Download: Baby Dee “Lilacs”

(from A Book Of Songs For Anne Marie out now on Drag City)

BABY DEE WITH SIMONE WHITE ON SAT., MAY 1, AT McCABE’S GUITAR SHOP, 3101 PICO BLVD., SANTA MONICA. 8 PM / $15 / ALL AGES. MCCABES.COM. BABY DEE’S A BOOK OF SONGS FOR ANNE MARIE IS OUT NOW ON DRAG CITY. VISIT BABY DEE AT BABYDEE.COM.

Stream: Ray Wylie Hubbard “Pots and Pans”

(from A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There is no C) out now on Bordello)

Ray Wylie Hubbard helped put the warhead on Jerry Jeff Walker’s heat-seeking missile and put the phrase ‘redneck mother’ into the English language. He soldiers on yet in the wilds of Texas but is heading west with a new record put out by a record company whose president he knows very very well. This interview by Drew Denny.

I gotta tell you that [Walker’s] ¡Viva Terlingua! was one of my first CDs. I used to ride around Oak Cliff in the backs of trucks singin’ ‘Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother’ when I was 12 years old, drinking Lone Star beer and hand-rollin’ cigarettes.
Ray Wylie Hubbard: Really? That’s great! You know I think that album holds up—even now, which is pretty impressive. It started that whole progressive country thing. So you’re a Texan?
Sure am. What was Oak Cliff like when you were a kid?
Ray Wylie Hubbard: Well, I’ll tell you what—I moved from Soper, Oklahoma, when I was just 8 years old. It was quite an awakening cuz I was pretty much in overalls and barefoot up there and then I got to Dallas and felt—well, I got that whole feelin’ like I never fit in. It was a weird thing. I spent a lot of time ridin’ the bus to the downtown Dallas library is where I spent all of my time.
You were a big reader?
Ray Wylie Hubbard: Yeah, I was—I went to the library every weekend. Where I was from was pretty rural and even Dallas in the late ’50s and ’60s was pretty hillbilly. So I just spent a lot of time alone, I s’pose.
This new album has more references than an encyclopedia! I’m always impressed by your ability to mix personal experience with mythology and literary allusions.
Ray Wylie Hubbard: I’m glad you feel that way cuz for this record—for A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There is no C)—I got back into Edgar Allan Poe and Steven King and the horror. Picked up the biography of Dylan Thomas, started thinking about my childhood churches …
Do you go to church now?
Ray Wylie Hubbard: Ah … no. I prefer the term ‘spiritual awakening’ to ‘religious conversion.’ I kind of—I try to live on certain spiritual principles. For a long period of time I considered myself a spiritual mongrel—I read up on Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Native American, and I tried to grasp all that. I thought of myself as a spiritual mongrel but nowadays I consider myself a spiritual slug. I don’t wanna do anything too fast. I don’t wanna commit.
I heard ‘Whoop and Hollar’ and thought, ‘This is revival music!’ But then came ‘Pots and Pans’—I wonder what the people in the church of ‘Whoop and Hollar’ would think of that sexy section in ‘Pots and Pans.’
Ray Wylie Hubbard: I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve decided to take advantage of the freedom to do what I want to do. I did this record with my own wife, Judy—it’s her label, and I’m actually signed to her label.
So she’s the boss?
Ray Wylie Hubbard: I’m sleeping with the president of the record company, which I don’t know if I’d recommend that but … It was a great thing having this freedom of not having anyone look over my shoulders. I’m not trying to write—cuz I’ll never be top 40 country—but trying to write a song for someone else to sing to make a hit with, that’s never been my forte obviously. So to have that freedom to be able to kind of put on that jacket and look at this through someone’s eyes without being judgmental like with ‘Whoop and Hollar’ or ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’—it’s trying to write about salvation from that mindset without judging it or looking down on it but then also to be able to write about drunken poets and opium. I kinda put on that persona where I’m being the guy in the torn T-shirt settin’ on the porch playin’ with his guitar and having his family around but also sometimes kinda tryin’ to write something that has a little depth and weight to it.
Do you always write from your own perspective or do you get into different characters?
Ray Wylie Hubbard: Well, both! Really. The character of the song ‘Tornado Ripe’—when I was a little kid, a tornado hit the town that we lived in and we came out of the storm cellar and it was just gone away. There was nothing there but death and killin’. That was an actual experience, you know—remembering that moment. ‘Whoop and Hollar’ is about when I was a kid goin’ down to all these revivals. Then again with opium I did my research. I didn’t do that firsthand! I read about it. The same thing, the character in ‘Loose’ is kind of a fast woman that is a friend of the guy who’s writing the song. I guess I try to write a song from a character’s viewpoint without judging it. I love having that freedom.
The woman in ‘Loose’ is the one who says, ‘Let’s go get tattoos.’ You got any?
Ray Wylie Hubbard: Yes, I do. Did you ever see my album cover for Snake Farm? I got that—the two-headed snake. It’s a long sordid story how I got that.
Are you willing to tell it?
Ray Wylie Hubbard: Next time I’m gonna get a black sparrow tattoo on my hand. Since I have that enlightenment I guess I’m gonna have to do that to—
Balance it out?
Ray Wylie Hubbard: Yeah! How ’bout you? You got any? What you got?
I have a skull with math symbols and my favorite equation, some bits of a painting, and a big black tree with branches that turn into black sparrows! And a human heart hanging on one of the branches.
Ray Wylie Hubbard: Do you have a picture of that on your MySpace?
Facebook. I’ll tag you.
Ray Wylie Hubbard: I got a song on an older album of mine called ‘Crimson Dragon Tattoo’ and the idea of that song is that the tattoo talks to you. That’s kind of the idea on Enlightenment, too—I don’t know if you have it, but every once in a while that tattoo will say something to you.
I believe it.
Ray Wylie Hubbard: Watch out for the black sparrow!
Since you’re used to putting yourselves in others’ shoes for songs, was it a natural thing for you to write a screenplay?
Ray Wylie Hubbard: In a way it was. Tiller Russell—he knew the structure of doing a film. So I could just become one of these characters and figure out how they would cuss. That was my forte. Just make it sound natural. It wasn’t that much different in a way. I didn’t have to rhyme it or make it in meter, but there was still rhythm to it—to the dialogue.
This career choice intrigues me because I graduated film school then became a musician! Films took too much time and too many people—
Ray Wylie Hubbard: I can see what you mean. So you play? You should come to McCabe’s! We can hang out and you can show me your tattoo!
You bet. You know, I think we know some of the same people—I went to high school with Django Walker, and Stevie Ray was my friend’s godfather. We talked about Jerry Jeff, but as I understand it, your friendship with Stevie Ray also had a big impact on your life?
Ray Wylie Hubbard: They both did—Jerry Jeff gave me my first black molly. Ain’t supposed to say that. Stevie Ray—well, I got clean and sober when I was 41 and Stevie Ray was very instrumental in takin’ the time to talk to me about his recovery from drug addiction and stuff. He was very influential and very helpful in giving me some hope at that time, which was what I didn’t have. Wow, that’s cool! Have you talked to Django lately?
I usually see him at South by Southwest. Speaking of father/son musicians, what’s it like playin’ music with your son?
Ray Wylie Hubbard: It’s pretty cool! He’s a good little guitar player, and I feel really proud of him cuz he’s kind of learned from guys like Gurf Morlix and Seth James and Derek O’Brien—some of these cooler, kinda older rootsy blues guys … I say I’m really proud of him cuz he’s at the point where he plays the song rather than just playin’ the licks. There’s a lot of players out there that got the licks but he really plays the song. It’s really cool. We just played at the Austin Music Hall—the Haitian relief deal—and it was really cool cuz Charlie Saxton was there and Bruce Robison and the Gourds … He was like, ‘Hey Lucas, what kinda amp?’ And Lucas said, ‘Vox AC30!’ Cuz that’s what he plays out of! It really is fun for me. He’s a good kid. It’s really cool that he’s been able to hang around these musicians that I have a lot of respect for. He’s doin’ well.
So y’all got the whole family in on it?
Ray Wylie Hubbard: Yeah—we’re just doin’ it, you know?

RAY WYLIE HUBBARD WITH AMY SPEACE ON SUN., FEB. 21, AT MCCABE’S GUITAR SHOP, 3101 PICO BLVD., SANTA MONICA. 7 PM / $20 / ALL AGES. MCCABES.COM. RAY WYLIE HUBBARD’S A. ENLIGHTENMENT B. ENDARKENMENT (HINT: THERE IS NO C) IS OUT NOW ON BORDELLO. VISIT RAY WYLIE HUBBARD AT RAYWYLIE.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/RAYWYLIE.

Stream: I See Hawks In L.A. “I See Hawks In L.A.” (Original Demo)

(from Shoulda Been Gold out Tue., Jan. 26, on Collector’s Choice)

Before this interview, I See Hawks in L.A. and L.A. RECORD co-founded the Four Guys for Peace organization, which is dedicated to promoting friendship and brotherhood worldwide by combining strangers with beers. The first meeting was held in Union Station. I See Hawks are marking their tenth anniversary as a band—as the band which spent years playing elevated California country in the side room at the old Cole’s—with a not-hits-but-still-greatest compilation called Shoulda Been Gold out this month. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

