworked on it.

Are there any surprises, like Mitch Mitchell from the Jimi Hendrix band on the last one?

There are some good studio players; some of the greats are on there.

You’re based out of Tulsa. For years, you were associated with Austin, so why the move to Tulsa?

Well, it’s where family lives. I still have a place in Austin I go to when I’m writing things. You know, I lived in New Mexico for a long time, from 1965 till ’75.

Was that in Cerrillos?

Part of it, yeah, I had a place in Cerrillos.

So what drew you out there?

Cheap rent [laughs]. Back in the 1960s, Cerrillos was still pretty much a ghost town, and they called it a ghost town.

It’s not much more now, minus a few tourists.

Yeah, but they don’t call it that anymore. I used to stay at the Palace Hotel, and my first gig was at the Tiffany Saloon working in the melodrama with my dad. That was ’66, ’67.

How did you get from Indiana to there?

We lived in Indiana, but we lived in a lot of places. Indiana was the first place I remember hearing country music, having it soak in when I was young. My parents listened to classical, so I listened to that at an early age.

Your dad also listened to big band 78s?

He had some of those too.

And he played piano?

Yeah. He was a musicologist. He knew a lot about music.

Are there any early experiences with music that have stayed with you, like hearing your father play piano?

The things that turned me on the most were hearing electric guitar players. When I first heard an electric guitar, that just changed everything because it was loud. I guess it just had a magical sound to it because of the loudness and that cutting tone. It didn’t sound like an acoustic guitar. I guess you call it a twang sound, the reverb and all that. The memories I have of being really excited by music is hearing a live band. There were a couple of instances, one of them was downtown Annapolis in the early sixties, they had a March of Dimes parade and there was a live band in it. It just changed my life. I was never the same after that.

You found a broken-down two-string acoustic guitar in the attic.

That’s going back to when I was real young. That was my idea of guitar, so you can see this kid’s idea of guitar, then he hears some records, but not that many, some radio. I didn’t really hear records because I was too young, but I heard the radio. But then you really see a guy playing an electric guitar and he’s plugged in, it was a big, life-changing thing. A similar event to that was a neighborhood having a party nearby across the woods from us. I had been put to bed, but listening out the window I could hear an electric guitar band playing, and I just thought I was at the party, I was visualizing everything. I was there, but I wasn’t there.

As you got a bit older, college kids turned you on to country, folk, and blues?

That’s because my father was a college professor. He taught at a liberal arts college, and the college campuses were where all that folk revival was going on in the sixties. There I got to hear all the blues players, people that were associated with all that. The kids my age were listening to the Beach Boys and the Beatles. They weren’t digging any deeper than that because they didn’t have the records. The college kids had the records. I hung around there because my dad worked there.

Did you already know you were a guitar player, or did you fiddle around with different instruments?

My dad wanted me to be a piano player. I had played piano, improvising very well, when I was a kid, but I never enjoyed it as much as guitar.

So the guitar just fit you, no two ways about it?

I mean I took a few lessons, learned a few chords, but I was self-taught after that.

You started working the club scene as early as the sixties?

Yeah, I started working in the Santa Fe and Albuquerque bars in the late sixties.

Doing covers, or working on some original material?

At that time, I was playing with country groups. It was all covers.

Was there a work ethic, sensibility, or set of values that was instilled in you way back in Indiana that stayed with you?

No, because it was all rebellion. I mean I didn’t get along with my parents. I wish I had. I had a miserable childhood. It wasn’t anybody’s fault necessarily; it’s just the way it was. I spent a lot of time in my room with the music, and the work ethic came from the desire just to be good at something, a passion for that particular thing. I really didn’t have a choice, you know. I didn’t sit around and practice all day because I liked to work. I sat around because that was all I could do.

I wasn’t really practicing, I was playing, but it amounted to the same thing, because I was working things out. And I did it for fun, and I did it because it was therapy, and eventually I did it for money. When I dropped out of high school, I mean, what was I going to do? So, I immediately just started playing with the older guys in the clubs, got a fake ID. That was my work ethic, survival. It just continued on from there.

You once said that music was a stabilizer.

I don’t know what context I was talking about.

I think in terms of how much music meant to you.

I think it kept me from getting into trouble. It was something to focus on. I had a goal. It was a tough time. The sixties were tough on a lot of people. And the seventies too; a lot of people didn’t make it. They went down some bad roads. I managed to stay out of trouble. I stayed off the booze. You know, playing all the bars with the free booze, I watched a lot of guys turn into drunks. I avoided that and just concentrated on the music. The music had helped me as a child. I didn’t get along with my parents very well and spent a lot of time in my room. I always had the music to pull me through. It was one thing I could do well because I didn’t do a lot of things well.

Around 1980 you had a vision of the guit-steel, the combination of the steel guitar and guitar. Was it really a spontaneous dream, or something you had envisioned in the seventies as you honed your music?

The idea had come to me of putting . . . well, Stella, who I was staying with in Hawaii, had this old zither that he had turned into a lap steel guitar. He had cut off part of the zither and made this small lap steel guitar out of it. It really didn’t work very well. It was small enough to where I thought I could glue this to my guitar. So I had been thinking about the idea of that. For some reason, it didn’t come to me until I had this dream that it was a double-necked instrument. I hadn’t thought of it as a double neck, I had thought of it as guitar with something stuck onto it, and my whole idea changed when I started thinking, hey, double-necked steel guitars. They make double-necked regular guitars, with a twelve-string and six-string. I said, this will be something like that, one of each. Interestingly, I hadn’t thought of that until the dream. That’s when I looked down and saw myself playing this thing.

Why did it take five years until Michael Stevens helped you make it?

I went around talking to everybody, and they just looked at me like I was half-crazy.

Stevens made a six- and twelve-string guitar for Christopher Cross.

Yeah, I went into his shop, and there were all these double-necked things, a six and twelve, then a bass and a six, and things like that. Then these other instruments that weren’t double necks but had the same beautiful craftsmanship. There was a consistency; you never saw anything he made that didn’t look exactly like something Gibson or Fender would have made at their factory. He was good at imitating the integrity of an instrument and making it look like it had been made by a company instead of just somebody in his garage. His finishes were second to none.

He had these sunburst finishes. He had one he had made for Christopher Cross, and I said, this is probably the guy who could make the guit-steel that I want to make. We took the guitar, then we took a lap steel, then some big huge rubber bands, and we stuck them together. I strapped it on and we found balance points, where to set the steel in relation to the guitar and all that. Then we drew up some blueprints, but he had a lot of projects going at the time, but by 1985 I had the thing.

How long did it take you to get accustomed to using it?

I was playing it the next night. I played the Station Inn with Mark O’Connor, Vince Gill, and Jerry Douglas. The night after it was made I just jumped on the stage and started using it.

In Austin?

No, I was in Nashville.

You’d already been working on your songwriting because your first solo record happened not too long after the development of the guit-steel.

I was a frustrated guy because I knew I had something to offer, but I hadn’t written any songs and I was just good as a player. Well, what do you do as a player? You play for other people. I saw all these guys that I knew get publishing deals. They could write a certain amount of songs and they could get a paycheck every month. They didn’t necessarily have to be good songs, they just had to turn out a certain amount of them. And if they didn’t turn out a certain amount, then they dropped them. But for that year, or six months, or whatever it was, you got a paycheck, and I thought that it would be a great thing to try. And I also knew that if I wanted to do anything as a solo artist, it would be good if I wrote my own material. With those two reasons, I just got into the songwriting really heavy. In the early eighties, I started concentrating on it.

As you developed your songwriting and put together a band, was it hard for you to find an audience, or was it built-in because people knew you from the other bands you played in?

When you play with other people, they usually forget you the same night. Even if you’re good, because what they’ve gone to see is the star, and you’re not the star, so they forget all about you. I knew a lot of musicians, but I didn’t really have . . . well, I had a little bit of a following because I put my own band together and in 1983 I recorded a single down there in Austin, a 45 record that was amazingly well-received. It sort of got a little buzz going. I don’t want to say cult, because I hate that word, but it kinda had an underground following. By the time I put my band together and started working in Austin with Tanya, a lot of the musicians knew who I was so they’d come out and see me, then gradually it caught on to the other people.

How did you get the gig teaching over at the Hank Thompson School of Country Music in Oklahoma? Who brought you out there?

That was Leon McAuliffe, the steel guitar player from Bob Wills Texas Playboys.

He came out to a couple of your shows?

No, no, I found him. Someone took me up there and introduced me to him and he offered me a job that way. We played together, and he said you oughta teach up here. The gigs were really thinning out, I was getting into my songwriting really heavy, and I needed a job, so I started teaching. That’s when I met my wife Tanya Rae. She was one of my students.

You kept her after class, you’ve said.

Right, right. It all worked out to where I was supposed to be there for that reason.

It’s not Nashville or Austin, so did being there give you a different sense of what you wanted from your music?

It gave me time to sit back and take things in and get out of the bars for a while. I missed it, I missed playing. I didn’t like teaching. I did it strictly for survival. Tanya and I immediately started playing together, because we liked music, and she picked up that style of guitar that I had already developed in my music that I knew that I needed, which is a very strong rhythmic style. She learned that and we started building the band around that.

Are you comfortable when people describe your guitar playing as genius, that it improves upon things, or even takes Hendrix a step forward?

[Roars laughing.] I don’t think anyone could take Hendrix a step further. Maybe backward a little, take him back to the forties [roars again]. Those are nice compliments, but the thing, or the compliment that I will accept, is originality, because I’m original. I take ideas other people have used, and I present them in an original way and hopefully in a new, fresh way. As long as I’m doing that and people are noticing it, then it’s a compliment and a deserved one. All the other stuff is flowery and needs to be taken with a grain of salt. As long as you can stay original, and stay sincere, that’s all that counts.

But as Ernest Tubbs said, you can be original and sincere, but you gotta bring it back to country.

Yeah, but see I didn’t take his advice; that’s the irony of it. I tried to, I tried to. But no one was interested in an old-sounding band. And I can understand why. I try to keep it country when it’s called for, but it doesn’t mean that every lick I play is going to be a country lick. Of course, he told me that in the 1970s, so we’re talking about a little bit of a different time and context there [laughs].

Your surf songs from Semi-Crazy were very popular, even got some radio play. Have you ever thought of putting out an all-instrumental record?

Yeah, I might wait for instrumentals to come back a little [laughs]. It used to be you could do that.

Between the Ventures and the Surfaris.

Exactly. You could put out a record, and it would be successful. You could get on the charts. Nah, I’ll wait for the right time to do that; I may do it.

You are often able to find a non-country audience that is prejudiced against country but present them with it in such a way that they get beyond that prejudice. But what makes them prejudiced against country to begin with?

Because it’s been worked to death. It’s been used, parodied, and reduced to a joke. It’s too bad that it’s that way, but that’s what’s happened. So there’s really not much dignity, unless of course you see an older country artist who’s been doing it awhile and has stuck to his guns and is sincere and real. There ain’t no changing this guy. He’s been around. And when you see him, he’s going to cut through all those preconceived notions you had about the corniness of country because he cuts through that with his sincerity. You don’t get many artists like that anymore except for the old ones.

Ernest Tubbs fought against watered-down country music, so that is the same fight you are fighting?

It’s been going on for a long time. I just went beyond it because I went beyond country music. You see, I play Hawaiian, rock, blues, the surf stuff . . . I’m open to anything. I got a Dixieland song on the new record. It’s more about original music. I used to say original American music, but it even goes beyond American music, because I like certain things from other countries that I am interested in. It’s just music, and I think we’re at a time now when labels don’t mean anything anymore. In the seventies, it meant something, because everyone was saying, hey, where’s our country music going? It’s been sold out. Well, that was a long time ago, and it’s been sold out for a long time. It’s been gone for a long time. It’s been a long time since I have turned on the radio and heard a country song, I don’t know about you.

Down here in Texas on KIKK, they changed formats. They play Dave Matthews along with the country. And you happen to be doing some shows with Dave Matthews this summer.

Yeah, anything goes. It’s all just music now, and I think it’s great. Yep, I’m doing some stuff with Dave Matthews, several shows. I played with the String Cheese Incident the other night. They’re great. I had a great time with them.

But if things have gone downhill for a while and there’s nothing exciting . . .

It’s not necessarily downhill, it’s just become. . . . Everything is just a distraction. You might hear a good song here and there. But there are so many distractions that it might only be on the radio for a few days. I don’t know.

People might wonder why you would play with Matthews or Stone Temple Pilots if you didn’t think their music was exciting.

That’s the whole idea. You take something that might not be exciting and make it unpredictable, therefore exciting. The whole idea of Junior Brown and String Cheese Incident playing together is exciting because it’s different. I’m different, and they’re different, so you put the two different things together and you have even more combinations. It’s all about combinations, how you present something that is exciting. If you want to get up there with your big belt buckle and tight pressed jeans, and you have five guys up there who look like they pulled the same clothes out of the same drawer and they’re all singing the same kind of song, they’re all whining through their noses and breaking their voice in the same spot, it’s predictable, right? It’s predictable. And you know, maybe some people find that highly interesting, but I think that the consensus is no, we want to see something more unpredictable and more creative. And that’s what I’m trying to do.

But now there’s a big underground of No Depression bands that are called alt-country bands, or bands that are returning to stripped-down country, including well-known bands like Whiskeytown and Son Volt. Is it really an honest move, or really just about people seeing an opportunity and grabbing it?

Yeah. It’s an opportunity, because I don’t hear any country coming out of it. Maybe there is, and I haven’t heard it. What I’m hearing is like folk rock. What they’re returning to is more acoustic-based stuff. Maybe that’s what they think they’re returning to. I don’t hear any country music coming out of those people. That doesn’t mean they’re not doing quality stuff, but I don’t hear any country.

Do you think that good music will always rise above flashiness or market trends?

I think honest music will, no matter if it’s country music or whatever, as long as it’s honest. I think that’s what they should promote that stuff as, say it’s going back to honesty rather than going back to country. Because there’s no going back to country. Those people aren’t hillbillies, and they shouldn’t pretend like they are. You got to be real; you got to be who you are. If you’re a college kid, you gotta say you’re a college kid because you sure can’t lie about it. It doesn’t work [laughs]. You can’t hide. You gotta be what you are. And if you say you’re country, and you ain’t country, you’re in trouble. That’s how I look at it. Even hillbillies don’t want to be called hillbillies. They want to drive their pickup trucks and spit Beechnut and chew, but they don’t want you calling them a hillbilly. They want to feel that they are just as sophisticated as you are. So what do they do—they go out and listen to rock music, outdated rock [laughs]. They don’t want anything to do with country music because it’s been gone for so long. They don’t want to act like Grandpa Jones or . . .

Hee Haw.

Exactly. So you’re trying to bring back something that is like 1950s rock; you really can’t bring it back. It will always be a parody of something that is gone.

You’ve said the thing is to listen to a Louis Armstrong record in a new way.

Well, you don’t listen to it in a new way. I was talking about playing it in a new way. It was about interpreting it. If you are going to play an old song, for instance, you add your own thing to it, and your own thing should define you. And what should define you should not be an imitation of the past. For instance, I did this Dixieland jazz thing with horns on the new record. I didn’t call up a trombone player; I sat and I learned the trombone part on the steel. I’m doing a traditional song in a traditional way, but I’ve taken a new idea and put my Junior Brown thing on it. So, it has some originality. Yes, it’s an imitation, but not a total imitation; it’s more of an imitation as far as paying tribute to something and adding your own thing to it than just imitating it.

Although there is also a horn section on it, you’re playing part of the old horn part?

I am playing the part of the trombone on the steel, which is a different idea. It’s original. So if I were to hire a trombone player and say, okay, play exactly what’s on this record, and tell the other players to play exactly what’s on the record . . .

It’s copycat.

Yes, it’s copycat. Anybody can do that, that’s why I’m saying you can use the old ideas, but add something new to them, so make it fresh.

You were just on the Chris Isaac Show, and have been on the X-Files, so do you ever think of yourself like John Doe from X, who has both a music career and bit parts in movies and TV?

Just whatever can promote what I’m doing. The more I get my faith out there, the more that I can sell records and things. I do it as a promotional thing for myself. I’ve been fortunate, like in the commercials and things, that I try to promote products that I’m not ashamed to promote.

Lipton ice tea, the Gap?

Yeah. I get to be myself. I get to have the guit-steel and be my own character, so I’m promoting myself. It works out.

You played the Smithsonian Institution Guitar Seminar. Did you ever imagine that a kid from Kirksville with a busted two-string guitar would end up there?

I appreciate the accolades. They aren’t what you live for, but when you get them, they’re nice, you know. I like to be appreciated because it shows that people are listening.

That a lot of different people are listening.

Yeah. It’s important because you have to try to reach all the people. I always had the dream, I always wanted to be a famous musician, and I always wanted to be good, so it helped. I hope I’m good [laughs]. If they don’t think I’m good, I’ll still believe in myself, but it’s nice when we agree.

People say your success was driven by videos like “My Wife Thinks You’re Dead,” which was number one on the Nashville Network and won the Country Music Association Award for best video. Do you agree?

I don’t know. Nothing is going to stop me, but everything that helps, helps. Every little bit that you can get. Certainly it woke up Nashville to who I was. How significant that is, I don’t know. I take the fans where I can get ’em.

As you head towards fifty, are there things you want for your music other than a bigger audience?

Oh, I think just a bigger audience and hope that it’s always increasing. I haven’t had a record out in two years, and my audience has diminished a bit. I’m still packing them in, so as long as they like the music, and I come up with fresh ideas and keep the music going, that’s enough. It will be interesting to see where music goes these next few years. It’s changing so fast, and it’s nice to know that I’m still around; there are a lot of artists that started out when I did with their success and record deals, and now you don’t hear from them anymore.

They float away.

Right. A couple of videos and they’re gone, or a couple records and they’re gone. So, I’m glad I’m not one of those and hope to have that kind of longevity like B.B. King, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, and a lot of the greats who worked until late in their years and came up with fresh ways to reinvent themselves.

Bruce Springsteen once told a reporter that he didn’t work in a factory, he couldn’t work on cars, but he could write a song. That’s who he was, but once in a while he had to take a step back, because if he lost the ability to do that, then there might be trouble. He couldn’t take such a thing for granted.

That’s very good. See, most musicians don’t think that way. They just say, oh, wow, here’s the party and it’s never going to end.

So you have some forethought?

I’ve seen a lot of guys come and go and figured out a lot about how that works before I became successful. So by the time I did, I didn’t squander anything and was very careful about how I handled it. Because I know it’s something you work on, and once you get it, it can be fleeting, so you try to milk it for all it’s worth and try to respect it. You respect it as any other business. Look at the Koreans, or the people like that, foreigners from any country that come over here and have nothing when they start, then work and work and work, then get enough to buy a little store or little business. Then they become a little more successful, maybe they buy another business. And you work your way up, and pretty soon you are self-sufficient. I mean they’ve always been self-sufficient, but they become successful. And that’s how it is with music. Tanya and I started this thing from nothing; we were living in a tent for a while. We built it up, and we cared for it. We don’t take it for granted at all.

People call you a traditionalist in terms of your music, but does the term carry over in terms of how you feel people should try to live—that people should be at one with what they do and love what they do?

I don’t tell other people how to live. I think it’s important in music. You go into a hotel and you say, “we’re musicians,” what rooms are they going to give you? They are going to give you the same ones they give to construction workers because they think you are trouble. Why do they think you’re trouble? Because musicians have brought the name down. They have brought the name of being a professional musician down. And that’s too bad. As far as what we do, we’ve got our system, and it works for us. We just try to do the best we can.

DEKE DICKERSON: LOOK BACK AND WINK

Originally published in Left of the Dial.

Dickerson is the alchemist of American roots music who easily blends hiccupy country with sawdust twang as well as lean rockabilly with jump blues and sly doo-wop. With untrammeled sincerity and easygoing panache, he is a kind of jukebox-made-flesh, a fountain of song that doesn’t fossilize the past; instead, he injects the past with fresh blood and enticing humor, wit, and honesty.

You’ve said that the first two shows you saw were Willie Dixon and Bill Monroe, but do the impressions of those shows stay with you?

Yeah, totally. The thing is that I think I essentially play rockabilly, but as a whole I don’t listen to that much rockabilly. I listen to a lot of country, old R&B, jazz, blues, and stuff like that. Sorta just like the old guys in the 1950s did, who weren’t really listening to rockabilly when they were making rockabilly. There were a lot of deeper influences. I’m really happy in that regard—that I was where I was during that time and could see guys like Bill Monroe and Willie Dixon.

In Missouri?

In Columbia, Missouri. There was a great club that’s still there called the Blue Note, but it was at a smaller location then, and they used to get all the acts that would come through St. Louis and Kansas City. I mean, I saw everybody.

Do you feel that the Midwest had an entirely different vibe than the coasts or the South, so when you went to California you knew you came from a very different place?

Oh, totally. I’ll just skip to one sort of specific thing about it. I agree with you that it’s a different frame of mind. In California, there was this thing with bands where one minute they’d be in the garage, the next minute they’re picked up by major labels and have videos and big promotion, then the next thing you know the band would just quit. But where I come from in Missouri, no one gets record deals. Nobody even gets paid shit for their music. To me, the idea of playing in a band and getting paid for it was an amazing idea. When I moved out to California, there were people who were essentially getting handed gold bricks on a plate, and then they’d complain about it.

When you’re in a bar and hear James Brown or Johnny Cash, the music transcends musical categories, and you want to be like those artists. You don’t want to be pegged as a rockabilly guy, but it happens anyway. How do you get away from that?

That’s a good question. There’s a pretty amazing rockabilly network across the U.S. It’s a real underground sort of thing. A band can exist for years and years by touring with a cult following, but you know, it only goes so far because those people don’t really like anything other than rockabilly, you know what I mean.

So when you do bluegrass, they veer away?

Well, with this band here, we do rockabilly, country, jump blues, some surfy stuff, and Link Ray 1960s-sounding garage stuff. I know a lot of times the real hardcore rockabilly types don’t really appreciate it that much, but to me it’s not bad music. It’s not like I’m wearing bellbottoms and playing with wa-wa on my guitar. What I’m doing is good music.

From the very beginning of your career, what is the one thing you think you have been consistent about?

The thing is, I don’t think I’m that good of a guitar player, I don’t think I’m that good of a musician, or singer. When you hear people play rockabilly, and they overplay it, they bring in seventies licks, and they bring in flangers and choruses, it’s just inappropriate stuff.

But what about Brian Seltzer, who seems to lean towards a little bit of that tendency?

I’m not going to get into Brian Seltzer.

But he is bringing nontraditional stuff . . .

I’ll say he’s a phenomenal musician that goes for the most cheesy element. It’s got a real cartoony sort of angle to it.

But does anyone who plays rockabilly, including yourself, get lumped into that caricature? Eventually, if you stick around long enough, do you outgrow the niche?

It’s hard to say. I’d like to think of myself as, oh, I’m trying to think of the word, either you’re an innovator or a regurgitator. I don’t think of myself as a regurgitator, like redoing a perfect 1956 concert you could have seen.

But don’t some people want that?

Oh, absolutely.

So, if you’re disappointing people, it’s because you are not a perfect reflection of what they want?

It’s hard to say what people want, especially with this band. Because one night we’ll be playing in front of the whole alt country crowd, and they’ll be disappointed that we’re doing rock ’n’ roll. Then the next night we’ll play in front of a bunch of Social Distortion rockabilly greasers, and they’ll be bummed out that we’re playing country.

You feel it was a positive experience?

Yeah, because literally every night for three months we would go out in front of huge angry crowds—you know, people who were pissed off that they had to sit through an opening band. Then we took the stage, and it was like, “Who are these fucking guys on stage? I want Mike Ness on stage.” You know? But they ended up going crazy. Every night we won them over.

What was the nicest thing Mike Ness said about your band?

The very last date we did with them, at the end of the night he always introduces his band, and he said, “Let’s hear it for Deke Dickerson and the guys, they did three months all over America in a van, and that takes balls,” or something like that. I thought that was pretty cool.

What is it about roots music that turns on punk kids?

Well, when you hear Kenny G. or something, it’s really overproduced. It offends our ears. I think kids who grew up on punk, when they hear rockabilly or country or stuff like that, it has the same elements: it’s direct, it’s to the point, and it’s in your face a lot of the time. It’s fast.

What’s the most challenging thing while touring?

Physical comfort. When you’re twenty years old and driving around in a van for six weeks at a time, it’s great. We’ve done about 450 shows in the last two years.

Which is totally like Black Flag throughout their span.

Yeah, yeah. But if you read that book on them, which I have read, by the end of the Black Flag touring days, he is so burned out. That’s just the way I feel right now.

So in the end, it’s almost just about physical endurance?

Pretty much. Everything becomes, what’s the word I’m looking for, the point of no return. After five weeks on the road, you just want to go home. But after about six or seven weeks. . . .

You have a following in Europe.

I’ve been over there five times, with the Deke and Dave duo, and other things.

What exactly are Europeans seeing in the music? What did they see in the Dave and Deke Combo?

The main thing about Europeans that makes them totally different than Americans is that they treat it like a textbook, like this is the proper way to do it. If you don’t do it that way, it’s not the proper way to do it. Like the first time I was in England visiting my girlfriend, I looked in the paper and saw that Joe Clay, an old rockabilly guy from Gretna, Louisiana, was playing there. I was like, holy shit, Joe Clay is playing. I went there in normal street clothes, not rockabilly clothes, so I go in this place, and it’s all rockabilly dudes. Everybody is dressed to the nines. I seriously thought I was going to get the shit beat out of me, just because I wasn’t conforming to the dress code.

But don’t you feel the same weirdness here sometimes?

Some bands, you know when you go to see them, you have to wear that uniform. I love playing for audiences that appreciate the music, whether it’s the people who are wearing vintage clothing or . . .

The Gap?

Exactly.

People follow you around, attending gigs.

Yeah, they do, and it’s kinda weird. It’s like, dude, I’m not a rock star. It’s strange. There were some guys in particular from Pittsburgh, they came and saw us in Nashville, and I can’t remember, somewhere else.

Like the Grateful Dead or something.

We got booked in Missoula, Montana, and we thought, this is going to be a bomb, but it was on the way to Seattle and Salt Lake City. So we show up, and there were six to ten guys with Dave and Deke records waiting for me to sign them. A really good crowd showed up.

But what makes those eager kids show up and even follow you?

I guess I understand it because when I was growing up people would come through, bands I really liked, and I was the total autograph geek guy. Like when the Blasters came through.

And you still have that stuff?

Oh, yeah. And I still do. When I found out that we were going to be backing Billy Lee Riley and Sonny Burgess on tour, I brought all my records on the road so I could have them autographed. So I totally identify with that. A lot of times the guys in the band or the guys that are hanging out with us are like, man, those guys are geeks. But they are exactly like me, so I’m not going to snub them. I mean, I totally appreciate those guys. The only thing that I wish was that there were really cute girls instead of pasty-faced white guys in their thirties, you know what I mean? Wait, you can leave that out of the interview [laughs].

Do you feel that sooner rather than later you’re going to pack things up and say, I’d rather buy records rather than make ’em?

The whole reason I started touring full time was . . . well, Dave and Deke was never a full-time band, we only did two national tours the five years we were together. When I formed this band, I thought, “Okay, this is all I am doing, and I’m touring until I just can’t take it anymore.” I’ve just got to get it out of my system. It might be that I continue to have success and make more money. And that would be great, but if it trails off, and people aren’t interested anymore, and I’ve probably gotten it out of my system, maybe I’ll get a real job and make some money.

When’s the last time you had a real job?

Two years ago, I was working for a record label in L.A. In L.A. it’s pretty expensive. I had to work to make ends meet.

Why not simply go back to Missouri?

I love L.A., man. It’s hard to explain to people who automatically assume that L.A. sucks because I really like that place.

How do you feel you are received critically?

Our write-ups are great. That’s one thing I really like about HighTone. There are so many good interviews, but at the same time I am kinda frustrated because the more serious writers, like the guy who writes for Billboard, and the guys who write for the Americana and alternative country type things, because we’re light-hearted and have a sense of humor, they consider us a novelty act. It pisses me off.

They are dismissive?

Yeah, but I think when you get to the bottom of it, I think we have a lot more soul than the college-boy, alternative bands that are out there.

Like Reckless Kelly or some others.

I’m not going to name any. Some of those bands are really good, but at the same time a lot of them started listening to country music about two months ago and decided to go start a band.

What’s one thing keeping you from a larger audience?

Good looks.

Well, there’s Lyle Lovett.

It’s hard to say because literally every audience this band has played to, punk rockers or whatever, we win them over, so it makes me wonder. If we had enough advertising and publicity dollars, how far could we take this thing? I don’t know.

But again, Brian Seltzer has gold records and is playing Vegas.

But he received insane promotion from Interscope. There were even friggin’ television commercials for the record.

Where will alt country go in the new millennium, on past Whiskeytown or back to Bill Monroe?

I don’t know because that whole alt-country thing baffles me, I guess, because I grew up listening to country music when all those people despised it.

Were you really listening to Merle Haggard and Ray Price?

Oh, yeah, I listened to nothing but the old shit. I remember when Uncle Tupelo came around. I mean, I liked what they were doing, but at the same time I was so distrustful of all the college kids that were into them. Because I was like, the only reason you guys like them is because they wear combat boots. If these guys were real backwoods Missouri hillbilly guys, you wouldn’t give them the fucking time of day. Just because they look like alternative college-guy musicians . . .

Well, Billy Joe Shaver would come down and play to a handful of devotees, and you have to ask, “Whose got the real shit? Shaver or the Uncle Tupelo offshoots?” Do you mistrust the sincerity behind it all?

Yeah, unfortunately, of music-listening and music-buying people, about 3 percent are educated and have an actual musical taste, 97 percent just look at the big ads in the papers and let MTV or whatever else define them.

REVEREND HORTON HEAT: ANTI-HERO OF

HOT ROD CULTURE

Originally published in Thirsty Ear, 2001, and Left of the Dial, 2001.

Jim Heath, a.k.a. Reverend Horton Heat, is a north Texas gringo who has dodged every genre pigeonhole by hot-wiring a hybrid sound melding boot-stompin’ country, piston-pumping swing, greased lightning rockabilly, and even heavy metal.

His records reek of greasy gas stations, hairnet gals with tattoos and cigarettes, pomade and martini barroom dizziness, and a prowl through dimestore nights. At the time of the interview, his offering, Spend a Night in the Box (remember chisel-faced Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke?), produced by ex-Butthole Surfer guitarist Paul Leary, was a return to the Reverend’s stripped-down and nimble Sub Pop–era rockabilly sound.

Being the king of hot rod culture, do you ever risk becoming a caricature? Do some people not see your artistic side?

I think they completely see my artistic side. All that hot rod stuff is icing on the cake. They’re there to see me perform, that’s it. I love all those hot rod people, though I’m not really into hot rods that much; I’m a guitar player, man. I wake up in the morning and spend four or five hours playing. Sometimes I do laugh, ’cause I wear flashy suits, and that will definitely turn you into a caricature when you wear some of those that are as bad as I have [laughs].

Do you feel closer to Junior Brown or the Supersuckers?

Junior Brown is just a hero of mine. It’s the real gutbucket country, you know. At the same time, I might not necessarily enjoy seeing Los Straightjackets any less than Junior Brown. Then again, I like singers too. I tend to be a person who misses the musicianship of eras gone by. At the same time, I love Rage Against the Machine. That’s what happens with a lot of music critics. Music is all about the guy at the record store going, “I was into them back when they were cool.” Hell, to me, I think a band like Rage against the Machine just keeps getting better.

Which do you prefer, the large Warped and White Zombie tours or smaller shows?

We have fun every night; it’s hard to say what I prefer. There’s no doubt that I have a blast when we’re doing those things. There are rock stars hanging around; Slash is there. Our set is thirty-five minutes exactly—not thirty-six, not thirty-four—then we’re done. We can hang around and watch the people freak out when White Zombie sets off their bombs, because we know exactly when they’re coming. Artistically, of course, I want to get across as many of my songs as possible. That’s pretty hard to make happen with a cold crowd for thirty-five minutes. We went out with ZZ Top, but there were a lot of older people in their crowd. We’d get heckled every night, then I’d get in some banter with the heckler, and finally I’d tell him, “Fuck you, this is rock ’n’ roll!” Then everybody would go, “Yeeah!” I’d have to win them over every night. It was hilarious.

Out of thirty songs you pick to record, twenty-five are Reverend songs. What are the rest?

If we want to try a funk beat or something pop even, guess what the record company is saying? “Well, those songs are okay, but these five songs are great—this doesn’t sound like y’all at all.” What am I supposed to say? “Thanks a lot. We finally did something that doesn’t sound like us. It’s a hit?” They’d be like, “Well, no, it’s not a hit, but these five are good enough for your new record.” So, I am definitely going to be more careful about sending out all my demos and all my songs to these guys because I do what I do. Frankly, it’s an insult when somebody tells you the song is great because it doesn’t sound like y’all at all. And, man, I am sick of being insulted by record companies.

You’ve been playing guitar since age ten, but why didn’t you become a songwriter until your mid-twenties?

The truth is I was writing songs back when I was sixteen or seventeen, but having an outlet for those songs was the hardest. I was basically a lead guitar player in all my bands; there was always another front person. Whoever is singing the lead of a song, the lyrics have to be very heartfelt, very personal. A song that someone else writes for me may not be something that I personally want to say. I got to the point where I figured, man, if I want to get my songs across I’ve got to be a lead singer. So, instead of hiring a band, I started out doing a solo thing.

Are you going to play the circuit forever?

Oh, yeah. Just like Ernest Tubb, who did it until he died.

What were the benefits of recording the last record at Willie Nelson’s Pedernales Studios outside Austin?

The big benefit was just being out in the country. A lot of peace and quiet, a lot of fresh air, real beautiful. We had a condo that overlooked the lake. When the sun came blaring in off the lake it was pretty neat. We have fun everywhere we go, but it was real relaxed. I ate a lot of barbeque and Mexican food. And Willie was around quite a bit, because he lives right out by there. I always saw him out hitting golf balls or something.

Why haven’t you incorporated a fourth member?