Do think there are other dimensions where I See Hawks is colossally, globally successful?
Paul Lacques (guitar): I’ve had a very schizophrenic life. Creativity fills anything—it goes with anything.
Rob Waller (guitar/vocals): Especially if you have to pee. My wife has a theory—every bottle in the highway median is a piss bottle. On our first tour outside of California in ’03 or something, we were in dead-stop traffic on I-40. We were driving all the way across the country to North Carolina for our first show, then play all the way back. The first week was just this hard-ass drive. In a 1994 GMC Yukon.
P: In which we could fit everything. Four members and all gear—electric and acoustic. Probably our finest achievement.
R: We’ve done amazing packs never recorded by history. The world will never know we pack a vehicle better than any band in America. There should be a Grammy for that! For Best Independent Vehicle Pack! So traffic comes to a dead stop and we’re just sitting there with the car turned off and the windows down … and we see a piss bottle. Like a plastic quart bottle full of piss.
P: Allegedly.
R: So we had to test the theory. Paul ran out to get it, and I would open the cap and sniff it. And confirm or deny.
Wouldn’t you need a bigger sample size?
P: Than one? One was enough.
R: I just put my nose over it and took this big sniff—and it was the worst most acrid stinking acidic smell—‘Ah, no!’
P: There was genuine horror in his eyes. There’s no faking that.
R: And I’m not a weak-stomached guy. I have two and a half children. I can wipe somebody’s ass while they’re puking. I don’t care!
P: Then you’ll never be out of work, son!
Did you write ‘hit the bong / hit the bottle / Shaquille O’Neal / is Aristotle’ because of Shaq’s Twitter?
R: I signed up to follow Shaquille cuz I knew enough to know that would be a good idea.
P: I refuse to use Twitter—who has time?
R: The two of us are the bloggers of the band.
P: Rob’s mom thought we actually got arrested for peeing in the California Aqueduct [a classic iseehawks.com tall tale—ed.] and she goes, ‘Good! He needed to be stopped!’
R: ‘I’m glad they finally got him!’ That’s what my mom said after discovering I’d been ‘arrested’ and ‘was in jail.’
Is she much of a criminal herself?
R: ‘Yes’ is my answer to that question.
P: You certainly have a common understanding of each other.
R: We understand each other better than anyone else. The dark side of each other. You can’t communicate with my mom in a way that’s not dark. The minute you communicate with my mom, you’re in darkness.
What were your birthday parties like growing up?
R: She didn’t throw any birthday parties. Ah … my mom.
Who does she wishes I See Hawks sounded more like?
R: Jimmy Swaggart!
P: My mom loves everything I do. She’s very supportive. One time one of my bands was on tour and the singer goes, ‘I’ll give you $5 if you stick your nose between my toes.’ Why not? So I do it and someone takes a picture—I’ve been set up! And they’re over at my mom’s and they lay it on her and she says, ‘But Paul looks so HANDSOME!’
R: We have opposite mothers. Maybe that’s why our writing collaboration works.
P: She’s dark, but she lightened up. Except politically. My mom’s darkness is in politics. Any conspiracy comes along, she’s right there. Art Bell is too mainstream.
What’s the closest brush with death I See Hawks has had?
R: Paul almost drowned on tour!
P: I don’t know if I really would have drowned. We were on a little inlet and I’m not a very good swimmer and halfway across, I realized I’m not gonna make it. So I just start floating and it’s going really fast. ‘Am I gonna drown? No, I can just float.’ And I see our drummer and our eyes lock and I realize he thinks I’m dying! He was just frozen! But you can tread water all day, so I just treaded water. And floated for a really long way.
R: That’s the best way to go through life! One of the only good things about aging—the process of aging—is realizing, ‘I’m not gonna make it! I’m not gonna make it to the other side. So I might as well just go slack and let the current take me.’
P: ‘I can prolong the experience as long as I remain calm.’
R: People don’t want it to come, but it’s a very good moment.
P: Death? No it’s not!
R: No, the moment when you realize not to struggle.
P: But you’re also into death. Rob is like, ‘I bet it’s great!’
P: Paul is very afraid. I’m kind of oddly welcoming.
Epicurus said, ‘If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear death?’ Does that help?
P: No, but I like that! I’ll grab on to any life raft!
You said once that I See Hawks songs are about three things—places, animals and defiance of death.
R: We might have expanded a little bit.
P: We sort of have kind of political and social commentary.
R: But woven into it.
P: Not like ‘War is wrong.’
Because war is right?
R: We had a song called ‘Kill the Rich.’
P: We never did it—it seemed like tossing a violent pebble into the river.
How come that’s not on the new compilation?
P: We never recorded it.
Is this I See Hawks’ private reserve?
P: We have a lot. We were thinking of putting them on the website. We have insane songs.
So what would the dark side version of Shoulda Been Gold have? ‘Shoulda Never Been Heard’?
R: There’s ‘Run Osama Run.’
P: We just wrote one on the train ride: ‘Hitler Needed Oil.’
R: ‘Morphine Is Good for You.’
P: It’s a lullaby.
Do you ever play these?
P: We played ‘Run Osama Run’ at Cole’s one time and it was great. Our bass player keeps us from doing a lot of these songs. He’s the moral rudder. Rob and I are children who pick wings off of flies and don’t know we’re causing harm. We’re pleased by our own clever turn of phrase, and he’s like, ‘Goddamit, you can’t play that!’
R: He just says he won’t play on the song, and he sings and plays so well that we want him on it, so …
What do you think of the new face-lifted Cole’s?
R: I hate it.
P: I haven’t gone in. I don’t wanna see it. It’s pretty heartbreaking. The guys wear garters on their sleeves. It’s ‘shave and a haircut, two bits!’ But there is something I’m happy about. The room we played in is gone. Sealed up. The vault has been sealed. We played there every week for three years. It was great—it really allowed for the creation of the band in certain ways. If you play every single week at the same place, it just develops a life of its own. And it was a laboratory for us.
R: And for our fans. It was easy to pack—a fairly small room—but it was packed every week. And the fans did not care what you did. If you fell on your face, they loved it!
R: You’d play every night and be like, ‘Wow, we’re fucking great!’
P: And then go do a real gig—
R: All of a sudden you’re in Athens, Georgia, and Beck is at the Georgiadome. And you’re like, ‘Oh, shit …’
Is the Cinema Bar your new Cole’s?
R: It’s a different spirit.
P: But you can do whatever you want. Cole’s was our little private … Ali was kind of doing it for fun.
R: Or family. But Cinema Bar has a place for good spirit.
What has departed L.A. forever and is never coming back?
R: My wife’s restaurant at Mr. T’s is gone and I miss it dearly.
So free food?
R: I certainly worked for my food there! That’s something I miss. Shaquille O’Neal. That era of the Lakers I enjoyed. 2002-2003.
Have you ever participated in a Lakers-related civil disturbance?
R: Not near any particular epicenter. But when Robert Horry hit that three-pointer against Sacramento, I was part of a spontaneous act of violence.
When you played the Mariposa County Fair, you said, ‘We believe in America. We love fairs. Corn Dogs, the Demolition Derby, funnel cakes and Ferris wheels.’ What do you still believe in about America?
R: Funnel cakes.
P: I think we were pretty specific—did we leave anything out?
R: Is that a trick question?
P: It’s almost ‘Do you support the troops?’
What’s the last nice thing you did for the troops?
R: I gave an acting serviceman a CD. He tried to pay for it and said he was in action in Afghanistan and I said, ‘Dude, take it.’
P: I stopped donating to Al Qaeda. I realized, ‘Wait a minute—this could be harming our troops!’
And now you’ll never be able to board a domestic flight again.
P: They won’t let us on anyway!
What are the three greatest American inventions?
P: The Shop-Vac is phenomenal.
R: The dildo.
I think that’s from ancient Greece.
P: ‘Dildo’ sounds Greek.
R: The electric vibrator.
Not the electric guitar?
R: Same concept.
P: I would say pedal steel. A phenomenal thing.
R: The cotton gin! The steam shovel!
P: The atom bomb. We’ve done a lot!
R: Haven’t we? It makes me proud! I’m proud we got the nuclear bomb first—aren’t you? I’m proud of the stealth bomber! I was a bartender at the 1996 Superbowl—Packers against Denver—and it was like the first time the stealth bomber was released to the public and they flew it over the Superbowl.
And no one could tell it was even there?
R: No one had ever seen it! Everybody was just silent like, ‘Oh my God …’ Cuz it looks like a flying wing of death coming to kill you. So everyone was like, ‘Ooh, it’s scary!’ 80,000 people scared! This huge wing goes WOOOOOOSH right past and then everybody is like, ‘… YEAHHHHHHHH!’ So fucking psyched! And I was too! ‘Yeah! This is ours! This is our weapon!’
P: It’s so primal. People make fun of the Soviets for parading the tanks but …
They should have dropped some kegs on the field.
R: The ultimate!
Is that what you thought of when you played the county fair?
R: We played at the Irvine Spectrum in the early days of the band. We got booked by the mall at the mall. Our job was to stand and set up all our shit—we’re telling all our humiliating stories! ‘We’ve had some good gigs—like the time we played the Spectrum!’ We go through the back entrance and they’re really hardcore about not drinking, so we went to McDonald’s and got a coke and filled it with bourbon. And they set us across from the Opera Café, and we were playing acoustic music and they got these speakers on the fake patio so we had to sing into the opera music. People would walk by like going to the movies—
P: —with no reaction. ‘Is that a fire hydrant?’
R: And then girls would come up and start talking to us—while we’re playing—and they wanna get on the mic and start saying ‘happy birthday’ to their friends. Which we let them.
P: Good times. Like ‘Flight of the Conchords.’ Playing to nobody for no reaction.
There’s purity there.
P: There is. For yourself.
R: It takes courage to face that cultural wave that’s gonna wipe you out.
You said before that country music is pragmatic above all else, and that makes people like Toby Keith and Gretchen Wilson truer in a way to country than the kind of throwback music I See Hawks makes.
R: We’re freaks and relics and we’re something else as well. But it’s weird how we tend to do better in remote areas. We have sort of a remote area mindset. I think it’s borderline survivalist. There are people in the world who still wanna rock. But it is weird. When you do this thing in this era—we’re releasing this record of basically music we’ve written and played for the last ten years. A decade of music as we’re coming to the close of a decade, and we started right at the beginning. An interesting way to mark time. It’s almost like geographical regions don’t matter. People can dial in to whatever taste is wherever. It’s spread way out. But you go there and have these kind of more rewarding experiences with people because they genuinely like what you’re doing and you genuinely appreciate them and they know it. Genuinely! You stay at their house and they make you dinner. It’s a strange experience and different than being a rock star. We sort of had that idea before, but when you are sort of just existing and playing music and connecting with people, it’s a totally different experience.
Does this connect to anything you’ve said about the death of regionalism?
P: Everyone has access to everything at the same time.
R: People hunt authentic experiences like people hunt exotic game. Hemingway shot elephants and now people get an iPhone app to find an authentic Mexican restaurtant. ‘The Authentic Guide To American Cities!’
P: That’s good! Authenti-city.
R: The second big website we’ve designed today! It’s great! Go to a bowling alley, check into a flophouse—
P: —I lost a finger! That real enough for you!?
So after all this time, people still kind of don’t want to be lied to?
R: They wanna be lied to and they don’t wanna be lied to. They wanna be lied to by the president but they don’t wanna be lied to by a country rock band. They welcome lies by the president. Maybe it’s easier to tell? When someone sings a song that’s bullshit, you walk the fuck out. You can’t sit there and be obliterated by it unless you’re heavily medicated. Unless people are!
So the solution is to let country-rock bands run the country?
R: There is no solution! But we will all die happy!

I SEE HAWKS IN L.A. WITH GINA VILLALOBOS AND HAYMAKER ON FRI., JAN. 22, AT THE PUKA BAR, 710 W. WILLOW ST., LONG BEACH. 9 PM / $7 / 21+. MYSPACE.COM/PUKABAR. AND ON SAT., JAN. 23, FOR THE HIGH DESERT CD RELEASE PARTY OF SHOULDA BEEN GOLD AT PAPPY AND HARRIET’S, 53688 PIONEERTOWN RD., PIONEERTOWN. 7:15 PM / FREE / 21+. PAPPYANDHARRIETS.COM. AND WITH MATT THE ELECTRICIAN ON SUN., JAN. 24, FOR THE L.A. CD RELEASE PARTY OF SHOULDA BEEN GOLD AT McCABE’S, 3101 PICO BLVD., SANTA MONICA. 7 / $15 / ALL AGES. MCCABES.COM. I SEE HAWKS IN L.A.’S SHOULDA BEEN GOLD RELEASES TUE., JAN. 26, ON COLLECTOR’S CHOICE. VISIT I SEE HAWKS IN L.A. AT ISEEHAWKS.COM.

Download: The Mekons “Dickie, Chalkie And Nobby”

(from Natural out now on Touch And Go)

The Mekons lived Leeds but dreamed Texas and Tennessee and after finding their feet in first-wave punk songs like “Where Were You,” they left the world of Rough Trade for the open range. They are working on a new album tentatively called 100 Years and singer-guitarist-activist Jon Langford speaks as he takes his dog to the vet. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

Is it true that the son of Donald Rumsfeld is a really big Mekons fan?
Jon Langford (guitar/vocals): That’s a good question. It might be true, but he has not revealed himself to us. I never got to the bottom of that but I heard he was wandering around the clubs of Chicago with a Mekons t-shirt on. Donald Rumsfeld sort of wandered around Chicago as well. He was a congressman from here so he was occasionally spotted in sushi restaurants. And I know people who actually know him and I always wonder what I would do if I actually ran into him.
Do you think you could beat him up? Mekon vs. Rumsfeld?
He’s kind of like some sort of crazy cockroach. You’d probably keep treading on him and he’d just get up and run around.
Do you think that might be an effective way for art and music to provoke social change? By specifically targeting the hearts and minds of the children of the rich and powerful?
I’d like to think something of what we’ve been singing about for the last twenty years may have rubbed off on him—he’d probably want to wrestle his dad to the ground as well, you know? But you know what? I think I know about as much about that as you do. I don’t know. Our songs were never particularly aimed at the sons of the rich and famous.
Where were they aimed?
They weren’t really aimed at anyone. They were aimed at ourselves, I think. Most of the songs we made to sort of please ourselves or to exorcise things that are in ourselves. I think a lot of the Mekons songs are quite sad, which is interesting because we’re not necessarily sad people. I think what’s good about the Mekons is that there’s always been a kind of cushion—the fact that there are a lot of people and we all kind of share the duties. There’s never been one person with the whole burden. A lot of the people in the Mekons have been through quite a lot together. I wouldn’t even say our politics are necessarily the same or our life stories are the same but there’s definitely a shared instinctive feeling about the world. Obviously, or we wouldn’t be doing this project together so long.
What is the essential sadness in the Mekons discography?
Well, we don’t come together and act sad. We come together and have a good time. But the music that comes out is often very—I don’t know, maybe gallows humor? We always try to describe the world we live in and anyone with half a brain would find it pretty difficult to write happy songs all the time.
I’ve heard that they did a neurolinguistic study of various genres of music and that country music is overwhelmingly objectively the saddest type of music they found. Do you think there’s anything to that?
Have you ever heard the music from the Bahamas? There’s some traditional vocal and solo vocal stuff that’s mostly unaccompanied that I think is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. People who are poor and have crap lives will probably make sad music. I guess rich people who have lots of money and an easy life, they might be sad as well—but they probably don’t bother to write songs about their lives. Probably too busy spending their money.
In ‘Big Zombie,’ is the line ‘I’m just not human tonight’ a Chandler reference?
Absolutely. Yeah. It’s an L.A. song and we’ll be playing it. When we kind of started up again in the mid-’80s, we were very interested in Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. We were touring the States a lot and that was our reference for what we thought the States should be like. Dashiell Hammett was our version of San Francisco and Raymond Chandler was our version of L.A. Every time I walked into a room, I’d expect to find a body. Most of the time we didn’t.
What drew you to honky-tonks like Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge when you came to America?
When we first came to the States we got obsessed about music and it was kind of like… most of the cowboy shops we went to seemed to be full of black people, Hispanic people, Asian people and English rock bands. So it was funny—just how you can literally claim a piece of this fantasy mythical America by buying a Stetson or a pair of cowboy boots and then going back home to Leeds and strutting around in your cowboy boots. They’d ask, ‘Where did you get those?’ and I’d say, ‘Aw, I got these in Chicago,’ you know? People would come ’round my house after the pub and I’d be playing Ernest Tubb and Merle Haggard, and these were all people who thought they wanted to go listen to acid-house or something. They thought we’d lost our minds.
There’s a quote from Ernest Tubb I wanted to ask you about. People would say, ‘Aw, Ernest, you’re so flat, anyone could sing the way you can. You just got lucky.’ And he would say, ‘Well, I sing that way on purpose. I want everyone who hears this to think that they could do it. I want them to feel that I’m no different from them.’
Is that from that Peter Guralnick book? Lost Highway? There’s another great quote in there where he says he’s singing for the boys back on the farm but he says by the end of his life the farm wasn’t even there anymore. But he wanted those farm boys to be able to sing his songs. Yeah, that’s a very Mekons-type thing. When I read that, I thought, ‘There is a connection between that and punk.’ It’s been said before that there was a connection between the Mekons and country music and I thought that was ludicrous, but as I listened to that stuff and really began to love it, it became more and more interesting to me. And then to have someone articulate it like that… We always meant the Mekons to be like ‘Anyone can do it.’ Anyone can pick up the guitar. There’s a quote from Mary Harron about the Mekons that kind of sums it up: ‘Rock ‘n’ roll is probably better played by people who can’t play it very well.’ She said the Mekons were the only people to base a band solely on that fact. It was kind of a jab as well as a compliment, but I think that’s true. That really struck a chord with me—I’ve always being drawn to music that was functional rather than virtuoso. Music that kind of has to be made because there was a need to make it.
Who are you thinking of?
Well, actually I was talking to Peter Hammill of Van der Graaf Generator who came to town the other night. I got to hang out with them and I was talking to them about what they were listening to on the bus and they were telling me about Olivier Messiaen who is an avant-garde composer who wrote something called The Quartet for the End of Time while he was in a P.O.W. camp or a concentration camp. As Hammill said, that was music that had to be made. It was a quartet because that’s what he had at the camp and they thought they were going to die, so they wrote this music. I’ve been listening to it and it’s like—you’ve got something as primitive as the Mekons when we first started and then you’ve got Ernest Tubb and reggae music that was there because it was on the street with a message that people could dance to. And then you’ve got Olivier Messiaen which is like music that couldn’t be kept in. It had to come out. It wasn’t anything to do with any commercial desires or all that. It’s just music that had to exist. There’s a lot of music like that and I find that I’m just drawn to it. It was actually great talking to those guys because they’re much older than me. To be sitting on a tour bus with a bunch of old guys drinking wine and talking about things you’ve never heard of—it was really, really cool. Peter Hammill said, ‘Yeah, that’s the secret, as long as you don’t pander.’ ‘No pandering allowed!’ he was shouting. ‘That’s the trouble with all this bloody music nowadays. It’s all just fucking pandering!’ And I thought that was pretty good. That’s what the Mekons do.
Steve Wynn said that it’s better to make a record that is just one person’s favorite in the entire world than to make a record that everyone thinks is just pretty good.
I totally, totally agree with that. I think that something happened to music when the idea was that everyone would like it. I think that’s completely unnatural. When we were on A&M, they told us that 25,000 records sales wasn’t very good and we were like, ‘That’s good enough for us!’ We’d feel very uncomfortable if more than 25,000 people bought our record. That’s more people than ever go to see any of the football teams I supported! But that was a failure. There’s a hierarchy in the music industry where you have all these people floundering around not making a living who are—to me— doing what they should do and doing a good job of it. And then you have these people who managed to hit on the magic formula—finding what it is that everybody wants and it’s all backwards. They should be punished for learning that secret. Paul McCartney should be taken out and punished.
What particular punishment would be appropriate for that?
A good lashing. No, I’m only joking, I’m only joking. Again, the structure of the industry is the problem. That’s what it’s geared to—it’s just not geared to having lots of different types of music for lots of different types of people to enjoy. It doesn’t recognize the fact that people are different—that not everybody wants to listen to the sort of crap that’s on the radio everyday. It’s very hard anywhere in this country when you listen to the radio to find stuff that’s worth listening to. I don’t think that makes me weird.
You said once that ‘society dehumanizes from the top down.’ I’m wondering if that reproduces within pop culture.
Yeah—most of the stuff that I’ve written and the paintings that I’ve made about country and western music, it was kind of about using that as a microcosm for the whole society. The trend is there and you can see it so obviously in what happened to country music. I think that goes through everything. And actually that quote, that’s not me—I didn’t say that. John Peel said that. I might have been quoting him because he said that about ‘God Save the Queen’ when that record came out and everyone was up in arms and he made that quote defending the record. He said it was a pretty simple record and that the message was society dehumanizes from the top down.
I have to commend your memory for quotes.
I know where I pinch all my best stuff from. You know, Peel was a Radio One DJ and to come out with something that profound was pretty powerful. To have somebody in the BBC defending the Sex Pistols when it looked like—when that record came out, you know… they could have been hung from lampposts and the majority of people in the country would have been really pleased. It was a very scary time for a little while.
Have you seen that kind of response to anything else in music?
Ice-T’s ‘Cop Killer’ was kind of interesting as well. It brought up an interesting debate about whether he really wanted to kill a cop or talk about someone else. It brought up the debate about what you can write about. Why is a song always in the first person? People always think when you write a song that it’s you talking. I had that problem singing ‘Cocaine Blues’ which, you know, is a Johnny Cash song. Obviously I’m not someone who takes cocaine and kills people, but it’s still a great song. The history of those songs is old and ancient.
Someone once asked you if there was a light at the end of the tunnel and you said that now that you have kids, you’re going to hijack the train, turn it around and drive it back.
I just felt like a lot of people tell me to shut my mouth because I’m not from here. I’ve got that a number of times. Mostly in hate mail, especially when we were doing the anti-death penalty stuff. I really got some quite extraordinarily vicious and unpleasant stuff. But I just felt like having kids was definitely a galvanizing moment for me. It made me feel like this is when you have to get involved. I can’t just be like non-American anymore and just shrug my shoulders and go, ‘Oh yeah, they’re just all fucking crazy.’ Because I’m one of you now.
What kind of world do you want to build for your children?
We need to dismantle what was created over the last fifty years, really. The food industry for a start. It’s a fucking hideous Frankenstein that’s killing us all, you know? I really believe that. I don’t think I’m some kind of freak. I’m not some kind of hippie vegetarian. Not that there’s anything wrong with hippie vegetarians, to be honest. I was always prejudiced against people who had, like, strong views about things like that. Now it’s kind of like, ‘Fuck, things are really, seriously wrong.’
How do you avoid becoming discouraged?
I see a lot of people feel the same way. I see the election of Obama, which I thought was impossible, you know? I’m encouraged because it wasn’t just me sitting in my bedroom. Wow, that’s change. That’s real serious change. A lot of sort of naysaying cynics that I know were like, ‘Aw, it’s never going to happen in America. The only reason this happened is because he’s just the same as the other people.’ I don’t think he is, you know? I don’t think he can be. It’s got to change, you know?

THE MEKONS ON SUN., JULY 26, AT McCABE’S GUITAR SHOP, 3101 PICO BLVD., SANTA MONICA. 9:30 PM / $16 / ALL AGES. MCCABES.COM. AND ON MON., JULY 27, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $12-$14 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. VISIT THE MEKONS AT MEKONS.DE OR MYSPACE.COM/THEMEKONS.

Stream: Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey “Here And Now”

(from hERE aND nOW out now on Bar/None)

Chris Stamey and Peter Holsapple were (legendarily) the only people in North Carolina who bought Big Star albums the very first time around, and they’d team up most famously for the power-pop band the dB’s. (Stamey would also release Chris Bell’s ‘I Am The Cosmos’ 45 and Holsapple would go on to play with R.E.M. and Hootie and the Blowfish!) They are now teamed up and touring as a band with no official name. This interview by Dan Collins.