I was thinking about that awhile back. My girlfriend told me, “Maybe that would take the edge off y’all.” So, I was thinking, maybe so. It might be all good, but at the same time we have fun doing what we do the way it is and we like to have extra guys come in sometimes in the studio. Maybe I will someday, but for right now we’re doing our thing. At one point in my career, I was seriously thinking about getting a horn section, and then Brian Seltzer got the whole orchestra thing, and I was like, hmm, let’s just stay a three-piece. A three-piece always highlights my drummer and bass player more. When we have somebody sit in with us, I can kinda lay back more and play a little more legato-type stuff, which is hard to do, because you have to keep it going by playing rhythm and lead.

It used to be that your ticket sales far outsold your record sales, but does that still hold true?

That’s my big business problem [laughs]. Well, not really. Our biggest-selling album, Liquor in the Front, had by far more money put into promoting it than any of our others. You got to get them to put the money where their mouth is. I don’t really think in terms of all that stuff when I’m making a record. I go in and try to do the best that I can.

You resist “the test-market dodo bird” factor?

The test-market thing has hurt us a lot. They get these record people who want to test the most average people they can get, and our fans are definitely, somewhat like myself, not normal, you know [laughs]. The test-marketing thing is kind of a weird deal. I’ve had some interesting insights into the whole business. There was this one guy in L.A. called Rambo, because he was an all-star distribution salesman. He was a cool, funny, really fast-talking guy. He came to our show, really liked us, and we went to his office and hung around. He had MTV going on the TV, you could hear that good. A CD by his desk, a whole stereo thing, and a CD going in there, and was talking on one of those headset phone things. He holds the record for selling the most records in one day or week, like half a million or something [laughs]. At one point, Urge Overkill came on the TV back when they had the song “Sister Havana” and we were like, hey, it’s Urge Overkill, because we had done shows with them. He looked up and saw us looking at it, and said, “Urge Overkill, major rotation on MTV, only moving about five to seven thousand units a week. They’re done.” And then he was back on the phone. I’m going, oh boy [laughs]. It didn’t look good at that point.

Do indie labels sometimes misjudge and mismanage just as much as majors like Interscope?

Definitely, I think so. I don’t know if it’s just true for us, but I think that labels want to stick their noses into what you are doing, and that is just a fact, whether it’s an indie or a major. And I’ve been lucky to avoid that to a pretty good degree compared to other artists, I think. That’s the hardest thing about what I do, is getting critiqued by people who need to be listening to me. We had this one album, Space Heater, but they tried to take all our swing, rockabilly, and country stuff completely off the record. That was about two months before the swing thing broke really big, so you can’t listen to those people, you do what you gotta do.

You’ve called swing, à la Cherry Poppin’ Daddies and Royal Crown Revue, as “revenge of the nerds.”

I never said that.

Maybe a misquote?

About the only time I’ve used the word “nerds” lately is when talking about myself. Me and Paul Leary are kind of guitar nerds because he works hard and is serious about what he does but has so much fun. It’s like the nerds who like biology and are like, “Wow, can you believe that?”

There’s a kind of innocence to it?

Absolutely so.

Now that swing has bottomed out, are you glad you didn’t ride that wave?

We’ve always just done our own thing, and it’s always worked out in the end. I have to be real careful because record guys can critique you right off the bat [laughs]. Just let us do what we do, and go from there.

If an era of Texas music like the Butthole Surfers, Hickoids, Loco Gringos, and others has now gone, what has replaced it?

Part of that thing with me was that I was very much part of the scene as far as not only playing gigs with bands, but I would also rent my P.A. system to these bands. So, I was working two shows and there all the time. Now, I’m a little too busy to be around, we go and tour so much. At the same time, there are a lot of really good guys around right now. As far as Dallas, where I live, I know a few of the local bands around here. I think musicianship will always rise to the top in the live format.

In the recorded format, it’s been proven that musicianship doesn’t mean shit. The producer can sample all the stuff and put it together, that’s the way they make records. In the live format, the bands that get in there and rip it up live are like Deke Dickerson, Wayne Hancock, or Big Sandy. There are a lot of great bands out there. My little scene in Dallas is still raging just like it did back then, but there are different bands because it’s a different time. I don’t know if it’s any better or any worse, but that was a fun era.

Dave Alvin in Houston. Courtesy of Tim O’Brien.

Deke Dickerson, Under the Volcano, Houston.

Junior Brown, Houston International Festival. Courtesy of Tim O’Brien.

Eleventh Dream Day, Showbar, Houston.

Peter Case, Walters, Houston.

Exene Cervenka, Cactus Records.

X, Euphoria, Portland, 1982.

Peter Case, Fenders, Los Angeles.

Peter Case, Project Row Houses, Houston.

Jason and the Scorchers, East Village Eye.

X, Fitzgeralds, Houston, 1986. Courtesy of Ben DeSoto.

X and Reverend Horton Heat at Hootenany 2002. Courtesy of Kalynn Campbell.

Wayne Kramer at TJ’s, Newport, Wales.

Swans at the Graystone, Detroit.

Swans at Club Clearview, Dallas.

Reverend Horton Heat. Courtesy of Tim O’Brien.

M. Gira, Rudyards, Houston.

Violent Femmes, Houston, 1980s.

Deke Dickerson, Rudyards, Houston. Courtesy of Lana McBride.

Alejandro Escovedo and Richard Buckner, Rudyards, Houston. Courtesy of Lana McBride.

Billy Joe and “Eddy” Shaver, Dan Electro’s, Houston.

Tom Russell, Houston.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Thirsty Ear Festival, Santa Fe, 2002.

Yo La Tengo, Kennel Club, San Francisco.

Chapter 3

Indelible Indie Rockers

Indie rock, once known more commonly as college rock, serves as an antidote to the aural sheen of soulless pop that tends to inhabit radio frequencies. Often burning with literary allusions, sly song craft that merges genres effortlessly, and sheer gut feeling, artists like Janet Bean and Michael Gira prove their artistic antennae are dynamic and singular. By fluidly switching from art rock to rootsy traditionalism, they prove mavericks follow the paths less traveled.

JANET BEAN: ELEVENTH DREAM DAY AND FREAKWATER

Originally published in Left of the Dial, 2001.

“It’s a little embarrassing being on the front page of a major Chicago newspaper,” Janet Bean tells me quietly between tasks during her new stint at a law firm, “People walk up to me and say hey, you’re the rock ’n’ roll girl.” Despite such everyday cover, Janet is a terribly vibrant and productive renaissance figure in the Midwest indie rock scene.

In 1983, Bean and then-husband Rick Rizzo formed Eleventh Dream Day, a sometimes breezy, sometimes sumptuous, but always hook-laden rock ’n’ roll band that belonged to a posse consisting of Souled American, Big Dipper, Scrawl, and Volcano Suns. Yet, whereas most of those bands have slipped into the void of discounted and forgotten records, for the last seven years Eleventh Dream Day has harnessed the progressive production of John McEntire (Tortoise, Sea and Cake). They still lean heavily towards Neil Young’s guitar sloshing (think Weld) and Velvet Underground’s infectious and cerebral minimalism, even while flirting with incidental electronic noodling.

Meanwhile, Bean has made an even bigger impression as co-singer/guitarist for Freakwater. Together with old high school pal Catherine Irwin, Bean has crafted a supremely sincere take on Kentucky bluegrass and other back-porch folk schools that transfixes the senses with its often spare and rustic delivery. Although this approach changed with their big-sounding release End Time, the duo (together with a changing ensemble of musical helpers) still trods a path somewhere between the Louvin Brothers, early Emmylou Harris, and a poppier version of Palace Brothers.

Do charts matter, bring people out to your shows, or sell records?

As odd as it may seem, I really don’t pay any attention. The only reason I know this record sold better than the last one is because I got more money. I don’t keep any track of it. I had gone on to Amazon and read a couple of reviews of consumers who bought it because they had read reviews of it, and they liked it, except for one gentleman who terribly despised it. But I could go on and see the other things they buy, and he had bought Broadway musicals, so . . .

With Freakwater, have you made a dent in the country or folk communities? In some circles, it’s been suggested that you and Catherin Irwin are two white hipsters who don’t have the “right” to play such music.

I’ve played this music more than half my life. I don’t think about it one way or another. Catherine and I have been singing some of those since we were fifteen years old, and I don’t think about whether or not I have the right to do it. I just try to write songs and do the best we can.

Does it matter if your audience is a small bar of Chicago hipsters or a folk festival circuit?

No. I couldn’t care less. I don’t think we’re purists in any sense. I just write the songs that seem to happen and I don’t think about them in the sort of way that they’ll fit into a framework of alternative country music; I think of it in terms of fitting into the framework of Freakwater. It’s not really an issue for me. If you say white hipsters are interested in us, that’s great because the bottom line is we want to sell records. As long as someone likes it, I couldn’t care less. . . . We sort of have this odd following of metal kids that like Slayer, and I’m just as happy that they are buying it as somebody who is older and has been listening to country music all their lives.

You think labels are wretched, like when people use the term “post-rock” when describing John McEntire’s band Tortoise or “insurgent country” when referring to Freakwater. Does it have to do with a Midwest sense of individualism?

Part of our personalities is about rejecting being clumped in with anything. Maybe it’s my sort of misanthropic attitude [laughs]. I don’t want to be part of any one thing: I want to be my own thing. I wouldn’t say our upbringing taught us to reject labels. We were involved early on in punk rock and stuff and tried to have a certain sense of freedom, and, as corny as it sounds, of not being labeled as something. I suppose some people get something out of a label like “post-rock,” and it helps them in some fashion to find records they’re searching for, and that’s fine. It’s just really awkward for me to define myself in a category like that. If someone else wants to do that, I can’t stop them. I would never be so bold as to call myself an “insurgent country” or “post-rock” band.

Rick [singer/guitarist of Eleventh Dream Day] has said, “We keep getting farther down the road and don’t know where the hell we are.” So what do you use for points of reference to know whether you’re going in the right or wrong direction?

We certainly live a fairly musically isolated lifestyle for the most part. Eleventh Dream Day makes records very infrequently, and we don’t tour very much. Our bass player Doug is actively playing music all over the place and Rick does buy records, but we’re not really in touch. We don’t have the opportunity to go through things a great deal before we head into the studio. We practice for a month or something and some of the songs we’ve never played before. We play rock ’n’ roll music, but we’re sorta out of time with a lot of things, so I don’t have a lot of reference to say this is the direction we’re going in. We just go in, play the songs we bring to the table, and I don’t think we have a clue. When we’re making it, we’re like, “Is this good? Is it not good? I think it’s okay; it sounds like us.” We ask Bettina [Thrill Jockey], What do you think? This record in particular seemed to recall different styles we’ve created over our musical lifespan. It seemed like a culmination of different time periods.

So it’s more representative of the band’s overall sound?

I like our last record, Eighth, very much. I really love to listen to that record, but I think that it was a record that was different for us to make. The songs were quieter; that’s not really how we play live so much. This time, I was a really big advocate of “let’s get back in and make a garage record.” But you put out a lot of records, and you play twenty years together, and you definitely want to be able to explore different things, like play fast and slow, loud and quiet, and all those different things.

Ricks calls himself musically illiterate. Are we to assume that he is naïve, and would the same apply to you?

I don’t think Rick meant that he is naïve musically, in that he’s unaware of music that’s out there. I think he was talking about his approach to the guitar. His personal stylings are sort of naïve and have this sort of freedom and sense of abandon.

You’ve said that Eleventh Dream Day exists in its own world, stylistically speaking. Then what is the world made of?

It consists of a couple funny little tunings that Rick likes to do and it consists of me banging away and playing fast and Doug being one hell of a bass player. I don’t know a whole lot of what’s going on brand new in the rock world. When we were in London this past week, I watched MTV, which I hadn’t seen in ten years, really, and we just sat there and watched it for twenty hours straight. We were just so enthralled and amused [laughs]. The Spice Girls had a three-hour power block, and we watched that, and that was really something.

If given the chance, would Eleventh Dream Day jump ship to a major label again [three of their records were on Atlantic]?

God no. The primary reason is we have a really lovely existence where we are. I don’t ever have to be in the situation where you’re wondering if everyone is doing right by you. I don’t have to worry about anything, like about the way Thrill Jockey presents us, the magazines they choose to advertise in, or not advertise in. I don’t concern myself with it, and I think they do a fabulous job. We put out a record every two years and maybe do five shows, and maybe we could do that at this point in our lives on a major label if we were Van Morrison or some huge prestige signing that doesn’t sell any records, but labels want them anyway. But that’s not going to happen, and I don’t have any interest in going out there and touring endlessly.

Being a drummer, were you self-conscious at all when Freakwater brought in the drummer from Waco Bros., Mekons, Elvis Costello, Gang of Four, and Gram Parsons?

No, not at all. Probably more than anyone else in Freakwater, I was the advocate for the drums. I mean, I like them, and I’m used to hearing them.

He had to throw out everything he’d learned before?

I don’t doubt it. Freakwater is like a trainwreck. We don’t follow any musical rules whatsoever, not because we’re defiant and don’t want to; we just exist in our world musically, even more so than Eleventh Dream Day. Anyone who comes into it has to learn the Freakwater way, and some people don’t make it. Some of it is because I’ve played music with Catherine for so long, but unfortunately, some of it has to do with our stubbornness to learn actually what to call things. So you’re using the cable and the third fret, which is an A with a hole in it, and we say A-hole three. We really have our own language, and we just go about things that way, and we don’t use any of the appropriate terms, though it would make life much easier for everyone if we did.

You’ve said that “Catherine and I are too egomaniacal not to be writing songs about ourselves; it’s a combination of self-loathing and egomania,” but then have also said that “it’s hard to capture how poignant day-to-day life can be in a song.”

Maybe that’s why I only write four songs every three years [laughs]. It’s hard. It’s a lot easier to write songs about misery than to write songs about happiness.

But you have songs like “Louisville Lip” and “One Big Union,” which are not entirely self-centered.

I mainly write about myself, and I write in probably a less disguised way than Catherine does. She is a little more protective that way and she can write rings around just about anybody. She’s got a phenomenal gift for the barb. Even “Louisville Lip” is obviously coming from her and has personal elements to it.

If at age eighteen everything is ironic, then what is everything at thirty-six?

I think I’ve reached this point where I try not to be so dismissive of earnestness, you know. I want to be less jaded. At eighteen, you’re all about, “I know that.” Everything is “I’ve done that before” attitude. At this point, I’ve re-approached things. I think it’s just about finding joy in things.

Do you still think you can be an astronaut, or anything you set your sights on?

I still have that kind of completely irrational, delusional attitude. I don’t think everybody is afflicted with this notion that they can do anything, because in a sense it can often paralyze you and you don’t do anything because of it. I think that’s just me. I can’t tell you if anybody else is like that.

In the U.S., you’ve said, culture is media-generated. If you don’t have airplay, you’re not written about, and if you’re not written about, you don’t have sales. Do you feel trapped in this vicious circle?

That’s obviously a true statement, just look at the last election and the campaigns of Ralph Nader and those guys. If you don’t get written about, you don’t get the votes. It’s certainly a cycle, but I’ve grown to feel comfortable in this skin and where we are. And I think we are exceptionally lucky in the amount of press we get. Over the past month in Chicago, Eleventh Dream Day has been in one of the major newspapers almost every single week. It’s almost embarrassing considering how little we play. But we’re just really lucky, and we get to make these records and we get to play five or six fantastic shows, and I couldn’t really ask for anything more.

Is it ironic that even as Emmylou Harris pushes the envelope of country music, even reinvents it for the age of electronica, so many people of your generation in Austin and Chicago have returned to a stripped-down primitive sound?

Well, obviously from Emmylou’s perspective she’s been doing it forever. She wants to be part of what’s current.

Could you just perform with Freakwater exclusively, or just Eleventh Dream Day? Because by doing both, you balance the homegrown and rootsy with the slightly uncompromising, experimental rock ’n’ roll side.

The things that I choose to write in either band, in a certain sense, could go either way. For the most part, the songs I put on an Eleventh Dream Day record could be on a Freakwater record, maybe slowed down. Essentially, they’re the same kind of songs to me. I don’t think in terms of Freakwater that I am trying to retain an old-timey sound: it’s not an issue for me. I don’t know why certain people choose that sound, but there’s a certain beauty to it. There’s directness to it, and for people who have been in rock bands for a long time, they want something simple and direct. And that’s an old acoustic guitar, a mic, and a voice.

Between both bands, you’ve covered a ton of songs. What makes a song desirable to cover, to make your own?

In the last few Eleventh Dream Day shows, we’ve covered “The Thrill of It All” by Roxy Music. I like that Country Life album a lot, and I heard that song and thought, “that’s a driving, Eleventh Dream Day kind of thing, that would be fun to do.” So, we do it. It’s as simple as that. We hear a song, and go, “That would be fun to try.” There are no litmus tests for it.

Growing up, you were an album rock girl.

I was a teenager in the 1970s. I listened to Led Zeppelin and was really heavy into Pink Floyd, Hendrix, and all that stuff. My senior year in high school I started listening to art damaged punk rock stuff like Bush Tetras and just went from there. As a kid, it was basically AM radio. I adored Burt Bacharach as a child. You listen to radio, and that’s what you get.

Are there any remnants of that in your music, are those songs still swimming in your head? Would you cover a Bacharach song?

I sang one once with Anna Fermin, and that was fantastic. I wish I had the power to arrange like he does. I sing his songs all the time. I would like that if Burt crept into stuff. I loved big dramatic production kind of things, like “The Age of Aquarias.”

Will you stay on this course, or will you, as you have threatened over the years, walk away from the music business altogether at some point?

I used to think all the time about just stopping and taking a different direction, but through the years, especially with Freakwater, I just really fell in love with singing. That’s probably the thing I’ve worked most at over time. Of course, you can sing just about any place you want to, in your house or on a stage, but obviously there’s a bit of ego attached to it in wanting to be on stage, and I do like that. So whether it’s with Eleventh Dream Day or Freakwater, I will try to put stuff out sometimes. I have an ego, and it does like to be taken care of in that way [laughs], like make records and have them out there, and chance whether or not someone else will like them or not.

DAVID THOMAS: THE UBER-ART OF PERE UBU

Previously unpublished.

As singer for Rocket from the Tombs and Pere Ubu, Thomas is the leading embodiment of unyielding contemporary avant-garde music, yet at times he is also curiously attached to American traditions of storytelling. His warbly, dissonant voice is unmistakable and hard to peg; his lyrics wax obscure and experimental even as they are immersive and bracing; and his style remains ever-morphing, as if he refuses to stand still and reap the rewards of placid listeners.

In another interview, you noted that punk rock was “something that businessmen really loved because it was a victory for Madison Avenue right at the point that rock music was preparing to deliver William Faulkner, Henry James, and Herman Melville.” From the perspective of Rocket from the Tombs and as a rock writer in the seventies, do you believe that there was a crossover and rock was becoming a new literary form?

I think absolutely. The impetus for that was the solidification of abstract sound, concrete sound, of the analog synthesizer into mainstream music that was going on. That was the major development that was going on in the early seventies. That was what everybody was working on. I don’t know how old you are or even if you remember back then, but every major single group in one way or another was working—and by major I don’t necessarily mean commercial, I mean groups that shaped things—was working on establishing the poetic voice of sound, the sound of musical activity as opposed to. . . . Well, the sound of the musical activity becoming a distinctly different thing than the musical activity itself. If you think about the groups that were influential back then, Can, some of the Germanic groups, Eno’s early stuff, Roxy Music’s early stuff, Cale, clearly what Rocket was engaged in and later Pere Ubu, the Residents, all that early pre-1975 stuff, whatever, so much of it was based around the rise of the analog synthesizer.

Well, on that note, I’d like to see if something you’ve said before applies to your new record, 18 Monkeys on a Dead Man’s Chest: “Rock music uses hieroglyphic forms and it is not naïve poetry bolted onto rhythm.” Is that an adequate view of your new record also?

What, that I don’t do poetry? Yeah [laughs]. I always say that I don’t do poetry.

But would you say that you are a storyteller?

Of course, I am a storyteller. I mean, don’t you think that these things have stories to them? The work I’ve always done has stories. I think these are striking cinematic pieces, if I could blow my own horn. I think they are very effective as mini-stories. But what I do is not poetry, it’s using the form of rock music to what I think is its potentials, which is what you are supposed to do with it, which is to create a cinema of the imagination—tell stories that are perceived at fundamental levels of human consciousness as opposed to “I fell in love with my baby and my baby left me.” There’s room for that, but that’s sort of a simple way of telling a story. It could be done better.

So what do you think of people like Patti Smith or Richard Hell, who seemingly try to blur the line between Apollinaire/Rimbaud and the rock lyric? Is that where you thought/think rock should not go?

I don’t know if that’s where rock should go. Certainly, it was worth the time to try to do it. It’s not what I would do, and I think that there are some weaknesses to the approach—that you are trying to combine things that are of distinct methodologies, and you are trying to get a hybrid going, and I’m not sure that it can be totally successfully done; but on the other hand, I like their stuff. So I don’t know what kind of answer that is. It’s sort of between answers. It’s not what I would do, and I’ve always been, in some ways, very dogmatic or very puristic in my approach, because somebody’s got to do what I do. Not that people aren’t doing similar things, but approach things. . . . Well, I decide what I’m going to do and stick to it until I change, but I try not to. . . . I was always very sensitive to the idea of taking note of my own culture. I think everybody should work within the limits of their own culture, and by culture, and I don’t mean broadly, I mean where I came, I mean the little piece of land in Cleveland, Ohio, that I inhabit. I don’t mean necessarily American culture. Culture defines much more tightly and much more locally and regionally. I think it’s incumbent on you to mine that as thoroughly as you can and kind of avoid taking something from somebody else and being influenced by it particularly in a way that you might be influenced by French poetry and getting all sensitive about it.

You’ve spoken before about the geography of sound that comes with the lyrics, but how important is actual geography, because when people talk about Pere Ubu, they talk about the flats of Cleveland. On the new record, you talk about New Orleans floods, Nebraska, the Brunswick parking lot; you have this very concrete sense of place. How does place serve as a trigger for lyrics?

[Laughs] Geez, I don’t know. You are asking for a technical explanation for what happens. You know, because when you are driving through Nebraska in the early morning and you’ve taken your ephedrine-based trucker pills, you are into the groove and it’s foggy all around and you pass, I can’t remember the name of the town I passed, it’s in the bridge vocal. You pass this town and you look in the mirror and you see the lights of a truck in your mirror shimmering in the distance and so why do you come up with a song called “Nebraska Alcohol Abuse”? Gee, I don’t know. But the point is, that’s what most of my lyrics are concerned with—these moments of vision that everybody has. You know, where you are surrounded by a particular place, a particular geography, and that’s working with whatever mindset you are in and whatever you happened to be thinking about, and it yields a vision of a story or yields this powerful connection with signposts that you pass, or something.

That’s one reason that you might notice that a lot of my stuff has to do with cars, movement, and traveling. Well, mostly that’s because when I want to write I get in the car and travel for weeks, two or three weeks, until some vision occurs to me. In a purely mechanistic or practical point of view, a car is really good for that because you get in a trance-like state and you are open to vision, seeing something and making a connection deep within you, and a story will flow from it and that story has something to do with what you want to say anyway, with what you have been thinking about. “Nebraska Alcohol Abuse,” like many of my songs, is about seeing a moment in time and wanting to stop there, or seeing that moment as a division, as a dividing point, a fork in the road, so if I went down that road, if I did this, if I did that, I’d end up somewhere else, or seeing something. I’m babbling, forget it.

ROBERT SCHNEIDER: TASTING THE FORBIDDEN POP FRUIT

Originally published in Left of the Dial.

As Trouser Press posits, Apples in Stereo, the band led by Schneider, sounds “comfortable as figureheads of a genre that swirls Beatles / Pet Sounds distinctions into a ’70s Saturday morning cartoon confection.” Part and parcel of do-it-yourself punk traditions, he has become an elder of sorts for indie music revelers à la Jonathan Richman, in which playfulness is neither ironic nor stilted and forced. The band’s fuzzy aural soundscapes, genuine glee for pop rock, and generosity of spirit often set them apart in a crowd of high-minded hipsters.

I’m not a huge fan of Wallace Stevens. To me, though, Williams’ imagist tradition is a precursor to the Beats, so I love that, and I love his longer poems like “Desert Music,” “Paterson,” and others.

I really like his shorter stuff too. I just love the way he’s really unpretentious and his unstuffy tone. His imagery is real simple and stark, but at the same time he uses a lot of color words and stuff like that in an unusual way, so I think. . . . I don’t know what it is about him, but there’s a sweet . . . like you said, there’s a transcendent quality to his poetry. To me, it’s like Japanese poetry or Chinese poetry. It’s written in a style that is somewhat flat. It’s not very flat, but it’s somewhat flat. It’s not that flat, but he doesn’t give it a very flowery . . . I don’t know what the fuck I am talking about. I like his poetry because it’s not extremely flowery, but it’s very. . . . It’s got certain . . . I don’t know exactly how to describe it. But it’s that slap-in-the-face, Zen sort of. . . . You get to the end of the poem, and it’s like, whoa. I don’t know. I just love his poems.

There’s a big sense of music in his work. Sometimes his poems seem flexible, and sometimes they seem very inflexible, because of the way he breaks his line and uses his meter, but at the same time there’s a certain Whitmanesque quality to it because he uses a colloquial language, that really common language like, “I’ll kick yer eye.”

That’s what I like about him, exactly. Or even when he’s not going and using actual colloquial language, he’s not using academic language. He uses a very flat, speech-like language. He did that meter thing later on, when everything split into the three lines or whatever. Then it’s very strict. Hey, did you read that translation of the Duende Elegies where the guy translated in that style, in Williams’ kind of form of verse with the three lines? It’s just a really cool translation of that poem.

I just flipped through a book of W.C.W.’s short stories, but I didn’t buy it. Now I regret it and think I may try to find it again. I’m sure they have the same condensed feeling to them.

Yeah. Totally. That’s what I like about it. I hate T. S. Eliot. I mean I am not taking any stand and I don’t know shit about anything, I’ll let you know. I don’t in any way want to come off as a dilettante. I don’t like poems that just spill from page to page. To me, the ultimate poem is one word. I love stuff that is simple. It’s not that it’s concise. I don’t like it to be concise. I like ambiguity. I like the same thing with pop music—a short experience that takes a lot of time to unfold itself to you, like something that happens to you in life. The long experiences, waiting in line or something . . . well, I like the ones that carry the most meaning. I like the short experiences. In Japanese Buddhism, they call it satori. It’s that instantaneous kind of knowledge.

“A sudden glimpse into ordinary existence” is how Jack Kerouac used to describe it, if I remember correctly.

Yeah, totally. I like that, and I love Williams’ poetry because it has a lot of that. Wallace Stevens is almost the opposite of that, but I love his poetry, because I just love his words. Like James Joyce, sometimes you don’t know what the fuck you are reading about, but it’s just so beautifully worded. It’s the most beautiful use of language that it means so much. It’s like with Wallace Stevens he is trying to say something and often it’s a very heady concept trying to fit in there, but up and beyond that there’s this beautiful language he uses, I don’t know what, like the “foaming aqua leaves” or some shit. I just made that up, but he always describes things in a way that makes them seem radiant, bright, and colorful, and at the same time, it’s not really optimistic. I really like it. Williams’ stuff is kind of like that too. I like his work, too, because it has a faux naïve quality and is kind of sweet, and at the same time, it also seems very serious. I think it’s really cool.

You make pop music, and I mean that in the best sense of the word. I don’t mean to denigrate the form, but I think the idea is: What makes the Beatles’ “Love Me Do” as transcendent for a lot of people as listening to Chopin?

You know, it’s totally that quality like I said. It’s the quick experience that takes a long time after the fact to unfold. The pop songs come so quickly. The perfect pop song is not like “Stairway to Heaven,” where it’s this mini-epic, although there are good qualities to that too. To me, the perfect pop song. . . . The structure of the thing carries a lot of the meaning. The perfect pop song captures your attention and by the time you are really inside of it, it’s gone. It’s this fleeting experience. It’s almost bittersweet. Especially when you listen to the radio, though this stuff doesn’t happen anymore, but when I was a kid, you hear a great song on the radio and you don’t hear it again until the next time they play it on the radio and you don’t know what it is and maybe they didn’t say, and it’s like this—you may never hear it again. I still feel that way when I hear a great song on college radio, like there’s this band called Math and Science, and I heard this song by them on college radio a couple of months ago, and it took me a long time to track down their record, but the song was incredible. I just heard it once, and after that there was just this empty slot in my head where that song had been heard and I still had the feeling of how I felt, but I couldn’t remember the song at all.

Like what’s transcendent about a pop song is . . . well, there are a few qualities. The first one is the fact that a pop song, unlike Chopin . . . well, Chopin is more pop than a lot of composers. It’s more simple in the way that I would consider pop music. Like, um, I don’t know what the fuck I am saying. Sorry, by the way, I am a terrible person to interview. I have a hard time keeping focus and I don’t mind at all if you slap me on the wrist and say, “Robert, we are talking about this.” I’d really appreciate it; otherwise, I’ll hang up the phone feeling embarrassed, like, ah, fuck.

So your question was what makes the pop song transcendent? I would say that there are a few things about it. The first thing is the simplicity of the elements that make it up. Of course, when you are dealing with music there are only twelve tones total. There are only twelve-note octaves on the piano, including the black keys, so you have this sparse sort of elements and it’s like with science and math and stuff, the most beautiful set of interconnections. The most beautiful structure you can build is one that has the simplest independent components. It’s just like with a poem. You don’t want your poem to go on and on and on and go through all these different things, or maybe you do want it to do that, but to me, the poem that is most effective is the one that says much less. It states in words much less than what it really means. It states in words so little—Chinese poetry is like that. Especially with the characters and stuff, it doesn’t say much. It might just say that you are fishing and there’s something about wine, but it’s talking about your dead wife and talking about the flowers and the spring and the end of the spring. It’s talking about all this stuff, but it really just uses a couple simple pieces . . .

It’s very condensed.

Yes, it’s a very condensed experience. It’s wrapped up like a little present; you’ve got this simple presentation, but it unfolds into something that’s just as deep as a symphony, just not as complicated as a symphony. That’s what’s so great about “Love Me Do.” It’s got these elements. It’s got this interesting melody. Now “Love Me Do” is not the best example, maybe, because I’m sure that’s not the best Beatles song. It’s got the one element of a pop song that is different from an art song, which is that it’s not stuffy; it’s not about sitting down. It’s got this gypsy quality of people dancing around in a field or something, this wild kind of youthful quality that makes even older people feel young when they listen to it now. At the time, I’m sure it made older people feel alienated. But it’s like, well, on the one hand, there’s the pureness of youth and experience and rock ’n’ roll and stuff. It’s just not rock ’n’ roll. It’s jazz, folk music, and gypsy kind of music. In general, it’s people’s music. It’s the form. The form of pop music is a dance form. I mean, not now, but in general it has to do with people in a casual setting as opposed to people in a sort of formal setting. So that’s the one difference. Right away it kind of brings to mind this wild sort of setting. Even if you are just sitting in your living room, it sets up this really alive sort of situation just in the sort of format, the whatever you call it, the venue you would listen to it in.

When you think about pop music, or the songs you like, is it the songs you remember or is it the albums?

I know, I guess, I would say albums, but when I think about it, really it’s just a couple of songs on each album that really set up the whole album for you. Like I think about Pet Sounds, and when I think about Pet Sounds I think about “You Still Believe in Me.” That’s the song I love most from Pet Sounds. It’s just so beautiful. So I am thinking about Pet Sounds, but when I think about all the qualities I like about Pet Sounds, really it’s this one song I bring to mind, the little archetype or whatever pops into my head and it’s like “You Still Believe in Me” so I would like to say it’s the album, but when I really try and think about it honestly, on every album there’s really a song that pops up that kind of marks the whole album. It’s even like that with our album. When I look back over our albums, a whole album will be tainted by just one song. Not tainted, necessarily, although sometimes that’s the case, but you know when I look back over our albums, like our last album, I tried to let the album have no feel, so that every song was so different from the last song that any song could have come off of any number of albums. It was kind of the idea for the last album, The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone, the last Apples album . . . I didn’t mean to be obscure. My idea for that record was for it to have no feel throughout it. It wouldn’t feel like you were listening to an album, it would feel like you were listening to the radio or just a bunch of songs, but then when I think back on the album it has a feel, and when I really think about it, that feel is set up by one song or two songs.

One of the feelings you used to try for was to be “spiritual and at the same time down to earth. It’s soulful and tone-oriented.” Is that something you are still trying to do?

Yeah, totally. Basically, the new record is a lot different than our other records. It’s not totally different, but we’re going for a different sort of feel. Very quickly back to the pop song and what makes it transcendent. I think what makes it transcendent the most is using simple elements that are familiar, perhaps the same scale as a nursery rhyme or a lullaby. You are using a simple melody, totally simple chord progression, because you are not throwing too many chords in there and stuff, and then there’s also this naïveté, or youthful wildness, and things like that. The reason I am referring back to that is because on our new record we wanted to do something that was anti-sophisticated. You know, I had spent so much time producing other people’s records and our albums kind of pursuing Pet Sounds. Kind of pursuing this multilayered, textural sort of. . . . Well, I looked at it like painting in a lot of ways, and there’s a certain depth in the production that I have found attractive and it kind of hit me in a depressing sort of way sometime about a year or two ago, that even though I am doing this and I am somewhat accomplished at it, I like all these beautiful arrangements and large sections of horns and harmony and stuff, and I like this counterpoint, and everything moving against each other and there’s this tension.

There are all these composer kind of qualities that I like about production, but at the same time I didn’t feel that I was ever going to do something great, which I have a vain desire to do, but there’s no real reason to want to do something great, so it’s just vanity. You want to do something great because you feel like you can and if you can, maybe you should. I’ve always felt this desire to make something great, really great in the way that other records hit me as being great. We might have. I think we made a lot of great records, but if I really want to make something like Pet Sounds it occurred to me that that thing is not going to sound like Pet Sounds. Pet Sounds was so great because it was so different. These records that I love were so great because they were so different from everything else. I kind of felt that if I was always referencing these other works. . . . It’s just really hard to do something great once removed from greatness already. It’s just like that with literature. You see that all the time. It’s not that it comes off as bad. It’s great when people refer to other stuff a lot, it’s just that it’s slightly obscure, and it comes off as a little bit insincere. I’m not saying that our music does, it’s just that I am afraid. . . . I just wanted to do something that relied on our songs and relied on the way our band has always sounded.

We’ve always taken two approaches to a band. One is to do this little mini-symphonic movement within the recordings, and the other side has always been the sloppy-esque garage rock band, and we just play this way live. On our recordings we play this way, but there are so many other instruments and things like that. . . . Well, it’s like if you have an ink drawing and you paint it with watercolors or something like that. It’s like you get this wash that makes it look much more attractive in a sense and at the same time, there was something about the starkness of the ink drawing that in and of itself could have been seen as something perfect and like so basically. . . . Okay, back to the simple elements. The thing is the way I have always looked at production is that it’s a pop song; we’re not like a prog rock band or something and if we are going to try to do a counterpoint and if we are going to try to do a large arrangement of things, every individual element has to be very simple and sweet, just like the Beach Boys. Pet Sounds is really complex, but at the same time the individual parts were really simple. Bach is like that too, except there are a lot more notes per measure with Bach, but still the parts themselves sound like singsong lullaby-type things. So, within the context of doing pop songs, I try to make it sound more lush, well, it’s not lush because what we do is not exactly lush, but just try to make it sound more baroque.

You’ve said that you want the songs to be “wistful, and have a romantic quality to them.”

Yeah, exactly. People always kind of feel that our songs are very happy sounding, but really most of the songs I write are sad, kind of wistful songs that are. . . . They are the kind of songs that are seeking something, kind of like Pet Sounds. There’s this yearning feeling that I feel for the world, and a lot of people feel. It’s kind of like you are just looking out the window. . . . I don’t know, this yearning feeling. It’s like you are separate from things, or maybe you can’t hold on to them, or perhaps they go so fast and maybe they’re not coming. That was always something that was important for me to get across in music, and I feel that there is a gentle, re-assuring quality that I always try to put in the music, and at the same time there’s always been a little bit of a self-effacing quality or something like that. Basically, with the new record. . . .

Would you say it is more ambitious than your other records?

Well, I think it is. I don’t know. You may disagree. You listen to it on the surface and it’s like this fuzz rock. It’s a totally different genre than trying to make Pet Sounds, you know. At the same time, to me it’s easy to do big productions. I’ve produced a lot of records. It’s easy to do beautiful horn parts, and I love the stuff. It comes easily to me. I love it. I love beautiful things. I mean I love these movements and the harmonies, and I love putting on headphones and hearing all this different stuff dancing all over the place in the mix. I love different parts not stepping on each other’s toes. There’s a certain feeling, there’s this counterpoint that I am really into, and at the same time, with the new record I wanted to try to do something that wasn’t easy for me. I wanted to try to do this thing which I felt I hadn’t been successful with in the past. It’s not like we were. . . . What’s been hard for me is making records that actually sound like the Apples, like what we sound like as a band. On every record there are a handful of songs that are real rockers, and when I go back over them they never sound very rocking. Somehow they become more washed out sounding. Maybe it’s the horns or whatever, but they never come off sounding as ballistic as we actually perform. I mean we’re a sloppy, loud, frenzied band. We’re not like Belle and Sebastian, where we are going up and pulling off this pretty stuff live. We’ve always had two different ways of going about it. We record one way, and we play live the other way. And so, when the horns come in on the record, when it’s live you kick on the big muff and it’s just a blast. We always tried to be the loudest possible band we could, that anybody has ever heard. There’s a certain sense of . . . well, I think what I am trying to say is that, as a producer, the artifice, my love of beauty and my love of this interplay and sort of depth of sound or whatever, kind of covered up some of the aspects that are true to our band. Not that it’s not true. There’s something to be said for pursuing your vision. There’s something to be said for your bandmates and you trying together to make something beautiful and great and that is transcendent. That is what we have been trying to do. At the same time, there is something that transcends transcendence, it’s the uh, uh, I can think of the word in Latin, the vivaciousness, no, that’s not the word, it’s the . . .

Vivacity?

Yes, that’s the word. It’s like the moving alive sort of quality of the music that classical music often lacks and Pet Sounds lacks. Pet Sounds doesn’t rock, and no one is going to say that it does.

But when you were young growing up in Louisiana, you listened to stuff like Jethro Tull, XTC . . .

Well, I was totally into R.E.M. I was really into punk rock and psychedelia when I was kid. That was what I was into. I was into psychedelia. I love 1960s psychedelia, and I also really liked punk rock and garage rock type of stuff. When we started that band we wanted the band to sound like “Interstellar Overdrive,” that was it. That was the template for our band. So “Interstellar Overdrive” is so garage rock, and so incredibly trippy, it’s both extremes in one song, so to me that’s what we wanted to start our band with, and there’s a certain. . . . I’m not trying to knock our work. It’s hard for me to say this without sounding like, uh, I’m not happy with it. I am very happy with everything we’ve done. It was perfect for what it was, but at the same time it was dishonest in the sense that. . . . Well, as a producer I covered up the sort of blemished quality of our band, which is a large portion of it. And on this record, it occurred to me that there was something great to be had by us, that’s going to be had by uncovering us, by letting the songs stand out, by trying. . . . Well, I try not to double-track the vocals very much, stuff like that. Like keeping first takes. I don’t know exactly how to say it without sounding stupid.

When you are doing that for your band or other bands, do you ever get a flashback of being ten and going to Sun studios and learning about multitracking and how exactly to approach the process?

That did happen. That’s weird [pause]. Wait. At first, I thought you were just talking about it. I thought you were saying that hypothetically. I was like, wait a second, that exact thing happened. It’s really hard for me to keep interested in stuff unless it’s new. I don’t know what it is with me. I have this psychological block. As soon as something starts to become familiar to me, it’s not that I am bored with it, and it doesn’t go across to my relationships with people. It’s just that I am easily distracted, and I need to be easily distracted to be interested. Basically, have you heard all of our records?

Almost all of them.

Every record has essentially been a wholesale rejection of the previous record. Like with every record, I try really hard to do that which I was dissatisfied with on the last record, and in this case I felt that on the last record I really did well in a White Album sort of late 1960s, early 1970s rock ’n’ roll album kind of way, but the garage rock songs weren’t garage rock–sounding enough. I mean as a band we are incredibly loud and fuzzy and kind of raucous, and on the record it sounds like we comb our hair neatly and wear ties or something. I don’t know exactly, but on our last record I really wanted to get across how raw we are, and looking back on it, it’s a great record. I am not dissatisfied with it at all, but it does fail on being raw. In fact, it is very highly, very nicely produced, so I just realized on this record. Do you ever watch Seinfeld?

Yes.

There’s this episode where George does the opposite of everything he should do, and he ends up being really successful with it. Do you know what I am talking about?

Right.

He decides that every impulse he has is wrong, then he should do the opposite, and that would be right. So he goes and asks some girl out on a date, and he says he lives at home with parents and is unemployed and he ends up getting a date. At the end, he ends up getting a job with the Yankees because he tells off the guy who is hiring him or whatever. So I was trying to do that with this record, where basically I felt dissatisfied, and I was like, “Where are we going to go with this?” At the same time, I wanted to do something great. I am not saying that this record is great, I’m just saying that I want to do something great, and if I am going to expect that I can do something great, it’s not going to be by starting off on my hero’s shoulders. There’s that whole thing about Isaac Newton and Galileo about standing on the shoulders of giants, but that is not the way you make art. That is the way that you make progress and other things, but that is not the way you make art. You don’t make art by standing on people’s shoulders: you make art by jumping off.

But you also make art from a certain restlessness because you have said before that you are not particularly rooted in what is happening now, and you’re not rooted in the past because you are not into retro per se, but the idea that there is a certain restlessness and rootless that makes you go forward.

Yeah, you are totally right, exactly. Without that you start to. . . . You either settle into what you do and it becomes boring, or you become so rootless, like U2, that you are not making art anyway. You have to be able to balance your vision with a sense of honesty with yourself of being able to let yourself. . . . It’s like what they say about painters or artists, you have to learn how to draw before you can forget how to draw. It’s the same thing with jazz musicians, you have to learn how to play saxophone before you cannot play the saxophone, before you can squeal and know what you are doing. Actually, I don’t know what I am trying to say with that.

But with The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone, you said you wanted that record “to be non-psychedelic, non-Elephant 6, non-1960s, non-conceptual.” Is the new record a wholesale rejection of that notion too?

You know what, I feel like I didn’t accomplish any of those. I don’t feel like I followed that program up accurately. In a sense, I am still trying to reject all those things and at the same time I feel like we really pulled it off on this record. What I learned from the last record—it isn’t very Elephant 6, it isn’t entirely 1960s, but it does have the intonation of 1960s stuff, it does have horns and flutes, and how can you do that without sounding 1960s? That was the main palette of instruments in the 1960s, so just by using the stuff I love you’re calling to mind this other time. A lot of music is very wistful sounding, even the rockin’ songs or whatever, and I wanted to call that to my mind. It was a production choice, like you put it in there and it’s easy to automatically bring a certain picture or feeling into the mind, but with this record I wanted to give up those things that were easy for me. If we were going to make sounds and create feeling, I wanted to do it in a way that is totally original to this record and that wasn’t using the palette that had been used by others. Sure, there are a lot of rock bands, there are a lot of punk bands, and there are a lot of garage bands, and there are a lot of fuzz guitars out there, but still this is the palette where, being somewhat a master of it too, that we could experiment in the way that we do live and also we did on our earlier records and take it further than other people have. I don’t know if we did that on this record. I’m not saying we have. I think our new record is really great, just for me liking it. . . . I am very happy with it. I am not dissatisfied with it in any way. You know, like you asked earlier, on this record we were trying to be more ambitious; I mean the program was if we are going to do something great it cannot be in any way by copying other people or referencing other records that we think are great. How can you do that? How can you . . .

How can you not do that?

That’s true too. That’s the difficulty—how can you not do that? It’s really, really hard to avoid and at the same time it wasn’t a conscious thing, it was just that at times I would think, let’s put some tambourine in that sounds like this Zombies song, but the Zombies part of it discounted the whole idea. You know, like every time it came up that I wanted to do something. . . . At the same time when we started the album I made this sort of dictate that there would be no acoustic instruments on this record. This record was going to be all electronic and electric instruments except for the drums and tambourines and stuff.

Why choose to pull out acoustic guitars?

Because I felt like the acoustic instruments, and this is not to diss acoustic instruments, just so you understand, it’s just that you have to go by a certain notion.

Do you think you would be where you are today if it wasn’t for the Elephant 6 collective?

Um, I guess I would have to say yes. Our first album came out before we really got Elephant 6, well, we started Elephant 6 to put out the first Apples single, so basically Elephant 6 simultaneously started with Apples, but it didn’t really grow into a large movement until by the time our second album came out, and our first album was the one, up to now anyway. . . . Well, all of our records have sold better than the last one, but our first album did not sell significantly worse than our last album. So I feel like Elephant. . . . Well my friend Steve Keen, who is a painter, he painted most of our album art, he said once while talking about art and painting in general, he said that at least in the twentieth century it’s really hard for individual artists to make waves or anything, so most of the time a painter will make waves as part of a movement. He said he liked that about Elephant 6 because it was a movement. There aren’t that many movements in rock music. It’s like a fairly different thing.

It’s not like there haven’t been movements, there are plenty, like Flying Nun and K Records, Andy Warhol’s warehouse, I mean his Factory and stuff, that we have based Elephant 6 on, partially, but like he said, he felt that was noble about Elephant 6 and he liked that. I liked that explanation and thought it was nice. At the same time, though, a lot of times Elephant 6, I mean Elephant 6 as far as I understand right now is pretty much. . . . I mean I withdrew myself from it about two years ago or so, and it’s not that there’s any “fuck you” or anything, it just wasn’t. . . . I don’t really want to go into this, okay? I happened to touch on it, and I feel like I needed to, but basically, I think Elephant 6 did help us. In a way, Elephant 6 helped all the bands, because for a few years there was some Elephant 6 band coming out every month, if not a few, so there was a ton of press around, and every review would reference every band, or at least a handful of other bands, so there were all these names getting out there, each piggybacking on each other’s release. That was really good. It was good publicity. It was easy for the label to put out the various releases, because instead of having to create a buzz for your label you already have something rolling.

Especially in terms of publicity, is it easier to sell people something that they are already familiar with, rather than sell them something that is different?

You know, you are totally right about that. It is. In a way, I think the downfall of Elephant 6 is that people start to think that they know what it is about. They don’t need to listen to every record or every band. I think that in the end, to me, Elephant 6 did help a lot of bands, but I can’t say it helped our band get any bigger than it would have because we were one of the bigger-selling bands. So, I’m not saying that to brag. I am just saying realistically, I don’t know if it helped us a lot, and it could have hurt us, but it definitely helped us creatively. The amazing thing about Elephant 6 was that there was this competition for a while where everybody wanted to out-freak-out the next band.

The end product was a lot of this noodle-some sort of psychedelia, but there were also some great songs in there. There’s nothing bad about Elephant 6. It’s a wonderful thing as a movement, but I think it worked against bands in a way because if somebody else puts out a bad record, that’s going to count against your record too in the next review. If somebody else puts out a record better than yours about the same time, then their record is going to just end up as a footnote to their review. By always piling all these bands together, it didn’t give the bands a chance to show what they’re all about on their own. What’s the difference between Olivia Tremor Control and Apples in Stereo? I’m hip to Elephant 6. The bands are all really different bands. If they weren’t Elephant 6 bands, they possibly would have nothing in common besides some members, so I think in a way it took away from the individuality of a lot of bands, and I know for a fact that in the end that probably made everybody upset; if not upset, then something of a bittersweet thing for everybody because yes, there is all this press out about Elephant 6, but at the same time, we are different. I’m sure every writer in every single band felt like that. We’re different from the next band.

You just finished your fourth album, but what part of you is still that Louisiana pre-teenager listening to Krokus?

You know, right now it is all of me. I don’t care about flutes and harmony right now. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve spent the last sixteen years becoming great at arranging all this beautiful stuff that I love, but right now I can’t muster up. . . .Well, I don’t care about it. I haven’t listened to a 1960s record in two years. I don’t care about that sort of fancypants, flowery psychedelia right now. It’s not that I don’t love it, and it’s not like I don’t relate to it, it’s just that right now there’s just something. . . . I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s September 11th. It was like, how can you be so obliviously happy when there’s terrible shit going on? It’s a typical feeling, I’m not trying to be like, oh, I’m so deep or something. There are a lot of things that have been different. I’ve had a baby. There’s just a lot of stuff that is different and right now it’s hard for me to keep interested in what I was interested in before. I think maybe part of it is that I am really obsessed with R&B. Some of that spilled over, and quite a large chunk of our last record was influenced by that.

The whole thing about R&B is the soul and passion of it. It got discouraging to me, because as a producer and an arranger, I can arrange a song that sounds like “Use Me Up,” by Bill Withers, one of my favorite songs, but there’s this soul and passion I cannot get on there. I am not an R&B singer. I love this music so much and what became important to me was not even creating something that was blissful and sophisticated but creating something that is ecstatic. Ecstatic and wild, you know what I mean? And I felt that the answer was to try to make R&B songs, but that’s not what’s true to my upbringing or my musical roots, even though I love that. What R&B taught me is that what is true to being a rock ’n’ roll band is to be just a rock ’n’ roll band, so instead of trying to flower it up and dress it up, or paint over it with fancy colors, maybe it’s better to let the rust be its own color. I guess right now I’m at this point where all I care about is what I was like when I was fifteen. I don’t care about. . . . Right now I do not care about all the acid trips, I don’t care about the six-part harmony part that could have been on “Please” or whatever; it’s just like I want to use the simplest elements in the loudest possible way to make the shortest statement, then let that statement unfold. I always wanted to be like, you listen to this pop song and there’s all these layers going on, and it could take a thousand listenings, like reading Ulysses, it could take a thousand listenings to try to get the pop song. Good Vibrations to me is like Ulysses. You listen to it over and over and it takes you on this long trip in just a few minutes. In three minutes or something, it takes you on this whole trip, and it comes back to where it started. . . .

MICHAEL GIRA: THE SENTINEL SOUNDS OF THE SWANS AND ANGELS OF LIGHT

Portions originally published in Left of the Dial, no. 2.

There’s a somber poetry in Michael Gira that never seems quelled. His face looks like it is carved from the midsection of a ruined Greek statue, and with one look from his eagle eyes, I want to disappear into my bar stool. I can’t justify describing Swans music in these lines. It’s too disparate and unwieldy. When I was first married, we would turn the lights off and fall flat on the bed, letting the sounds of Lust for Life weave a spiderweb across the room in our 1886 building. The songs on the album were crippling and soft one moment, like an acoustic prayer whirring in the ear, then sonically unbearable the next, like an army had just pushed its tanks over your skull.

When describing Gira, the words “recalcitrant” and “standoffish” seem too mild, as silly as describing Ian Curtis from Joy Division as a candidate for Prozac studies. Perhaps it’s his zero tolerance for artsy fartsy lofty ideas, or the result of being on his own since age twelve—left with an alcoholic mother, living hand-to-mouth in Europe for a while with zero money and no friends, or being jailed for selling drugs in Israel at an age when most kids are failing geometry. When his songs later took hold in (post-Swans) Angels of Light, he evoked a carnival barker, snake conjurer, sallow-eyed healer, and vengeful cutthroat, all of them drifting towards one implacable core of desire and trouble, the twin engines of our lives.

You’ve asserted, “My mistake, always, has been to not be able to rein myself in, to learn when enough is enough. But I accept that flaw.” How have you learned to know when enough is enough? What kind of mistakes had to be made?

I STILL haven’t learned when enough is enough. I can never let go of something until I’ve strangled the last bit of blood out of it. I see that as a definite flaw. Oh well. . . .

Would you abide by Samuel Beckett’s idea to “fail again, fail better”?

Well, that sounds a bit lofty, but I guess so. I’ve only experienced a handful of moments in my life and work where I thought everything came together properly and made something bigger than the elements that comprised the structure of it.

In a Bob Bert interview you joked you had to put up Sheetrock for six years before making your first record, not to forget roofing, plumbing, working in a tool factory, parental alcoholism, dislocation, exile, jail, massive drug use, etc. It would be a cliché to say that you grew up fast. Yet, you are a totally different man now than in the vociferous early days of the Swans. What led you to the contentment, if we can call it that, of the last decade?

Well, yes, I was essentially on my own from the time I was twelve or so—I won’t go into this here—and that gave me a sense that since I’ve been able to survive, say, with zero money and no friends in a foreign country—that I could do anything. But that’s false, actually. Maybe I’ve learned there’s more to life than surviving the odds and would very much like the experience of joy, personal freedom, love, things like that. Still, I’m not saying I’ve reached that point! I still seem to manage to fuck up a good thing when it comes my way most of the time. If the idea didn’t repulse me so much, maybe I’d see a therapist. On the other hand, the idea of being “well adjusted” is somehow repugnant to me!

You used to read Genet, Celine, De Sade, Wilhelm Reich (The Mass Psychology of Fascism), and Jerzy Kozinski (Steps), noting, “I just wanted a methodical blunt language without metaphor. That’s how I wrote. The music just seemed to slow down and slow down; it seemed to become this pulse instead of this rocking thing.” Do those writers still imprint the music at all, or have others replaced them?

I return to those writers occasionally, but I’m a different person. The favorite book I’ve read in the last few years is Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. That and anything by James Ellroy and Russell Banks. I kinda doubt they have any influence on what I write, though.

Speaking of influences, you asserted, “I didn’t want it to sound like any fucking punk band in any way, although there was a certain energy in, say, the Germs that I really liked,” yet have also stated, “I got involved in the nefarious activities of punk rock, so that ruined my life for about fifteen years.” Are you suggesting that seeing bands like X and the Screamers and moving to New York to catch the tail end of the No Wave movement actually sidetracked you for fifteen years?

I was just saying that I regretted getting involved in music in any way. What a horrible career choice, especially for me. I’ve developed a few now, but for most of my life and career I’ve had absolutely no social skills, and to make music you have to work with other people, from beginning to end, in most situations. So, I would have been better off personally to have remained a visual artist or a writer, where I could do the whole thing in solitude. But I’m addicted to the rush of sound, even now, so that’s how it is.

Touring early on, whether playing with Sonic Youth across the Midwest or ending up broke in London opening for the Fall, seemed rather disastrous and brutal. Even today, when you play to small audiences in the Southeast or large ones in Austin, is touring a kind of necessary evil for the sake of promotion or something to be relished?

There’s nothing in life I love more than performing music when it all comes together, when you, as musicians, are just the vehicle, and something outside yourself is carrying you upwards. I suppose you’d say it’s a moment of self-actualization, sometimes for the performer and the audience mutually. But you can’t control it. In fact, if you try, you ruin it. I think I’ve come to the realization lately that I don’t really have much hand in writing the songs or producing the records, etc.—I’m just trying to uncover what’s already there.

After the series of 12-inches called Greed, Holy Money, Time Is Money, Bastard, I started incorporating other elements like early sampling, like the kick drum and the snare on Holy Money were a nail gun I got from work. [Things] slowly transmuted. It was just Jarboe and me working with simple means. A little piano, a little guitar, and samplers with strange sounds, and then we got ridiculous and got a string section for a few songs.

Changing directions is no easy task, so what paved the way—just an earnest desire to experiment with an acoustic guitar and samples, or something as far back as seeing Pink Floyd in 1969?

No, I’m just always happiest when I’m leaving.

After finishing Soundtracks for the Blind, you admitted, “Frankly, I’m having trouble finding a new voice.” Could you explain what led you to finding it and forging Angels of Light?

Desperation! And stubbornness. I just don’t give up. Another character flaw.

By and large you hate artsy fartsy concepts and irony and you “just try to make things simple and clear,” yet you are a fan of Bob Dylan, whose writing like Tarantula seems steeped in those things. Would you consider yourself more akin to the directness of people like Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, as well as early Kraftwerk?

No, Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson are just gods, in my opinion, and I’m just me, trying to make do with what I have. I try to remain true to myself, but that seems like an impossible task sometimes too. A few times I’ve been able to make something pure happen, but not often.

You enjoy soundtracks like Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre, Heart of Glass, Aguirre: Wrath of God, and even Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and have delved into it a little bit with Two Small Bodies and promoted your interest on the YGR website, but what makes it so appealing?

I think I enjoy the wistfulness, the “other world” aspect of good soundtrack music. I grew up listening to psychedelic records in the late 1960s, and the whole point was to lose yourself in the experience. Quasi-religious, in a sense, I suspect.

Even though you don’t profess any religious inclinations, you do understand the potency of people like TV evangelists and roadside tent revival preachers. Do you feel, even perhaps unconsciously, that there is an underlying notion of that within your personality?

Elvis was to me the same as Jimmy Swaggart, or Patti Smith the same as James Brown. They’re just perfectly tuned conduits for the massively powerful life-creating/destroying energy that exists inside us and around us, and they managed to find a form that it could inhabit and use as a voice. A very, very few times, I’ve been able to occupy that privileged position too, but not often, and I don’t feel any personal responsibility for it or even feel that I had much to do with it, except for maybe arranging the circumstance that made it possible to exist; then, since I’m there, it comes through me. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately—who writes my songs? As I said, I don’t think I do it. So, naturally, I just wrote a song about the subject, but again, I don’t think I wrote it. It’s a prayer, sort of, to the “entity” that writes the songs. It’s like a hymn. The chorus is “may freedom and love come through to you, through this song.” Corny, I guess, but it seems right.

“I don’t draw any parallels between live and the studio—they’re two different worlds.” Could you explain a bit more?

It’s just the difference between recording a band in the studio, and that’s what it is. Or recording a band, or anything in the studio, then looking at it as a place to begin. I lean towards the latter, having been weaned on everything from early Pink Floyd, to George Martin’s work with the Beatles, to Phil Spector, etc. I absolutely am not making a value judgment here. I’ve produced several albums by other artists where the former is the case, and I think that, for instance, Nick Drake’s Pink Moon is maybe a little more complete (though it’s hard to make a distinction, since all of his work is so beautiful) than his other records (Pink Moon is primarily just guitar and voice). I just lean towards making a special sonic world for each album I make. Again, probably a personal flaw.

“The most pleasurable moments in music-making, for me, are when I’ve first worked out a song, and I play it for myself. As soon as it transfers from that moment, it’s polluted.” Does that suggest that the recording process itself is a pale, twice-removed, tainted imitation of that moment too?

Maybe that’s why I try not to hang on to the nostalgia of the initial moment and use the material from that point onward to make something else happen. Sometimes it ends up in the same place anyway.

JARBOE: THE ARTFUL LADY AWAKES

Originally printed in Left of the Dial, 2004.

Jarboe was the seductive, confessional, and willowy other side of the Swans that balanced the guttural, bellowing voice of Michael Gira. Interviewing her after the collaborative album The Men Album was released, I felt she seemed to survey the myopic underbelly of the world, the sadness stretching in every direction, only to be outweighed by the brief bursts of tenderness, no more than the fleeting breath of men flickering in the heart, like the piano notes in the songs. With slightly muted dissonance, a taste for kaleidoscopic multicultural sounds, and a candid intimacy, the record carved out a feeling that listeners witnessed the deconstruction of a relationship with all the weight of empathy that seemed more immediate than her earlier, more avant-garde works.

What led you to work with Neurosis?

I have known Neurosis for years. We have always felt a sense of camaraderie and understanding of each other’s work. This collaboration has been years in the making in terms of the goal to make it happen.

How exactly does one convey solitude when working on a project full of people?

When I write words, I do so alone. We didn’t dialogue per se over the words or music. They came together from our own places. I think the resulting album sounds personal and intimate.

Your online, open-access web diary seems as honest as Anaïs Nin and Walt Whitman decoding not to fear candor and transparency. What led you to make daily thoughts available to the public?

I am regularly told that it is surprising how I am “down to earth.” Well, I have always believed that there is strength in vulnerability and strength in having nothing to hide. For example, I have talked about the fact that I have never known stage fright. I believe that stage fright comes from having something to hide. Through my open thoughts in “Artery,” as my online journal is called, I have realized from the resultant feedback that the more open and real I am to the people who have an interest in my work, the more they see themselves and find a connection. There is universality in human experience.

Also, even though I am conscious to remain open and vulnerable, that is not to say that I do not have an awareness to take things in stride (i.e., “thick skin”) at this point from years of being a public persona. You cannot be oversensitive and conduct a popularity contest if you go into the public arena. You may resonate with some people and not with others. Ultimately, I have learned from keeping “Artery” and being so open. It is at the core of what I do in my songs.

Anhedoniac, an album you now call “harrowing, harsh, and the most beautiful album I ever made,” was partly a response to paintings you saw in Atlanta that pushed you to use the “hideous fear and pain” you were feeling to make an album during a period when you painted your room black and lost twelve pounds. What was it like making the album with Neurosis—how was the process and context different?

Anhedoniac was a result of extreme loneliness and loss. It was a disease in full grip. A type of breakdown. Technically, the process of the Neurosis + Jarboe album was that I had a notebook of ideas in terms of words, and when I heard the initial music, certain words responded to the music and attached to it. They presented me with music in the form of ideas and rough drafts and then I set my voice and words to it and then they fleshed that out with more music to respond to the voice. Emotionally, the music guided me.

How do you identify with the work of Richard Kern, who shot you for the Anhedoniac album and has worked for Sonic Youth and nude magazines?

I worked with photographer Richard Kern and Kembra Pfahler as “scar and gash” makeup artist because I wanted to have the visual images for the album documented and presented by people from “the neighborhood” that gave birth to the Swans. It is where Michael and I lived (the East Village, New York City) for many years, and both Richard and Kembra are part of that original scene to which I am strongly connected, as is Swans. I respect both Richard and Kembra. And yes, both have been featured in “nude” magazines. One behind the camera. One in front of it. Richard Kern is also published by Taschen and Kembra Pfahler has shown at the American Fine Arts Gallery.

Do you feel there is always some essence of physical movement, gesture, and dance to all of your albums, even in the most quiet of moments, from the Swans and Sacrificial Cake to your new work?

Yes, I do. Outside of metaphor, as I love to literally dance and run and use my body to express myself, it is a good thing. At home, I may run as many as six miles a day and I have been known to put on a trance CD and dance around the house with no clothes on! This is when living alone. Is it a good idea?

Do you see concerts as a means to an end, a promotion of product, and a means to earn a living, or will you always see it as akin to performance art, cabaret, something that should retain the power of Karen Finley, rock ’n’ roll, and Marlene Dietrich?

Hah! I am most myself when I am performing, and it has been pointed out to me that indeed it is the time when I seem most actualized, alive, in the moment. So, I have to say the latter description is closest to my heart.

What draws you back to the song “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (Joy Division) as part of your repertoire—fan expectation or deep fondness for the song?

Both. I will always remember the time I sang it in a Swans concert in Manchester, England, to a large audience and they all sang along with me. Amazing. Like a huge choir of believers. Also, the lyrics hit home again and again. They describe my own experience with my relationships and when I sing that song, it is truth. Recently, a man told me that romantic love was merely a “fairy tale” and not for someone like him. I keep coming back to that assessment myself. “Love” has been an ideal impossible for me to sustain. That is not to say that, as a romantic, I don’t keep trying!

You are featured in Catamania, the women’s studies/cultural theory book by Creation. Have you looked at the book? How do you feel, knowing you are featured alongside Nina Simone and Kate Bush?

Yes, I have read the book. There is also an inside photo of me nude in my garden [laughs]. Seriously, Adele Olivia Gladwell did extensive research for this project and it is written from a “cultural theory” point of view, definitely. I think she chose vocalists from diverse backgrounds that have a specific vocabulary that is uniquely their own. To have been included in this study with Nina Simone is an honor, of course.

Your approach to life is cerebral (Zen Buddhism) as it is actively physical (lifting weights, kick-boxing, and mountain climbing). Is this balance and focus part of the reason you have become so incredibly productive these last few years? If not, what are the factors that have kept you pushing yourself?

Oh, YES. As far as an analysis of “Jarboe” is concerned, that is a damn good question. Challenge and pushing myself to the point of exhaustion (and beyond) is right at the crux of every decision I have probably made in my entire life. When I moved to New York to join Swans in the early 1980s, a close friend in Georgia described it by saying, “you NEED the challenge.” I can’t ascribe it to the study of Zen and athletic pursuit because it is how I have been since my earliest memory. It is more like something I have inherited, a family trait. Genetics and conditioning. I was pushed to be an achiever as a child, and the expectations were for me always to excel and make my mark somewhere. Being this way results in spurts of superhuman productivity, but it comes in fever washes and is not necessarily a carefully planned crucible.

Also, you are never satisfied with your output and your standards are so high and particular that you keep pushing and reaching and pushing and reaching again and again and again. An effort to attain the impossible? You don’t see it that way. You keep believing it is possible. You are not kind to yourself. You utilize “mind over matter” as your mantra. One of the dangers of this mentality is that predators (and in a woman’s case, these are usually men) come along, see your endurance, and mistake it for weakness, and move in for the kill.

Are you full of more fighting spirit now than ever?

Yeah, the “fighting spirit” is always there, but my grip on the reins is erratic. I get thrown down on my ass a lot. I should have been dead by now with my leap-before-you-look trajectory.

You’ve stayed in the Middle East, behind the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem in the Arab Quarter. Do you feel the whole conflict in that region is often misrepresented?

I feel it is horrific. I don’t think it is misrepresented.

Why did you choose to record in Israel?

I had never been to the Middle East, and yet I loved the music from that part of the world. I wanted to see Jerusalem and Bethlehem, Ramallah and Tel Aviv—and work with local musicians. I have no regrets about my six weeks in Israel. Jerusalem is an amazing place, and if it had actually been safe to live there, I would have returned for a much longer stay of at least a year.

As it was, car bombs and occupation by rifle-ready soldiers on rooftops, beatings and riots, and tear gas and tanks . . . were a daily occurrence. I didn’t escape the direct violence and found myself trying to flee for my life from the midst of a huge outbreak of fighting amongst Israeli and Palestinian men on one of my last nights in Jerusalem. The Israeli Army showed up with their tanks. Men were carried away on stretchers. Blood was everywhere.

You told an interviewer, who asked you to give advice to a young woman trying to get into the music business, to avoid “naysayers and persons who are all talk no action.” You also stressed the personal mantra “You are not your emotions.” What did you mean?

Naysayers and persons who are all talk and no action are prevalent in the music world. . . . Emotions are chemical and hormonal changes that are always in flux. You can observe them coming into you and watch them as they leave. You are not your happiness, sadness, or anger. They are mere shifts of chemical compositions. They are not you.

In your online journal, you quote Tenzin Palmo: “It’s not based on sentiment. It’s not based on feedback and how good it makes you feel. That is not real love at all.”

Real love is unconditional and expects nothing in return.

Do you feel that men are still unwilling to accept the power, knowledge, and intuition of women that have repeatedly proven themselves?

Some men, yes. This has been my experience, yes. The controlling. The power play . . . yes, yes, yes. The alpha dog syndrome. The competition. The resentment. The war.

Do you feel closer in spirit to designers like Jean Paul Gaultier (who made you a dress featuring swans, Indian maidens, skulls, and roses) or to musicians in a bar downtown right now?

A-HAH! I love it. Both are me, baby . . . both are me.

Could you illustrate your methods, like inviting elements of chaos and confusion for the sake of insight?

Step into the fire. Shake it up and get down. Y’know? Find what it is you can use to inform you. Don’t remain static or rely on what is tried and true. Leave your comfort zone.

You once said, “The only way to live with loss is to negate the existence of ‘reminders’ so that the emptiness and awareness of abandonment is not center stage. . . . You are ‘living in a graveyard.’ . . . You are not living at all. Rise from the dead.” Are you suggesting one should delete reminders and not have a living memory because one can’t heal and go forth?