Peter, you joined a band when you were eight?
Peter Holsapple (guitar/vocals): What?
Admittedly, this is from Wikipedia. But it says you were born in ’56 and joined a band in 1964.
Peter: That is true. I played in combos. But they weren’t professional. The first professional band I played in was when I was 12—when I earned money. We lived in a city with a lot of very active places for young people to play. They were the assembly halls for churches. On the weekends they’d get a PA and bands would play. That was kind of fun.
Did you ever cut a single?
Peter: No. Chris and Mitch [Easter] and I had a band that had an album in 1973 called Rittenhouse Square. It was not very good! It was what you’d expect out of 14- or 15-year-olds. We certainly listened to a lot of Yes, a lot of the Move. Things were funny and grind-y, but in retrospect it’s pretty naïve stuff.
Sounds like you met each other early in life.
Peter: Chris and Mitch were ahead of me in school. I do remember him standing in the parking lot of the school with an instrument case waiting for his parents to pick him up. His dad was a pediatrician in town—a lot of people went to Dr. Stamey! I saw him as a sort of inroads in a lot of ways. When I met him, he wasn’t playing music at all. He was learning to record, which I thought was very cool.
Yeah! And Chris, you produced Peter’s band Little Diesel in ’74.
Chris Stamey (guitar/vocals): We made it in an afternoon in my bedroom at my parents’ house. I’d moved the bed a little bit, and I had little tweed Fender amps nailed up to the wall and we made it on a four-track tape recorder. At the time I think they made 10 copies. They recorded it on an eight-track recorder, and by that I mean a little recorder that made 8-track cartridges. There were only literally a few copies made.
Do you have an 8-track you can send to me in the mail?
Peter: No! But a vinyl edition did come out a few years ago. It came out on Telstar records.
Chris: I was talking to Mitch about how we should find that, and he was like, ‘Oh, I’ve got the master tape still!’ So we dug it out and I mixed it up a little better than I had back then, and it’s a really cool energetic record! Anybody who’s heard it loves it.
Peter: There were a breadth of covers that we were trying to tackle. We were doing Free and Spirit and Status Quo. We didn’t really ascribe to the Allman Brothers/Marshall Tucker stuff that was popular there at the time. We sort of rooted for the underdog. That’s probably why we were such huge Move fans. That’s probably why the first song off our new album is by a band called ‘Family,’ who we love very dearly. That’s a band that had really meant an awful lot to us.
Chris: The MC5 had just come to town and just really transformed the Winston rock scene.
Peter: I was in school in New Hampshire at prep school for a year, during which time I did get to play in bands with Bob Tench, who went on to be Tom Petty’s keyboard player. He was one of those guys who was very deeply into the MC5 and the Stooges. The first Mott the Hoople album came out, and we really absorbed that.
Did you see the revival tour the MC5 did a few years ago? Evan Dando and Mark Arm from Mudhoney were singing with them.
Chris: And Marshall Crenshaw playing with them too—I have to say, the night I saw them in Chapel Hill, it was not a huge success, but it was only one night on a tour. It was kind of dark, I guess you’d say—the energy. The singers were reading all the lyrics—it wasn’t totally all together.
Well, enough about the past—tell me about the sound on your new album.
Chris: Well, what’s refreshing about talking with you is that it does remind me of a sixties interview. It’s not the usual questions. But Peter and I think about this as a band that we have together that has its own identity, and we just don’t have a band name for it. We recorded Mavericks in 1992, and in some ways we see this as a continuation of that.
Why is that?
Chris: It makes a connection to I guess what used to be called ‘good guy’ radio, almost like sixties AM radio. My experience with Big Star, for example, was hearing them—they were a hit band in Winston/Salem, and they were on the radio with bands like the Grass Roots and the Seeds. It’s just that they weren’t anywhere else but my hometown. It just isn’t a Porsche—more of a Woody! A family station wagon.
If somebody was a dB’s fan who had never heard this album, what differences would they see between this album and your old stuff?
Peter: dB’s records and the duet records are such that they both have as their main contributors myself and Chris. But if they’re dB’s records, they’ve got Will on drums and Gene on bass and it’s a harder rocking and slightly more frenzied thing.
Chris: The way the dB’s bass player and drummer play together is kind of like you drop an electric blender in a bathtub, and yet it keeps running. It’s a very explosive combustible combination. And we use really good players and we have more drums on this record than we thought we would, but this is more about our guitars and our voices.
Peter: It is two different voices! Even though Chris and I are the main guys writing for both groups. You know, there’s only been one saxophone on a dB’s record—on a single maybe. And here we’ve got Branford Marsalis who played on a couple cuts on this album.
That’s a score!
Peter: Yeah, Bran is a great guy. For years I was the keyboard guy and utility guy for Hootie and the Blowfish, and Branford always came down for their charity golf tournament every year and played. A couple years ago I said, ‘Well, I’ve got these songs that would be really well served if you could find some time to come and play on it. It’s about New Orleans.’ He was like, ‘I’m busy, but let me know! We’ll make it happen.’ Both tracks were lifted incredibly by his presence.
Lou Reed, before he was in the Velvet Underground, cut a single with King Curtis as the session horn guy! But I think you just beat that. Do you want to gloat at Lou Reed for besting him?
Peter: Lou’s contribution is sacred! Even his bad records aren’t that bad. I have no opportunity to diss him, frankly.
A few years back you recorded an album called A Question of Temperature.
Chris: Peter and I just came up with that title, I recall. On a record with a lot of covers, to name it after a cover that we weren’t doing seemed, you know… it was originally called Vote, and it was done as an EP. We did too many things… it became the world’s longest EP! We put it out right before the election that John Kerry lost to try to encourage people to vote. It seems crazy in retrospect. It was then released as a regular record in January. It was never intended to be an album-album.
What songs did you cover?
Chris: We covered a song of mine called ‘Summer Sun.’ The Yardbirds, we did. We covered ‘Venus’ by Television.
Can I get a statement from you about the death of Sky Saxon?
Chris: He was a friend of Chilton’s. I never really met him. When I played with Alex, we used to do ‘I Can’t Seem to Make You Mine’ almost every night. Alex was a really big fan.
How did you meet Alex Chilton?
Chris: I was making a record with Terry Ork. He’d put out the first Television 45, and I’d just moved to New York. And he said that they were putting out a record by Alex Chilton, and he needed a band because he was going to come up for one day—to play Valentine’s Day in New York. And Alex called me up, and we talked, and he asked me what my sign was, and everything seemed to be okay. I was playing bass—I think Tina Weymouth almost got the call, but I ended up getting it. And Alex stayed for over a year, and we kept playing. He’d stay on my couch a lot, and we went up and recorded a lot, most of which never came out.
There was another celebrity death this month as well. You guys once had a song called ‘Neverland.’ Do you think Michael Jackson named his ranch after you?
Chris: I think that would be a stretch.
The dance music movement that came along in the mid-early eighties, with Michael and Prince and Sheila E.—did that eclipse the fame that bands like the dB’s might have earned?
Peter: It certainly didn’t help it get on the radio! But… the music was great. All the music was great. We felt that we weren’t particularly in competition with that.
Chris: I think that for most bands, the whole idea of making it big wasn’t around. Once MTV came along, and it went out into the world, people got the idea, ‘Yeah, let’s make it big!’ But that wasn’t why we were making music. We weren’t trying to win the lottery.
Peter: Even as well known as we are for our contributions to sort of ‘new wave’ with the dB’s, we had already been writing and recording well before that. We just happened to come along at the time. The dB’s didn’t even have an American label for many years.
Of the people who were your contemporaries, who would you say sounded like you?
Chris: I think the Soft Boys! I clearly thought Television had the right idea, but I think the Soft Boys would be the closest.
Peter: Without meaning to be left of center, it appears that we were left of center. My dear friend Mark Brian from Hootie & the Blowfish says things to me like, ‘You’re my favorite eccentric weird songwriter.’ And I listen to my songs, and I don’t think they’re all that eccentric and weird. They’re simple, they’re rock ‘n’ roll, they have verses, they have choruses and bridges. What’s so different? Same thing with a Michael Jackson record. They’re still set up approximately the same way. Yet there’s a world of difference between them. The thing that we’ve all had to learn over the years is that this is not about huge success. That would be wonderful! I’d love it if a song got used in a commercial that would take the load off of being an unemployed musician. If I could ever get my publishing straightened out, maybe I could do something! The great thing is that I’ve got a job that I love. I love to be a musician. I love the reaction of people when they like my songs. Maybe I’m just a ham, but I really do dig it a lot. It feels really good. I’m not really comfortable in the rest of the world. I am on stage, though. Music was just about the most important thing to me until my kids came along.
Can you get your kids involved in music?
Peter: I play at my son’s school. I was the kids’ entertainer at Borders in New Orleans for about five years. I started working on a kids record, but then I realized that practically every old semi-failed new waver had done a kids record! I don’t want to be in that number until I can do something really good. Dan Zanes does a great job! Robert Warren is great! Disney’s got the Imagination Movers—that’s just the shit! I love it! The kids love it! You want to make kids music so that parents don’t jump out the window.
Chris, you haven’t released any kids albums to my knowledge—but you released Chris Bell’s first single on your label, right?
Chris: Right! Again, that was through Alex. Alex told me about it. I was very proud to have done that, but it wasn’t anything very creative except to the extent that A&R is creative. He’d made it a while back. He’d done in a guy’s garage, in a shoe box in Memphis, and then moved to London and mixed it with Geoff Emerick at George Martin’s Air studios.
In the last couple decades, we haven’t heard a whole lot from you! Have you been recording and producing bands or selling crystal meth, or what?
Chris: I do an album or two a month—some mixing, some producing. I probably work on about fifteen records a year. I just did a band called Megafaun. I did Rosebuds, on Merge. The Old Ceremony. Luego, which hasn’t come out yet…
How about some L.A. bands?
Chris: I did a whole bunch of recordings with Patrick Park! I don’t think he qualifies as a ‘band,’ but if anybody qualifies as a one-man band, he can really do it. That would be the most recent thing. I lived there, working there with Scott Litt on a Flat Duo Jets record for a while at Ocean Way, which became Cello. I definitely put in time in California. In a lot of ways, I consider the span I spent with Peter Holsapple to be a California band. We really started in L.A. We live in North Carolina, but the spirit of our birth was really in the Santa Monica kind of thing.
I have the Sharp Cuts compilation you came out on in 1980 on Planet Records with ‘Soul Kiss.’ You’re on there with a lot of other L.A. bands. Did that record come about because of your association with people out here?
Chris: No, I think that would be prior to it. I think we just got a call about it. I do remember they accidentally put the wrong tape on there, which always bugged me. That was a joke mix! It never was supposed to be out like that.
If it makes you feel better, on the album sticker, they list Suburban Lawns twice and forgot to list the Alleycats.
Chris: It figures.
Besides just songs, did people constantly misspell the ‘dB’s’ name on albums and flyers and such?
Chris: I think we knew we were in for trouble. It was interesting to see how things change in translation. I kind of liked that it did change all the time, but I guess it was an uphill struggle.
Did people ever spell it ‘D-e-e-B-e-e-s’ like the Bee Gees?
Chris: I think we’ve had every kind of possible ramification. The embarrassing thing is that we never should have put the apostrophe in there to begin with. It was archaic even then. It’s pretty incorrect.
I was listening to your early discography, Chris, and I feel like you were playing a brand of power-pop that even now sounds a bit more youthful. I feel like other power-pop sounded a bit mannish, and yours sounds more teenaged—even maybe had a bit of a bubblegum feel.
Peter:We listened to everything—depending on what you feel is bubblegum. I was married to Susan Cowsill of the Cowsills, so I love the Partridge Family. I love the stuff that was on Buddah, the Kasenetz-Katz Orchestra and things like that. But I don’t love it anymore than I love Otis Redding or the Dave Clark Five or Big Star. I will admit to having listened to more than the lion’s share of AM radio. Anything that goes from about 1964-1974.
Did you have a hard time convincing your peers to appreciate something more gentle and delicate?
Chris: I always played with good musicians, and we just talk about how to play music. You know on iTunes, they have a little pull-down things for genre when you want to make an MP3? I actually think I do more ‘folk rock’ over ‘power pop.’
What folk rock bands inspired you?
Chris: I would say the Byrds would be the biggest.
Speaking of 8-tracks, you guys did a lot of cassette releases as the dB’s. You did one that came in an actual can! Wasn’t that expensive?
Chris: We didn’t get the bill, but I don’t think it was that expensive. Probably a big waste of chow mein noodles or something! Cans can’t really cost that much—otherwise, they wouldn’t put cheap food in them.
Did the people who bought them actually have to use a can opener to get the tape out?
Chris: Oh yeah!
Why did things end? Why did you shelve the dB’s?
Chris: I think it’s more of a mystery why things continue. I look at bands I like like Blind Faith where they last for five months and a few gigs. It seemed like it went on a long time.
And you guys are still working together as a duo, so it’s like this working relationship that was in the dB’s is still going.
Chris: It had started 11 years before that, really. It’s just that the dB’s got more press because there were press agents involved.
Peter, you had a huge bunch of press when you played with R.E.M.
Peter: I did play with R.E.M. We did a tour for Green, the first album they did on Warner Brothers, and we recorded Out of Time—I played the acoustic guitar on ‘Losing My Religion.’ And then we went to England, and we reached a point where it was ‘untenable’ to work together. Much as I love those guys and respect what they’ve done, it was time for me to move on. I joined the Continental Drifters for ten years, and was serving in the same capacity I had with R.E.M. in Hootie & the Blowfish, which was a great gig I had for thirteen years.
You were saying that the dude from the Blowfish thinks you write weird songs. For our readership the weirdest thing you’ve EVER done is play in Hootie & the Blowfish!
Peter: The guys in the band are remarkable people. They truly are! They worked very, very hard for their success. They did some things that were probably ill-advised—they rushed out a second record out because they were afraid their fans were sick of the first record! They were thinking of their fans, which I thought was really cool.
Yeah, but… Hootie and the Blowfish! Chris, were ever moments where you were like, ‘Peter is killing the brand?’
Chris: I can’t even think in that way! He had been doing flower deliveries in New Orleans before that happened. I can’t think of how many times he went to Vietnam with them. I think it was kind of fun!
Peter: I would certainly rather do this than not work! That’s probably the best job I ever had. I enjoyed playing the music—it was really comfortable music, and really comforting music. It was not like playing with Yes. But to get to back up a world-class singer like Darius Rucker for 13 years was a serious honor. I was able to rope him into a tribute to Sandy Denny—I was the music director for a show that was celebrating the work of Sandy Denny, in Brooklyn, and I asked him to sing ‘Black Waterside,’ and he just tore it up! We got him on the R.E.M. tribute show at Carnegie Hall, and he did ‘I Believe’ with Calexico. People are more inclined to hate Hootie & the Blowfish because they think they’ve heard Hootie & the Blowfish. But Hootie did five really good studio records. Every one of those records had songs that could have been hits on them. The shape of radio changed, and the band stuck with their style. It was tough to go from being nobody, to being a huge hit, to being a punch line. People just think it’s ‘Hold My Hand’ and Darius in a cowboy hat hawking Burger King.
What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever played?
Chris: They all seem so normal! With the Golden Palominos, we played the Montrose Jazz Festival. We were playing after the Herbie Hancock Quartet, with Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock. I think we played after Miles Davis, too.
Have you had any crazy stories recently where you two put out an album or did a show, and some rabid fans did something… rabid?
Chris: I usually hide after shows! You seem to be looking for fun, tabloid stuff, and you’re probably looking in the wrong direction. We come from a very Southern, polite tradition.
I was actually at the 99 Cent Store on York in Highland Park, and ran across the Chris Stamey and Friends’ Christmas album— for a buck! It wasn’t bad! Can you tell me how that came about?
Peter: I did ‘O Holy Night’ on the very first version of the Christmas album years ago. I love that stuff! I grew up in the Episcopal Church, singing in the choir. I love the popular stuff! The Beach Boys’ Christmas record, the Ventures Christmas record, the Phil Spector Christmas Gift for You, the Beatles 45. Love ‘em, love ‘em, love ‘em! And the best part of Christmas albums is that they sell every year.
Chris: Gene Holder, who plays bass in the dB’s, always wanted to make a Christmas record, always thought that would be a fun thing to do. We were so impressed that even after I was no longer playing with the band, I wrote a song called ‘Christmas Time’ kinda with him in mind and got the other guys who had been in the dB’s to record it with me. And we put together other tracks based around that one song.
Who sings ‘Silver Bells?’ That was my favorite tune off the album.
That was Kirsten Lambert. She’s a friend of ours who lives here. That may be her only recorded effort, as far as I know.
That’s a tragedy! Tell her! If she ever goes on tour, I’ll give her an interview.
Chris: Okay—haha!