If you are even remotely obsessive and analytical, then hell, yeah. For a time, yes. It’s exactly that—a graveyard. For a time, to move on and find closure with certain things in life, the best way to do it is remove tangible reminders of your field of vision. Say you lived with an artist for six years who dumped you and broke your heart? Take her paintings down from your wall and put them in storage for a while. Put that photograph of the two of you laughing together on a camping trip under lock and key into the attic trunk for a while. It works. I have gone to a different geographic locale to help me forget. To help me breathe and not be overcome with grief or panic. To help me get out of denial and let go.

You wrote, “No questions asked. No explanations accepted. No one leaves here alive” just hours after the 9/11 attacks. How did you respond initially to what happened?

My reaction was that a mother who had adopted me and taken me in had been wounded and was screaming out in pain. I also immediately thought of the repercussions and hate virus from those quick to judge that would wrongfully come towards all Muslims. I had gotten to know many people who are Muslims in Jerusalem and I knew that they would never support such violence.

When you look back at Swans, what are the things (memories, lessons, or attitudes) that you have carried into your career that most people would not easily recognize?

This is a topic for an interview all its own. The discipline honed. The “sanction” to see the “random” element and seize it. By working with Michael Gira in Swans and World of Skin, these are two of the most important tools within my work as a musician. I knew from the beginning that we were going to do intense and valuable work together. Michael also saw my strengths and potential, and it is through our work together that I was born and began to find my voice.

He told me, “You’re an American. Sing like an American,” when I first sang for him in 1984 in my then-trained jazz vocal intonation. When I first met him, I called Swans “a project,” but he corrected me and said, “I think we are a rock band.” I told him I liked Europe. He replied he liked Americans. This was all unexpected.

He was not “arty.” . . . I found him refreshing. He was down to earth and he had a strong work ethic. We clicked. We had the same ideas about perseverance and lack of compromise. Michael and I were destined to meet and do those performances and make those recordings. He was my mentor, my peer, my husband, and my soul mate. Michael has said we were like magnets, drawn and repelled at the same time. I say we were also a powerful blast of mega-dynamite. Who held the fuse and who held the flame? I’ll let that be the visualization for tonight.

RICHARD BUCKNER AND ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO

Originally printed in Thirsty Ear, 2000.

The wet, bone-chilling wind, a Houston anomaly, sweeps across the roof of Rudyards as Alejandro Escovedo and Richard Buckner—on tour together—stir languidly in almost matching worn brown jackets. With easy-going poise, they put up with camera flashes that white out the wire and dead potted plants crammed near their feet. The photographer keeps them pinned in two rickety chairs adjacent to a partially crumbled wall, a rather dubious spot that reveals the raw neon loam over the empty street below. “Do you think the interview went well?” Escovedo asks in his low and elusive voice, eyes serene as a rock ’n’ roll Buddha. This forty-eight-year-old legend’s style is still very much in the punk vein, and he is honest, uncompromising, and hopeful, with an air of inscrutable coolness. I begin rambling like a giddy, suburban boy at a baseball card convention, “It was really great.” Buckner looks amused, almost. Living up north has made him tougher. Tonight he’s a bit edgy, not to mention enigmatic, partly because he’s trying to suck down a whole bowl of salad between barking about music labels, answering my questions when it’s obvious he doesn’t like interviews, and looking on in horror as LeAnn Rimes duets with Merle Haggard on a TNT special.

Richard, critics have said that you write lyrics that confuse obscurity with meaning and are in part in love with your own alienation.

Buckner: I feel weird that he has figured out my little secret. Now it’s out in the open and people know what my real deal is. That’s too bad.

Escovedo: Rock critics don’t matter anyway. [Pause] Rock writers do. I used to really read a lot of reviews. But I hardly ever do anymore.

Lester Bangs, was he a writer or critic?

Escovedo: Writer.

Robert Christgau [of the Village Voice]?

Escovedo: Critic.

Buckner: Christgau? Fuck him. I hate Robert Christgau. I sent him a personal letter once.

Your songs remind me of miniature Raymond Carver stories. They are all about people who are kind of helpless, kind of confused, trying to find a space in which to live, and falling down as they try.

Buckner: That’s everybody, man. What else would the songs be about?

But they often feel like vignettes.

Buckner: All it comes down to is I get really stoned and I write, then I put it together, then get high again and try to mix the music down, that’s all it is. It’s about completely letting yourself go and putting out whatever it is. And for some reason, even if you don’t know what you’re writing, you feel better afterwards.

But the songs on Since are different than the other two records: they’re a little more fragmented.

Buckner: I agree with that.

I’ve heard that the reason that the songs feel that way, like they don’t have beginnings and don’t have ends, is because they were written while you lived in your truck.

Buckner: I like to pull stuff back and keep them like that. I’m kind of a rough writer too. I like songs that get to the point. One of the things I hate most is a song that is too long, I just wanna say, “Fucking stop it, man.” Not that I’m a pro–short song guy, but make them however long the point takes to get. Five minutes, two minutes, it doesn’t matter. But it’s true. I was in my truck for almost three years, touring nonstop, so it did have something to do with the process. Things like that do get inside and change the process.

Both of you always tour with different people, and thus present the music in unexpected ways. Why?

Escovedo: I like change. I tour eight months a year. That’s my life. And I always want to give people something different.

Buckner: I love touring in various forms and changing the arrangements based on that form.

Alejandro, you have been singing songs for a long time, since the 1970s.

Escovedo: Before Richard was born! [Laughs.]

How do you sit down and write? Do the songs still just come to you?

Escovedo: Yes. That’s just what I do. I don’t make myself do it. I’m a songwriter. It’s just as simple as that, I’m sorry.

You were an original San Francisco punk. When I look back at old Search and Destroy magazines, if there’s one person who dominates the photos, well, besides Chip and Tony from the Dils, it’s you. But you’ve never re-grouped the Nuns, never run across the country and played all-ages clubs. Has it ever been a question for you?

Escovedo: It’s never interested me at all. Wouldn’t even consider it.

But you guys made a lot of firsts, like playing with Roxy Music and the Sex Pistols.

Escovedo: Yeah, people tell us we were the first band of our kind to really play bigger, arena-type places.

Richard, your music has been dubbed “poet rock” by a writer for the Bay Insider. It’s not just simple jingle-jangle material, but it has a literate quality that is different from that of other writers. Do you agree with that?

Buckner: I don’t know. It’s weird to see your album from the other side, so it’s hard to comment on it because you don’t know what the other side is.

You can’t step back?

Buckner: All I know is that I record the song.

Alejandro, you once held a singer-songwriter workshop for young kids, and that really spoke to me beyond the performance. Was that a one-off event?

Escovedo: It was part of a program. But I do a lot because I have kids who go to the elementary school where I did it. I try to give as much as I can back to the community because I love the kids and I love the people. It’s a great neighborhood. Marcia Ball, Charlie Sexton, and a lot of other musicians live there.

It’s interesting that between the Zeros, the Plugz, the Offs, Weirdos, and other punk bands in late-1970s San Francisco there was a blend between the Anglo and Chicano rockers.

Escovedo: People are always amazed that there is this rock cross-cultural thing that happens, but in places like California, or even Austin, Chicanos play with white guys, who play with Asian guys. It seems pretty natural to me.

But because there is still so much weirdness and hostility between races, rock ’n’ roll seems a special place where people come together and get along.

Escovedo: But it’s always been like that—look at the whole roots of rock and blues. I really don’t get any of that shit from anybody inside music, but I do from people outside of it. I mean, we go through shit when we tour, like down in the South.

Buckner: Like last night in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Escovedo: Yeah, it was like a police state there. Personally I do have a sense of fear, and I don’t feel comfortable.

Does rock ’n’ roll keep you from understanding those kinds of people and shield you from the world? People on the outside may feel that what you are doing by playing together is something unique, but people like yourselves feel that it is perfectly normal.

Buckner: I don’t think it’s odd at all.

Escovedo: What Richard does and what I do are two very different things, but we share something in terms of the music. The places where the music comes from are completely different because my music does come from a more traditional rock place. I can do a Roxy Music song, a John Cale song, a Stooges song. Then I can do a song like “Broken Bottle” and a song about an arrhythmic castanets player, but Richard’s music is different. What I love about Richard is that his lyrics are really beautiful, and his voice is very rich and deep. And that is a place where you wanna go, and that’s where people rarely take you.

Is that where we can locate the power—in the voice? If we took away the guitar and everything else?

Escovedo: You’ll still have a great song. I know he could still entertain and capture us much better than a guy with a bunch of synthesizers, so that’s where the beauty of it is. I personally think that a song is in the voice.

Richard, what do you hear in Alejandro’s songs?

Buckner: The stories, and the range of the songs, especially since the live versions and recorded versions are so different. And they have amazing arrangements that are full of emotion.

Chapter 4

The Other Side of the Pond

British Voices

If America gave birth to modern rock ’n’ roll, then the British and New Zealanders stamped their unique impressions and craft upon it with everlasting panache. Some, like James Stevenson, were shaped by punk’s creeds and edginess, while Richard Thompson’s haunting and hallow catalog, which extends back to the folk rock of Fairport Convention, is a testament to resilience and vision. Uncompromising and uncanny, these artists reveal their conceptual DNA.

JAMES STEVENSON: CHELSEA, GEN X, AND GENE LOVES JEZEBEL

Previously published in my Punk and Indie Compendium app by BiblioBoard.

James Stevenson is the nimble, electrifying guitar sound that has backed iconic bands like Chelsea, Gen X, Kim Wilde, Gene Loves Jezebel, and the Alarm. Pleased by his modest and easygoing demeanor, I plumbed his past, looking for the roots weaving throughout his storied career.

Do you recall what led Chelsea to cover Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross”? And was Chelsea conscious of the climate leading to the race riots of 1981 and/or the racial difficulties facing Two Tone?

We covered “Many Rivers” basically because we all thought it was a great song. It was Gene’s idea—and I think the angst he gets across in the delivery of the vocal is really special. At the end of the day, the song is about pain and the difficulty we all face in moving forward through life. I think that’s a subject we all have in common, and it rears its head in every form of music. There was a big riot at the Notting Hill carnival in 1981. I remember being there with Mick Jones. It was a very mixed-race battle against the authorities, and I remember saying to Mick, “See, this is our battle too!” Brixton was different. That was more of a specific opposition to Maggie Thatcher’s policies rather than authority as a whole.

Wikipedia notes Gene might have starred in gay pornography before Chelsea, or according to Andy Czezowski, Gene, like Dee Dee Ramone, “was a rent boy and knew this club on Neal Street which was known as Shageramas then, but became the Roxy soon after.” Were you aware, early on, of Gene’s past?

Yeah, I was aware of Gene’s past, but a lot has been exaggerated and Gene is a private guy, so I don’t really want to go into it here. The situation with the Roxy is totally true. Gene was the guy that got the first gigs happening there. He gets little credit for that. I don’t know if the scene would have happened differently, but it certainly would have happened in a different venue.

I was delighted to see an Urgh: A Music War clip that I had forgotten about, featuring a Chelsea gig in L.A.

Actually I had already left the band when that was shot. The only members of the band from the first album lineup in that film are Gene and Chris Bashford. There were three other guys who were very short-lived in the band and didn’t even make the Evacuate record. I don’t know their names. One of them kind of had a haircut a bit like me so people sometimes think it’s me.

Tell me about your experience working with Tricky. I understand that the Boomtown Rats’ old bass player, Pete Briquette, was also featured. What do you think you brought to the music Tricky was shaping?

That was a strange experience. I like what Tricky did—trip-hop to me is not like rap, and Tricky, really he invented it. It was a very different way of working from what I was used to, which was laying down guitar parts for complete songs—he’d get me to play whatever I wanted all over a track and then sample and loop it here and there. I think he’s a very creative guy. I actually play on about six tracks on the album, though I think I’m only credited on one. One minute he’d want rock power chords, the next acoustic lead! Then he’d sample and loop maybe the three seconds he liked and spin it into the track where he thought it worked. Haven’t heard from him for a while, so I don’t know what he’s up to at the moment.

Supposedly, you walked in to play with Gen X, and ten days later the band made a stage at World’s End Studio [renamed the Congo Club] and invited press, industry, and fans to check out the new solid sound. Yet, soon, it was all over. Was it really due to “Dancing with Yourself” only hitting the Top 100 briefly, thus keeping the band in debt, or did the band not really gel?

When Billy announced he was leaving I felt the band was just starting to really gel. We’d been playing for about six months and Terry and Tony really did sound great together. I remember afterwards Tony saying to me, “Sorry, you’ve joined a sinking ship.” He felt Billy’s decision to leave was taken even before I joined and was something Bill Aucoin pressured him into. At the end of the day, it was obviously the right decision for Billy commercially.

Chelsea’s Alternative Hits was produced by onetime Who manager/producer Kit Lambert, while Kiss Me Deadly–era Idol was supposedly under the tutelage of ex-Kiss manager Bill Aucoin (it’s fair to mention that Aerosmith’s producer Sandy Pearlman recorded the Clash’s “Give ’Em Enough Rope”). Was there any difference working with these old rock industry types versus working with Miles Copeland (Step Forward)?

Actually Kit only produced “Urban Kids” and the flip side “No Flowers.” He was a real character—very much the Englishman. We recorded the song in a studio about thirty miles out of London where Miles Copeland had a deal—and Kit spent all of his advance on a supermarket trolley of booze for everyone. Rumor has it Gene met him while he was burgling his house! But I’ve never been able to confirm that. Apparently, someone was making a film about his life. Don’t know if it made the light of day.

You played with Kim Wilde for her mega-hit “Kids of America” period, in the time before Gene Loves Jezebel and after Gen X, right? Now, how do you look back at the period?

I played on a few tracks on the first and second albums, but I was very much a hired gun—by Mickie Most, not Kim. Though I loved Kim—she’s really one of the boys and drank me under the table more than once!—I missed playing live. All I did with Kim was TV shows, that’s why I put Hot Club together with Glen Matlock. I did all the guitar soloing at the end of “Water on Glass.” I remember being quite proud of it at the time.

Many people consider the work Gene Loves Jezebel did with Jimmy Iovine (“The Motion of Love” and “Suspicion”), and Peter Walsh [who previously handled Simple Minds, China Crisis, Peter Gabriel’s live LP] for House of Dolls as the seminal, watershed period.

Well, I wouldn’t describe our experience with Jimmy Iovine as positive. There’s a joke about him, which I actually told him, and he was not amused. He was basically producing more than one band at the time he was producing us—all at A+M in L.A.—so we weren’t getting his undivided attention, which, considering the fee he was getting, was disgraceful, I think. Then he vanished for two weeks because Lone Justice, who he managed, was supporting U2 in Italy.

We finished two tracks with him in six weeks! That’s one of the reasons GLJ will never recoup—it cost us about two hundred grand! Two tracks! I’m amazed our manager let us stay out there all that time. Pete Walsh is a close personal friend. I love working with him, and we’ve done a lot of stuff together. I just played on The Drift by Scott Walker, which he produced. We finished the whole of The House of Dolls with Pete in less time than we did those two tracks with Iovine. Pete also produced Heavenly Bodies, which I think is my favorite Gene Loves Jezebel album. I think one of the great things technology has enabled is bands not to have to rent studios at a grand a day—you can have a great-sounding studio in your own house now.

When asked to describe the roots of Gene Loves Jezebel’s approach, you said, “I’d say it didn’t have roots in anything tangible apart from British eccentricity.” Looking back, what does that mean? Does it go back to Oscar Wilde (actually Irish, so I am wrong there) or Ziggy Stardust?

It was the Aston twins thing. They had a unique chemistry together and also Jay alone. The androgyny was very genuine—born out of that creative working-class scenario that only seems to occur in the U.K.—think Bowie, Oscar Wilde as you say. I think it goes back further than rock ’n’ roll. That British dandyism. Although the Astons were both actually savagely heterosexual.

Lastly, it seems that the sense of punk renewal, from Chelsea and the Alarm albums to the recurring huge Blackpool festival and so on, is happening right as the Labour Party, or Blair at least, seemingly wanes and declines. Do you think people are reconnecting to the music simply for the sake of nostalgia, or do you think the messages from both bands critique current society and offer messages of hope and vigor?

There has always been music that challenges the status quo—right back to Robert Johnson and the original blues guys, and then Woody Guthrie, etc., and then rock ’n’ roll. Even Elvis, well in some ways especially Elvis, made people question their beliefs and changed opinion by causing a conflict between the young and what the older generation held as sacred. I think punk still does that, though we’re not all so young any more! I also think lots of punk bands are making great new records now—that’s why there are thousands of people at some of these punk festivals. Politicians always wane eventually.

I don’t see a connection directly between the downward spiral of New Labour and what’s happening today in punk rock, but I do feel most people in the U.K. are fed up with the way the country is going. Huge bonuses for city rich kids contrasted with the very real poverty we see on our streets, greed, the erosion of essential services, bureaucracy that is out of control. People in the U.K. anyway do seem to be giving out the message that they’ve had enough. Chelsea’s songs have always conveyed that, right up to tracks on the new album like “Sod the War” and “Living in the Urban U.K.” There will always be a bit of nostalgia, but I think the new album carries its own weight.

MIKE SCOTT: THE WATERBOYS

Originally published in Left of the Dial, 2002.

As a kind of vagabond spiritualist and musician, Mike Scott escaped from the punk ghetto after jump-starting his propulsive project the Waterboys. The band unwittingly begat the genre known as Big Music, which combined a fecund sense of Anglo poetry with a soundscape that resembled an amalgam of rambling Bob Dylan, hard-hitting rock ’n’ roll, swoony art pop, sea shanty serenades, and dark moody ambience. Scott, at the helm, was a paramour and enigma, reclusive and resilient, making music for the ages, not today’s superficial charts.

On A Rock in the Weary Land, you balance an epic, spiritual side with a confessional and intimate side. Is that how you see the record?

Well, I don’t think of it in those terms, though I like them.

Well, how do you think of it then?

Well, I just do what I do really, and make the record as good as I can.

But how do you know how good it is?

Um, whether it turns me on or not, and this one really does. I like this record a lot, and I am very proud of it.

Would it be wrong for people to draw a line from Dream Harder, to Still Burning, to the last solo record in order to trace the sound of the new record, or do you think there are elements of your earlier work on it too?

I don’t hear the early stuff on it. I think this record is a continuation of Bring ’Em All In. On that record, I began using distorted keyboards and a customized wa-wa pedal with a volume control–type knob that I move very slowly by hand or even by foot, so I get much more control. I started using those on Bring ’Em All In, and they reach their peak on this record.

And is the direction you will continue with?

No, I would think it will change on the next record.

For a few years you didn’t listen to much new music, then a few years ago you started listening to Mercury Rev and Radiohead and liked them because they showed you what was possible in rock music. So what exactly did they make possible?

Well, Radiohead’s OK Computer reminded me to work on the sound of every instrument. I love that about OK Computer—every single instrument is an opportunity to explore sonically, and I wanted to do that.

I know you recorded “A Rock in the Weary Land” several times in the studio, so did they also show you how to explore each song in an infinite number of ways?

No, it was more like I was recording certain songs three or four times just to get the right version, just to really nail it.

How do you know when you are satisfied, when the fourth take is better than the third?

No, I wasn’t talking in terms of takes, but different recordings months apart. I just kind of get an instinctive feeling that yes, this is it.

It’s been said that you use the studio time in a clever way, and use it to get good at playing the songs. I understand a lot of A Rock in the Weary Land was just played on piano and guitar in a room that you set aside for music. Is that a big difference from the previous times when you used the studio to explore the songs and now you do it at the house?

I do more at home, yes. I don’t remember that quote, but the record where we explored the music all the time in the studio, especially, was Fisherman’s Blues, and boy did we use it. We would record multiple arrangements of songs, and really took it to the limit on that one. Ever since, I’ve pulled back from the process. It takes a lot of money and a lot of energy working that way. So now I prefer to figure out the song before I even step into the studio. I think there’s a better discipline working that way.

Is the process more satisfying that way?

Any process is satisfying if it gets the results, and if I repeated the Fisherman’s Blues experience, I would have stopped getting results, so I had to do it differently.

How would you identify an American audience as being different than an Irish or British audience?

They’re less cynical. They’re out for a good time. And they really know their music. I’m not saying that audiences in Europe don’t, but there’s something about an American audience that is especially sophisticated. And inhibited as well. It’s that marvelous combination of inhibition and sophistication.

Ironically, a lot of American bands can’t wait to go to Europe because the audiences are supposedly so literate, sophisticated, and interested.

[Laughs.] Well, maybe it’s that old thing where the grass is always greener on the other man’s side.

Why did it take over ten years to go back and reimagine the Fisherman’s Blues material that you’ve been working on?

There were so many other records to make in the meantime. You know, I kept writing songs, I kept finding myself in new cities and new countries.

It just didn’t occur to you?

It was something in the back of my mind that I knew I would go back to when the time was right.

You once said, “The day that I stop being driven I should lay down and die, or go to Scotland and become a shepherd.” Is it being driven that makes you write the songs, or is it the songs that drive you?

It’s a piece of both. When I have written a cluster of new songs, a big drive comes into play, but at the same time I am a driven musician and performer. I don’t know how not to do it. I am very grateful for it, that spirit.

Is it ever difficult to balance the spiritual and artistic sides of your personality?

I don’t think of them as separate areas of life. When I went to live in the Findhorn Foundation community, which is a spiritual community in the north of Scotland, one of the first things I learned was I had to trust my intuition. I realized that I had been doing that in songwriting for decades without knowing that was its name.

You’ve done a musical backdrop for Yeat’s “The Stolen Child,” but when you are writing, do you see any literature creeping in as you make a record, or as you make a song?

I don’t think so, but I’m constantly reading books, and they are constantly inspiring me. One book that did inspire lyric writing was Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin, an American writer. That was an absolute motherfucker of a book. Definitely inspired me when I was writing the “Whole of the Moon,” along with Jimi Hendrix.

Was it the picture the writer drew in the mind, or the rhythm of the language that inspired you?

His writing is jeweled, and there is a teeming quality to it, an abundance in his writing. And that inspired me.

And does it still inspire you?

I haven’t read it for a number of years, but I am sure if I read it again I could get another few songs out of it actually.

What makes you happy in your life?

Um, writing a good song, being happy with my wife. Traveling, being with people in different parts of the world. Working with my band. All those things. A good cup of coffee.

Do you still consider yourself the “mainstream guy who goes with the flow”?

I think I was trying to make a point when I said that, which I didn’t articulate very well. I was trying to get across the point that society is distorted and accepts that order as the natural order of things, but I try in my life to work in harmony with the natural order of things, and I don’t always succeed, and I have my bad moments and my good moments. But I’m working on it constantly.

If you work towards that harmony in your work and your life, does that put you in touch with whomever you believe is a higher being?

Absolutely. I kind of feel that the universe has a mind, in fact I think the universe is a very loving, great being that we really can’t perceive in our minds. But all the time it is sending us signs. The American Indians knew this. They knew how to read the universe, how to read the physical world for its symbolism and its construction, and I’m trying to do that in my daily life. Intuition is a great helper.

How do you know whether or not to trust intuition?

Well, I get a feeling inside, in my body, in my gut.

You just know?

Like when you meet a person and get a good feeling or bad feeling, it’s that kind of thing.

Would this being relate to D. H. Lawrence’s idea of the “roaring God-stuff” that makes up the universe and the shimmering electricity of life?

I have no idea. Never read D. H. Lawrence. But I kind of have a sense of what the Native Americans call “the great mystery.” I subscribe to that.

Is this knowledge through books alone, or have you traveled to Indian reservations?

I have been to reservations, yeah, in Canada and Arizona, but mainly through reading.

What makes modern Western culture a wasteland, or, as you call it on the new record, the weary land?

Well, I have lived in the community and in western Ireland, which is to me the old world, the ancient world. And when I came back to live in London, after a break of twelve years, I could sense the violence and uneasiness in the air. And a focus on celebrity, drugs, glamour, and superficiality. It was like looking at my country through a distorted lens.

But is that really any different than the last fifty years? What brought about this sudden recognition?

I think I had been away and saw it with new eyes. To some degree, my new eyes allowed me to see what was already there, things I hadn’t seen clearly before, but I also think to some degree there was a difference. You know, I noticed it mostly in the comedians. New things had become acceptable. Cruelty had come into the comedy: it had become more acceptable for comedians to use cruelty in their work. In the same way in the 1980s Margaret Thatcher made it acceptable to be selfish. Things that had previously been unspoken were now acceptable. I think in rock music in the early 1990s drugs became more acceptable, to the extent that Oasis had a big picture of cocaine jars on one of their albums. That hadn’t been acceptable for a long time.

Did that go against your early punk sensibilities?

Well, punk music had its own drugs of choice too, usually speed. But it had never been flaunted quite as much.

How important is spontaneity or improvisation to the live show or the process of making a record?

It’s not really very important in the live set. I love to improvise. I like to take a left turn during the performance of the songs. Recording-wise, I can record many different ways. When we recorded Fisherman’s Blues, we were improvising all the time in the stereo, but when I did A Rock in the Weary Land it was much more focused and disciplined.

This album feels very gospel-like to me. Do you feel that way?

I would say yes. I listened to a lot of gospel music before I made it, and I feel at least one of its legs is rooted in gospel. I’ve loved gospel music for a long time, and when I lived in New York I used to go to gospel concerts.

Did you go out to the churches in Brooklyn?

Up in Harlem. I used to see the a cappella gospel groups, no-name gospel groups that I’m sure are still around.

Did it revitalize music for you?

Well, gospel is a great storehouse of not only songs but imagery that rings a chord with people, because most of us have grown up in a nominally Christian background, so we know this language that is in gospel music, and it speaks to us on an emotional and soul level. I don’t think that Christians have got a monopoly on it.

But there’s also the intense use of parallelism—repeated rhythmical phrasing.

Absolutely, that is fantastic.

You’ve said that videos are bad for music, but I know you have also made some. Do you still feel that way, or do you think that you can make videos with integrity and a kind of soul?

Well, that’s a good question. I think a few people can make videos with integrity.

Like who?

Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush.

And how do you go about making a video that has integrity?

I don’t take well to video. I write songs to create images in a person’s mind, and video gets in the way of that for me. It undoes what I do. It’s a medium that I don’t recognize. Do you see what I’m saying? I don’t respect it as a medium. And I don’t have any hunger to do it. I went for seven years without making a video, from the “Whole of the Moon” in 1985 to Dream Harder in 1993. For eight years, in fact, I didn’t make a single video. And when I signed to Geffen records for Dream Harder in 1992, I remember the conversation with David Geffen when I said I don’t want to have to make videos. I’ll do them if I want to try it. And he said okay, we want you to be comfortable, and he was cool about it.

And I did try—I made two videos when I was on Geffen, and neither of them was a success creatively for me. One of them got pulled. I tried it again with Bring ’Em All In, and made one or two, and then tried it again with Still Burning, and made another two videos, but it just doesn’t work for me. I’m not quite sure what I’m doing wrong. I think it’s because I don’t see videos as a valid extension of my music, so it’s not going to work for me. It’s just tough luck.

There’s something very fake and businesslike about videos, whereas the Waterboys always had a very street-level feel; for instance, you were still busking in the mid-1980s and doing surprise gigs. That essence is totally lost in the video format.

Yeah, I am aware that in the 1960s there were artists who weren’t necessarily good-looking but had voices and became big stars because of their records, like Joe Cocker, or Eric Burdon and the Animals. They would find it very hard in a video culture, where the way we look is so important. And I think that’s a downside to video. I don’t think that music needs video. I’ve bought myself a little video camera, and we’re filming everything we do as we tour around the world with the band, and I can see a Waterboys “on the road” video.

That seems like a different process, more honest and documentary?

Well, it’s creative for me. And I’m not saying that all the people who make videos are dishonest about it, but it just doesn’t work for me. I may try it again in the future.

If 70 percent of live shows happen simply because of pleasure, then what’s the other 30 percent of why you play live shows?

I want to support the record, and I want the band to be seen and heard.

For the first four records, you were the producer, and for the next four you were the co-producer, but now you are producing again. . . .

I was burned out after Fisherman’s Blues.

But are you happy to be back in control?

Oh my god, yes, it’s fantastic. After Fisherman’s Blues, I didn’t want that responsibility of production for a long time, so I tried co-producing, and that was okay. I like the records I made during that period. But I really think I make my best records when I’m producing, like now. I think they have a greater degree of Waterboy-ness, whatever that means.

Some people say that the Golders Green Hippodrome show in 1985 was the Waterboys at their best live.

Well, that was a radio session. We did four songs only for a BBC radio show.

Was it a peak for you or just another link in the chain?

Yeah, just another link in the chain for me. We did a version of “Don’t Bang the Drum” that day that is on the Secret Life of the Waterboys record that was definitely wonderful.

But it was done without drums.

It was with piano, trumpet, fiddle, and saxophone.

And the trumpet player had only played spontaneously in the studio, never live?

Something like that. No, I think he had played it live, but we had always played it with drums like it is on the This Is the Sea record, but on this day I wanted to do a totally different version. So I played it on the piano, and got the three boys, the fiddle, sax, and trumpet, to improvise as I played the song on piano. And to inspire them, I got the trumpet and sax players to play up high in the royal boxes, because the Hippodrome is a converted theater, while I was down on the floor playing piano. They were way up, suspended off the ground, and then we turned all the lights off, and then we recorded it.

With the lights off?

Yeah, and everybody was inspired, and I think we made this magical piece of music.

Bob Dylan told you he loved the song “Whole of the Moon?”

Well, I don’t know how much he liked it, but when I met him, yeah, he told me he enjoyed it.

You jammed with him a little bit?

In his studio.

Is there any new Dylan material that stands out to you?

Well, I enjoyed Time Out of Mind. I loved the production on that. I thought it was a great record. I get so lost in the lyrics. The lyrics are so bleak, yet the sound of the music around him is so beautiful, it’s like he’s surrounded by angels that you can’t see. A beautiful record.

Has there always been a streak of independence in you, regardless of what ensemble you put together for the Waterboys?

In the Waterboys, I’ve always been responsible for the direction of the band. And it wasn’t until I met Steve Wickham that it became more of a band. Even on This Is the Sea, which looks like a band record, I’m directing the whole thing. The guys are coming down to the studio to play, and I’m using them as I envisage it. It wasn’t until we made Fisherman’s Blues that we played live in the studio as a band, and people were inventing their own parts. On the early records, I’m directing everything. And it is only when I work with a musician like Steve and develop a great intuitive musical bond that I can let go of the music.

Do you feel that your music is redemptive, not just for you but for listeners too?

I would hope that my music, and the Waterboys’ music, contributes to the good. My intentions have always been to inspire. When I make a record, I want to inspire people; I want people to be inspired like I am when I hear a record.

What music are you listening to right now that puts shivers up your spine?

Well, someone has given me a copy of the new Spiritualized, and the third track just does something, it is so great, it’s really turning me on.

Can you put your finger on what it is?

No. It’s an absolutely brilliant track, absolutely brilliant, inspired track. I’ve been listening to a lot of Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald.

What era of Davis?

Sketches of Spain, Porgy and Bess, Miles Ahead, and the Gil Evans record.

Is there still something unique or special about your relationship to Ireland?

Yes, very much so. It’s still very strong.

Even after you’ve lived in New York?

Yes, part of my soul is in Ireland.

And will that continue to filter into the music?

Yeah, it’s somewhere under the consciousness of the music. It’s not in the forefront like it was on Fisherman’s Blues, but it’s always there.

Is America just as weary and grotesque as Europe?

Well, wherever I go in America, I find there is this sense of clarity and optimism. America is built on different foundations than the European countries. For me, coming from the Old World, I find my experiences in America as very fresh ones. People are really friendly in restaurants. It’s things like that.

RICHARD THOMPSON: THE WIT AND THE WISDOM

Originally published in Thirsty Ear, 2001.

Stepping into Richard Thompson’s tour bus, I was immediately overcome not by the cantankerous schlock of a traveling rock band, replete with beer-stained clothes, sunken eyes, and the lingering smell of Lysol, but instead by the cleanliness and serenity of a well-kept Cape Cod dayroom. A bowl of fresh fruit lay near an open window, and two members of his band watched TV quietly, barely nodding as I walked through the sleep quarters. “Is that good?” Richard said, pointing to a tiny table with a Game Boy on it. “We like our soccer game,” he said with a cheeky smile, his cropped flaxen hair slightly matted up. There wasn’t a trace of dust in the compartment, and the sweeping gray light was bracing. I was all set to fire off a steady volley of questions about his former wife and songwriting bandmate Linda Thompson and music, including his first successful band, the folk rock pioneers Fairport Convention, and his later avant-garde side projects with David Thomas and Fred Frith. He’s going to be a challenge of British proportions, I thought. Instead I came face to face with a man who was far more approachable, witty, and modest than his records chock-full of crisscrossing idioms (Celtic jig, folk musings, prog rock, Cajun zydeco, uptempo swing pop rockabilly); incisive and barbed lyrical wit; and exasperating, wigged-out, but crisp and melodic guitar playing would suggest. His calm, narrow, and concerned face led me away into history and politics, but that’s where his heart was at the moment.

You often try to inhabit the lives of other people and characters in your work.

That’s human nature, I suppose.

You witness their experiences but never really editorialize or moralize about them.

But there are songs, for instance, that I write in the first person where the people cut down themselves. They expose themselves. You put a character in an extreme situation, and the character will expose itself, you don’t have to do anything else. You don’t have to have a big sign saying the moral of the story. On the other hand, there are folk songs where the last verse is the moral of the story. And I love those songs too.

Are the Scottish ballads, with their direct, terse approach and economical sense of images, some of the finest forms of songwriting for you?

They’re handed down through generations of singers. The bad verses and weaknesses get filtered out.

They are distilled?

It’s a very distilled process, and in many cases [the songs] end up stronger than any one writer could have come up with. Sometimes these are songs that at some point had an intelligent hand in them.

An invisible one?

Sometimes they started out as printed broadsides and were sold as songs celebrating naval victories or a famous murder and were written by a hack, although sometimes a good hack, a good whore. The songs are sung by all classes, people in the upper class sitting around a piano singing about something and the people in the pubs would be singing it and the farm workers singing it, and it would get transformed over fifty or a hundred years.

The songs, in some cases, become unrecognizable. Sometimes a school teacher or a parson would get ahold of what appears to be a folk song and say, “Well, I could turn it up a little.” But in a good way, say, with weak verses. They may know a little something about poetry, and tweak it a bit. Skillful, intelligent, educated poets like Burns and Walter Scott would take folk songs and rewrite them.

Even T. S. Eliot would mix the highs and lows of culture by integrating workingmen’s songs into his rather erudite, lofty, and conceptual pieces.

The end process is that there’s some really good stuff in those songs.

Does it ever make you shudder to think that you’re just a link in the growth of the song, that’s there’s a whole burden of history behind the songs?

No, it’s a really good feeling. It may be frightening to some, but I’m not scared [laughs]. It’s nice to feel part of a tradition; it’s nice to know what a tradition is, to know where you come from and what the music of where you come from is. That is something you can build on—as they say, those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. It’s great to have that behind you. You feel part of a long process. And it’s easy to go forward from there.

Some critics argue that Bob Dylan was a great rock ’n’ roller, a great traditional folk artist, but never quite merged the two together in a way that appealed to a lot of fans. On the other hand, you seem perfectly adept at bridging the two forms.

I disagree with that Dylan part. He was very influenced by Scottish ballads, and he knows that stuff. He always knew that stuff. “It’s All Over, Baby Blue” is a rewrite of a traditional ballad about Mary Queen of Scots that he contemporized, which I very much like the idea of.

Speaking of roots, how did you get back to the suburbs of London? How did you decide on the material for Mock Tudor? Were the songs crafted over a period of time, then finally brought into the light of day, or were they written in a burst?

I collect piles of songs for different projects. I put songs in piles and grab them, say, for a particular thing, like this one will be great for my album about the lost city of Atlantis [laughs]. Here’s one on the Nicaraguan trade union movement to go with my other fourteen songs on the subject.

You could save those for Billy Bragg.

Yeah, Billy. I had a small part, maybe two or three songs about suburban London and growing up in it, just as a project to do sometime. Then I said, well, now’s the time, I’ll see how easy or hard it is to write twelve new songs.

Was it easy as the songs grew and gained momentum?

It surprised me because there was obviously a lot of stuff there that I could think about and develop. So it was a quick process, though I wouldn’t say easy.

When Americans think back on 1950s England, I think they have images culled from things like Look Back in Anger and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.

It was all black and white.

But was it really all that?

Yes, it was bleak and black and white in the fifties, certainly. It was before teenagers had enough wealth to express their own culture. You had the Elvis, Buddy Holly, James Dean stuff that was imported, and we had poetry, and a sense of youth culture, but there wasn’t the wealth or influence to express it yet. In the sixties, it really blossomed, with the Beatles, the fashion thing and swinging London. There was a real youth voice at that point.

In the year 2000 is London a bustling youth center again?

Yeah, it’s bustling. It’s a very exciting city, a real focus, certainly for young people from all over Europe.

Different from the Thatcher years?

It was starting then. The music and fashion scene are very centered on London. It seems to have shifted from New York City, which is a sign of some sort. New York is an art center, but not particularly a fashion center, though I’m sure New Yorkers would disagree.

J. G. Ballard, a very influential sci-fi writer who has spent almost his entire life in the London suburbs writing about the certain psychology of the place, said that in the fifties people spoke of isms, of politics and despair, but by the sixties the Beatles washed all of that away.

It’s absolutely true. As Philip Larkin said, sex began in 1963. Sex didn’t exist before that. I’m not sure if it was tied in with some economic growth; I think it was. So people suddenly had some spending money, but at last people had the opportunity to express themselves through spending. There was a sense of culture and the art schools fostered the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds.

While you were living in the suburbs, what was your feeling about them?

The first area I lived in is called Highgate. We lived on the line between the rough and smooth parts of town. It was fun. The suburbs are fine if you’ve got friends right down the road, so that was great. Later, I found it frustrating when we moved further out, because at that point I was a teenager and it was a long bus ride to get anywhere, to find any friends.

Did you have a sense of dislocation?

Absolutely. I was at least seven miles out of town, at least seven miles. If you’re on foot, if you’re relying on the London bus service of the time, it was very frustrating; you ride the bus a long time to get anywhere. That just means you appreciate entertainment when you find it.

What do you mean when you say country basically goes back to Anglo roots?

Well, Tennessee was settled by a lot of Scots and Irish.

The roots of bluegrass.

Which is very Scottish. When some people went around and collected ballads in Appalachia years back, they found about five hundred that were forgotten in England. People were very isolated in the middle of that part of the country, and people really preserved things that in a more industrialized England got swept away. There were young people speaking in accents that came from a county back in Britain. The pronunciation of the words was straight out of southeast Scotland. The way people did weddings was exactly like East Anglia; in some cases it was better preserved than in England, which had changed a lot.

It seems like a natural progression to release Mock Tudor after Industry, a rather misunderstood album.

They’re both about Britain at different eras. I’ve always loved industrial Britain, however ugly.

It sounds like maybe a love and hate relationship, partially like William Blake’s “London,” with its blackened cathedrals.

Yes, and his “dark and satanic mills.” I love the industrial hardware, the steam engines and incredible factories, and the brilliance of human invention. It’s a very crude process. Every five to twenty years you get these improvements, a guy comes along and says, “Hey, I know how I can improve this spinning jenny; I can improve it if you just put two more holes there.” Another guy comes along and says, “There’s a better way of doing this, let’s just modify this machine.”

It brings out what’s best and worst about humanity?

Yes, but you can’t stop it. Technology has only become unfashionable since about 1950. Before that, they wanted to build as many dams and nuclear bombs as possible. It was all great.

Is there a total sense of idealism in that, a kind of hope that society is perfectible, that we can build that castle in the sky?

Since Newton and Descartes, since the mechanical view of the universe, science has been the thing that would lead mankind and save us all. It would eradicate poverty and would eradicate hunger, which are all fine ideals. This was the Protestant view, but not always the Catholic view. If Britain would have remained Catholic, the Industrial Revolution might have happened four hundred years later. Industry is a blessing and a curse. So we love the landscape of industrial Britain, because we grew up in it, we got used to the factories. There’s a real gray beauty to it. We got used to the grayness and bleakness of it all.

It speaks to you?

It moves your soul somehow. There’s the story of the people. Despite the hardships of some of those jobs, like steel working and coal mining, however tough it was, they were wonderful people and built incredible communities.

Like D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, which is set in a Welsh mining community and is full of a sense of hardship and pride.

An incredible sense of pride. There was a great sense of personal and community pride that you just don’t have anymore. It’s sad to see the skills go. Someone learned these tough jobs, but they learned a skill, how to do it, and then the industry closed down and they’re left without a job. But they’re only trained for one thing.

Were the Thatcher years, perhaps epitomized by your song “Mother Knows Best,” the end-all for those communities?

When Mrs. Thatcher didn’t like something, she just got rid of it.

Point blank?

Yeah. She didn’t like the Greater London Council, so she got rid of it.

Chopped trouble off at the head?

She didn’t like the unions, so she got rid of them, like the Miner’s Union.

Like Reagan and the airline pilots?

That’s right. Her way of dealing with strikes and opposition from the coal miners was just to get rid of the coal mines. At that point they shut down a lot of mines. It was for political reasons, not for economic ones.

They could have been solvent?

They were solvent. Many of them were running at a profit. It was just a political gesture, just a whim, a case of Thatcher being a Chinese Mandarin.

A lot of your songs deal with being the underdog or people struggling, like “Genesis Hall.” I’ve seen artists like Billy Bragg not exactly be apologists for Tony Blair but suggest he is a lesser of two evils. For instance, at least he does stand for education, or some kind of resolution in Northern Ireland.

He stands for compromise in Northern Ireland, he’s an appeaser, and he will sell the Protestants in Northern Ireland down the river and do a deal with the IRA, which I think he’s already done, actually, and the IRA will have won. Whether or not that’s a good or bad thing depends on your point of view. But he’ll do it. I find him slightly sneaky. You know, sometimes as you get on in life you judge people against people you went to school with.

He’s the bully; he’s the clown.

Exactly [laughs]. You think Tony is in your gang, one of the naughty boys, that smoking-behind-the-back shit. But suddenly he turns around and he’s the head boy. Then you say, “I thought he was one of us, one of the dropouts.” And he says, “Sorry lads, I had to get on with my life and someone had to do it.” He strikes me in that way. I don’t quite trust him. When he first came in, I felt he was a breath of fresh air, but I think that however radical a politician you are, at some point you become compromised by the system.

Are there any subjects or songs that you have wanted to write but haven’t gotten to yet?

I love the idea that you should be able to sit down and write a song about absolutely anything, such as writing a song about this interview, that we should just pick up the guitar and do it.

A beatnik thing, like a writer should stop just to see the picture better.

That’s the same kind of writing that just about lends itself to anything. It’s the story of Elgar, who comes home and has been talking all night to his friend about Beethoven and tells someone about what a wonderful time he had. And that person says, “Well, you always say you can write about anything—write a piece of music about that.” He says, okay, that’s a challenge, and writes the first piece of the Enigma Variations based on the strength of that meeting.

So you believe in spontaneous compositions?

Like a good haiku poet, you should sit down and take any situation and find the meaning behind the action, the people, and the objects, and the time and the place. That should be the aim.

DAVID GEDGE: CINERAMA AND WEDDING PRESENT

Indebted to modern music’s unruly early 1970s tendencies (think Velvet Underground), along with the tight-fisted pop that shook Britain in both the mod and punk eras, with a dapple of folk sensibilities and off-the-cuff blue-collar poetry, Gedge is the wise obscure rocker that critics and a hardcore fan base adore. Seminal and musically succinct, Gedge is a straight-talker that spent an hour in the van with me during the Cinerama era, when he was balancing his past with the future as modern music, with its emergent technologies, was quickly shifting underfoot.

You’ve said, “I’ve got this problem with old songs: once we’ve played a song five thousand times, I feel that I can go through the motions, whereas I am still genuinely excited by new songs,” yet you play six Wedding Present songs in the Cinerama set. Why?

Five. I think what happened was that, well, I still agree with that, but then the last time we played those songs was 1996. I think it’s just time. It’s five years later. Well, actually there’s a label in Britain called Camden, which re-released Bizarro and Seamonsters, and I was involved with the mastering and all that, obviously. I’ve not played those albums in four or five years, anyway, and I thought, actually, I quite like a lot of these songs and certainly I have lost that kind of “can’t be bothered again, go through the motions,” and it is genuinely exciting, almost like doing new songs because you haven’t done them in five years. And also, it’s a different group, so it does feel a bit different. I think we’re actually playing them better than the Wedding Present.

How so?

I think Simon, the drummer, and Terry, the bass player, are really good musicians. The Wedding Present was okay, but I think we do play them a bit tighter than Wedding Present did.

Why go back and master something that was good to begin with, because you’ve said, “Steve Albini is just the best engineer I’ve ever worked with at capturing the sound of drums, electric bass, guitar, and there’s no-one that I’ve worked with who can have that clarity, that power, that depth.”

I still stand by that. Well, remastering can mean everything from going back and enhancing what you’ve already recorded to basically going into the studio and making sure. . . . I mean, when I remastered those albums all we did was go back to the original tapes and listen to them, and the remastering engineer said, “To be honest, they sound fine to me.” I said, “If it sounds alright to him, it sounds alright to me.” All we actually did was make sure, for instance . . . it has new tracks on it, so you got to basically create a new master for which the CDs are duplicated. It’s just a matter of making sure the gaps between them are all right. Sometimes, for instance, singles will be louder than album tracks, or vice versa, so you have to equalize them all. So, remastering in that case was a matter of sequencing, really. In fact, I didn’t need to be there, but I know on the one occasion that I am not there, somebody will mix up the tracks, like this is “Crushed,” but it is not. It’s just a matter of course, but I was quite pleased with it because those albums were made ten years ago, so now they’ve only gotten better. I thought, someone will say, “Maybe we could add a bit of this or that and make it sound bigger or better.” But I didn’t think it needed that. It was quite nice for the bloke to say, “Actually, it sounds great to me. Let’s not change it.” I think those records have withstood the test of time.

Would you say the Wedding Present records you were most pleased with were the ones done with Steve Albini, or Watusi, the record that really gained you attention in America but was recorded by Steve Fisk?

Uh, no. It depends on what mood I am in, honestly. I think the Albini records sound a lot different than the Steve Fisk records, and it’s hard to say which are better, and what’s good and what’s bad. Watusi was always meant to be more of a pop album, and we wanted to get away. . . . Well, it’s quite easy when you are in a rock band to kind of stick distortion pedals on in the chorus because it makes it sound bigger and more exciting and everyone goes, “Whoa.” We just thought, okay, we’ve done that, now let’s try something different. Let’s try to achieve some dynamics within the actual writing, and that’s what we set out with when doing Watusi. I think it’s a different kind of record, really, and I can’t really compare that to the Albini stuff, in the same way I can’t compare the Albini stuff to the stuff I did before him. But the Albini records sound really good.

When you played the Jonathon Ross show on the BBC, he said he liked the fact you retain your northern accent [Gedge is from Leeds], whereas many pop stars cover them up in what you called “American droll.” Did you think that punk explosion in 1976 put an end to the cover-up done by everyone from the early Beatles, the Who, and Rolling Stones to Tom Jones?

I think those bands were more influenced by American music, weren’t they? The kind of R&B stuff of that time? I think the stuff from the 1960s, like Nick Drake, well, he’s English isn’t he? I just think it’s a bit pretentious. Obviously, we are not American. But having said that, I have sung in French, Spanish, and German as well. I’m not displeased with my accent, so I think it’s a bit weird to suddenly. . . . Well, I’ll say it’s very kind of cabaret, you know, like British singers . . . like Tina Turner are big stars, so they sing in that kind of fake American accent. It just sounds horrendous, really.

Two of the singles were in French, right?

Well, we did a Spanish 7”, then French, and then we just did another one.

You learned French in school, but on the Spanish one you were helped by a non-native Spanish-speaking American . . .

And it was wrong [laughs].

I can understand the French one, but why do a German and Spanish one? Was it just a market opportunity, or something from the heart?

The Spanish one was because when we recorded it the. . . . Well, why did we? Because we re-recorded “Hard, Fast and Beautiful,” which is a track on the first album, and we did it a bit differently, and I just thought, “Is there a way we could make it even a bit more different so it’s just like re-doing the same song?” And one of the engineers who works for Albini just happened to mention that his girlfriend spoke Spanish, so I thought, let’s do it in Spanish, and she translated the lyrics. Then for the other side of the record I got a real Spanish person to do it. I think she made a few mistakes, apparently. But it was purely that. It was the right place at the right time. For the German one, we just recorded a 7” single in Atlanta a few days ago. The studio belonged to Man or Astroman? and the a-side is a Cinerama original song, and we just thought we’d do a cover on the b-side. Simon lives in Germany now, and he just got some friends in a band called Klee and we just had a go at one of those, really.

Though you hate 1980s synth music, early on in Cinerama you tried to use more sampling and programming. Why?

I just felt that it was something that I’d like to know about. I generally did think it would be interesting to try it, and if you remember, I’ve been in a band since I was in school and it has always been the classic rock ’n’ roll line-up: guitars, bass, and drums. I just felt a little bit jaded, really. I felt this was something else I could do. It was just a bit different. There seems to be a lot of people who are getting a lot out of samplers and sequencers. I think that the sampler is one of the best things ever invented for music, and even now I use it even though it’s as a band. I think I use it as more of a writing tool now. Also, I’ve always been interested in film music and that kind of orchestral arrangement, but I can’t score music and I can’t write it. I can’t arrange that kind of music, so it was only with the advent of sampling technology and computers and sequencing software that I could actually do that.

Did it make you appreciate the genius of people like Morricone and John Barry?

God, yeah. Definitely.

They were able to do it all without such equipment?

I don’t think the equipment has anything to do with it really because they were trained to do it at music college. I think that is the same as me doing it on the computer, so the genius of John Barry is in the songwriting. It’s breathtaking, really. It’s something you always know is there because the Bond theme sounds really exciting. You think, yeah, these are great sounds, and your heart’s beating faster because of the way it’s building. Then when you start thinking about the soundtrack albums and you listen to them more carefully, like we covered “Diamonds Are Forever,” the chords are so clever and dramatic. Yeah, then Morricone as well. Those kind of cinematic soundscapes are just fantastic. It’s changed my life in a way, though it sounds a bit pretentious to say things like that.

But you never really listened to the music until fairly recently?

No. I think with pop music, in every record I hear I start to analyze it and realize that bass is a bit quiet, but with that stuff, I just thought, yeah, those James Bond themes, they are brilliant, aren’t they, and not think why. Suddenly, I sat down and spent a couple years thinking about why they were. I realized it’s the way they are written and the way they are arranged. It’s just certain instruments. It’s certain instruments he used, which I think are really exciting. I don’t know what the instruments are, and I don’t know how to write for those. When I first started doing it, I didn’t have a clue. I had my little computer with my keyboard, and I was writing these parts for trumpet players and strings and stuff, and you play it on the keyboard, and the computer prints out the score, and then they go play it, and they’d say, “I can’t play this, because my violin doesn’t go that low,” and “The trumpet doesn’t make that note. I need three hands to do that.”

But is it dangerous territory for a rock ’n’ roller? You can tell that the Clash listened to a lot of soundtracks like Apocalypse Now when recording the b-side of Combat Rock, and 999’s Concrete is loaded with sonic references to spaghetti westerns, and while each of those records were popular in America, critics panned them.

I think it’s very dangerous. I think it has to be good, and hopefully mine are. I think a lot of bands think, okay, we’ve got a rock song, how can we make it better? They get an average rock song, and they think they can add a few strings and make it posh and epic and make it better. I’ve never liked that, really. I’ve tried to go back and learn how those kinds of dramatic orchestrations are constructed and then write pop music from that, really. I think I have done okay.

Would you say it goes back to the Twin Peaks theme covered by Wedding Present?

Certainly. Yeah. As a simple answer, I suppose. I mean it’s popped up a few times in the history of the Wedding Present. I’ve tried to push those things through, and the Hit Parade series was a good opportunity for me because we had twelve covers that year, and everybody was choosing them. I would say “Twins Peaks” and the “Theme from Shaft,” which wasn’t quite as successful.

They were suggesting Neil Young . . .

Go-betweens.

“Pleasant Valley Sunday”?

Actually, that was mine. That’s the reason I started Cinerama. It wasn’t fair. It would be impossible for me to simply reinvent the Wedding Present as a kind of vehicle for my experimentation with film music.

You stopped trying to replicate the album sound because of the difficulties accommodating and even hearing string players and stripped it down basically to a Wedding Present plus keyboard. Is that like giving the songs two different lives?

When I started it, I thought we could re-create the albums on stage. It just didn’t work. We’re not big enough, really. On the stages we play, like the one tonight, we just physically cannot get anybody else on the stage anyway. So then I thought, “Let’s do it with keyboards.” We had two keyboard players and really great samples and really great equipment, but it still didn’t sound right. It sounded like 1980s synth music, even though they weren’t synthesizers but real strings. I just think that someone playing the keyboards is never going to sound like someone bowing a cello, so we actually phased it out and have given up on it, really. Now, yeah, it’s like two bands almost, like a studio version and a touring version. We’ve re-arranged the songs specifically for this tour so that we can play stuff on the guitars instead of keyboards and orchestration.

You’ve said that in the past the New Music Express had an editorial policy in which they didn’t like any of the Wedding Present records after the first one, and you said, “We’re just not fashionable anymore.” Do you think you regained the attention of the U.K. press with Cinerama?

Uh, no, not really. I think I’m kind of seen as this legendary indie figure, so I am paid lip service, but I don’t think. . . . Well, I could make the greatest record ever now, and the NME is never going to say it is because it is not their belief to say so, their brief is to say, “The Vines!” Or someone new, because the whole basis of their being really is that it’s got to be bands that no one has heard before. Q could put me in, some of the older, more mature readership magazines probably would do it, but the NME is for kids, really. Kids have got to be seen into new bands before anybody else, and to them I am a late-1980s, early-1990s indie guitar player, so I am completely irrelevant to their lives.

“I’ve always been a big fan of radio. When I was growing up I was always listening to the radio and being inspired by it.” Would the same hold true for your experiences with radio in America?

Well, yeah, I think college radio in America. Yes, when we are approaching big towns. The presenters are not quite in the same league as Peel, but then again, I am always interested in. . . . Well, I think Peel is of fundamental and paramount importance in British pop music. But I am a fan of all radio. Here I’d sooner switch on the radio and hear something that I have not chosen myself than go back and play some classic album that I know is good but I don’t have to hear anymore because I know what it sounds like. I’d rather hear something newer. I think radio is a great medium.

“I’ve always been a massive fan of that [John Peel’s] programme, as everyone knows [laughs]! I’ve listened to it as long as I can remember: I think I’ve missed about six programmes! My taste in music has always been in the same kind of area as his—the Fall, guitar bands—and in some ways I think it has influenced me to make records that wouldn’t sit uncomfortably in that programme,” you’ve said. So, are we to blame John Peel for your stylistic leanings and development?

Well, yeah, I suppose so. I suppose I latched on to that program in my late teens. In fact, when punk started there were only two programmers on the radio at that time, Radio One, BBC, anyway, who played that stuff, and he was one of them. I’ve stayed with him ever since, really. So I think it has almost been like an older brother saying, “Here’s this record, here’s another, here’s some African music, here’s this.” I’m sure he has shaped my tastes. It actually used to be on the radio here in Texas as well. He was here for a couple of years.

“I think we stopped doing [encores] in the mid 80s really. I’ve always been a little uncomfortable about it. . . . As you get a bit more well known you can literally do an encore every night. I started thinking that I’m not actually keen on it, it’s a rock tradition, and I think it’s a bit hackneyed,” you’ve said. Does it relate to the old punk idea like the Ramones burning through the sets in twenty minutes without going through stadium rock gestures or early Jesus and Mary Chain playing with their backs to the audience or PIL behind a giant screen?

A lot of bands actually write a set list and draw a line at the bottom. It’s just a lot more simple, actually. I feel a bit uncomfortable. The Wedding Present did start off doing them. You get to the point quite soon, I think, as soon as you get a bit of a following, where you can do them every night. Well, when we first started off and played a gig, if it was really good, and we got an encore, we’d be like, “That’s really great. Let’s do one more song.” Then if it wasn’t, we’d say, “Let’s not do one.” But then after maybe a year and we started doing all right, it could be every night, really. Then suddenly it’s this thing where you hang around a bit, go okay, then go back on, and I don’t think an encore should be that. If it’s going to happen at all, it should be spontaneous. really.

And there are a lot of things like, well, it’s so stupid, but if the dressing room is close to the stage, obviously you are going to hear the cheers more, but if it’s down the corridor, you are not going to hear them, so it’s things like that. The easiest way to avoid all these complications, pretensions, and embarrassment, and whatever—like you think, “Let’s do an encore,” and you walk on and half the crowd is already gone away—let’s just not do them. As I said with the film analogy, the set is done. It’s like reading a book or making a cake.

“I think the lyrics have got more extreme as I’ve gone on. Now it’s more about relationships but earlier it was more, well, not teenage exactly but more naïve, now they’re a bit more realistic and explicit.” Are you so embarrassed of some of the songs?

Oh yeah, definitely, especially the real early stuff. It just sounds a bit juvenile to me now, and a bit teenage angst–ridden, really. I hate the word “mature.” It’s not very rock ’n’ roll, but I think I’m obviously fifteen years older now. I’ve had more experiences and I’m a better writer, and I just think it’s like reading your diaries when you were eight or something.

But it’s a very public diary.

Yeah. I think that’s part of the thing, certainly George Best. It was my diaries, like, here’s what I’ve been doing for the last five years. After that, I started thinking about writing pop songs, I suppose, which might be a good thing or a bad thing, but from an artist’s point of view, you always think you’ve improved. Otherwise you wouldn’t do it, I think.

“I never had any trouble with RCA, they were a great label to be on . . . really nice. . . . We were there for years and then we signed to Island records and they were fine and then we signed to Cooking Vinyl, the independent label, which I thought would be fine.” Do you think people have a misimpression of big labels?

I think it has changed. I think, from what I gather, being on a major is harder nowadays. There’s a lot more marketing involved, and it’s a lot more cutthroat. But certainly when we signed to RCA, it was great, because we got money and we got the artistic freedom we already had. In a way, we actually got more freedom because when it was our own label, theoretically we could do whatever we wanted, but the money wasn’t always there, but with RCA, we could say, “We fancy doing a mini-LP of Ukrainian folk songs,” and they just said, “Okay, whatever.”

But when the band wanted to do a single a month, they only wanted to print five thousand, but you said that was crazy, and they ended up printing fifteen thousand.

They were probably right, actually. The albums didn’t do as well as they should do. RCA wanted them to be from the albums, but because we had an artistic control clause, they relented.

The irony is, do you think a small independent label would have done that?

Probably not. Yeah, I don’t think a smaller label would have been able to afford it. So, it’s to their credit, really, that RCA did that, so I’ll always defend it. When we signed, it was a really big thing, because we were the biggest independent band at that time. People were like, “Ah, they are going to sign to a major, it’s the end of the indie ethic” and all that. I was quite nervous about it. At one point, we spoke to every major record label in London. We had meetings with these people, and it was always like, “Okay, you’ve done really well so far, now what are we going to do?” It was always, “How are we going to change now to adapt to a major label”—the things we’d have to do, marketing and stuff. RCA said, “Okay, you’re doing really well so far, carry on,” and we put the records out.

It was just about putting their name on the label?

Yeah, it was exactly the same, and obviously it meant that we could sell records around the world because previously it was all exports for us, but RCA and the parent company BMG have offices everywhere. It means we can sell records in Australia and America. It was perfect. It lasted a long time as well. I mean, it only ended because. . . . Well, I suppose if there was any problem with our major deal it was that you’re only as good as the people who were there when you signed. We were there for five or six years. By the time we came to the end of it, all the people who were there when we signed were all gone. It was a whole new regime, and they were off signing new bands and weren’t interested in the bands that were already there, so that’s when we got dropped, really.

“I’ve got thousands of CDs but I don’t listen to them—I’m more interested in what Peel’s going to play tonight—some band I’ve never heard of. I’m not one of those people who’s interested in some classic album from 1989, I’m more interested in a classic album from 2002.” So why have a thousand CDs?

That’s a good question, really. I should get rid of them. I am a bit of a hoarder, I think. But I do think that I will get rid of them one day. There’s a bloke in Vancouver that’s going to leave me all of his in his will, so I’ll get another twenty thousand when he dies. He’s getting on a bit as well, so I am dreading that phone call, because he says he really respects the fact that I am a music enthusiast, so he told me that he has me in his will as a beneficiary of all these CDs that he’s got, because his wife does not want them, and he’s serious. He said, “I’m not joking. They are going to come to your house” [laughs]. I’m like, “No!”

“I think all I do really is absorb bits of conversation and regurgitate it in a pop song. . . . It’s always been very basic, just like little stories. I do feel like I don’t really do that much.” David Mamet said one of the elements of drama is feeling like you are overhearing someone’s conversation in a restaurant, and you have to make guesses and fill in the blanks. Would that relate to your songwriting?

I guess it means that I don’t really make things up. I just kind of regurgitate what I’ve heard around me.

You’re not really writing fictitious material, you’re just observant?

Yeah, and nosy, I suppose [laughs]. It’s not just people, it’s everything, really: films, books, comics, newspapers, and magazines. It just kind of all goes in there, and when I sit down to write, it’s usually quite easy to draw on, because it’s just all there.

It’s interesting that you like to write but do not like to read, because you’ve said that novels by people like Jane Austen were written when people had all kinds of time.

It’s just that reason really. I just don’t see why anyone would want to read a book now when there’s so much else to do.

But then someone might ask, why write at all?

Because I write pop music. I still think there’s a place for pop music in our culture.

Where do you think it belongs? Exactly where it is?

Yeah, I think it’s fine. It’s perfect. Radio is good, records are good, then it can move into TV and films as well, so it all works. A book . . . I don’t know. The only reason I can see for writing a book is to turn it into a film, really. I know that’s artificial [laughs].

You were pulled over by the police on the way to Mt. Rushmore. Many Americans see it as an important national monument, but as someone from Britain, was it a bit kitschy for you?

I thought it was great. I mean I am very, very fond of American culture. I suppose it’s pop culture, and I love pop culture. I’ve never been interested in Shakespeare and poetry and architecture, all those old buildings in Britain. I’ve always been interested in comics [laughs] and TV, pop music, rock music. A) There’s more of it here than Europe, and B) It’s not quite as frowned upon. In Britain, people stop listening to pop music when they are thirty because they think, that’s for kids, and we’ve moved on to something else, theater, you know. In America, it’s seen as a viable . . . actually, on the continent of Europe it also seems like valid art. I just thought that Mt. Rushmore is a great example of that, really. It is pop culture. I know it’s a fantastic monument, but it’s a bit silly, and I think that is really interesting. It wouldn’t happen in Britain, I don’t think. Let’s carve four massive heads out of this mountain. I don’t think anyone else enjoyed it as much as me. I think they preferred the Badlands, but I thought that was boring.

Really?

There’s nothing there.

Are accidental moments in the studio more rewarding than coming up with a polished pop song in the studio?

No. I think they just kind of enhance it, really, and I think sometimes they happen, sometimes they don’t. We did a session for the BBC before we went away and it sounded really good and the engineer was coming over and looking at my crappy amp and trying to work out how I got these fantastic sounds, and I know absolutely nothing about guitars, I’ll be the first to admit it, other than pick-ups, pedals, or whatever. He was explaining to me how it was interesting the way that it was set up. It came out with this really interesting sound. To me, I just struck a good fortune there. I know what sounds good on records, but I have no idea how to do that, really. I think a lot of it is trial and error, like this sounds great, let’s keep it.

Deep down, are you like a starry-eyed, seventeen-year-old fan of music and musicians?

I think so, but it’s only a select bunch, really. I’ve met absolute loads of people in the music industry who I just think are idiots. But yeah, there’s a lot of people I really respect, but it’s a small group. On the last tour of America, we played with Broadcast, if you know them, from Britain. I was quite nervous speaking to them. It’s just if you think someone is really, really great, then you get a bit worried. Yeah, for instance, John Peel. I’ve met Peel so many times now, but I still get really nervous. My girlfriend is fine with him. She’s like his niece or something. Whereas if he walks into the room, I’m suddenly sweating, like, “Uh, John Peel’s in the room.”

When the Wedding Present bio Thank Yer, Very Glad came out, you said, “It’s crap, don’t waste your money.”

[Laughs.]

Looking back, do you appreciate it a bit more or still think it is crap?

I think I probably overreacted, but it was an emotional time because the band was in a kind of transition at that point, and I think he didn’t really write it very well, and it came off rather tabloidy. It was just a bit annoying and I wished it didn’t exist, but in retrospect, it’s not the absolute end of the world.

Do you think you tend to see the symbolic nature of a lot of common practices, or intellectualize them?

I don’t think I overintellectualize in the writing. I think I am quite a straightforward writer. I just think it’s odd. For instance, I think that marriage is a weird phenomenon. I think it’s got its roots in this weird patriarchal and slightly weird society.

But why do you prefer Roger Moore as Bond?

Actually, I don’t. Now my favorite Bond is Pierce Brosnan. I think he’s perfect.

Why?

To me, he’s handsome, dashing, and English. No, actually he’s Irish. I think he just fits the bill, really. I think Sean Connery’s films are the best films because they are a bit darker, and it got a bit silly after Sean Connery, but I think Brosnan is great.

Do the British view Bond differently than Americans?

I’m not sure anymore. Possibly a few decades ago they did. I think Americans thought it was a very British thing rather than a pop culture thing, but we had more of a history with the actual book, I mean Ian Fleming being an English writer and stuff.

How do you keep approaching the oldest topic in the world—love—in a fresh way?

It’s really strange. I do have this recurring fear that I will sit down and not be able to think of anything, but it’s never happened yet. I suppose on the other hand I’ve felt that I’ve only begun to scratch the surface because it’s such a massive subject. People are having relationships all the time, not just with their boyfriends and girlfriends, or husbands or wives. I mean right now we are having a relationship. I’m just really interested in the way people speak to each other, really. What they say, how they say, and why they say it. I think it’s more interesting in relationships at the start and end of them. It’s selfish, but there are all these great lines flying out all over the place. I’m like, “That would be a great chorus,” and all I’ve got to do is write them down, really.

You are more or less an intermediary?

I think so, yeah, like a sponge. There’s only been a few occasions when I’ve started writing, then thought, wait a minute, I remember this one, I’m rewriting one I’ve done before.

You never feel you are rehashing anything?

No, not at all. I think it’s so big. On this tour, I have written down two or three scenarios in my book here, which are new to me. Like our roadie Jessica just told me something the other day, and I thought—and she didn’t even know what I might be thinking—hmm, that’s an interesting idea for a song. I forgot what it was now. I’ll have to find it. That’s what I do. It’s a con, really.

What do you feel about people like Paul Weller, who has carved a third career after the Jam and Style Council?

I think Paul Weller broadened his appeal a bit more. He’s a bit more coffee table really. He’s a bit less extreme than the Jam. That probably increased his fan base. Well, I think, if I am honest, I have made some decisions in my life that have not helped my career, really. For instance, I should live in London. Every time I go to London, I go out with friends, and because of the circle I move in, I’m always meeting record producers, like, “He’s a record producer, he works at Radio 1, she writes reviews for the Guardian, he chooses music for films, and she’s an NME journalist.” I don’t move there, but if I would have ten years ago I probably would have been more successful.

But would you have spent more time making connections and less time observing people and making great pop songs?

Well, no, because I would have just gotten out more. I do go out in Leeds, but I just go out with my friends . . . well, I don’t have any friends. I go out with my girlfriend, as opposed to going out with movers and shakers from the entertainment industry, so I just use that as an example of the fact that I’ve probably made commercially inappropriate decisions, but then I’ve done it for other reasons.

Including?