PETER HOLSAPPLE AND CHRIS STAMEY ON FRI., JULY 17, AT McCABE’S GUITAR SHOP, 3101 PICO BLVD., SANTA MONICA. 8 PM / $20 / ALL AGES. MCCABES.COM PETER HOLSAPPLE AND CHRIS STAMEY’S hEAR aND nOW IS OUT NOW ON BAR/NONE. VISIT PETER HOLSAPPLE AND CHRIS STAMEY AT HOLSAPPLESTAMEY.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/HEREANDNOWPETERANDCHRIS.

Stream: The Dream Syndicate “Merrittville”

(from Medicine Show on A&M)

The Dream Syndicate found whatever was in Sister Lovers and Tonight’s The Night still breathing in L.A. in 1984 and used it to make Medicine Show, still a nervous and wild local classic. Guitarist-singer Steve Wynn will perform the album in its entirety tonight with his band the Miracle 3. He speaks now from a quiet park in New York. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

What’s an easier cover song for you to do at an instant’s notice? Flamin’ Groovies, Roxy Music, Modern Lovers or the Ghostbusters theme song?
Every one of those. Every single one. They’re all fair game. I’d play any of those right now. I could do a medley of ‘Roadrunner,’ ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Shake Some Action.’ That would work out pretty well.
What was it like growing up in the Hollywood Hills while Manson and friends were on the prowl?
I was nine years old at the time and that was a nice introduction to the more sinister side of life. I remember being absolutely certain that they were coming for me, that they were going to be knocking on my window. Because if you remember, they weren’t caught right away. I think there were several months between the Tate-LaBianca murders and when they were arrested. During that time, I’m sure a lot of people thought this way. Definitely being a nine-year-old kid living up in the hills where you hear all kinds of sounds all the time-you’re sure it’s Susan Atkins and Tex Watson knocking on your window. It was a scary time. I’ve written a lot about these kinds of things and maybe that was my earliest influence. The Beatles, Creedence and Charles Manson.
Was that the first time you encountered the concept of evil?
Well, it’s funny. When I was growing up Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were killed and I was just barely old enough to grasp that-but something about that was more abstract. I didn’t quite understand their importance and impact and what they represented. Then you hear something like the Manson killings and you think, ‘Well, that seems like something that could happen right here.’ The Robert Kennedy assassination didn’t seem quite as immediate. It seemed terrible and I had the sense that something very bad had happened and I kind of understood the overview-but at that age you don’t fully grasp that. But you can completely understand the concept of someone coming into your house and killing everyone savagely. That was definitely my first sign that there were people out there who would do very bad things for almost no reason.
You said once the best serial killers all came from L.A.
It’s a little glib to say the ‘best’ ones because they’re all pretty awful. That’s something I said a long time ago but yeah, it’s interesting. Most of the well known serial killers seem to be in L.A. or Florida. What does that say? Beautiful, full of sunshine and full of open spaces-well, not L.A. but California anyway. You’d figure they’d all be in Detroit where they’re miserable. Maybe people get bored in California and Florida.
Maybe they really are cold blooded. They need that nice warm weather or they get sluggish.
Maybe that’s it. I lived in L.A. for years. I feel like I know L.A. probably better than any other city I’ll ever know in my life and L.A.’s got a lot of secret places. As anyone who lives there knows, it’s got the shiny, slick veneer and when you flip on the lights all the cockroaches start running around. There are a lot of very seamy things hidden by a very shiny exterior. Living in New York, the grit’s right there staring you in the face the whole time and nothing really surprises you. I think maybe that really shines a light on the difference between the beautiful and the horrible. Maybe when there’s that kind of a contrast, there’s no limit to how horrible you can get.
Is that uneasy coexistence between the beautiful and the horrible sort of the same thing we get on Medicine Show?
I think it’s definitely on Medicine Show. When the Dream Syndicate started the thing that we were all intrigued by in the band was taking very essentially straightforward hooky pop songs and just destroying them-having no reverence for them. At the time, most bands either played pop music or punk music or roots music and there was no mixing it up too much and our obvious reference point was the Velvets-but a lot of other bands as well-who would do that sort of thing, who would take a beautiful thing and then just trash it. That’s what we were doing on Days of Wine and Roses. I think on Medicine Show we kind of took away a lot of the beauty and went into the ugliness. It’s a very, very dark record but still catchy songs, still hooks, a lot of moments of beauty and elegance. It’s a much darker, disturbed record than Days of Wine and Roses.
You described it as the most ‘emotional, frightening and unique’ of the Dream Syndicate records. Why?
Well, I love that record. It is my favorite Dream Syndicate album and, you know, among other reasons it’s because there is no other record like it. When I hear the other three Dream Syndicate albums, I like them, but I can hear things that came before and things that went after but I can’t think of any other record either before or after that was quite like what we were doing on Medicine Show and it’s a pretty unique little thumbprint of where we were at the time and all the good things and the bad things about being in that band at that moment in time. Having said that, I spent every day for six months making that album and it was not the happiest times for me and Karl. On the one hand, we were at a peak as far as what people thought of us and the interest in us and at the same time kind of a downslide in the way that we were getting along with each other. So it wasn’t a record I wanted to go right back to right away. As much as I liked it, it brought back a lot of bad memories. But especially in recent months when I hear that record I’m really proud of it. I don’t listen to my stuff that much. I usually only listen to my records when it’s time to rehearse for tour but I started playing that record in the last few months and I was very happy with what I heard. It holds up really well.
What was the cost or price of making this record happen? You said you were losing your mind when you were making it.
A lot. First of all, it’s not the way I liked to work then or since then. I don’t like spending that much time on a record. I think that once you spend that much time you start second guessing yourself too much-you start making decisions because you’re bored, you start not getting along with each other. That’s a hard process so I wouldn’t recommend that for anybody unless you’re making some mass-market pop hit record-maybe you need to do that sort of thing but it’s not the way I would choose to work. But the cost beyond that? Look, we made Days of Wine and Roses in three days and that’s amazingly quick-that’s beyond belief. And we made Medicine Show in six months, which was too long. Probably somewhere in between would have been good. I mean, Karl and I were both twenty-three at the time. A year before that we’d been working minimum wage jobs and hoping we could get a gig third billed at Madame Wong’s. It was a lot of stuff coming in very quickly and we reacted in very different ways. If that kind of thing happened now, or ten years ago, I would know how to deal with it but at the time we were just confused. It was pretty, pretty heavy stuff.
How did making Medicine Show change the way you made the rest of your music afterward?
Well, I wouldn’t change a thing about that record. I’ll say that right away. But at the same time, I think we could have made the exact same record in one month. I think all that push and pull and the doubt… and maybe there were reasons certain people had for having it take that long and that’s all I’ll say about that. But I guess the main thing I learned is that I won’t take that long to make a record again. I’d rather make a record in a month or less and knock it out and it is what it is and it’s a moment and then you make another one a year later. That’s one thing I took away. On the other hand, another thing I took away from that record is that it’s good to dig deep and go to some very ugly places either to get something you’re looking for or to put you on a path to get to something else. If you’re making music or art or writing books or whatever, you sometimes have to go someplace where you’re not comfortable going and we definitely did that making that record.
You had a quote where you said, ‘If I was one of my own subjects, I’d be dead.’ Is that what’s happening on Medicine Show?
Yeah, the people in those songs and in a lot of my songs, they push themselves to a limit with no regard for themselves and no regard for people around them-they maybe make a lot of bad choices and then they regret them and then they make more bad choices. That’s a common theme in my stuff. Like anybody, I’ve got elements of that in myself and I enjoy going there when I’m writing or recording but I’m not living that all the time. Having said that, when I was making that record I was a wreck. I was drinking a lot. I was drinking a fifth of whiskey every day.
What brand?
Jim Beam. I was a big fan of Jim Beam and I knew every liquor store in San Francisco that stayed open until two in the morning where I could go and get a bottle right before closing time. I was definitely a drunk and I was not happy because I felt out of control of the record we were making and I was afraid that something that was very, very exciting and meaningful to me-the Dream Syndicate and the music we were making-was being hijacked. Turns out in a way it was-because it wasn’t necessarily how we would have gone about doing things. But again, like I say, the end results were fantastic. When you’re twenty-three, you’ve only made one record in your entire life and that record took three days and now you’re working on a record every day for five months, you’re going to go through all kinds of emotional places. And when you add a lot of whiskey to that… and also on top of that I think that one thing with making that record that had a lot of impact is that we did it in San Francisco, away from home. We were away from all our friends and away from our families and away from the places we hung out and the clubs we liked and the bands we liked and we were kind of isolated. That was in a way a good thing because it maybe freed us up to go further but it also took away a little bit of the compass, a little bit of a reference point that we might have needed at the time.
It sounds like an echo-chamber effect.
Exactly. And beyond that, it wasn’t just with each other because Dennis Duck and Dave Provost, the rhythm section, they were gone after two weeks. They spent two, maybe three weeks and then they were gone and then it was just me and Karl for about two months and then he was gone and then for the last two months I was pretty much there by myself with [producer] Sandy Pearlman. It was definitely some sort of Patty Hearst Stockholm Syndrome-esque experience.
Are you saying that you and Sandy Pearlman had a Stockholm Syndrome relationship?
In a way. In a way. I still see Sandy now and then. He’s a great producer, did a great job on the record, but there was definitely a lot of… I wouldn’t say intentional. It wasn’t malicious, but a lot of definite mental manipulation being that close together for that long a period of time.
Was it sort of like a Phil Spector waving a gun vibe?
There were no guns. It was more psychological, but at one point I threw a whiskey bottle at him and he said, ‘You can’t throw a whiskey bottle at me. Mick Jones didn’t even throw a whiskey bottle at me.’ I took that as high praise.
When you were going through that kind of thing, what did you do to escape?
I was reading a lot. I think the same thing that influenced me on the songs added more paranoia. I was reading a lot of Faulkner, a lot of Flannery O’Connor, a lot of Harry Crews, a lot of Southern Gothic dark writers so that just compounded everything. And then on top of it I was in a zone where each day I would play Funhouse by the Stooges at least two or three times. I think at the time I was a lot older at twenty-three than I am now at forty-nine. I pictured myself sort of a vagrant gypsy type, just wandering the streets of San Francisco at all hours, looking for trouble, looking for bars, looking for people I could get into confrontational discussions with-just kind of looking for the darker side of things. I was living the record. I was living the songs and there was also some self-flagellation going on there. It was an interesting time. I was also watching the television preacher Gene Scott. I was obsessed with Gene Scott. There was a channel at the time in San Francisco that had him on TV twenty-four hours a day. I watched Gene Scott when I woke up. I wasn’t converting. I wasn’t sending any money. He just became sort of my alter ego. I think I sort of looked at him and thought that’s who I was. I was Gene Scott. I wanted to get a full-length fur coat and dark glasses and wander around the streets. I wanted to be Gene Scott. Since that time, I’ve seen that kind of early success followed by self-flagellation. You see it in a lot of people. You saw it in Kurt Cobain, you saw it in Eddie Vedder, you see it in a lot of people. It happens over and over. There’s a pattern there and who’s to say why it happens? But I think when you’re young and doing something that means a lot to you and maybe the same kind of vulnerability that makes you do the stuff in the first place-when you get that kind of thing where suddenly you’re successful and everyone’s watching you, you might not react in the most stable, sane way as you would if you were older and had perspective.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said when you get success really early, it really wrecks you.
Well, it’s why I’m really grateful that twenty-five years later I’m still touring and making records and doing better than ever so fortunately I’ve had both sides of it. I had that whole experience that was enlightening and horrific and now I’m able to kind of enjoy the good things that happen so I’ve had both ends of it. I’ve always said the one regret I have about Dream Syndicate is that I wish there had been one more album. I think Medicine Show should have been our third album. I wish we would have made one more record with Kendra and a couple more tours. Just because what we were doing on Days of Wine and Roses and on those first few tours was really exciting, a really great thing and I think we could have had a little more of that and then made the grand epic.