I don’t want to be in London. I don’t want to make records that might sound like they are going to sell millions because they have to appeal to me as a person. I’ve probably made records that would have sold more if they had been produced in a different way, or arranged in a different way. You could give me a million pounds now and say write in a certain way, but I can’t do that. I’ve got to write stuff that I am totally happy with, really. Unfortunately, my taste is not the average taste of the music-listening world, so I am never going to make stuff that a lot of people want to buy, really.

DAVID KILGOUR: A BIT DIRTY AFTER ALL

Originally published in Left of the Dial, 2002.

Like an artful dodger, David Kilgour has made music that is lean, unprocessed, and slightly disorderly at times. As a co-founder of the Clean, he made a huge impression on the American indie scene of the 1980s, which helped shape the sonic slyness of bands like Yo La Tengo and Superchunk and anticipated the likes of Magnetic Fields. Though his music remains under the radar of the general public, it offers a wealth of tumbledown, anti-bourgeois pop that is as penetrating as it is potent. As the New York Times sums up his character, he is “a god among the ranks of similarly low-fidelity groups.”

Do you think that you would even have an audience if it wasn’t for Vehicle, which many people consider your most accessible and successful album?

Well, for most Americans that I meet, or have met over the fifteen years or so, that’s the LP that tends to model the band. I think it did a lot for us in America.

What about worldwide?

Well, we were touring quite a bit back then, pre-Vehicle, and then post-Vehicle we were actually quite popular in Germany. We spent a month just playing in Germany. The shows we used to do on the East Coast of the U.S. in the late eighties and early nineties were basically just stopovers on the way over to Europe. It did pretty well for us in Europe, especially Germany.

Has that German audience consistently stayed with you over the years?

I sincerely doubt it, because I haven’t been back to Europe but once. I really don’t know, I couldn’t tell you. Matador released my last solo record in Europe and also released Getaway, but I haven’t heard any word back. We don’t have any management, we don’t have any grand stand, we don’t have any career stance at all. It’s almost like a hobby for us. I mean, it was a complete surprise that we toured here this year. As we finished this last album, we discussed whether or not it was time to quit doing it. It was a difficult LP to make, in a way. It’s always hard because Hamish lives in New York and when he comes back he has a limited time with the band. We talked about that, so I’m flummoxed that we actually made it back to America twelve years later.

Was the new record made like Modern Rock, which happened almost accidentally because everyone in the band ended up in Dunedin at the same time?

Well, Hamish had flown back to Dunedin for an art festival, and we decided to do a short tour of New Zealand while he’s here. We weren’t going to make it an LP, we thought let’s not make another LP, let’s just tour. But in the rehearsal we had a four track and started to jam and before we knew it, we made the decision to make an LP.

At the same time that Ira and Georgia were visiting New Zealand?

They were playing way north, about a three-hour plane ride north of Dunedin, doing a gig on their way to Australia and Japan, so they stopped off for three or four days before their gig really just to have a holiday.

How long have you know them?

The Clean toured Germany in 1989 and we ran into them there or in Amsterdam. I think they were staying at the same hotel. We were aware that both bands had been on a Homestead compilation called Human Music. We already knew something about Yo La Tengo because they had already released an LP by then, so we talked and connected, and I’ve known them since then.

The Flying Nun website says that the “on again, off again nature of the Clean is by design.” Is it really that intentional or just haphazard?

It’s purely coincidence that we end up in the same city at the same time, really. There’s no plan.

Well, I’m sure people wonder why, since one of your first singles, “Tally Ho,” went to number nineteen on the New Zealand music charts.

Sure, obviously with that first lineup of the Clean we were exceedingly ambitious. We were quite organized in our own cottage industry way, but since the early eighties it’s been a stop-start thing. But with that first lineup we were very ambitious.

Would that same kind of ambition today make the Clean less interesting for you?

I don’t think so. We have a pretty good way of working with each other. We don’t take any music into our rehearsal space. We try to write spontaneously. I mean, if Getaway does really well, we’d consider making another LP, but at the moment I can’t see it. But who knows? Whether we’d get serious about it . . . I really don’t know. We have our own lives that we live, and we have our own creative projects going as well, so who knows.

What kind of challenges do your solo records present?

Well I guess that the first three that I made were vague attempts at making commercial pop rock LPs. I was trying to walk a fine line between making accessible pop and pleasing myself, but on the new LP, I threw all that out the window. I decided this time I should be selfish. I recorded most of the LP at my home. I basically just had a collection of songs I’ve done over the last four years.

The new solo record is much more varied than the Clean record. For instance, you have everything from cinematic-feeling instrumentals, to acoustic tracks, to drum ’n’ bass beats.

I recently installed a 24 four-track studio in my house. Quite a few of those tracks were experiments with my tape machine. With “Today Becomes Tomorrow,” I was with a friend of mine who is an engineer and does a lot of drum and bass, and he engineered my solo records as well, but basically I used some drum tracks that my drummer had recorded on tape at my house that I was going to record some songs over, but he basically turned out a whole piece of music and I just sang over the top. The whole LP is coming from different areas, like four-tracks, sixteen-tracks, and twenty-four-tracks, and some of it I wrote just twenty minutes before I recorded it, so there’s a freshness to the tracks. A lot of it was recorded as soon as I wrote it. So I thought, this is good demo, I’ll fix all this up and use some studio overdubs, but at the end of the day I didn’t, and I decided to just go for it.

Every song almost feels like a risk or a challenge.

I certainly didn’t plan it that way. Like I said, it was a collection of songs that I like from the last four years. There wasn’t an attempt to make it experimental. I mean, I kind of did, but there was no conscious attempt to do it. Sure, I probably had grandiose plans at one point. At one point, it was going to be an LP with strings on it, but at the end of the day I became less anal about it and just gave in. I feel I can’t help myself because it allows me to do the things the Clean never allows me to do.

The site also says you come from the Brian Wilson school of songwriting, where “dumb is the essence of pop’s appeal,” but I don’t listen to your records and hear anything that’s very dumb.

That’s a boring cliché—Brian Wilson. They also seem to drop the names Skip Spencer and Syd Barrett. Sure, I loved the Beach Boys and Syd Barrett as a kid. I’m not sure I’m in the vein of any of those people. I mean, I love them, but I love a lot of music.

Did you not say, “I am a sucker for sweet melodies”?

I hate [laughs] that quote. I said that in the early 1990s. I am a sucker for little sweet melody things. . . . What does that mean? I like melody [laughs]. Melody is hard. I do struggle with it.

How did playing with Yo La Tengo differ from your other experiences?

It’s a lot harder playing somebody else’s music, and that was a great challenge for me, and I knew it would be to do those shows, but I like to put myself in those situations. We only had like five days of rehearsal, though we knew what songs we were going to do many months before the tour, so it’s not like we were getting up on stage without knowing the songs. But it was a really great challenge for me, and I did push the envelope of my playing ability. I learned a lot from doing that tour. It’s one of the most interesting experiences I’ve had, actually. It was grand. Kinda stressful, but really satisfying.

How did you end up receiving the New Zealand Order of Merit?

I have no idea. Someone would have nominated me. A politician, somebody upstanding, obviously. Someone nominated me, but I have no idea how. It’s not really a choice whether you want to accept it or not.

Do you see it as significant, or as vacuous?

It’s always nice to get a slap on the back. You know, my mother was extremely pleased. It was funny, a few musicians that I never hear from out-of-the-blue wrote me and said that’s great. I think that some musicians felt that it was nice to see the government say well done. I think in a way it was a slap on the back of everybody.

It wasn’t a slap on David’s back as much as one on the back of musicians you grew up with and played with?

I wouldn’t have gotten it without the Clean. But it felt kind of funny getting it without Bob and Hamish getting anything. But I did a lot of press and raged on about things on TV. It was sort of on the news and stuff, so I tried to do my bit and rant and rave about how horrible the music scene was in New Zealand and blah blah blah, all that good stuff.

Is it true that the Clean were one of the first bands to play original music in New Zealand?

In the 1960s, there were people writing original music. There were some great garage pop bands that came out of New Zealand. Even in the 1970s, probably the most well known to Americans were the Slodines, who ended up being pretty much a standard pop band, but in the early seventies, they were an extremely experimental and creative band. There’s always been original music in New Zealand, but it was certainly nothing like us at the time when we started out making music. Our first singles sounded like they were recorded in a toilet but were chartered without any hope of radio play. There were no college radio stations in New Zealand until the mid-1980s, so we toured without any radio play at all. We had videos, and they had to play them only because we charted. But we toured all the time in New Zealand, and people would go out.

Did Radio Birdman reach the shores of New Zealand?

Radio Birdman certainly got through, but the Saints had a major effect.

With I’m Stranded in 1976?

It was a big album in the punk scene in New Zealand, but you have to remember that the punk scene mostly hit New Zealand probably two years after it exploded in England, so we were always a little bit behind. But we had a friend in Dunedin who was importing all those records, so two weeks after “Anarchy in the UK” came out, we were getting it in Dunedin. We were all avid vinyl collectors, and music collectors, especially Chris Knox, who was music obsessed. We were always paying attention to music.

It was a cottage industry that ended up being quite successful. Can a New Zealand band in 2001 do it the same way and chart without radio play and get through to people and sell records?

It’s still possible but a hell of a lot harder.

What makes it harder?

The New Zealand music industry is in the saddest state it’s ever been in. The corporations completely control it, even to the point of actually owning the media. New Zealand’s a tiny country. There are only three million people that live there. So it’s tough. But I still think it’s possible to succeed on your own terms. Maybe not as easy as it was for us.

Were you listening to the Velvet Underground a lot?

We had already been listening to Velvet Underground before punk hit, via Lou Reed. Lou Reed was huge, like Transformer, and Rock n Roll Animal, so we found out about the Velvets through that.

Did Lou Reed tour New Zealand in the 1970s?

I saw him play live post–Rock n Roll Animal, the tour right after it. He came to Dunedin twice. The thing about New Zealand in the seventies and early eighties was that everybody came and played—I saw so many people play as a kid in my town, from Lou Reed to Chuck Berry to Graham Parker and the Rumour. There was early Talking Heads, the Cure—it’s hard to believe, but it’s actually true. I saw so much music.

How did you and Hamish begin playing?

My mother played piano, but we didn’t really pick up music at all. I think when I was about twelve I tried to play the guitar, and Hamish did too, but we both gave it up because it was so difficult. But then punk rock came along to Dunedin and that gave us the excuse to pick up a guitar and play noise, so that’s how we started. Sure, it was a punk rock thing.

When you play guitar today, is that still the vein where you are coming from?

I don’t think we do it intentionally, but it’s funny, we’ve met a few people on tours that come up and say, look, we’re in a punk rock band, blah blah blah, I really love you guys. But I’ve never thought of the Clean as a punk band. Hamish told me the other day, David, we are. Maybe he’s right, I don’t know. I think there’s still some punk music in it for me, we’re rather shambolic live. We can be pretty pop, but we can also shred it and give it the right noise experimentation, so there’s a punk attitude too.

What did you think about God Save the Clean, the Clean tribute album that had all small bands, even though bands Sonic Youth and Pavement were fans?

I have a bad taste in my mouth about that LP because we basically had nothing to do with it. I really liked some of the stuff on it, and I am flattered all those acts were on it, but I haven’t heard of a third of those bands. I think the guy who organized it got his friend’s bands to play the songs. Quite a few of those acts I’ve never heard of before, but I am really flattered that they all wanted to do it. But we had nothing to do with it, though we asked to have some sort of input into it. But at the same time, I’m flattered.

Do you see yourself playing with more people beyond Yo La Tengo?

If I were asked, I’d play with anybody. I’d be willing to take on anything within reason.

What are you working on?

Well, I am going to go back to New Zealand on Sunday and start writing and recording again.

Do you think you could ever live in America?

Yeah, I could. I don’t know how I would because I would need a green card to do it.

What’s appealing about living here?

Change; I’m a bit tired of New Zealand. I think change. I don’t know if I’d live there too long, I’m not sure. I think change is good. I’ve been itching to live somewhere else for the last three or four years, and I think I am pretty close to coming here to live something like twelve months. We’ll see how it goes. I really don’t know how I would do it.

Is it easier to survive and make music the way you want to in New Zealand?

Probably, but there’s not a lot of motivation to do it in New Zealand because of the way the music industry is set up. It’s a lot more stimulating to be here in America and play and make music here. It seems like such a larger country. Also, I know so many people here now, a nice network of friends throughout the country, so it’s a very appealing idea to come here. But I don’t want to come here and be an illegal . . . what do you call it? I would like to do it legit, so I’m not sure how to do that.

There is a very strong cinematic feel to the instrumentals on the new record. Is that something you aimed for?

Not really, but I do like instrumental music.

Like what?

As a kid, I was a huge fan of Brian Eno, especially his ambient stuff. Then there’s stuff like the soundtracks of Ennio Morricone, and I adore Jimi Hendrix, and a lot of his live stuff is instrumental music.

Can you see yourself composing for films?

I would love to. I’ve done a little bit for a friend’s short movie a few years ago. I would really like to. Yeah, I’ve had songs used in the odd movie or two in New Zealand, but I’ve never actually written anything, and I would really like to.

If you could name one major difference between you and brother Hamish, what is it?

[Long pause.] That’s a very good question. He’s got black hair and I’ve got brown.

That’s it?

Off the top of my head. Yeah. We are very similar in many ways, but sure we have our differences, absolutely.

How did the Clean transcend “Kiwi Pop” and survive twenty years later?

I really don’t know. This trip over we did very tentatively—we hadn’t been here for twelve years and we didn’t know what it was going to be like. We just did a few shows to test it out. We’re still flummoxed by how many people have still held on to the love of it. There are young people that we’re meeting who have been coming to the shows, and people at radio stations. I don’t know what it is. Maybe they hear the innocence of it all. I think Americans are also pretty turned on to the history of music.

Do you find that in other places?

Maybe not on such a grand scale. They are pretty turned on here. And I think there’s a great love of garage rock too.

Chapter 5

Short Cuts

Concise Interviews with Icons

These shorter interviews, compact and condensed, reveal various points of the artists’ interests—from studio projects and boat making to the changing nature of rural America—that grip artists like Merle Haggard and folksinger Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Breezy and informative, the pieces provide candid snapshots of artists in action, grappling with their careers or issues that plug into their deepest concerns.

MERLE HAGGARD: THE ROOTS OF HIS RAISING

Originally published in Thirsty Ear, June/July 2001.

How did the 1930s and the Depression shape your vision of America?

Well, I feel lucky that I even survived. But those were also the times when there were small businesses, ma-and-pa joints, and free industry. There hasn’t been anything like it since, and there probably never will be again, so I feel sorry for people like you.

People say your conservatism is a longing for an idealized past.

I’m not a conservative; I’m a liberal! I used to open my shows with, “Welcome, friends, neighbors, and conservatives.” If a man in his forties wants to walk over and do a line of coke, then I believe he should have that right. I once saw a man at a show get pulled over by the police, and they took this poor guy and roughed him over and found a joint on him, and started waving it at his little kid, saying things like, “Look what your daddy has done.” No one should get between a man and his child and do a thing like that, it’s crazy. I tell you, that put me in a fighting mood.

Charlie Parker played until the very end. His last gig was at the Hotel Astoria. His doctors told him not to perform, but he did anyway because he felt it was important for the music and his fans. Will that be you some day?

I’ve fought with that question every day of my life. You know, I sound like I’m going to cave in every once in a while, but it’s just because my body’s getting old. I could easily just sink back in the chair and become a hermit like some other people in the entertainment business. But I really think that life goes away when I do that, the minute I quit what I’m supposed to do. I’ve got to play somewhere on a regular basis, and to do that I guess you’re going to have to drive to some of them. I’m doing seven to ten days a month, and I have a young family that I want to be with, so I don’t want to be on the road much. But I’m not financially independent, you know; freedom comes with a lot of money. Freedom is a funny word. It’s only free if you’ve got money. I have an expensive lifestyle. I probably go through $100,000 a month, just to do what other people do. It seems like they get by on far less. I don’t quite understand it.

Chaos, you once said, got you going, then you’d go to a quiet place, and the songs would come to you in a half-psychic way. Is that almost like a trance?

It’s not like Edgar Cayce. I don’t go into a trance and come out with a hit. I wish. I love to write. I’m continually trying to analyze and put things into some sort of analogy. Then if you can also put it to music, you’ve got a song. I play guitar; that’s my first love. I play fiddle, and I love a certain kind of music. I love the kind of music that is straightforward and has no pretense to it. Things that happen from pure gut feelings during a recording—things that occur that, in my judgment, are treasures, whereas someone else might call them mistakes—what I try to do is bring reality and the pendulum of reality back into play again and make a song take notice of what we’ve allowed ourselves to become used to. Let’s clean out our ears. I’d like to hear some real talent; I’d like to hear all the talent that is available without all the interference of the so-called producers and electronic bullshit. I want to hear a story about a guy they sign to a contract and they [bring] him into the studio and let him do what he wants to, and, boy, he’s really good [laughs].

You were the first artist from California in the Country Hall of Fame and its youngest member, and you’ve had too many hit songs to list. But would any of that matter if tomorrow you couldn’t write a song?

You know, there’s an old saying that the man who just passed away a few minutes ago, he’s as dead as Julius Caesar. Once things slip into the past, they’re of no good to you. I don’t live in the past. I don’t sit around thinking about what I’ve done. I’ve always got a project, always working on something. And if I’m not, I’m a very depressed, miserable individual. So I have to keep doing something. And I’m more excited about this project [recording the songs of Lefty Frizzell live to two-track in his living room] than anything I’ve ever done, because it’s done without any electronic manipulation. We’re using basic microphones, no echo of any kind. We’re doing it all at the same time, so the spirit rises at once. It’s incredible. I can’t imagine how far off the damn center we’ve come with this electronic bombardment of manipulation and making everybody a good singer, when they couldn’t sing one song, couldn’t sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” without the help of a tuner of some sort. In forty years, I haven’t heard a voice as good as Lefty Frizzell’s.

RAMBLIN’ JACK ELLIOTT: IN THE DEEP GRAIN OF MUSIC

Interviewed for Thirsty Ear in July 2002, which printed portions. Remaining portions published in Left of the Dial.

You told a reporter that in your heart you are a sailor and that you used to inspire Pete Seeger with stories about ships during the 1960s?

Yeah. That’s true.

What is it about the life of a sailor that you find so fascinating?

Not drowning is the most fascinating thing about sailing, and getting wet but not getting cold. Well, not getting too wet, staying dry, and not getting seasick. I’ve never been seasick, but I know that every sailor or any person who has been seasick, well, they feel like they want to die. It’s a miserable thing I have never experienced. I’ve always had good times when I have been sailing.

But you’re not a huge fan of sailor songs?

Not at all.

What is so not interesting about them?

The songs themselves are very interesting, but the people that sing them are like opera singers and not like sailors. They do it in such a hammy way that it sort of drove me away and spoiled my interest in it, so I have been driven in another direction when I’ve heard people interpret old sea shanties. One of my favorite sailors, the great author who wrote a lot of great books about the sea from his own experience sailing around Cape Horn and sailing vessels all over the world, was an Australian gentleman named Alan Villiers. He was the captain of the vessel they used for filming Moby Dick with Gregory Peck. He had an old schooner they had dummied up to look like or resemble a whaling vessel out of New Bedford. She was rigged like a whaler.

The movie people—John Huston—forgot to tell the shipyard that he really intended to take that vessel out to sea and sail her so they could shoot movies onboard as they were underway with the sail set. The shipyard people thought they were rigging her up for another movie and kind of rigged her up with skinny spars and insufficient rigging and then they took her out to sea anyway. So, she was very weak, brittle, vulnerable, and breakable. The first captain quit, then they hired Alan Villiers, and then they had a man who was a friend of mine, a folksinger in England, singing the sea shanties. He had never sailed in a sailing vessel in his life, but he was a great student of folk music and had a lot of style and heart. His name was A. L. Lloyd.

He was the shanty man in the movie Moby Dick. When I visited Alan’s home in Oxford, I said, “What did you think of the sea shanties there in the movie?” This is before I had actually seen the movie. They had just finished filming, and he said [Jack uses a thick accent], “I don’t know, Jack, I never heard any sea shanties sung when I was sailing around the world. They’d just say one, two, one, two, or heave, ho, heave, ho and stop that heaving, delay, and come up.” So he really didn’t have any knowledge about how sea shanties were supposed to be done.

He said he thought that A. L. Lloyd sounded nice but didn’t have the right rhythm. Well, I don’t know. A. L. Lloyd didn’t have much experience with sailing vessels, but I thought it was blood-curdling good they way he sang, and he’s much better than most of the other people I have heard that try to do sea shanties. I have only heard a few people do them well. He was one. He’s dead now.

And another fellow named Sam Larner. There was another Englishman who was the last English sailor to sail around Cape Horn in a square-rigger that was still singing sea shanties before 1930, when Alan Villiers started sailing. It was around 1929 or 1930, but Alan never heard them, so he thinks they stopped singing them around 1920. I don’t know anything about sea shanties. I sing one or two sea songs. But it’s not enough to make a big deal about it or claim to be a singer of sea shanties. But I certainly love sailing. That’s why I am up here in school.

You were being trained at a young age by a neighbor to be an officer in the merchant marine?

That’s right.

So I assume your love of sailing goes back to your childhood. Was there a point where you, like Allen Ginsberg, might have been a merchant marine?

I was twelve when I first met Captain Hinckley. I met another old sailor when I was about thirteen or fourteen who taught me about sailing. He was an old sailmaker from Denmark, Mr. Eriksen. He had a sailmaker shop, and they took me out sailing on his boat. He and his wife. Then I got off on the rodeo trip and got interested in the rodeo, and that really upset my sailmaker friend [laughs]. He was pretty pissed off about it.

The Madison Square Garden Rodeo triggered your interest, along with the books by Will James. Were you a fan of history and the lore of the American West?

I was reading Will James’ books and he was born in 1890. He started cowboying around 1915 or so, no, 1905, out in Alberta. He went west on the train. His mom gave him a bag of cookies, a brown paper bag, and he got a job on a ranch out there in western Canada and started cowboying. Then he came down into the U.S. and cowboyed all over the West. He even went to Hollywood and worked as an extra in Westerns for a while, but he was always a real cowboy.

Do you remember any films with him in them?

No, I never saw any films with him in them. He never had a speaking line because of his French-Canadian accent [laughs]. He wrote like American cowboys speak, and the way he spelled everything was like he was a cowboy from Nevada or Montana.

You grew up in Brooklyn, and Henry Miller also grew up in Brooklyn. Were you aware of Miller and his books, like Tropic of Cancer?

I was right next door to him visiting a lady who wrote a song that I sang, and he was her next-door neighbor, and I had never heard of him because his books weren’t discovered or popular in America. In fact, they were banned in America. You had to go to Paris to buy one in 1954 or 1953 when I visited her. Then I went to Europe in 1955, and his books were readily available, and I bought some of his books and read him and thought he was great. One book he wrote about Greece made me want to go to Greece. I came very close to meeting the man that the book was about.

Was it The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder?

The Colossus of Maroussi.

You rode across Europe throughout the mid to late 1950s on a Vespa with the British writer Herb Greer?

He was from New Mexico but lived in Britain. I lost track of him. He tried to contact me on email once, and I didn’t get back to him in time, and now I have lost his address and still don’t know how to reach him. He wrote a book about our travels. It was called The Trip and was published by some well-known British publishing company.

Could that book be compared to The Americans, the photo and prose book written by Jack Kerouac and shot by Robert Frank, which explored late-1950s America?

No, not quite, no, no. It was a very brief little book, and the stories he made up were not entirely true about our adventures, and some of it included actual things that he told as they did happen and for some reason or another he decided to make up some imaginary stories about things that didn’t really happen. I don’t think it was that great of a book at all. I am, however, proud I was in a book.

You met the author/songwriter Shel Silverstein in Rome in 1957 and on the back of your 1964 Vanguard record he said that, “Jack treats his guitar like a human being.” What did he mean?

Well, like I treat a dog or horse like a human being. Like everything I have a high regard for, I treat it like a human being. I used to treat my Land Rover like it was a human being too. Let’s see, what does that mean? He had a funny way of putting things; in fact, he wrote an incredibly hysterically funny and incredibly accurate description of me and my wife trying to pack for a trip, which were album notes. In fact, he was the best man at my wedding when I got married for the second time, after the first marriage dissolved.

What distinguishes you from songwriters you enjoy today, such as Tom Russell, Dave Alvin, and Richard Thompson?

I will be seeing Dave this Friday when he plays a theater here. Well, we seem to have a great deal of affinity for one another personally. We like each other. I don’t write songs; I’m not a singer-songwriter. I’ve been misnomered as a singer-songwriter. I’ve only written four songs in forty years. I don’t go around writing. I wish I could write. It’s like wanting to learn how to build a boat. I’ve been studying boat building for fifty years now and don’t know a thing about it because I haven’t applied myself in a consistent manner for more than a little while at a time, and it takes much more attention than that to learn how to be a good airplane pilot or boat builder or songwriter.

So what are you, a storyteller?

I’m a storyteller and a guitar picker. I’m a picker and a driver. Can’t even work the Internet. I have a computer in the house, but I rarely go in that room. I keep it locked up. In fact, I call it the Radio Shack. My wife used to work with the computer. It was an old Mac she got when she worked for Jesse Colin Young’s record company. So, we bought the old computer when he closed his record company up. He sold us the old Mac. Now I’ve got a newer computer but haven’t dared yet to plug it in.

I am very slow to learn about these electronic things. I have a cell phone, and I used it a couple of times, but I still can’t understand how to make it work. The thing keeps telling me I have lots of messages. But in order to get your messages, you have to dial certain numbers, numbers that you make up as your ID number, so I chose a certain year that something happened in my life, which is four digits, which is my ID number, and you dial your cell phone number and then you dial your ID number, and I get a message that says, you have dialed the wrong number. So, what do I do now? I wasn’t stupid before I got the cell phone. Now I got the cell phone and I am stupid.

Your name comes from Odetta’s mom saying, “That Jack Elliott, he sure can ramble.”

Also, Bobby Neuwirth claims to be the inventor of that name, although I think that Odetta’s mom did it earlier.

But you learned the art of storytelling and talking from truck drivers who gave you rides?

Well, yeah, just like Jack Kerouac, who would say when we’d walk down the street together, “I love the language of bums.” He was inspired by that, and I was too. I loved the way Woody Guthrie spoke. Woody had that potpourri of slang from all over the country.

Kerouac read you the entire manuscript of On the Road in his Bleeker Street apartment?

Yeah, he did.

How did you feel about it?

I think I related to it quite well. Some of it seemed like my own experiences, and there were a lot of things he described that I had never done before. And that was three years before the book was published.

It was on one continuous roll.

It was a roll of paper, the thing the Teletype machine used to use.

You’ve said, “It’s been hard for me to sit down unless it’s on some kind of horse or truck.”

[Laughs.] I just rode a horse in a rodeo parade in Colorado, a very frisky horse too, and this is with a brand new hip. I just got a total hip replacement on one side ten months ago. I was walking with crutches for a while, then I was walking with a cane, and then I finally put the cane away and have been going on hikes and doing pretty good.

Are those American sensibilities of restless freedom and the need to be on the road dying with the Internet, couch-potato generations?

It’s dying in me. I really don’t want to go on the road much anymore. I’m tired of airports. I can’t stand the way they treat you at airports and on airplanes. But if I had my own little truck, I could enjoy a few more years of going down the road and doing shows and stuff, but the world is getting so overcrowded with traffic on the roads and at airports, and with all this wartime stuff while traveling, it’s not really a lot of fun anymore.

GORDON GANO: VIOLENT FEMMES

Originally published in Thirsty Ear, 2000.

You’ve been playing new material that ended up on Freak Magnet for a few years—trying it out on audiences?

No, actually, on this record we weren’t doing a lot of the songs in concert. We were waiting until we got the record out and then doing a lot of them. We do six or seven new songs per concert. Some of them shift a little bit when we play them live, as they do anyway.

What’s been the general response to the new material?

The longer the record’s been out, the more people hear about it, the more they will respond to those songs. But it’s more of a minority. The majority of the people that come out to see us, going back for years, never have cared if we had a new record or not.

It must be, in part, how Lou Reed feels when he pulls out the old Velvet Underground songs at the end of the night.

We have never done it like that; we always mix in the older songs. I know a lot of people—well, when I think of Lou, I can think of a couple other people I’ve seen who do that. But with us, we’ve always mixed in the older stuff throughout the show.

Even on Why Do the Birds Sing? the songs weren’t new. Some were ten years old, fan favorites.

It’s all mixed up. There’s very little that’s chronologically pure. This new record, I think it really is the first record that doesn’t have a song on it that I wrote when I was fifteen. So, if somebody’s going to go, “Okay, the development, or lack of development. . . .” Songs on the records are from so many different years. I think the Freak Magnet songs, except for one, are all from within the last five or six years.

In the reviews of every new record, at least one critic points out your “teenage angst.”

I think that there’s a stretch of records where there was one song written when I was fifteen. It’s definitely one thing that people say about the first record, but all the songs on Hallowed Ground, the second record, were also written around the time I was a teenager. But the record isn’t thought of in that way.

Why is the record 3 always given the backburner?

I’ve got the beautiful answer for you. The band, you know, we don’t agree on things. Brian calls off the sets, and I think he does a brilliant job with it, so every night’s a little different. We don’t know what we’re going to play when we walk up on stage. He’ll call as it goes, which has been a great thing for us, in terms of that kind of spontaneity.

You’ve never used a set list?

Right, and that’s Brian’s least-favorite record. He really dislikes that record. I disagree. But it’s like, he’s flying the plane at that point.

But it’s the one record where you mix gritty punk, impromptu free jazz, and very quiet ballads.

I think the thing he doesn’t like about that record is something that I do like. He feels like it’s woefully underproduced, because it was so spontaneous and so created in the studio. Opportunities were missed to make the songs as good as they should have been. It’s just a different perspective on it. But, interestingly, a lot of people told me it was their favorite record, but they’re Europeans. I’ve almost never heard it from people in this country.

“Nothing Worth Living For” is difficult to pull off live?

When we went on tour for that record, we had to stop playing that song because they were so obviously bored. In the U.S., people were talking to each other, going to the bathroom, getting drinks, anything but being able to sit, listen, and pay attention to that song. In Europe, people would give incredible applause and ovations for that song. Sometimes, with certain songs, consistently and over a period of time at different venues and different places, one can really notice a difference in one country compared to another. It can be enormous. The differences in response to that song were incredible. I think it’s because that song is more a listening, intimate kind of song. The U.S. is different than anyplace. To many American audiences, we’re a party band.

Do you ever feel lumped in with that eighties retro party nostalgia, like the Go-Go’s, the Psychedelic Furs, and the B-52’s?

Are the people you know mostly teenagers?

No, mid-twenties.

But people who are teenagers now keep finding out about the group and keep getting into us. Those people don’t think of us in that way. They think of the Violent Femmes as something that’s a current thing, and not having anything to do with the eighties at all.

You transcend nostalgia?

In a sense, that’s a pretty wonderful thing. They wanted to do a VH1 Where Are They Now? on us, and we told them no because we’re more popular now than we have ever been. It doesn’t make any sense for them to keep putting us in that view. I tend not to like that, but it’s nice to be remembered and thought of in any context at all.

How underground can you be when the first record sold over a million copies?

Well, it’s about two million now. But it just went out of print. But we’ll have to look into that, because that’s absurd. Hopefully, that’s just a glitch.

How much was the band shaped by Milwaukee?

I know this question came up like, ten or twelve years ago, maybe more. At that time, I felt that it had nothing to do, I still do, nothing to do with that at all. It had to do with the people making the music. We were more influenced by national and international kinds of music, or what we listened to in our record collections and by people touring through town. That’s how I feel. But at that time, Victor DeLorenzo, our original drummer, and Brian felt that, no, it was really important that we were from Milwaukee. But I think that if we had hooked up in some other city, the music would sound the same.

You’ve said for low-level celebrities like yourself that technology can be scary.

I didn’t say low level, I said low life. [Laughs.] I’m kidding.

But what does that mean?

What’s low-level celebrity mean? Ask your daughter. [Laughs.]

A lot of six-year-olds like you?

[Laughs.] Uh-oh.

Why are you scared of technology?

Hey, did the red button on your cassette recorder just come on? Did it just shut off? It’s okay if it did. [Laughs.] Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.

Brian has said that the band has often taken the path of least success. But you regularly play 1,200-seat venues like this one.

Does that prove or disprove what you just said? [Laughs.] You know, we’re a little light on ticket sales tonight!

Isn’t this a measure of success?

I know people who have made worse choices as far as a career goes, definitely. But I’ve known people who have made better ones as far as related to popularity.

At one point, you wanted to make a record a year and felt it was a struggle with Slash, your label, to make any record at all. Has that changed with the new label?

Well, it has changed in that we have been able to get out a few records. But I have no idea now. We’re not in any long-term relationship. My guess would be, if it’s been difficult for this many years, then it means that’s how it always will be. There are no plans to make another record. But I really like this new record, I really do.

But you have other interests, like the play you staged in New York.

I staged two. There was another one that was done but officially wasn’t done because it’s not allowed to be done. Picasso wrote a few plays, and I ended up setting one to music. The Picasso estate years ago said, “You shall not.” That’s something I’d like to get back to.

WAYNE KRAMER: MC5

Your manager described your Wayne Kramer Presents Beyond Cyberpunk as a “thinking man’s punk record.” Would you describe it the same way?

I suppose. I was just trying to broaden the definition of punk, show that it wasn’t all beats at 160 rpm and flashing guitar, that a mid-tempo ballad could actually be a punk song, or a twisted-up funk track could actually be punk, or swamp metal could be punk. I think it has much more to do with a sense of self-determination and self-efficacy than it does a musical style.

You wrote “Sharkskin’s Suit” for Charles Bukowski, did a recording of a Poe poem, and early on were highly influenced by Allen Ginsberg. How do these writers shape your own art, not just music, but now your writing?