Was there anything that came between the two records that never made it out?
Nothing, nothing. It was really quick. Days of Wine and Roses came out in November of ’82 and by March Kendra had left the band and by the summer we were in the studio. It was all happening very quickly. I wasn’t writing as much at the time. Now I write a lot, but at the time, getting those eight songs on the record, that’s all there was. There were no other songs, there were no outtakes. That was it. Again, the pressure you put on yourself… Those are songs I still play all the time, songs I still love.
Did you feel pressure coming off Days of Wine and Roses and going right into Medicine Show?
Yes, but we handled it in different ways. You know, I was a very big music fan and I had my heroes and they were all people like Lou Reed and Big Star Sister Lovers. All the people I was into-also Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Neil Young, John Lennon on his first solo album-all people at their darkest, most confused, fucked up, plumbing the depths period-this is what I thought was cool. I didn’t like Radio City or #1 Record, I liked Third. I didn’t like Imagine, I liked Plastic Ono Band. I didn’t like Harvest, I liked Tonight’s the Night. I was going for that dark place, so I felt that I was carrying the torch to take us darker and weirder and make something very disturbing and that was an extreme reaction. Karl, on the other hand, saw it as our chance to be a stadium rock band and he said we’re on a major label now-we’re playing with the big boys and he wanted to take it to a more slick, professional, let’s be a big rock band kind of thing. And both reactions were completely heartfelt and noble but they don’t work too well together so we drove each other nuts. That’s why we drove each other absolutely nuts and you can hear it on the record. And what drove us nuts on a personal level, musically is interesting. I think the nice thing about Medicine Show is it is very disturbing, very dark and it’s also very big and regal and epic. It’s not a trashy little record. It’s a very grand record. There was sort of a push and pull between my record collection, my record label, my reality and my band mates that maybe added pressure. The thing I learned at the time, and I’ve seen this in a lot of bands since then, is that it’s just as much of a sell-out to make yourself more repellent than you need to be as it is to try and make yourself more glamorous than you need to be. They’re both somethings that may not be true to what you really are. So, self sabotage and selling out are sort of two sides of the same coin.
Do you think you would have agreed with that at the time?
Of course not. That’s the thing, you get perspective and that’s why I say I don’t have any problem with any of that, but it’s something that I’ve learned since then. It’s natural to go there. And it’s something I’ve always admired about R.E.M. Maybe it’s because they were all such good friends, maybe it’s that they all lived in Athens, whatever it was-they really managed to kind of keep a pretty even keel in a way that a lot of other bands didn’t. If I look at most bands from that period of time, whether it’s the Replacements or us or Hüsker Dü or the Long Ryders, they all had a lot of inner turmoil, a lot of mercurial moves musically, career wise… and R.E.M. didn’t seem to do that and that’s probably why they’ve had such long term success. Then there was no road map. Now you come along and Pitchfork writes about you and you can look back and see a lot of bands around you or that came ten years before and see how they handled it. There was really no road map for us. There was no such thing as indie rock. Yeah, there had been punk rock, but that was kind of a very isolated thing and kind of imploded very quickly. We were the first band of our ilk to sign to a major label-before R.E.M., before Replacements, before kind of anybody we were the first ones to kind of go that route and it was ‘What now? What do we do now? Are we the Scorpions now? What can we base this whole thing on?’ And then you would tour around and if you were any of the bands that I mentioned you were going cross-country playing in cities where they didn’t really get what you were doing. Even when we toured with R.E.M. a few months after Medicine Show we would play cities like Boisie, Idaho and the headline in the paper the next day was ‘New Wave Comes to Boise.’ Are you kidding? New wave? I wish I would have saved it because it was the most amazing thing. We saw it and our jaws dropped. But as much as New York and L.A. got it, it was still this mostly completely mysterious thing. Are you a punk or are you new wave? We were still getting that then. And the other thing we’d get then was, ‘Now why are you playing guitars? Is that some kind of statement? Because guitars are dead.’ And it was mystifying. Also it was kind of the era of the producer. We just hit a point where bands just didn’t go in and make their music and have it documented. Producers were meant to manipulate bands to make them ‘better.’ And so the producer became the star. Like, ‘I can take ten seconds of what you’re doing, mess it around and make you a much better band.’
The producer as alchemist, kind of?
Kind of, and the band was the tools. Of course I’m sure that Grizzly Bear and other bands now and Animal Collective have their own problems now and things they have to face, but they can at least say, well, here’s what the hot indie band did two years ago. Here’s how Arcade Fire handled it two years ago. So there’s a little more of a rudder to the whole thing.
It’s like everybody’s got somebody working for them now.
I’ve gone the exact opposite way. I’ve found a real freedom beginning about fifteen years ago when I started managing myself. I stopped caring about making it, which I did or didn’t care about at different times. And all I really want to do is make records I like and then go out in front of people and play them. And if the arc takes me one tour in front of three thousand people, another tour in front of thirty, it doesn’t matter. After this many years, it’s just kind of a continuous thing and when I’m ninety I’ll have made a handful of records and some will be my favorites and some will be ones where I kind of missed it by a few marks here and there and that’s great. That’s a good life. It’s a lot easier to do it when you’ve been around for twenty-five years and a lot easier when you’ve made a lot of records that people like. The thing I always liked about the ’70s for example, as opposed to right now, is that really good artists made some really bad records and I think that’s great. I think that’s a great thing. I don’t think people give themselves as much freedom now to make really shitty records. I’m not sure if it’s because people aren’t making as many or that there’s so much importance on it, but I love that there are some really bad Neil Young records and some really bad Bob Dylan records and some really bad Lou Reed records and it’s great because I think sometimes you have to get through a really huge misstep to get to something really good.
There’s not the freedom to make those kinds of mistakes anymore?
Or maybe they just don’t allow themselves to. I mean, they have the freedom to because these days you could make a record in your living room and have it out a couple weeks later but maybe people are more savvy now. People are a little more self-conscious, a little more aware. And everything that’s good about having the road map, everything that makes it easier also makes it a little bit harder to completely go off the deep end. And on Medicine Show, that’s a record where we went way off the deep end. We went to this crazy, extreme place that no one had gone to before. I keep going back to this but when I hear Days of Wine and Roses I can hear a lot of bands in that record, before and after. Medicine Show? You tell me. I mean, I hear certain Nick Cave things that came after, but there’s this kind of weird mixture of things, very dark, very big at the same time and I think it’s pretty unique.
What do you think about the fact that that much of your personality and mind state came come through in Medicine Show?
Well, I think that the people who were really affected by Medicine Show-and it’s important to remember that in the U.S. there was really a backlash because people wanted Days of Wine and Roses, but in Europe it was taken to be the best record of those couple years. People freaked out over it and still do. So on one side of the Atlantic people were saying we dropped the ball and on the other side they were rolling out the red carpet, so I think I found it more amusing than upsetting. But the people that that record touched, over here especially, were people who really enjoy that dark ride. One thing I heard that really flattered me was I saw an interview with Greg Dulli where he said he moved to L.A. because he heard Medicine Show and that’s great. And he’s a pretty fucked up, disturbed guy too, so it was definitely a little mating call-a little radar signal to the malcontents and the wackos out there. It goes back to what I said about loving Tonight’s the Night, and Plastic Ono Band and Big Star Third. I think those kinds of records aren’t for everybody but the people who are touched by those records, those are their favorite records. They think, ‘That was made for me.’ There’s no grey about it. It’s black and white. You either get it or you don’t.
You know that famous story about some kid coming up to Lou Reed and saying, ‘Man, I started using because of you. You were the guy who turned me on to it.’ Have you had that ‘what have we really made here?’ feeling?
Fortunately no one ever came up to me and said they set fire to a field because of me, so I guess I’m ok on that front. I’ve never incited arson or any of the things that happen in ‘Merrittville’ so I think I’m ok on that front. Look, I think the Dream Syndicate has the same very flattering legacy that a lot of bands like the Velvets have where people started bands because they were influenced by us and I think that’s great. That means a lot to me. I didn’t plan out everything to the letter, the way it all worked out, and I don’t think I ever would have imagined I’d be where I am right now doing things the way I am right now, but it is interesting that the career we had kind of mirrored the bands I was in to. I wasn’t looking to be the next Beatles. I was looking to make those records that really were challenging and difficult and would mean a lot to the people who liked them. The thing I used to say at the beginning of the Dream Syndicate, and I think we all felt, was that it’s most important to make a record that could be at least one person’s favorite record of all time. It’s better to do that than to make a record that a lot of people will say, ‘yeah, that’s ok. I’m fine with that. That’s good background music.’ If one person in the world could say that’s the best thing that I’ve ever heard in my life and it changed my life, then you’ve done something right.
How often do you think to yourself, ‘I must have been crazy because I did this or didn’t do that’?
All the time, man. Like anybody, all the time. I try not to get bogged down in it too much because it’s much better to just do something new, do a new record or a new tour. But again, and I think a lot of people in that situation would say the same thing, is that I wish I would have enjoyed it a little more.
That’s youth.
Yeah, why is youth wasted on the young? Blah blah blah. But being twenty-three and opening for R.E.M. and U2 and making a record with that much money at your disposal, I think that the forty-nine year old Steve would think, oh, I can have fun with this. And I did have fun. On the R.E.M. tour I made friends with Peter and Mike especially, who are still great friends to this day. And I have great stories to tell of the debauchery.
Can you give me a few tales of R.E.M. debauchery for the readers?
Absolutely, absolutely not.
Is there still a room in L.A. that you know you could walk into that you know hasn’t changed a bit since you were last here?
You know, that’s a good question. A lot of my favorite clubs and bars I used to love are gone. There were so many great ones. I miss Raji’s. I miss Al’s Bar. I miss what the Whisky was. I miss Moby’s Dock, a great bar at the end of the Santa Monica pier. I miss the Tap ‘n’ Cap on Sawtelle. I miss the Firefly on Vine. And there are a whole new generation of those things that are probably amazing that I don’t go to that often. I love Chez Jay. It’s a great bar by the beach that will probably never change. That’s my favorite haunt. It’s been there since before I was born and it’s still the same as it was back then. That’s a great hangout. It’s the first thing I could think of as far as an L.A. constant.
You never ended up at a bar with Warren Zevon, did you?
No, and I really wish I would have known him. I met him once backstage at McCabe’s and I’m a huge fan. I know people who have hung out with him and have a couple stories about him, but no. I wish I would have known him either when we were both at our worst or when we’d recovered from that. Both would have been interesting. Kind of on that level, I remember I used to DJ at the Cathay de Grande. That’s another place I miss a lot. I was a Monday night kind of blues/soul/garage DJ there and they used to pay me in alcohol. I didn’t get any money but I used to drink as much as I could stand and I remember DJing and drinking my screwdrivers up in the booth and watching a very drunken Tom Waits come stumbling in with Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs and that was kind of a very L.A. thing.
How do you feel reminiscing about this stuff? Do you recognize yourself as the same person in the songs or is it like coming back to a country you haven’t been to in awhile?
That’s interesting. We toured a couple years ago and did The Days of Wine and Roses, the same as we’re doing with this record. It was very easy to fall into that mode for some reason, the sort of wise-ass, cocky confrontational guy that made that record and did those tours and I was actually having fun method acting it. I don’t think I can go to where I was during Medicine Show. I can play those songs and it’s going to be a really good tribute and update at the same time, but man, I don’t know if I could be that person or want to be that person. We’ve been rehearsing the record a lot this week for the New York show and we’ll be getting into shape for the L.A. show and it’s going to be great, but I said really if I wanted to do it the right way I would just spend the next two weeks drinking whiskey nonstop and that would put me in the right mode but I don’t think I’m going to do that.