It’s like how I wanted to learn and play guitar like Chuck Berry. In my literary efforts, it’s the same kind of thing. I’ve always admired writers and wanted to be a writer. William Burroughs, Ernest Hemingway, and great crime fiction writers like Elmore Leonard—I love what these guys can do with character and dialogue. I aspire to that, and in songwriting I have been blessed to have people in my life like Rob Tyner and John Sinclair, and I study Bob Dylan’s lyrics and Tom Waits’. These guys are gifted lyricists; even Jackson Browne is a truly gifted lyricist. These are people I admire, and I aspire to their level of competence and their level of vocabulary in the craft of songwriting. I guess I’m continuing to stretch that into my prose and the kinds of things I have been writing, like book reviews and memoirs. We’re working on a couple of scripts, so it’s just the continuing work in a creative lifetime. It’s not all that remarkable. It really is 90 percent perspiration, and 10 percent inspiration. You have to do the work. I can only go so long without writing a song and then I start to feel bad. I go, you know, Wayne, it’s time to write a song, you gotta go write a song. Otherwise you’re going to get in a crabby mood here. It’s the same with all of it.

I came from Rockford, Illinois, and you’re from Detroit, both factory-belt towns, where people only had three real choices out of high school: the army, factory, or—if you were lucky—college. But we grew up with a Midwest work ethic—when work mattered, it was important, even a healthy part of our life.

I have no doubt it’s my Detroit, blue-collar, factory upbringing. I was basically raised by my mother, and she put such a premium on work. She worked hard all her life. It’s just what you did. No one gave you nothing. If you wanted anything in this world, you had to work for it. There were no entitlements, you know. And that was reinforced in the neighborhood, in the city. Detroit is a city that is all about work. I found, as I got older, that there was honor in work. There was esteem in work. Even in the beginning of the MC5 we applied all these principles to how we ran our band.

People don’t realize how much work is in rock ’n’ roll. When the MC5 began, you played clubs almost every night, though you might have been performing a lot of covers.

It’s a job when you’re playing five sets a night, six nights a week [laughs]. Forty-five on, fifteen off.

People always talk about the R&B and jazz influences on the MC5, but your mom’s boyfriend used to bring home Patsy Cline and Hank Williams records. Have people missed out on the fact that country music is also part of your musical roots?

Well, it turns out it is. I kind of denied it for years, because I was such a staunch rock ’n’ roller, then I became an avant-gardist, but when I look over the complete path I have been down, those songs are important to me. Those artists and those Nashville guitar players. Talk about lyric construction—some of that stuff is fabulous, you know.

“No Easy Way Out” could easily be a country song.

You’re right. I haven’t thought of it that way, but that’s interesting.

When a guy like Springsteen writes a song like “My Hometown,” then buys a million-dollar home, should it matter to us, or should only the song matter?

It’s not up to me to say what matters for you. I just don’t have a problem with it. Art is very broad, and inclusive, not exclusive. I don’t think that it’s okay to write songs that are exactly true to your life and not okay to write a complete fabrication, and anything between. Let’s keep our feet on the ground. There’s real evil in the world. Whether Bruce lives in a mansion and writes about his poor upbringing is not part of it [laughs]. Who cares, really? If you write a good song, great. If you live in a nice house, good for you. How many great songs are there that Holland-Dozier-Holland wrote that didn’t have anything to do with anybody’s real life but that we all love and are important to us? Who was Bernadette anyway? Did she look over her shoulder or not? What was she looking at? What was she running from?

You mentioned Hemingway earlier. You lived in Key West for a while. What was that like?

I had been living in Manhattan for ten years and reached a point where I felt like I needed a change. I didn’t feel like I was any closer to being happy or being rich, or whatever. I didn’t know what I was doing, really. I was kind of in a rut. I thought, let me go down there. I met a woman who lived down there and she invited me down. We ended up getting married. It was a nice lifestyle for a couple years. But it’s a little teeny island at the end of the road, and I’m way too ambitious to have been able to stay there. I want to make movies. I have a lot of records to make, and a lot of songs to write, and a lot of bands to produce.

Without that time you spent there, do you think you would have been as productive as you are now? Was it necessary as a way of getting your shit together?

Yeah, I think everything we do fits part of a larger plan. If we’re growing at all, change can be a good thing. I know I was on some kind of a path, whether I knew it or not. Moving to Key West was part of it.

To paraphrase Dostoyevsky, you are on the right path; the thing is not to leave it.

Right. Exactly.

Whether it’s Citizen Wayne or Dangerous Madness, you are making some of the most potent political music next to Rage against the Machine. Interestingly enough, it didn’t happen during the Reagan era but smack in the middle of the Clinton era, a time of false progressive politics.

I think I’m interested in both. If the Bush election taught me anything, it was about the illusion of choice. That there is no real choice in the world, certainly in America, about anything that is important. Like health care, we don’t have any choice in that. Electricity, utilities, those kinds of things that are important. We don’t have any choice in that. Media, we have no say in any of that. Is it a Republican or Democrat? Well, what’s the difference? They’re both corporate shills.

The things we have choice in are like thirty-one flavors of ice cream, fifty kinds of bagels. You get ten different kinds of sneakers, but that stuff doesn’t matter. There are only five record companies. Choices on the important things are all narrowed down and controlled by gigantic multinational corporations. That’s the fact. We have no choice. We have the illusion of choice, like we all go vote. And believe me, I vote, and I’d vote every day if they’d let me. I don’t believe it’s going to make much difference. I haven’t seen where it makes much difference.

Would you still describe yourself as a libertarian?

I’ve kind of come to the point where I’m calling myself a radical democrat.

You described the Citizen Wayne songs as auto-mythogized . . .

Auto-mythological.

Is that still your direction?

Well, there was a lot of looking back on that record. I was trying to tell mythological versions of what my experiences have been, but I think if anything, I’m looking more in now. So that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to take a hard look at who I really am. What the hell am I doing? What am I really all about? What am I really interested in? What do I really care about? Can I be honest enough? Do I have enough courage to really look inside and say what I really see? I think that’s what I’m trying to do.

While imprisoned in Lexington, Kentucky, you worked with Red Rodney, who took you from being a straight rocker to a jazzier player. Is there anybody influencing you today like Red Rodney did then?

I have a lot of contemporaries. I’m pretty close to guys like Chris Vrenna, or John X, or David Was remains very close to me creatively. All these guys are doing things. They’re showing a high degree of creativity and courage and pushing music into new spaces. Releasing it from old ideas. It’s not the same as my relationship with Red, because that was more the fundamentals of music, the language of music, but I hold these guys pretty much in the same esteem and I feel like we have a real healthy petri dish that we’re trying to operate in.

THE MEKONS: THE POLITICS OF POP

Originally published in Thirsty Ear, 2000.

According to traditional Marxist beliefs, in a time when there’s a vacuum in terms of authentic revolutionary or progressive avant-garde art, the most significant art, say art that holds people’s attention, is produced by reactionaries. Do you believe that’s true?

John: I think what’s happening now is symptomatic of what’s happening across the board, not just about art, but about capital in general.

If you’ve been consistent in terms of being a band, it’s probably about attacking power, whether it’s in the boardroom, bedroom, or barroom.

Langford: We’re always burrowing around the edges of it.

But you’ve said that you’re not purists about it, so what does that mean? For instance, is Tony Blair evil? Billy Bragg has said, in effect, that at least he stands for education and other Labour issues. Is he being an apologist?

Timms: He would be. That doesn’t surprise me at all.

Langford: Blair’s not evil, but he represents something that is evil. He’s always preaching about democracy, but people are now more powerless than they’ve ever been. Blair and Clinton have really been presiding over the dash away from democracy.

Timms: Blair and Clinton are problematic because they’ve continued the policies of their countries’ previous governments but put on a face. It was easy not to like Thatcher and Reagan, you just weren’t supposed to like them. But Clinton is harder to dislike. He coats everything with this veneer of liberalism, but in reality there’s nothing he’s done that’s been different than the previous governments. He carries it on, but says, “We’re not doing this.” It’s hard to focus on disliking them because they don’t admit it themselves. . . . Thatcher was pretty unapologetic about what she did, so it was easy to say, “I don’t like her and what she did.” But it’s very hard dealing with these rightist liberals.

Greenhalgh: They know better, basically. That’s why Tony Blair is evil. He’s a very intelligent person. They come out from a 1960s culture. They know what’s going on . . .

Langford: But they know what they have to do to get elected. Blair had to go to Australia and kiss the fucking ring of Rupert Murdoch. And he had to go around to all the moneymen and tell them he wasn’t going to rock the boat. It’s like, what is the fucking point?

Americans tend to carry their politics innately in their emotions and psychology and tend to be rather unconscious of their beliefs; do Europeans tend to be more self-aware of their politics?

Langford: There’s no socialism in America, and there’s socialism all over Western Europe.

But that’s like saying there was no peasant class in America, therefore we had different stages in terms of social and political development.

Langford: Right, that’s a major difference.

Greenhalgh: But stuff like that is definitely disintegrating.

Sally: It’s still there, but it’s changing. The essence of America is the individual, but I wouldn’t say that for Europe, it’s the society.

The focus is on community?

Timms: Yes.

Langford: Individualism is not going to work much in England, because the institutionalized socialistic mechanisms are not going to be broken down.

But is that just cultural relativism, where one thing is as good as the next?

Langford: I think one can be highly critical. But rock ’n’ roll isn’t art, then suddenly becomes art? You’re saying Robert Johnson wasn’t fucking art?

Greenhalgh: I think there obviously is a difference, but it’s easy for us not to be bothered by all that. It’s not like we say, “Today I’m going to make art.”

But is outsider art, say a guy scribbling on an aluminum wall, as interesting as a Monet?

Langford: There’s good scribbling.

Timms: Often it is.

Greenhalgh: You say rock ’n’ roll started in the mid-1950s with Elvis, then trace it, and it’s somewhat interesting. But it’s rather boring too.

But we can trace it back to country, and then even back to Africa.

Langford: Back to people banging two rocks together.

Greenhalgh: At the end of the day, it all gets meshed together.

As Ian from the Make-Up has said, when kids no longer have to go into the community to play their music but just sit at home, where they can make and produce their own album, it becomes weird, masturbatory, and inverted, because rock ’n’ roll used to be about reaching out.

Langford: Everything becomes so dissipated as people sit home locked away in their own little worlds and no one has common ground anymore, except for a huge corporate thing. So the only thing you have a conversation about anymore is so bland it’s useless.

Timms: My point is that you kept asking us how we viewed ourselves—what we view ourselves as artists—and where do we sit, and where we come from. We think that everybody is capable of making something, and it doesn’t matter. . . . It’s just music, and it’s not necessarily incredibly special.

RALPH STANLEY: THE ORIGINAL MAN OF CONSTANT SORROW

Originally published in Thirsty Ear, 2003.

Ralph Stanley’s high-lonesome, mournful tenor is often and widely hailed as the greatest voice ever to emerge from Appalachia, especially when singing his signature tune, “Man of Constant Sorrow,” or his definitive, a cappella version of “Oh Death,” the centerpiece of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? sound track. Indisputably the elder statesman of old-time bluegrass music, Stanley is one of the most prolific recording artists in American history—initially playing with his older brother Carter as the Stanley Brothers and later as leader of the Clinch Mountain Boys—performing on more than 170 bluegrass, country, and gospel records over the course of six decades.

You refer to your music as “mountain music” instead of “bluegrass.” Why?

I like for it to be mountain music or old-time country music or traditional bluegrass. Either one will fit me. It’s traditional, basically.

Were you surprised that six million fans bought the O Brother, Where Art Thou? sound track, or had you realized there was an audience, and it was just a matter of time before you reached them?

I don’t think anybody expected it to do that good, but I am certainly glad that it did. I think it did because of the old-time music. T. Bone [Burnett, producer of the sound track] and the Coen Brothers put it out where people could hear it, and they advertised it. There were probably thousands and thousands of people who hadn’t ever heard this type of music before, and when they heard it, they liked it.

Do you think those people will continue to buy your records, or records by other bluegrass artists?

Ah, yeah, they are. When I do a personal appearance, every night I ask for people to raise their hands if it’s the first time they have seen my show. Sometimes it will be one third of the audience. Well, those are new people that I have picked up, and there’s also the old audience that I have had for years.

Would you describe the bluegrass festival circuit as a family unto itself?

Yeah, this Down from the Mountain tour [featuring a host of roots music artists] was just like a family. All the people were nice and cooperating and helped each other. It was actually more homey-like than festivals, really. Everybody was just for each other.

Did that suggest to you that even in 2003, when people can be a little bit cynical and jaded about the music industry, there are still really good people in the business?

Yeah, that’s right. They’s good people and all the music is good. Well, there’s some that’s bad out there, I guess. And some, well, I don’t know. I better not judge that [laughs].

Was it a difficult decision to leave Rebel Records after thirty years and record for a new one?

No, I was pretty anxious to try something new, and I think it has helped me in a way. Like I said, it’s gotten me a lot of fans. The sound track of O Brother is the most publicity I’ve gotten. I don’t feel that I have lost any of my old fans, but I have gained new ones.

Over the past several years, you’ve worked with a lot of younger artists, from Patty Loveless to Dwight Yoakum. How do you know when you can trust the musical sensibilities of artists who are sometimes thirty to forty years younger than you?

Well, I don’t let anyone record with me who is not a fan of mine or doesn’t believe in my music. Everybody who records with me, from Bob Dylan on down to George Jones, everybody loves me and my music, and I knew they would do the best that they could do, and they did. I didn’t doubt them a bit. There’s some country people who I wouldn’t want, who didn’t record with me.

Your press statement says that your material is original, unlike Bill Monroe. Can you clarify what that statement is supposed to suggest, because I just saw you on the Bill Monroe PBS special and obviously you are a fan.

Well, a lot of Bill’s sound and Stanley’s sound is different. Whatever I said about Bill, he’s the greatest in my book. But his style is still different than Stanley music.

But how would you describe that difference to a person who might not be a diehard bluegrass fan?

Bill’s music was a little more polished. Ours is just a little rougher than Bill’s, not as smooth, just really down to earth, in the mountains.

Would you say the difference is that Bill Monroe did not grow up in Appalachia?

I’d say that Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, and me have just about the same fans. It altogether was good. But I don’t sound like Bill Monroe and he didn’t sound like me. He was the greatest, I think, but we didn’t sound alike.

Didn’t Bill Monroe leave Columbia Records because he felt the Stanleys were copying his sound?

Well, he told Columbia that if they signed the Stanley Brothers, he would resign, which he did, yeah. But that didn’t last long. We was the greatest of friends. We got together and I recorded with him, and Bill recorded with me. I don’t have anything but good things to say about Bill Monroe.

Is your picking style something you learned from your mother?

No, she just played the old claw-hammer banjo. I didn’t get much from her. That’s all I learned from her was that. It’s just a style that God gave the Stanley Brothers and me. I can’t explain it. It’s just natural.

Speaking of God, you went to a church where instruments were not allowed. Were they considered too sinful to be in the church?

I joined that church and was baptized and they buy every record that I make, but they don’t want it in church.

You were firmly in the mainstream right after WWII, then rock ’n’ roll came in and quickly supplanted bluegrass, just like bluegrass had for a time supplanted country music. Were you ever tempted to switch styles?

I would have quit before I went rock ’n’ roll. I know one way, and that’s natural, and when I can’t make it, I’ll come home and stay. I believe in my music.

In the early 1970s, when hot artists with new licks and drum sets forged a style called New Grass and tried to widen the bluegrass tent, you stuck even more firmly with tradition?

I stayed just the way I started. All that new stuff that they put out . . . that’s the reason I say that I don’t know what bluegrass is. When I think of bluegrass, I think of Bill Monroe and traditional. Well, Bill’s a traditional guy, but we’re just a little further back.

Your nickname for Ralph Stanley II [his only son] is “Two.” How did you know when he was ready to take up a front spot in your band?

Well, I could tell by the way he goes over with the crowd, the way they buy his records. I could tell, just the way when I hired Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley. I hired them at sixteen years old. I saw potential, I saw a future in that, just like I see it in Ralph. I believe I am qualified to know to do that.

Did he really begin as early as six or seven?

Oh yeah, he recorded a tape with me when he was three.

And now you have a young grandson who is following in the same footsteps?

Yeah, he’s ten. He’s playing a mandolin now. He started out playing the spoons.

Was the new record you recorded with Jim Lauderdale [Lost in the Lonesome Pines, Dualtone Records] made in the old style or with new, computerized cut-and-paste technology?

We did the Jim Lauderdale record the new way.

When you listen to the records, which sound do you prefer?

You know, I enjoy both. I can do with either one. Of course, I am used to doing it this [older] way, but I like both.

After 170 records and 150 shows a year, are you completely at ease with the recording process?

Yeah, just as much at ease as I am doing a show or something. Yeah, I don’t pay any attention to it. I do the best I can with it, you know. That’s the way I do whatever I do.

Nothing surprises you in the studio?

No, not really.

How important was it for Lauderdale to come to Virginia to record?

All me and my band live close to the studio here, that’s the reason. We’ve been recording at the same studio for several years, and it was much easier for us to do, so I thought that Jim could come from Nashville up here better than us all could go down there.

He had actually been an honorary Clinch Mountain boy in 1998, when Ralph II was ill.

Yeah, I believe it was then.

You’ve had experience with Lauderdale off and on over the years?

Well, that’s our second project. We recorded one before that (I Feel Like Singing Today, Rebel Records) and it did good, and he wanted to do another. Of course, it was nominated for a Grammy too, but it didn’t win, so he wanted to do another one. I think [Lost in the Lonesome Pines] is a better one, and I reckon he thinks so too. He thought maybe we could win a Grammy with it, which we did.

Did you know he had actually gone to Nashville in 1979 to get a bluegrass recording contract?

I knew he liked bluegrass. I understood that he went down there as a writer. He’s a good songwriter.

Your self-titled album for DMZ as well as O Brother concentrate on older material. Does it ever concern you that people focus on Stanley Brothers material and not much at all from your sixties, seventies, and eighties solo music?

Well, with that old material, you see, I went back farther than me and my brother or anything that I had ever done. I went back farther.

Why do you think people are so interested in the oldest material? Why did T. Bone insist on it?

Well, he just wanted me to try a different sound. Of course, the O Brother sound track did so good, and it was all old-time music, like “O Death,” “Man of Constant Sorrow.” All that was old-time music.

Speaking of T. Bone, he said you are enjoying yourself like crazy, driving around with sunglasses and a black leather jacket in a Jaguar. Is he exaggerating?

Well, I drive a Jaguar sometimes. I’ve always enjoyed, for several years, driving around like that.

In the next five years, do you see yourself as busy as you’ve been the last five years, or slowing down?

I’m cutting down by about half on my personal appearances, and I’ve signed with Columbia Records to do six CDs, so I’ll do that, and I guess that’ll probably be all that I do, if I can do that much, you know? You never know at my age.

What do you want people to remember most about you?

Well, I would want them to remember that I respected what I do and believed in putting on nothing and doing it natural, which I’ve done for fifty-six years, and I believe that’s why I am around today. There are not too many people that stay in that long. I’m just down to earth with it and believe in nothing fancy.

JAMES MCNEW: YO LA TENGO

Originally published in Thirsty Ear, 1998.

You’re happy with the way the new songs on I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One feel when you play them live?

I think so. As far as this stuff is concerned, this record is really different for us, in that normally, even every time we make an album, there’s been at least one or two songs from that record that we say goodbye to and never try to play live. But we’ve played every song from this record live one time or another. Actually, compared to the other records, we’ve played all the songs fairly faithfully compared to the versions on the record. We shift them up a little a bit, but for the most part it’s been steady.

I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, your last record, was voted by Spin as one of the 90 top records of the 1990s; Rolling Stone voted it one of the 150 top records of the 1990s. You are about to be on a K-Tel compilation, and the Toronto Globe called you the best band in North America. That sounds like a lot of pressure when making a follow-up record.

Especially when it’s all true [laughs]. I forget whether it was the Spin or Rolling Stone thing, but I remember my mom bought it because she had heard about it. I think we were on the same page as Marilyn Manson, and when my Dad saw that he was like, “Who’s this Marilyn Manson guy?” It was all worth it just for that. I’m sure there was some pressure, but I think we tried to keep it as far back in our minds as we could while getting ready to make this record. It was, at the time, our most successful record by a million miles. It seemed like more was available to us and more was happening for us while we were traveling; there were more opportunities to play, more people bought copies of the record. That was incredible. We didn’t want to go and do another one of those.

Georgia once said that there’s always so much to improve upon.

I don’t know if I consider it really improving. I think you just grow as people. I mean, I think if you do it right, you are able to express that by the music you write and the records you make. I don’t know if we improve with age [laughs]. It’s not like a fine cheese.

You recorded the record in Nashville, which is not the first time. Does recording in a studio outside of New York/New Jersey give you a different perspective on the music while making the albums?

Not socially. But I think it allows us to concentrate, and I think it’s been a very good strategy for us, because leaving home and going to the studio, where we will just basically work for twelve or thirteen hours every day for four weeks is a really good way to go. We just get into the groove of working and eating. Nashville is America’s best-kept secret as far as restaurants; I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s out of this world.

The band has always been identified with Hoboken, New Jersey, right across the Hudson River from Manhattan, and you end the new record with a fourteen-minute meditation on the city. As Hoboken has changed and gentrified how has the band’s relationship to the city changed, and how has that impacted your music?

All of our surroundings feed into our work. Hoboken has changed over the years. There used to be what I thought was the best record store in the world there, and that shut down a few years ago. Although Maxwell’s [where Ira used to DJ and the band regularly plays] is doing very well. We just played there over the summer. It’s still by far my favorite place to go see a show. If you become gentrified along with your surroundings, do you notice it as much? Because we notice it pretty severely, so maybe we’re resisting it a bit.

It’s a three-member band, two of whom are married to each other. Do you ever feel like the third spoke, or is it natural to work with Ira and Georgia?

It feels natural to me. I just don’t think about it. There have been a few times when I’ve played with other people in other groups that don’t have the female dynamic, and it’s definitely noticeable. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but it’s there. Or maybe it’s just because Georgia is such a good drummer.

You’ve done sound-track work for the animated short “The Pigeon Within” by Georgia’s sister, and Hal Hartley regularly uses your songs in his films. Does it surprise you how the songs seem to work their way into films?

I’m sure somewhere in our consciousness is that element of sound-track music. We go to the movies a lot, and in our record collections there’s a pretty good amount of sound tracks. I know we’re all really interested in that kind of music. We’ve done very little in terms of composing for movies. A lot of times people just take the songs that they want to use and plug them into a scene. We’re a ton more interested in writing stuff for films. We just did some music for a movie called Traffic, which is directed by Steven Soderbergh and is coming out around Christmas time. I was psyched to do it and can’t wait to do more.

Is there a change between who you are on the street and who you are on stage, like at a sold-out show at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall?

The bigger the place, the more of an asshole I like to be. It all goes by attendance, really [laughs]. I don’t think about that stuff. When people come to see us, I’m excited, I’m out of my mind.

On the records, you tend to have eclectic tastes in terms of covers, but for encores you tend toward familiar songs by the likes of Blondie and the Ramones.

A lot of times they are requests. A lot of times we gauge the feeling of the evening and decide which way to go. Every set is made for the night.

On the first tour for the new record, you asked venues to install seats, but on this tour you have not. How is this a different tour than the summer one?

It’s definitely different. The seating idea was mainly a product of being the first tour when the record came out, and no one had heard the songs before. We knew they were different, we knew they were quieter, we knew that attendance would probably be pretty good because we hadn’t toured for a long time. We wanted a more calm setting, because the songs are quiet and it was just a short, three-week trip across the U.S. That’s all we wanted—to play them that way first, and then as time went on, people would become more familiar with the feel of the songs and know that there were quiet songs coming as well as loud songs. I loved that tour tremendously, that was a lot of fun.

Over the past five years, the band has really reached across a multigenerational indie music perspective by collaborating with Jad Fair (Half Japanese, started in the mid-1970s), David Kilgour (the Clean, 1980s), and Mac McCaughan (Superchunk, 1990s). Did you seek out these people?

We sought out Mac and David. We knew we wanted to put together a five-piece group and tried to think of people who could play multiple instruments and switch around. Although we were big fans of both bands, we knew them as people too. It was like a dream. It was too short. As the last shows were rolling around, I was really sad. I felt like we were really hitting it. I miss them terribly. When we played England, we played with two more musicians to augment the group, Pete “Sonic Boom” of Spaceman 3 and Neil Innes of the Rutles, so you can add the 1960s also. Just recently, we backed Ray Davies of the Kinks for a series of shows. That was insane, unbelievable.

Is it important to retain a sense of humor, whether it’s on record or on tour?

I think so. How do I explain this? I think we’re able to get across our personalities a little bit by playing. We’re fully aware that a seventy-minute record of real serious songs can be a tough thing to take by anybody. It works really great to show the lighter end of a sustained mood that goes throughout the record. And though we’re real serious and all, we’re hilarious people. There’s no getting around that.

As a band, you’re able to be smart but spontaneous, then be ambient yet noisy too. Is that something planned?

I hope it comes naturally. I think it does. I don’t think we’d just want to do one thing, but I also like when we can do all those things at the same time, kind of combine them in the span of one song. When those things come together, that’s success.

Have you ever regretted anything?

My biggest regret is when on tour in January of 1994, the day after a New Orleans show, I passed on a copy of Lanquidity by Sun Ra with original silver Mylar sleeve because it was thirty dollars. As soon as we drove out of town in the van, I was like, “Wait a minute, go back!” because it goes for like five hundred dollars now. I was really sad about that. But it was just reissued this week, and I picked up a copy in New Orleans, so it all came around.

NEKO CASE: I AM THE BOSS OF MY DESTINY

Originally published in Left of the Dial, 2002.

Did you approach the record Boiler Room Lullaby any differently than The Virginian, your first?

I kind of knew what I was doing this time. The general approach was pretty much the same, though I had some better ideas.

What do you mean, better ideas?

I had a better idea of what I wanted. Last time it was kind of an experiment.

Was it so well received partially because it was an experiment, thus felt a bit fresh?

I don’t know why it was so well received. I appreciate it, but I was just trying to see if I could make a record or not. It was nice that people really liked it. It gave me a lot of confidence, and I felt good about myself. I also felt that I could do a much better job.

You’ve said before that you were unhappy with the split singles you did with the Sadies and Whiskeytown?

Well, my performance on the Whiskeytown wasn’t very good because I had been on the road awhile and was just exhausted. It was a strange time.

Do you feel yourself pulled between the three places dear to you—Tacoma, Virginia, and Vancouver? Does it give you a sense of dislocation?

I think I am pulled by not knowing where my home is right now. I live in Seattle at the moment, but I’m moving to Chicago in April. I just feel that I’m not done moving around yet. I feel pulled by Chicago, but I’ll go back to Washington eventually.

It seems that country music has always been about that sense of place, do you agree?

It is about a sense of place, but I think people mistake it for geography a lot of times, so people get weird about it if you’re not from a certain place. For instance, if you’re not from there, you’re not playing country music, but that’s not true.

Is it true that you turned to country music about six years back after a bad breakup with a boyfriend, and country music was just easier for you to write at the time?

No. I just started writing songs in the band I was in, and they were country songs. I’m sure a lot of bad breakup things are reflected in the songs, but it wasn’t necessarily because of that. I grew up listening to country music from the time I was very little.

With your grandmother?

Yes. It seemed the natural thing for me.

Country music does pull you through the hard times?

All kinds of music. Different music for different times, but southern gospel is one of my favorites. It’s very passionate, but not steamy love songs. I’m not a religious person, so it’s not about that, but more or less about giving yourself over to something entirely, being totally selfless, such as making music for God. But in my case, making life okay or justifying why I’m alive.

You’ve said that country music carved a place for women long before rock did. Did you feel discontent growing up and listening to punk rock, which often is male-dominated?

In the eighties and early nineties, I wasn’t feeling a lot of kinship with the music being made, like I had felt with earlier punk rock. The stuff was monotonous political diatribes that I found boring.

What about the riot grrrls, who seemed to restore women in the scene?

I was listening to country music at the time. I wasn’t really in on that at all.

It didn’t change your views of punk rock?

No, I always thought ladies should be playing music and I had never taken any shit off anybody, so it didn’t seem that weird to me, I guess.

Are you at all uncomfortable with all the press and notice your records are now getting?

People are pretty favorable in their reviews. And it doesn’t really matter. I know what it’s like to be there making the record, and they don’t. There’s nothing they can say that can really upset me. Even if somebody wrote something contrary to what I’m about, I don’t think I’d be bothered by it. Not that I can’t be bothered, but that I was there making the record, and I know what happened. I know what the truth about things is. You know, as long as my grandmother likes it. . . .

She’s the litmus test for the records?

Yeah. And it’s just not me on the records at all. It’s not just my performance.

How did you like playing on the Mekons’ Journey to the End of the Night record?

It was fun.

I hear you do a great impression of Sally Timms.

I have to be around her again for a while [laughs]. Sally is probably pretty sick of my imitation.

Do you miss living up in Canada?

Yes, I do a lot. I love living in Canada.

You were unceremoniously booted at the end of your visa?

No, I wasn’t booted at the end of my visa. I once got booted because I played a show, which I found out was illegal. Nobody kicked me out because my visa ran out, I just couldn’t work there. I’d have to go through a long process, and I’m not independently wealthy, so I can’t live there without a job. You can’t make enough money being a musician.

Canada has a different national music culture, with good support from the government and the Canadian Broadcast Company, which is entirely different than the U.S.

The government and some forms of media are very supportive of the community and embrace it. Here, there are no government grants. In grade schools, they take away the arts.

They’ve eliminated the tambourines and triangles.

It’s awful.

Is there a difference between the music communities in the U.S. and Canada as well?

Well, there are way fewer people in Canada. It’s very supportive and people aren’t really that competitive, although people aren’t necessarily that competitive here.

You played Lilith Fair?

Yes, but I don’t know if anybody notices the smaller bands at Lilith Fair. They all go to see Sarah McLachlan.

Your producer, Darryl Neudorf, was also her producer, though he had to take her to court over song rights. Is that what tied up the release of the new record?

No, not legal hassles with him alone. Lawyers are crazy. Lawyers want to feel like they run the show, and they’re slow motherfuckers. We did have some scheduling problems because he did have to go to court, but it wasn’t that alone.

You met and exchanged records with Emmylou Harris at Lilith Fair?

I didn’t exchange any records with her. I read that the other day and don’t know where it came from. I met her at the show and drove her to a hotel in Seattle. She was an incredibly nice person. She didn’t remember having met me before, but I had met her.

You’ve also played on the same stage as Loretta Lynn?

Yes, but people were clinging all over her. I thought the nicest thing I could do for Loretta was not bug her at all.

Why do you have such an aversion to being called alternative country?

Because it’s a cop-out. I listened to country music growing up, and I just want to call my stuff country music. I’m not going to get confused with New Country, so why should I play the whole media thing about alt country?

But what if the simple term could gain you audience because people look for certain kinds of music?

I don’t think it’s that big of an issue, really. I’ll never get played on TNT. I’ll never get played on country radio. I don’t have real control about what people call it. They call it alternative country. People ask me the question like it’s some big deal. I don’t think about it. I’m in a good position, I have creative control of my recordings, and I’m not worried about becoming mainstream, though I’d like to do certain things that are beyond my means.

Are you going back to graduate school anytime soon?

If I can get together the money.

You’re unhappy with Seattle?

Housing is nonexistent. It’s really expensive, and I’m starting to hate it for that reason. I live in a good loft building downtown, but we’re getting kicked out.

Has the money changed the music scene?

A lot of people are moving away. It will become pretty culturally void soon.

Can you illuminate the lines, “I can’t seem to fathom the dark of my history / so I invented my own in Tacoma” from your song “Thrice All American”?

It’s about growing up in America in a very racially diverse city, including gangs, ghettoes, and racism. It’s so hard to figure out your place in America.

What about the line “I’m guided by the voices I’ve perfected” from the song “Guided by Wires”?

That’s about growing up with a bad learning disability and being creative and faking your way through everything. It’s about the difficulty of getting ahead, basically being a smart kid and trying to get ahead, though it’s not so specific as all that. Songwriting feels good when you can get close to something. It’s not about therapy but about combining words to create images that you might find in the subconscious.

Is the emphasis on image what makes punk different from country?

Well, punk’s more literal. But there are bands like the Cramps, who have the most crazed, twisted, kick-ass lyrics ever made, and at the same time the sexiest songs ever.

What are you listening to right now?

I’m loving the new Mekons, and a band from Vancouver called Destroyer, who play the greatest, oddest, mid-1970s Bowie style of pop.

Does it matter if you play to thirty or three hundred people?

It depends on the feeling of the place. I’ve played to five thousand people who weren’t there to see me, and it was pretty cold.

Is indifference the worst part?

They are usually there to see somebody who made a hit song. It’s hard playing in front of people who aren’t really interested in anything new because they’re waiting for the headline act. They want to hear the hit songs; they’re not really into music.

How into music are you?

I don’t know if I could be more into it.

You have an art degree?

I do photography, printmaking, and sculpture. But I’m looking for a steady place to live, and I have a hard time making visual art without a steady place to live. I do feel a definite void in my life at the moment.

ROB YOUNGER: RADIO BIRDMAN AND NEW CHRISTS

Originally printed in Left of the Dial, interviewed by Jeremy Saperstein and David Ensminger, 2003.

Did you ad-lib most of the vocals for the Deep Reduction sessions?

I didn’t ad-lib those vocals, I sang what was put in front of me, and for the three sets of words I wrote to cassettes sent to me I wrote two versions, “plans A and B.” Not sure why, but in each case plan B prevailed. There wasn’t time for more than two takes for any of them, if I recall, a weird situation considering I was flown all that way to sing on the record. Whatever, it turned out well enough.

According to an Australian website, the 1989 release of the New Race’s First to Pay was hailed by some, since the original raw vocals are preserved and are considered by many to be compelling in their intensity. These had been overdubbed on the “official” The First and Last album. Were you consulted? Is this true and accurate?