STEVE WYNN AND THE MIRACLE THREE PERFORM MEDICINE SHOW PLUS THE URINALS THUR., JULY 9, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $10 / 18+. VISIT STEVE WYNN AT STEVEWYNN.NET.

Download: Ramblin’ Jack Elliott “Soul Of A Man”

(from A Stranger Here out now on Anti)

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s first job was a rodeo hand after he ran away from his childhood home in Brooklyn. Not long after, he apprenticed under Woody Guthrie. Not long after that, Bob Dylan apprenticed under Jack. He’s only written four songs in his entire life, but one of those songs was a personal favorite of Townes Van Zandt. His newest album A Stranger Here (out now on Anti) is made up of blues standards and features Van Dyke Parks on piano. He had his hip replaced just last week. This interview by Kevin Ferguson.

Can you still do the 45-second yodel at the end of ‘Muleskinner Blues?’
I haven’t sung ‘Muleskinner Blues’ in a couple of years. But actually I was going to get a lung test at the hospital one day. The doctors put me on this machine and they told me that I had a problem with my lungs—that it wasn’t reading good. And I thought, ‘Well, I’ll show you guys!’ So I looked at the clock on the wall and I waited ‘til the second hand came up the twelve and I started my yodel which I believe was supposed to be 45 seconds long. But under the added stimulation of having two young doctors watching me and the clock and all—and having just done the lung test, which was like a warm up exercise—I held that note for sixty seconds! A couple of years later I went back to the hospital for another lung test and I had two new doctors—but the same machine, the same old story. I did the test and they said it wasn’t a good reading and I said, ‘OK, I’ll show you guys, too!’ And I looked up at the wall for the second hand again and I started my sixty-second yodel again, but that time I held that note for seventy seconds! But I haven’t tried it much since then. And of course they repeated their diagnosis about what they thought was wrong, and I thought, ‘You guys are a bunch of spoilsports! I ain’t going back here!’
Does the yodel require practice?
I’ve never been known to do any practicing of the guitar or singing—the only practice I get is when I’m on stage. I’m gonna be practicing again soon though, because I need to learn these new songs that I recorded almost ten months ago. I recorded them last June—they’re on a new album that’s just coming out in a few days now? I don’t know any of those songs. I didn’t learn them when I went down there. I was just reading them off the paper.
How did you choose the songs for that album?
I didn’t choose them. The record company suggested them to me—they had this concept in their mind of me doing these funky old blues songs, and I thought, ‘OK, that sounds like a good idea!’ I didn’t want to be argumentative. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even like about half the songs! I listened to them for three months about five times a day, and I never learned a single one! There was only one that I already knew, and I had been singing it for about fifty years—the ‘How Long Blues.’ But I sang Leadbelly’s version, and this is not Leadbelly’s version. This is a different version—the one by the guy that wrote it. I think he was a piano player. The only reason that record so good is because the musicians who were backing me up are a bunch of geniuses! They had done their homework—they knew the songs pretty well, and we did it like a huge jam session. That too is unusual for me because I don’t normally do jam sessions. The best way you can learn and improve your technique on guitar is to work out with other musicians—to play live. I did a lot of that for the first ten years or so that I was playing guitar. But after I got to traveling around and playing professionally more and more, I sort of lost interest in going out and jamming all the time. I love playing with those guys! They were great. Jay Belrose on drums—Van Dyke Parks on piano. And I knew Van Dyke from about twenty years back—we were drinking buddies in L.A.!
What has been the biggest revelation in your life?
Biggest revelation! I had a marvelous time last night. I just got out of the hospital about ten days ago—had a new hip put in, and I just started to walk back to normal. I’m walking with a walking stick. A friend of mine told me that Kris Kristofferson and Merle Haggard were playing in a theatre near where I lived, so he drove me over there in my truck because I’m not ready to drive yet. I got a special cushion I can sit on ‘cause it’s kind of painful to sit in a car. I got about two more weeks to go—I’ll be ready to go on the road. But right now I’m just barely getting used to having this new hip in me, and it gets a little painful sometimes. But I walked a mile a day before yesterday, and that was a little bit too much. It took me an hour and a half to get the mail! But I went to see Kris Kristofferson and Merle Haggard last night! They did a great show. Joel Selvin was there from the San Francisco Chronicle, and he had just written a big story about them… so a good time was had by all, and I’m starting to like get ready to face show biz and being on the road again. So—the greatest revelation! Well, I guess it was when I climbed the rigging in an old whaler in a museum ship in Mystic, Connecticut. I’ve always loved boats—water and clipper ships. So I met some people who sailed in these old square riggers, and I was memorizing a lot of information about boats and navigation. I went and climbed up the rigging that cold winter’s day. My hands were so cold I could only go up about one third of the way! So then I climbed back down to the deck to warm my hands. It took me three separate climbs—about an hour—to gradually work my way up to the whale lookout about 125 feet above the deck on this old sailing whale ship called the Charles W. Morgan. That was kind of an exercise in control of cold and fear of heights, and learning to accept being alone in the cold. A lot of my heroes were singlehanded navigators, and I’d read about it. But I myself have never done a long trip solo. I had a small sailboat in the Atlantic Ocean about a mile offshore from when I was about 16 to when I was 20. When I’d sail it in the wintertime, they’d call that ‘frostbite dinghy sailing.’
Frostbite dinghy sailing?
Warmly dressed, of course. You’d wear ex-Navy foul-weather gear—wool and such. It was very fun. But then my first performance was playing for World War II survivors in a hospital in New York. These guys were pretty fucked-up from being in the war and they lost legs and arms and stuff—they didn’t make a very good audience. Some were laughing, some were crying, some were cussing, some were telling jokes, and some were even listening and enjoying the music! That was my first schooling in handling an audience. But I have never been able to handle drunks very well. My L.A. gigs are a bit trying, too, because the audience at McCabe’s guitar shop are mostly elderly people and they’re serious fans and they’re dead quiet—sort of like in church! I’ve been known to go asleep on stage in that venue! So I have to be a stand-up comic at the beginning. Get them out of their reverent worshipful mood that they’re in and wake ‘em up! Of course, there’s about a hundred guitars up on the wall there—people are afraid to clap for fear that they might start a guitar avalanche off the wall!
Do you still play your old Gretsch?
Well, it was stolen and it was missing for 23 years! I got it back—I had a local guitar maker take it back and glue it all together again. He did a pretty good job. It’s got a lot of scars of battle on it. I asked him to please not make it look any prettier than it did before I lost it. It’s been over the Alps on the back of a motor scooter in a blizzard, all over Europe for about three years! So I don’t need to kind of expose it to any more travel—it’s a museum piece. The other day, I hauled it out in its case and showed it to a friend who’s a boat builder. He stomped on it and he was amazed—I was amazed—how good the Gretsch still sounds and holds up despite all of the glue that’s been added to it. Because I got it back from this thief because he saw me singing with Kris Kristofferson in the same theater where I was last night to see Kris. He must have had a pang of guilt when he saw me playing on stage without it—he knocked on the stage door later and he said his name, said he was a friend of so-and-so. He gave me his number and I called him and went up to visit at his farm and got my guitar back. It looked like he carefully removed the guitar from the case, put it on the ground, and rolled over it with a tractor two or three times! It was a mess! Totally wrecked! He said a friend of his gave it to him and stuff like, ‘I didn’t know where you were. I thought you were out of town, Jack! Here’s the guitar—take good care of it.’ I was very tempted to say, ‘Why didn’t you take good care of it?’ But I thought it wouldn’t be polite. Especially when I’m sitting in his house drinking his wine and he’s treating me like a guest. I really think that kid stole my guitar. It took a couple of years for my guitar-maker friend to glue that thing back together again! You know, I loaned that guitar to the Experience Music Project museum and they had it travelling all over America for two years as an exhibit of early Bob Dylan influences. They had it in a glass case along with some pertinent information about the guitar because that was the guitar I had played on my first early recordings that Bob had gotten from some friends in Minneapolis when they first turned them on to Woody Guthrie and then to me.
Did you ever really call him your son?
No! I never did! The press called him ‘son of Jack Elliott.’ They thought it was kind of a cute way to announce the arrival of a new talent on the scene. And I was very proud of it because he was very obviously imitating me, although other people saw it more plainly than I could see it. I’d sing a song on stage and a minute later Bob would jump on and start doing something that he just noticed that I was doing—totally unabashedly! It used to piss people off—they didn’t understand why I was allowing it. They thought I ought to crack down on the bastard! But I liked him. He was my friend—sort of unofficially like a student. That’s the way I learned from Woody, too. I was out hanging out with Woody for about four years, starting in 1951. He just told me a lot of stories and we’d play music together. I learned a lot about guitar playing with Woody.
What was the first song he taught you?
Actually, I learned it off a record of his—it was called ‘Hard Travelling.’ I actually knew it by heart when I first met Woody. I’d been listening to that record for about two months before I finally called him one day. I got his phone number through a friend of mine. I called him up and said ‘I’ve been listening to your records, and I sure like your music.’ And he said ‘Well, come on over—bring your guitar! We’ll knock off a couple of tunes together! Don’t come today, though—I got a bellyache.’ And indeed, he almost died. He had appendicitis.
What’s the worst indignity about travelling by air?
Having to give them my guitar and put in baggage where they can break it! I was very lucky they’ve never broken it. But I’ve had many, many friends who had their valuable guitars broken by airlines, Earl Scruggs had his banjo broken by one of those airlines, and so he bought an airplane to learn how to fly on his own! I’ve had my suitcase lost four or five times—always got it back a few days back. I remember when they used to have beautiful stewardesses and nice food and silverware. Metal silverware! That was the old days when the plane stunk of cigarette smoke and coffee, and I didn’t mind!
How did it feel knowing that ‘912 Greens’ was one of the last songs Townes Van Zandt ever heard?
Well, it felt very good that night—I didn’t know that he was going to die. He didn’t even let me know that he had a broken hip. He had tripped over a tree stump the day before and he was frightened to go to a hospital. But he needed to get a surgical operation to get his hip fixed. He put it off ac couple of days before his loved ones finally talked him into going to the hospital. Now, my father was a surgeon. When you operate an alcoholic, you have to give them alcohol. Otherwise they’ll die of shock! And those doctors must’ve not known that. You know, there are a lot of doctors who just don’t know anything nowadays. Isn’t that funny? I don’t know what they teach in medical school. There’s a lot to be found out about the medical profession. He said he liked ‘912 Greens.’ I know he did because every time I talked to him he mentioned that. And I thanked him and I said, ‘You have a nice New Year’s.’ He died about eight hours after that.
What do you think America lost with the death of Odetta?
She had a great powerful voice and a lot of spirit. She was a wonderful, wonderful woman and I just don’t think they make a lot of people like that anymore. She sang Leadbelly songs and old folk songs. She sang a lot of Leadbelly songs. We did five or six concerts together, spread out over two years time. When she died they had a big tribute to Odetta, so I made a videotape and they played it on a big screen.
Is it true that her mom was the first person to call you ‘Ramblin’?’
That’s correct! I like to tell a lot of stories, you know—long stories. I had just met Odetta about a month before and she lived across the street from a man that had several Model A Fords. I had just purchased a Model A and I went to see the man about fixing this and that I because he was an expert. The first time I visited Odetta, her mother answered the door and said, ‘Odetta is in the bathtub—you can wait here in the living room.’ So I waited and I waited and I waited—I could hear the water splashing in the bathtub. I could hear Odetta singing to herself! She seemed very content to be in the bathroom for over a half hour. She’s a large person. Anyway, I got tired of waiting so I went up to the bathroom door and said ‘Hey, Odetta—it’s me, Jack! I’m here!’ and I started telling stories about my adventures. Her mother thought that was odd. The next time I visited Odetta and knocked on her door, her mother looks out the little peephole, saw my face and I heard her holler, ‘ODETTA, RAMBLIN’ JACK IS HERE!’ That was the first time I heard that name. I’ve heard it an awful lot since then!
Was On The Road the only manuscript that’s ever been read to you?
That’s the only one! I’ve read manuscripts for movies and stuff, but that was the first and last time anybody read me their manuscript. We drank some wine, had some other things and we sat on the floor. Jack read to us for three days!
How do you stay awake through that?
I don’t think we had any trouble staying awake—it was such a wonderful story. That was in the year 1953 and the book came out in 1956, or ‘57! Yeah, ‘57—it was four years prior to the publishing of the book. So when it finally came out I was in Paris and I gave a reading of some of the chapters of that book and along with a reading of some of Woody’s writings. I performed, too. I was performing in concert with Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso in Paris.
How do you survive on two dollars a day when you’re a rodeo hand?
Well, it was in 1947—I could get bacon and eggs and a cup of coffee and sometimes still have enough money left over for a malted milk later! But that was it—I was pretty much a one-meal-a-day kid for about three months. Well, the latter part of that time I was on the ranch I was paid 5 dollars a week, but they fed us. I had nineteen flapjacks every morning! The cook made the most delicious pancakes! To this day, I still love buckwheat pancakes—they’re very different. A unique flavor. They taste rich and healthy without being too sweet. It’s sort of like a good bowl of oatmeal!
Is there a trick to make the most money possible while busking?
Aw, I never made much money busking! When I was busking in Paris regularly—practically every night—in the wintertime, we would work for approximately one hour and collect the equivalent of about $8 U.S., which was about enough to pay our room rent and one or two meals. Breakfast was just coffee and a croissant, lunch was a ham sandwich, and dinner was a beefsteak and frites.
When was the last time you rode a horse?
I rode a horse when I was watching Larry Mayham practice roping. It was at a Colorado film festival. Before that, I rode a horse about a year ago on a round-up finding some cattle up in the mountains of Northern California. Bringing them down in a rainstorm and sleeping in a very leaky tent with a cowboy who snored. After about three hours of soaking in my sleep, I apologized to him for abandoning him and went into my Ford truck. There, I had a wool blanket and 2 full hours of good sleep until I heard the cook rustling up the coffee pot. I was up like a flash! We couldn’t even brand the calves—they were too wet! But I like riding horses—I just don’t get to ride them enough. I used to have a horse for twelve years and rode him constantly in the hills of Northern California.
What was his name?
His name was Young Brigham. I had him on a record album cover—the album was named after him, too. The saddle maker that sold me that horse told me, ‘You know, Jack, if you put a picture of Brigham on the cover of your record album, the hay will be tax deductible!’
Is that for real?
It was a good sales point! I was already in love with the horse, anyway.
How do you think your music and Woody’s music fits in with today, as we’re risking a second Great Depression?
I think it fits in perfectly. He was singing about hard times, and he went through the hard times and he saw it and he wrote about it. And now we’re getting ready to have some more. I think people appreciate the music because it means something to them. Back as recently as a year ago, the country was still in a blind bourgeois alcoholic drug-induced Hollywood-induced fog of, ‘Gimme, gimme, gimme! Gotta have a fast car, gotta have a big fat four-wheel drive, just like in the movies.’ We were totally stupid—in a crazed state of mind—which helped to bring about the fall. It’s like the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Stuff goes up and comes back down again. It’s gravity!
What’s the one lesson we all should have learned from history but never will?
I think that there’s a very good chance that most of the people will never have learned anything. Because it seems like it’s almost built into human nature that it’s easy for certain politicians to exist. As long as the politicians do exist, they’re always going to lie to the public and the deprivation and destruction of schools will continue. And California is the leading state in backwardness for education. It’s still shocking and hard to believe! I was raised on mom, apple pie, red white and blue, ‘America the Beautiful’—I was very patriotic in my heart, although I was lucky enough to not have to go to war. I was too young for World War II and later I just fell through the cracks. I probably would’ve had to be a draft dodger or refuse to go. I don’t approve of warfare and I don’t like killing animals or people. Although I used to love a good steak!
So you’re a vegetarian?
I’m part idealist and part hypocrite. I’m part yogi and part bull-rider. I’m all things good and all things bad! No, I’m not, Hitler was! No, I’m not a vegetarian. But I am trying to cut down on meat as I’ve found out that red meat is not as good for you as I had once supposed that it was. And yet I crave it! But I’m starting to eat more lamb. I love lamb curry and I love lamb chops. I like Indian food a lot, too. Theoretically, I’m much more a vegetarian than I am in practice. And I don’t smoke cigarettes. I did smoke cigarettes for about twenty years. I started when I was fifteen, rolling my own cigarettes at the rodeo ranch. I thought that was cool! Then I started smoking Camels and Luckys and all that trash. I was very lucky that I didn’t get seriously addicted to tobacco. One day I decided I was really tired and bored with it, and I just stopped buying and smoking cigarettes. I didn’t have a difficult time quitting tobacco. I know that most people have a hard time—they say it’s harder to kick than heroin!
What was it like getting an award from Bill Clinton?
Well, of course I don’t ever rehearse what I’m going to say. It seems like it comes out better ad-libbed, in the style of Woody Guthrie and Will Rogers. They never rehearsed or planned out what they were going to say. And so here comes the president and he’s about to shake hands with me in the White House. I said, ‘It’s wonderful to meet you, Bill! Is it ok if I call you Bill?’ And he said, ‘Of course, Jack.’ And I felt like he was my friend! I like him! And I had come in with no preconceived notion about him. I just looked in his eyes and I thought, ‘This guy is OK. Good man.’ When I met his wife, I said, ‘I’m Ramblin’ Jack!’ and she just hollered, ‘I KNOW YOU, RAMBLIN’ JACK!’ It reverberated down the hall of the White House! It was as if she was back in Arkansas knocking on the back porch to borrow some sugar. I thought, ‘These guys are down home folks!’
What was the most memorable time you sang the national anthem?
As a matter of fact, I sang it the one time we were being serenaded by some musicians on foot who were in blue. It was the U.S. Marine Corp band, and they were playing all these tunes, mostly patriotic songs. So I chimed in with them on, ‘America, America, God shed his grace on thee.’ I had had ONE shot of scotch and two glasses of red wine, which is about enough. I was a little bit in my cups—as they say—but I didn’t dare look but my wife sitting next to me peeked over. I was singing a little too loud because I was carried away with patriotic fervor. Bill was looking right at me, grinning broadly. He just dug it! And later after the dinner was over, immediately I had to scooch over and allow Bill to sneak past me, ahead of some other people. As he walked by me, I put my hand up to my mouth as if I had a secret to whisper to him. And in fact the G-Men by the other wall couldn’t see what I was saying, and I told Bill, ‘I heard a rumor that Bob Dylan is in town tonight and I thought we could dress you up in a disguise and sneak you over there.’ He threw his head back and laughed, ‘That would be fun!’