The simplest and best thing would be for the raw tapes to be mixed properly and put out. I thought the official release of The First and Last was fine, and I only found out years later that Deniz had been unhappy with my re-recording of the singing. The two releases on Revenge were put out without my permission, Ron Asheton having presented them with utterly crap unmixed cassettes of various shows. These cassettes consisted of a one-pass-through “the-desk” mixes made by someone who was not a sound engineer to enable the band members to figure out what was worth putting on an official release. Back then, I used to jump around so much that the vocals didn’t always register on tape, and all I wanted to do was give the songs the necessary focus. Maybe they are better in organic form than what I changed them to. Who cares now anyway?

How do you gauge fans in America—by record reviews, by letters and emails, or by sales?

I gauged our profile from all the sources mentioned, except record sales. I didn’t, still don’t, delude myself that there’s a whole lot of interest, but probably we’d have filled a smallish club in the bigger cities.

“It’s cyclical how raw rock ’n’ roll comes back to remind everybody and make them all ashamed about their wanking and overproduction. Like the latest example, the White Stripes, . . . I felt ashamed to be playing in a band with six people when two people can go out there and generate that shit,” you told the English press. Are you fascinated, since the White Stripes are products of Detroit, the source of much inspiration for Radio Birdman and New Race?

Not really. It seems to be a coincidence, the Detroit connection. I was being tongue-in-cheek when I said I felt ashamed about having six as opposed to two, to emphasize the point about what a firm reminder the Stripes are that simplicity, directness, good songwriting, and attitude don’t require a traveling circus to support them. It’s that the power of ideas, of art, isn’t, or shouldn’t be, dependant on extravagance and overembellishment. Sorry if that’s badly explained. I suppose I should say that, for me, it wasn’t just Detroit music that got me interested in playing music apart from all the stuff I heard in my so-called formative years, it was the New York Dolls that got me to thinking I could give it a shot. I never felt I could get anywhere near to capturing the atmosphere I perceived on Funhouse.

On the Long Way to the Top TV series, you said, “This whole legacy thing is a bit difficult. . . . I’ve been accused of a lot of dreadful things, but that sort of pomposity of assuming that ‘godfather’ mantle is a bit odious. Is there something odd about downplaying one’s role, especially since you’ve been a constant presence in Australian music?

Maybe it is odd, but it’s consistent with most Australians’ character. It’s a national trait, modesty, and its close relative, false modesty, too, of course. Really, I don’t want to think about things like this legend and icon shit. It’s quite meaningless. I’m a fan, in the main. I started out trying to copy Iggy Pop, got over it, and kept on with bands. I’ve outlasted a few people, so I’m now old enough to be this fucking elder statesman. Spare me.

Do you feel the true meaning of the song “New Race” has been misunderstood for over two decades, not unlike the Rezillos’ “Someone’s Going to Get Their Head Kicked In (Tonight)” and even Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”?

Deniz wrote “New Race” in response to our then-producer Charles Fisher’s request that he write a teen anthem. He knocked it up overnight. It’s about kids mutating through the power of rock ’n’ roll into a “new race.” It’s a bit of fun. All the bullshit about it being a fascist call to arms is patently absurd.

Jules from Phantom Records, your former neighbor and even roommate, said, “The one thing I remember about Rob is all the time we were together he never had any photos of himself at an age younger than what he was then!” Is he remembering this correctly?

Jules has a virtual photographic memory, so I’d be nuts to argue with him. And in this case he’s right. I couldn’t give a damn about photographs of myself. Now, there’s a wild pronouncement.

You liked the British bands of the 1960s, including the Animals, Kinks, and the Beatles, but why in the 1970s did you become so turned on to American music like the New York Dolls, Stooges, and Alice Cooper (I believe your early band the Rats covered Alice Cooper)?

I latched onto those U.S. bands because they sounded so good. Their nationalities had nothing to do with it. At the time—the early seventies—British rock was mired in that boring Free, Deep Purple scene, apart from the Faces and the glam crowd, which I really loved, and when I heard Funhouse I completely flipped. It wasn’t like me consciously going “I think I’ll give the U.S. boys a go for a while.” I didn’t think in terms of legacies and stuff. You just follow your heart; it’s not that theoretical. The Rats never played any Alice songs. They were too hard for us to learn. We did about six Dolls, five Stooges, “Strutter” by Kiss, a couple of Velvets ones, “Waiting for the Man,” and “Rock & Roll.” Tried to play “Call Me Animal,” but it was too tough. It didn’t occur to us that we could write our own material, like, that it was allowable.

Is that what led you to eventually cover the likes of the Who and Love later on?

No, we needed a couple of songs to make up the numbers for an EP release, and I suggested we learn “The Seeker” and “She Comes in Colors,” both big favorites of mine. Since our drummer played the trumpet really well, too, I thought it could substitute for the flute on “Colors.”

At the same time, you saw all the prog bands of the time, like Blackfeather, Khahvas Jute, Coloured Balls, Carson, Spectrum, and Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs or listened to albums by the La De Da’s and Human Instinct? How did these bands shape your attitude towards music?

None of those bands shaped shit for me. I liked the La De Da’s for a few songs, and Khahvas Jute was interesting, but it was more a case of those bands contributing to the reason I got into playing the kind of rock ’n’ roll I’m into, because that scene was a pile of shit to me. A sort of anti-influence thing.

You booked bands at the Oxford Funhouse, like Johnny Dole and the Scabs and Mangrove Boogie Kings, and the Saints. From what I’ve read, you kept out shitty bands. How did this lead to, say, producing bands like Died Pretty, the Hangmen, City Kids, and Lime Spiders? Do you pick and choose his projects like he used to pick and choose bands to play the club?

Not really. Apart from being quite full of shit and on a bit of a crusade championing real rock as I then saw it, I booked bands that fitted the style of the place—grubby, unpretentious, rocking bands. The bands I recorded with fell into my lap through my association with Citadel Records, mainly. I wasn’t in any position to be choosy. It turned out that I smelled like roses being associated with such great groups, like Died Pretty and the Hangmen obviously are. I first got production offers because I seemed to be the only one around Darlinghurst that had actually spent any time at all in a studio.

A scene can’t develop with just bands alone, so could you talk about the magazines like RAM and Bucketful of Brains, and the record stores like Ripple Records, Phantom Records, and Anthem?

Well, Bucketful is an English magazine that is still going, but RAM, or Rock Australia Magazine, was just a mainstream rag publicizing the stuff that was already popular. I tried writing reviews for them a few times, but the editor kept changing my words to ones he preferred and cutting out the more insulting stuff. Those record stores all sold imports, so they were instrumental in people in Sydney getting hold of the hipper releases from the U.S. and U.K. I remember the day Jules got in his batch of the new Lou Reed album, Metal Machine Music. It was meant to sell for $16, but after only a week it was down to $2, and no one was going for it. The best store around that time was White Light, which was run by Mark Taylor, later of the Lipstick Killers.

In some ways, supposedly the poet Penny Ward was to the Birdman what Patti Smith was to early Blue Oyster Cult. Do you remember anything about her?

I remember Penny as being a great person, always pleasant, and I was really impressed when eventually I heard some songs she and Angie Pepper [Deniz’s wife now] had written, but there was never any involvement Birdman-wise that I can recall. We were far too insular to incorporate others into the fold. Penny used to be a Funhouse (our rock club in Taylor Square, Darlinghurst) regular.

What happened to Hard-On and later the project with Richard and Peter from Sunnyboys?

I’ve got no idea what Hard-On refers to, band-wise at least. Around 1980 though, the guys that eventually became the Sunnyboys and I rehearsed songs. We were playing Jeremy Oxley’s stuff, really well-crafted stuff, good tunes, and a few of mine, “No Next Time,” I forget the others. In the best career move I made on other people’s behalf, I decided they didn’t need me because Jeremy sounded so good on his own songs when he was showing them to me. Also, I would’ve compromised their immense teen appeal.

Two of the Birdman were former paratroopers or Navy men, and two were med students. Is this what partly defined the tension in the band?

Actually, our bass player Carl, who left, was a paratrooper, and Deniz was a flight surgeon in the U.S. Navy, but that was well after Radio Birdman broke up. Deniz and Pip were med students in our early days. None of this created any tension, though. Our tensions stemmed much later on from being cooped up together in a crummy flat in Drayton Park in London, and the endless drives in the so-called Van of Hate over there. Previously, we’d only been shoved together for two days at a time, not week after week, getting on each other’s nerves.

Is there one defining moment that you can recall from the tour with Flamin’ Groovies?

The endless tuning of their twelve-string guitars between songs, and the accompanying banter about how a guitar is like a woman and you’ve got to treat them with great care, ad nauseam. They were a good band, though. We didn’t have all that much contact with them as I recall.

How did you feel when the band was dropped from Sire (home of the Saints, too) and were unceremoniously replaced with the street punkers Sham 69, who, besides their cover of the Animals, were a pale comparison to the rootsy thunder of the Birdman?

I wasn’t aware that Sham 69 replaced us. We were culled from the label along with a host of other bands when Sire was dumped by their distributor or some rubbish. Sham 69? That is an insult. They sucked. Bad note to end on.

EUGENE ROBINSON: THE ORACLE BEHIND OXBOW

Previously unpublished, interviewed in January 2014.

I don’t mean to overwhelm or wax too much about punk, but I find it to be important to your body of work.

Yes, to quote the Minutemen, punk rock saved my life and framed it quite closely to the boundaries and borders of my personality as it is.

With Whipping Boy’s inclusion on the Not So Quiet on the Western Front compilation, did you feel like you were part of a cultural moment—a zeitgeist of sorts?

As is typical/usual for me that feeling predated the call to appear on the compilation by a few years. I mean I’m a rare beast. Part of the last throes of punk rock formal, from 1977 to 1980 in New York, followed by a fast, fairly effortless move to hardcore. Only a few others I know made that same trip and can claim to have already been there when I showed up: Harley Flanagan, Stephen Ielpi, Jack Rabid, Lydia Lunch, even though she never really made the jump to hardcore both feet-wise, and a few others.

So, Not So Quiet . . . seemed a quasi quaint play for placement in something that was already changing what I was doing and thinking about personally and what people I was associating with were doing specifically. It was useful though in that it coalesced the outliers by giving them a frame of reference that was maybe absent wherever they were from.

Well-known political bands like MDC and Dead Kennedys were also featured.

I still remember when MDC moved to town (San Francisco), so I find I still think of them as “the new guys” . . . funny, but they had something new going on very definitely: they weren’t ashamed of being able to play well and they were not ashamed of being smart. And that probably both came from being older AND from out of town.

During the era how did you feel about the politics of those bands? Did you personally embody similar ideologies?

The last time I used or enjoyed any other ideology not so much my own was probably when I discovered that my long-term interest in physical fitness, something that had marked me as a “jock” in the eyes of the Maximum Rocknroll community, despite me showing up to participate in the early radio shows and all, which dovetailed nicely with the whole straight edge thing. I mean back then Ian was drinking soda, eating meat and candy. So not the greatest diet. But I didn’t drink, I exercised, and while not straight edge was a firm believer in will and control. So it seemed tailor fit for me. The only part of that I regret was the whole sexless no-fucking portion of it, which made sense in light of younger men who were possibly unsure of their sexual interests, but in my life? Well it probably cost me a few good years of fucking, [laughs] . . . but the politics of MDC in my mind were very different from the politics of the DKs.

MDC had very firm and developed ideas about eating for the long term (McDonalds? Bad . . . which some had never really considered. . . . Vegetables? Good), sexuality, and how the government was working. While I think their cop target was a small and wrongheaded shot at what should have been a much wider target (I have friends who are cops, and it’s a tough blue-collar job not always done by assholes), it seems to me that, drug problems aside, they were earnest and smart cats.

The DKs were pretty apolitical, strangely enough. I mean it’s easy to not see that given their name and their songs and how their whole history played out, but knowing them, with the exception of Jello, these guys were much more excited about the prospects of what they could do musically and artistically than they were in any sort of agit-prop. Except for Jello, who as a singer and frontman would shoulder the shaping of the thematic thrust of the band, which, in his hands, always seemed a little newspaper-headline driven. I mean Jello is a voracious listener to music (I’ve never been able to get a pause in edgewise with the guy . . . ) but not so much a voracious reader of anything other than newspapers, which will eventually shallow your approach to whatever themes you’re drawn to I think, so it makes sense to ask me about MDC’s politics, not so much about the DKs.

But my politics were fast evolving, so whether I was arguing with Ian MacKaye about race vis-a-vis “Guilty of Being White” or Jello about why a man should be able to shoot his own lawnmower on his front lawn . . . I always found that politics were the politics of looking deeper into the pond than the newspapers would ever have you do. Though I did happen to sing a song called “America Must Die” [laughs].

Did you feel magazines like Maximum Rocknroll and punk venues provided true alternative perspectives and spaces, like shaping a new world within the old? Or did you seek out other venues/press, especially as Oxbow began?

By the time Oxbow started, I was not at all interested in what they were doing, thinking, or talking about. They were trying to serve youth, and I was trying to grow up. I liked the idea of Gilman. I liked that the magazine still existed/exists, but I wanted to hear musicians who had gotten better and ideas that had evolved and art that was forward looking, so good for them to be a gateway drug to “doing things yourself,” but it made about as much sense for me to be involved in the same way as it would have for me to still be sporting a mohawk.

You’ve mentioned vocalists you enjoy like Tom Waits, Al Jolson, and Nick Cave. . . .

I enjoy Waits and Cave more as lyricists, though I like their ideations of their lyrics as well.

And Marianne Faithful appeared on an Oxbow record, but why is Darby Crash still so intriguing to you?

Same reason: his lyrics were much smarter than they had any right to be, and much smarter than you’d ever think having seen them play. An enduring sadness for me is that I never got to see them live or work with him at all.

You once said your book A Long Slow Screw is about the functioning of “filthy lucre and our relationship to the corrosive power of cash,” which brings to mind both the Sex Pistols and Ezra Pound to me. How do you propose a viable alternative—how do people break free of these chains?

Philosophically. I mean money is an abstraction, even if the power it exercises is very real. So, what power does is real, but that’s the only thing that’s real about it. I can “buy” a house, I can “pay” to have someone killed, or I can create art that has more than a better chance of being heard because I can just push it and push it like Lana Del Rey and people will give me more of this abstraction. In case I have not been clear, I will take the time to say here: I love money. Make no mistake. It’s one of the best abstractions out there. Second only to love in my mind.

So the alternative? There is none. There is, though, changing how we think about this abstraction.

You’ve admitted “‘I’m just a standard bearer of eros. . . .” Would you say that goes back to your first punk gigs as well—and how does it sit in relationship to, say, pathos, or ethos, which many people link to punk?

I suppressed this early on. Like I said, the vibe of all of the D.C. guys who I used to see when they came up to New York was very different and very anti-sex. It took a few years for me to realize this was exactly the last place I want to be in my head and in my heart.

But pathos, or the ethos of pathos, or bathos, well, that’s complicated, and I see post-punk as much more comfortable with its sexuality than punk ever was, so answering your question here is not so easy.

By far, you have one of the most distinct voices in music, which I always felt was akin to David Thomas of Pere Ubu—voice as unbound instrument, not simply a conveyor belt of lyrics. Was your approach, perhaps like Mike Watt, inspired by a punk sense of explore, experiment, and challenge, or something else? John Zorn. . . .

No. I remember telling Biafra about Oxbow before I had finished it, saying, “I just want to capture the sounds that are in my head,” and he sagely responded, “Don’t we all?” Even if the truth is that most singers don’t want to do this. I mean I really like Little Richard, Glen Campbell, and a half a dozen other singers, but my head has me sounding like I sound. And it changes from Oxbow record to Oxbow record, which many would miss if they were not paying close enough attention.

You also seem to convey a true challenge to binary gender roles—your physique might be called hypermasculine, but your performances and narratives, like on “Gal” with its monologue about tears, conveys an alternative masculinity. Do you feel you are at the front lines of gender?

Front lines? [laughs] Not so much, but you do know I have four sisters, and there were only two males born into my family (and I was one) in like a fifty-year stretch. So I grew up with aunts, female cousins, grandmas, great-grandmas, my mom. I spent waaaaaay more time with women my whole life, so despite my really typical masculine pursuits my identification has always been primarily feminine. My typical masculine pursuits—the fighting, the knives, guns, martial arts, and so on—are probably done to protect this identification. I mean, I used to be a bouncer for strippers, and I never bought the whole stripper lie, and I identified with them much more as first performers and of course real actual humans, which sharpened my fury when I had to throw guys out for infractions. Not saying I was not interested in fucking, but saying that my approach is nuanced and not so dictated by the very simple and simplified media approach to it all, which makes for a very confusing Oxbow show—confusing for viewers, not for me at all.

How does the book form serve you differently than a fight space or gig space?

It is a place to articulate. Very different from a fight or a gig.

Are they your multiple selves (author, fighter, singer) finding different forms, or might they present one holistic approach—a unified performance across mediums?

The latter, most assuredly.

You worked with Kathy Acker, too, considered one of punk’s inventive literary forces. Her fiction is filled with a sense of the avant-garde and the aggressive/atavistic, not unlike your own music, yet her narrative on “The Stabbing Hand” is so subdued, even mild. Was that intentional—did you want to channel her more feral side?

Well, I don’t know if you ever met Kathy, but she was a real sweetheart and sort of like me was probably projecting to protect. So, next, to us—what we were doing. It seemed to make sense for her to do as she did. Pussy King of the Pirates was the piece that she appended to “The Stabbing Hand,” and it was perfect in its own way.

You’ve said the nonprofessional fight scene is “where punk rock was at in 1982, ’83 when some people were starting to make real money, but it’s still largely unaffected by the money and driven by passion.” I know you’ve been involved with karate and boxing since 1983, so is untrammeled pure passion what remains singular and pure in both amateur fighting and punk?

Very much not so at this point. That is, you can’t do either without careerist notions at this point. Many people have made huge amounts of money, for good or ill, with punk rock. Keep in mind, largely, I support each and every one of them. Green Day, Rancid, Bad Religion? I’m really really happy with how they’ve made it work for them and succeeded.

America really, despite claims to the opposite, hates winners. Me? I’m OK with winners. Especially thems that share their winnings.

And the same could be said of fighting at this point. But fighting, as with punk, still has people involved for whom their exercise of the art answers some deep emotional needs and really comes closest to being the center searched for than many other pursuits might or have, and they may not make a nickel doing it and do not care at all.

You talked about seeing the Bad Brains and Black Flag as transformative, and you had a Grateful Dead–like devotion to them. In what sense were they different than others?

Walking it like they talked it. I mean you do realize that the self-destructiveness Black Flag sang about, as well as the “rising above,” was built into their DNA . . . their very sort of specific fucked-up DNA. I mean what’s happening with Black Flag now could not have happened any other way, and it’s really amazing when you think about it because they could have been richer and more famous and successful than God at this point, but they voted with their hearts and so . . . destruction of legacy, a steadfast refusal to profit off of it in any sort of meaningful way. All of it.

That being said, I am more impressed with what Rollins, Mugger, and Raymond Pettibon have wrought out of all of that than many others associated with that scene.

And the Bad Brains? Very much sort of the same deal: they have aggressively resisted any and all attempts at being as hugely successful as we know they all could have been, which is a really situation specific kind of “fuck you” that I do not at all have the intestinal fortitude to have pulled off myself.

I know John Joseph (Cro-mags) was equally transformed by the Bad Brains and is now an endurance sport triathlete. Do you feel you share a common path with him?

I know John and have for years and years. Last time we spent any time together was at some cool corporate event in Laramie, Wyoming, for Scion. But his path/deal are very, very, very, different from mine it seems. I used to be a distance swimmer in high school though.

More recently, you configured Black Face with Chuck Dukowski and released a really powerful 7-inch, but the whole thing seems to have imploded.Why? The issue seems murky.

See [my last answer] regarding the Black Flag nimbus of agita. Everything was right about it outside of the fact that, for Chuck, the fact that everything was right about it caused a kind of horror movie concern a la . . . “it’s quiet . . . too quiet.” So, he said there were concerns over the name, which he chose, but which Ian MacKaye presumably came down on him for. And then after that came a very singular and pointed desire to scuttle it—telling the label to change the name after everything was printed, canceling shows, desires to fire various other band members for ill-defined reasons—eventually ending with a phone call where he stated, “I’m just not feeling it.” So, it goes.

I bear no one ill will. It’s like if someone does not want to have sex with you. You have to assume their reasons are valid for them.

Is race one area that punk rock, and American culture in general, has yet to address honestly?

I’d say, “Who cares?” but based on all of the people around me who seem to, well, there might be some fire where there is smoke, but it’s really an American obsession that I find more boring than many others.

And keep in mind that what I am saying is this: America’s race problems are not my problems, even if I get shot by a Klan card–holding cop . . . not my problem. Like people who were encouraging Obama not to run because of assassination concerns and his response was great: “I don’t even know how to make sense of that.”

I understand that some people may be bothered by your enjoyment of Al Jolson, yet these same people might listen to Jon Spencer and the Beastie Boys, who seem like mimicry, too.

Jolson was a man of his time and one of the first civil rights supporters back before it would have been assumed that he did this for PR reasons. People’s distaste for him might be for symbolic reasons and might be valid, but I never watch Jolson. I just listen to him.

Looking back at Birth of Tragedy, it seems to be one part transgressive literary fanzine and one part John Giorno system style concept. (Your Fear Power God spoken-word album reminds me of A Diamond Hidden. . . . ) What does it symbolize to you today—and did Allen Ginsberg really try to bully you a bit?

It was a great magazine and still has come closest to what I’d like to be doing editorially but which I can’t because it is to mainstream interests what Oxbow is to mainstream interests.

Yes, Ginsberg did try to bully me. So did Samuel L. Jackson. While the Ginsberg thing had us ultimately being friends/friendly, I still think Jackson is an asshole.

Index

A

Acker, Kathy, 1

Albini, Steve, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3

Allison, Mose, 1

Allman, Duane, 1

Alvin, Dave, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6.1-6.2 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10

Alvin Phil, 1 , 2 , 3

Apples in Stereo

See Schneider, Robert

Austin City Limits, 1

Austin, Texas, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13

B

Bakersfield, California, 1

Baltimore, Maryland, 1 , 2

Banks, Russell, 1

Bean, Janet, 1.1-1.2

Beat Generation, 1 , 2

T

The Beatles, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14

B

Beck, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3

Becket, Samuel, 1

Beethoven, 1

Berry, Chuck, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Betts, Dickey, 1

Black Flag, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

T

The Blasters, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4

B

Blue Oyster Cult, 1

Boggs, Doc, 1 , 2

Boston, Massachusetts, 1

Bradfute, George, 1

Brand, Ray, 1 , 2

Braverman, Kate, 1

Brecht, Bertolt, 1

Browne, Jackson, 1

Buckner, Richard, 1.1-1.2

Buffalo, New York, 1 , 2

Bukowski, Charles, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

Burnett, T. Bone, 1 , 2 , 3

Burroughs, William, 1

Butthole Surfers, 1 , 2

T

The Byrds, 1

C

Cage, Nicolas, 1

Cale, John, 1 , 2

Calexico, 1

Can, 1

Case, Peter, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3 , 4

Case, Neko, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2

Cash, Johnny, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4.1-4.2 , 5 , 6

Cat Power, 1

Cayce, Edgar, 1

Celine, 1

Cheap Trick, 1

Chicago, Illinois, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6.1-6.2 , 7

“

“Chicago,” Carl Sandburg poem, 1

C

Chopin, Frederic, 1.1-1.2

Cinerama

See Gedge, David

Clark, Guy, 1 , 2

Clay, Joe, 1

T

The Clash, 1 , 2 , 3

The Clean

See Kilgour, David

C

Clinton, President Bill, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Cockburn, Bruce, 1 , 2

Colvin, Shawn, 1 , 2

Copeland, Miles, 1.1-1.2

Coltrane, John, 1

Costello, Elvis, 1 , 2 , 3

T

The Cramps, 1

C

Crash, Darby, 1 , 2 , 3

D

De Sade, Marquis, 1

T

The Dead Kennedys, 1 , 2

D

Dean, James, 1

Debs, Eugene V., 1

DeMent, Iris, 1

Depp, Johnny, 1

Dietrich, Marlene, 1

T

The Dils, 1

D

DiPrima, Diane, 1

Dixieland, 1 , 2

Dixon, Willie, 1 , 2.1-2.2

Doe, John, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3

Downey, California, 1

T

The Doors, 1

D

Duvall, Robert, 1.1-1.2 , 2

Dylan, Bob, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16.1-16.2 , 17 , 18

E

Earle, Steve, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4 , 5 , 6

Elephant 6 Records, 1.1-1.2

Eleventh Dream Day

See Bean, Janet

Eliot, T. S., 1 , 2

Ely, Joe, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3 , 4 , 5

Ellington, Duke, 1

Elliott, Ramblin’ Jack, 1 , 2.1-2.2

Ellroy, James, 1

Escovedo, Alejandro, 1.1-1.2

F

Faithful, Marianne, 1

Fante, John, 1.1-1.2

Finley, Karen, 1

Flying Nun Records, 1 , 2

Frank, Robert, 1

Freakwater

See Bean, Janet

Froom, Mitchell, 1.1-1.2

Fuller, Bobby, 1

G

Galileo, 1

Gano, Gordon, 1.1-1.2

Gardner, Leonard, 1

Gaultier, Jean Paul, 1

Gauthier, Mary, 1

Gedge, David, 1.1-1.2

Gen X, 1.1-1.2

Gene Loves Jezbel, 1.1-1.2

Genet, Jean, 1

T

The Germs, 1 , 2

G

Gilkyson, Tony, 1

Gilmore, Jimmie Dale, 1 , 2

Ginsberg, Allen, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4 , 5 , 6.1-6.2

Gira, Michael, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3

Griffith, Nanci, 1

Gossip, 1

Grapes, Jack, 1

Grateful Dead, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Green, Pat, 1 , 2

Greer, Herb, 1

Guthrie, Woody, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8

Guy, Buddy, 1

H

Haggard, Merle, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4.1-4.2 , 5 , 6.1-6.2

Hancock, Wayne, 1 , 2 , 3

Harper, Ben, 1.1-1.2

Hendrix, Jimi, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4 , 5 , 6

Herzog, Werner, 1

Hiatt, John, 1 , 2.1-2.2

T

The Hickoids, 1

H

hillbilly ballads, 1

Holiday, Billie, 1

Holly, Buddy, 1 , 2

Hollywood, California, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8

Houston, Cisco, 1

Houston, Texas, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8

Hunter, Robert, 1.1-1.2

Hurt, Mississippi John, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4.1-4.2

I

Idol, Billy, 1

Ireland, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

J

Jarboe, 1.1-1.2

Jason and the Scorchers, 1

See Ringenberg, Jason

Jefferson Airplane, 1 , 2

Jennings, Waylon, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3

Jethro Tull, 1

Johnson, Robert, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Jolson, Al, 1.1-1.2

Joyce, James, 1

Junior Brown, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

K

Kaplin, Fats, 1

Keen, Robert Earl, 1.1-1.2

Keen, Steve, 1

Kern, Richard, 1.1-1.2

Kilgour, David, 1.1-1.2

Kingston Trio, 1.1-1.2

T

The Kinks, 1 , 2

K

Kiss, 1

T

The Knitters, 1 , 2

K

Kramer, Wayne, 1.1-1.2

L

Lawrence, D. H., 1 , 2

Leadbelly, 1

Led Zeppelin, 1

Lennon, John, 1

Lewis, Jerry Lee, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3 , 4

Los Angeles, California, 1 , 2 , 3

Los Angeles, the album, 1 , 2

M

Mahal, Taj, 1 , 2 , 3

Malloy, George, 1

Mann, Aimee, 1 , 2 , 3

Manzarek, Ray, 1

Masters, Edgar Lee, 1.1-1.2

MC5, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3.1-3.2

McCrary, Regina, 1

T

The Mekons, 1.1-1.2

M

Memphis, Tennessee, 1 , 2

Mexico, 1 , 2

Mingus, Charles, 1

Minutemen, 1

Mohr, Bill, 1

Mojo, 1 , 2

Monk, Thelonius, 1

Monroe, Bill, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3.1-3.2

Missoula, Montana, 1

Morrissey, Bill, 1 , 2 , 3

Morrow, Corey, 1

MTV, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Muldaur, Geoff, 1.1-1.2

N

Nashville, Tennessee, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3 , 4.1-4.2 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9.1-9.2 , 10.1-10.2 , 11 , 12.1-12.2 , 13.1-13.2 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20.1-20.2 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26

Nelson, Willie, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5.1-5.2

Neurosis, 1.1-1.2 , 2.1-2.2

New Jersey, 1 , 2

New Orleans, Louisiana, 1 , 2 , 3

New Mexico, 1 , 2 , 3

New York Dolls, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Newton, Isaac, 1 , 2

Nin, Anais, 1

Northern Ireland, 1.1-1.2

Norway, 1

P

Palmo, Tenzin, 1

Pearl Jam, 1

Peel, John, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3

Pere Ubu

See Thomas, David

Pet Sounds, 1 , 2.1-2.2

Pfahler, Kembra, 1.1-1.2

Philips, Grant-Lee, 1

Piaf, Edith, 1

Pink Floyd, 1 , 2 , 3

Planet Hollywood, 1

Plimsouls, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

See Case, Peter

Popmatters, 1 , 2 , 3

Presley, Elvis, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

punk music, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7.1-7.2 , 8 , 9.1-9.2 , 10 , 11.1-11.2 , 12.1-12.2 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26.1-26.2 , 27 , 28.1-28.2 , 29 , 30 , 31.1-31.2 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37.1-37.2 , 38.1-38.2 , 39 , 40.1-40.2 , 41

R

Radio Birdman

See Younger, Rob

Rage Against the Machine, 1 , 2

Ramones, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

Rank and File, 1 , 2

Reed, Lou, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3 , 4

Reich, William, 1

Reverend Horton Heat, 1.1-1.2

Richman, Jonathan, 1

Ringenberg, Jason, 1.1-1.2

Rolling Stone, 1 , 2 , 3

Rolling Stones, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Roxy Music, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

S

Salt Lake City, Utah, 1

San Francisco, California, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1 , 2

Saroyan, Aram, 1

Schneider, Robert, 1.1-1.2

Scott, Mike, 1.1-1.2

Scottish ballads, 1 , 2

Seeger, Mike, 1

Seeger, Pete, 1

Seinfield, 1 , 2

Sex Pistols, 1

Sexton, Anne, 1

Sexton, Charlie, 1

Shakespeare, William, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4

Sham 69, 1

Shaver, Billy Joe and Eddy, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3

Silverstein, Shel, 1

Sinclair, John, 1

Simone, Nina, 1 , 2

Skaggs, Ricky, 1

Slash Records, 1 , 2

Smith, Bessie, 1

Smith, Harry, 1

Smith, Patti, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Smither, Chris, 1 , 2

Sobule, Jill, 1 , 2

Sousa, John Philip, 1

Snyder, Gary, 1

Spector, Phil, 1 , 2

Springsteen, Bruce, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

Stanley Brothers

See Stanley, Ralph

Stanley, Ralph, 1.1-1.2

Stevens, Wallace, 1 , 2.1-2.2

Stevenson, James, 1.1-1.2

T

The Supersuckers, 1.1-1.2 , 2

S

Swans

See Gira, Michael See Jarboe

T

Thirsty Ear, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15

Thomas, David, 1.1-1.2 , 2

Thompson, Hank, 1

Thompson, Hunter S., 1

Thompson, Richard, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2

Thoreau, Henry David, 1

Tricky, 1.1-1.2

Twain, Mark, 1

Twin Peaks, 1

Tyner, Rob, 1

U

U2, 1 , 2

Uncle Tupelo, 1 , 2

Urge Overkill, 1

V

Valens, Ritchie, 1

Van Morrison, 1 , 2

Van Ronk, Dave, 1

Van Zandt, Townes, 1 , 2

Velvet Underground, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4 , 5

T

The Ventures, 1

W

Waits, Tom, 1 , 2

T

The Waterboys

See Scott, Mike

W

Waters, John, 1.1-1.2

Waters, Muddy, 1 , 2 , 3

Webber, Andrew Lloyd, 1

T

The Wedding Present

See Gedge, David

W

Welch, Gillian, 1

Welch, Kevin, 1

Welch, Lew, 1

Wells, Junior, 1

Whitman, Walt, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

White Zombie, 1.1-1.2

Wilde, Kim, 1 , 2

Wilde, Oscar, 1.1-1.2

Wilder, Webb, 1

Williams, Andrew, 1

Williams, Hank, Sr., 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Williams, Lucinda, 1 , 2 , 3

Williams, Victoria, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Williams, William Carlos, 1.1-1.2 , 2.1-2.2

Wills, Bob, and the Texas Playboys, 1

X

X

See Doe, John

Y

Yeats, William Butler, 1

Yo La Tengo, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5.1-5.2

Younger, Rob, 1.1-1.2

Z

Zinn, Howard, 1

T

The Zombies, 1

About the Author

David Ensminger is a humanities, folklore, and English instructor at Lee College in Baytown, Texas. As a writer covering music, art, and contemporary issues, he has authored or co-authored three books: Visual Vitriol: The Street Art and Subcultures of the Punk and Hardcore Generations, Mojo Hand, a biography of bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Left of the Dial: Conversations with Punk Icons. He has contributed to Popmatters, Maximum Rocknroll, Houston Press, Trust, Postmodern Culture, Art in Print, M/C Journal, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Liminalities, Artcore, and others. As a digital archivist and blogger, he maintains twenty-five blogs documenting vernacular culture. Throughout his career, he has focused on the often overlooked but fecund, ongoing, and nuanced contributions of women, people of color, gays and lesbians, and deaf/hard of hearing communities on the legacy, history, and modern dynamics of punk, indie, and roots music. In 2012, he released the Punk and Indie Compendium, an electronic application including music, photography, interviews, and ephemera from Ensminger’s own fanzines No Deposit No Return and Left of the Dial dating from 1987 to 2012. His photographs have also been featured in his books, blogs, and articles. Lastly, as a drummer, singer, and curator of the traveling Visual Vitriol poster exhibitions, he has toured America and western Europe since 2002.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Preface

The Song Is the Territory

Rockabilly and Honky-Tonker Renegades

Indelible Indie Rockers

The Other Side of the Pond

Short Cuts

Index

About the Author