RAMBLIN’ JACK ELLIOTT ON FRI.. APR. 17, AND SAT., APR. 18, AT McCABE’S GUITAR SHOP, 3101 PICO BLVD., SANTA MONICA. 8 PM / $20 / ALL AGES. MCCABES.COM. RAMBLIN JACK ELLIOTT’S A STRANGER HERE RELEASES TUE., APR. 7, ON ANTI-. VISIT RAMBLIN’ JACK ELLIOTT AT RAMBLINJACK.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/RAMBLINJACKELLIOTT.

Quick list of all last week’s previews, reviews, interviews and MP3s!

2MEX @ URBAN UNDERGROUND: PREVIEW

2MEX “Shades Of Orange”

A-BONES AND ROY LONEY @ REAL BOSS HOSS: REVIEW

AFRIKA BAMBAATAA @ DETROIT: PREVIEW

Afrika Bambaata “Metal” (f. Gary Numan and MC Chat)

ARI UP @ PUNKY REGGAE PARTY: PREVIEW

ARI UP @ PUNKY REGGAE PARTY: VIDEO

Click here to watch

BLACK LIPS @ THE EL REY: REVIEW

Black Lips “O Katrina”

DAEDELUS: TRAINSPOTTING Q & A AND PODCAST

Daedelus’ L.A. RECORD Podcast

DAN’S EUROPE TOUR PHOTOS : FEATURE PART 2, PART 3

The Sads “Miniature Moons”

DARKER MY LOVE + MORE @ THE ECHO: PREVIEW

Darker My Love “Summer Is Here”

DEL THA FUNKEE HOMOSAPIEN @ VAULT 350: PREVIEW

Del Tha Funkee Homosapien “Bubble Pop”

DJ VADIM @ LOW END THEORY: PREVIEW

DJ Vadim “Got To Rock” (f. Zion)

EVEREST @ BOARDNER’S: PREVIEW

Everest “Into Your Soft Heart”

HENRY CLAY PEOPLE @ THE ECHO: PREVIEW

The Henry Clay People “Andy Sings!”

L.A. RECORD ANNIVERSARY @ 6TH ST.: REVIEW

Crystal Antlers “Parting Song For The Torn Sky”

LIARS + NO AGE @ THE EL REY: PREVIEW

Liars “Plaster Casts of Everything”

MAGIC LANTERN @ ECHO CURIO: PREVIEW

Magic Lantern “At the Mountains of Madness”

THEE MAKEOUT PARTY @ EL CID: PREVIEW

Thee Makeout Party “2 EZ 2 LUV U”

MANNY NIETO AND THE MATT CRONK BENEFIT: INTERVIEW

Qui “Freeze”

MIKE BONES: LIVE FROM NEW YORK

Mike Bones “Love’s Not Yours”

MIKE STINSON + MORE @ CHARLIE O’S: PREVIEW

Mike Stinson “Take Out The Trash” (clip)

NIKKI CORVETTE + MORE @ REAL BOSS HOSS: REVIEW

Nikki Corvette and the Stingrays “Back To Detroit”

NUDITY @ MOUNTAIN BAR: PREVIEW

Nudity “Nightfeeders” (Concentricks) (clip)

PEANUT BUTTER WOLF: TRAINSPOTTING Q & A AND PODCAST

L.A. RECORD Stones Throw Podcast

PINBACK AND MC CHRIS @ AVALON: REVIEW

Pinback “From Nothing to Nowhere”

SIAN ALICE GROUP: LIVE FROM NEW YORK

Sian Alice Group “Motionless”

ST. VINCENT @ THE ECHOPLEX: REVIEW

St. Vincent “Marry Me”

VAMPIRE WEEKEND: HERU REVIEWS

Vampire Weekend “Walcott”

WAIT THINK FAST + MORE @ SPACELAND: PREVIEW

Wait Think Fast “Lightning”

WEST INDIAN GIRL @ TROUBADOUR: REVIEW

West Indian Girl “All My Friends”

WOODEN SHJIPS @ McCABE’S: REVIEW

Wooden Shjips “We Ask You To Ride”

The third installment of Arthur Sunday Evenings at McCabe’s brought out a diverse crowd of bearded stoners, record geeks, pregnant professors, unsuspecting folkies, the coolest 15-year-olds in L.A., and Robert Downey Jr. No kidding. The evening began with Headdress, whose otherwise hypnotic (some might say sleep-inducing) performance was marred by the distracting and presumably unintentional rattle of a snare drum vibrating throughout the set. One forty-something McCabe’s regular found the Texan duo “oppressive,” though she freely admitted she was accustomed to the more “geriatric” performers the legendary guitar shop has hosted. Well if Headdress wasn’t her cup of tea, she was probably pleasantly surprised by the next artist, Mariee Sioux, sometimes a part of new hippie group Brightblack Morning Light. And if gentle finger plucking and lilting melodies about wizards, magic, and animals in the forest sung by a demure, sugary-voiced maiden are your thing, you’ll want to check her out too. Finally up were the Shjips, and hip kids young and old stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the center aisle in anticipation of the rock. Ripley Johnson, giving heed to the uninitiated by offering free earplugs should anyone need them, came out looking like a modern-day Rip Van Winkle who dozed off listening to the Velvet Underground’s White Light/White Heat and awoke a few decades later to Spacemen 3’s Sound of Confusion. But some other influences must have crept in during that epic nap because the raucous up-tempo opening number sounded almost like a cover of Devo’s “Gates of Steel.” Lest anyone fear a post-punk makeover, though, the Shjips soon floated into their signature meditative, psychedelic drone, laying out blistering guitar freakout solos over minimal electric keyboard, metronomic drumbeats, and bass lines repeated like a mantra. Johnson joked that the band adheres to the Ramones philosophy of playing short sets. But whereas  Joey and Co. might tear through 15 songs in 20 minutes, Ripley, Dusty, Omar, and Nash jammed out about 6 or so in a bit more than half an hour—leaving the audience still wanting more.

— Hane C. Lee