Macchine Semplici

Fugazi played 39 shows in 63 days on the 1988 Fall European Tour, between 14 October and 16 December. If you watch the video, you will notice that there is a pause of about a week in London before the final show of the tour in Eindhoven. That will have been when they recorded the Margin Walker EP. If you feel like listening to a show from this tour, this is a fun one:

Mixtape 327 “Superimposed Forest”

2023-06-21

Slow Ambient Drift

Wednesdays, Fridays & Sundays. Support the artists and labels. Don't forget to tip so future shows can bloom. https://www.mixcloud.com/djsofabed/

Matthewdavid-Perpetuity-00:00

KENJI KIHARA-Flow in the Back-04:28

Tayus-Agnostic-07:35

Lori Scacco-Strange Cities-10:23

Philippe Brown-Serenade of the Techno Mystics-14:48

Jogging House-Dancer-16:56

Scanner-Entrance to Listening Forest-20:10

Suzanne Ciani-The Third Wave - Love In The Waves-24:41

Future Children-Cotard's Delusion-29:21

John Haughey-Seamounts-30:34

tadoma-Attic Excavation-32:51

I like Gene Clark. Greg Cartwright likes Gene Clark. When I interviewed Cartwright years back, we went on a Gene Clark tangent. Here it is…

Interview by Ryan Leach

This excerpt originally ran on www.razorcake.org

Ryan: I recently read a great biography on Gene Clark called Mr. Tambourine Man. It’s by this Canadian rock journalist named John Einarson. Have you read it?

Greg: I haven’t read it, but a lot of people have recommended it to me and I do intend to read it.

Ryan: It’s really amazing. It says in the book that there was a power play going on in the group while they (Doug Dillard and Gene Clark) were recording that second (Dillard and Clark) album. Girlfriends became involved in the recording process—vying for singing time—and Gene kind of lost interest about halfway through.

Greg: That’s too bad because his stuff on there is really pretty killer. “Don’t Let Me Down”—that version of the Beatles’s song is on there and that’s fantastic. It takes the track to a whole different place. And “Through the Morning, Through the Night”…there are a couple of other ones on that album that are really unbelievable. Then there was the album that came out first in Holland and years later in America—Roadmaster. That one’s kind of hard to find.

Ryan: Yeah, I don’t have that one. That’s the one with him in a red coupe on the cover.

Greg: Yeah. You’d love it; it’s so incredible. It’s all classic Gene stuff that sounds just like you want it to sound. I love the way Gene writes songs in general. And he’s one of those guys, as well, where some of the stuff is really autobiographical, but, at the same time, some of it is super abstract. The Gosdin Brothers album has a lot of songs that are so abstract they border on a kind of Bob Dylan-style of lyric writing. But Gene’s not aping Dylan; it’s just Clark doing his own thing, which a lot of people apparently didn’t appreciate at the time.

Ryan: No, they certainly didn’t. That record (Gosdin Brothers) was released the same week as the Byrds’s Younger than Yesterday. And Columbia said, “Well, The Byrds are tried and true while this guy is unknown. Let’s sink our money in his old band, and maybe throw him some scraps.”

Greg: That was a big mistake because if you just look at the singles, Gene’s material is the best.

Ryan: Damn straight!

Greg: They are way better than anything anyone else in the Byrds wrote. Once he was gone, it was a steady decline downhill for them. The album with Gram (Parsons) is kind of fun–Sweetheart of the Rodeo–but it’s mainly covers. There’s nothing on there that’s mind blowing, just pretty good. They never had another songwriter like Gene. To me, Gene was the Byrds. There were two things that defined the Byrds as far as the early singles go: Gene Clark’s voice and songwriting and McGuinn’s guitar. And if I had to make a choice between a good songwriter and singer and a kitsch guitar sound, I’d have to go with the voice.

Ryan: That’s true. Chris Hillman lives right around where I used to live—Ventura County. I used to work at a radio station and he would come in. One of the things I read in an interview with him—he said that, “People always come up to me and say ‘Gram Parsons.’ I always say ‘Gene Clark.’”

Greg: [laughs] You know what’s funny is that on Gene’s album—and on all the other albums he did, even up to Roadmaster and the Dillard & Clark albums—Gene had more Byrds on his records than the Byrds did on theirs. You’ve got Michael Clarke, Chris Hillman—everybody except the assholes (Roger McGuinn, David Crosby) is on Gene’s albums. You’ve got this other band masquerading as the Byrds, but it’s just the assholes who nobody else can get along with.

Ryan: There’s that one song on Turn, Turn, Turn—“Wait and See.” That song was released as a single because Crosby and McGuinn wanted songwriting credit. It’s literally one of the most pathetic songs I’ve ever heard from any group. That took the place of a Clark original.

Greg: Oh yeah, it’s really terrible. It was a power play of Crosby and McGuinn saying, “This is our band.” But it’s unfortunate that they got rid of Gene. And it’s unfortunate that Gene never got his dues ever.

Ryan: He was kind of a self-destructive guy. I think the major saving grace of the latter-day Byrds—a surprise even—was Chris Hillman’s development as a songwriter. He turned out to be amazing. “Time Between” is one of the greatest songs ever written.

Don Howland has been in a long list of bands that’ll light up a Terminal Boredom and Goner Records forum search, if not many mainstream music sites. Like most artists creating music that (actually) matters, he’s on the periphery—but that doesn’t diminish Howland’s impressive and prodigious body of work to those paying attention.

           Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Don started out as a rock writer for local mag the Offense before briefly joining Great Plains as a bassist. In 1983, Howland moved to New York City where he contributed articles to the New York Rocker, as well as writing under the mentorship of Robert Christgau for the Village Voice. Don moved back to Columbus in 1985 and joined Jeffrey Evans and Dan Dow in the Gibson Bros. Influenced by The Cramps and The Panther Burns, The Gibson Bros. lowered standards for everyone, pissing off Americana purists (as well as club patrons who appreciated tuned instruments) with early rockabilly and Alice Cooper covers so raw and off-kilter they bordered on art-rock. Forced Exposure and Gerard Cosloy at Homestead got it, as did other musicians who’d tweak the formula a bit and achieve slightly greater commercial success. The original lineup (including Ellen Hoover on drums) imploded after arguably their best record, 1989’s Dedicated Fool. Jeffrey Evans and Don Howland subsequently reinvented the band as a more rocking and competent outfit, with a slew of semi-permanent and guest musicians—guitarists Jack Taylor and Jon Spencer; drummers Rich Lillash, Cristina Martinez and Ross Johnson. An unfortunate lawsuit from Norton Records ended their time with Homestead. The Gibson Bros. released their last album, Memphis Sol Today!, on Sympathy Records in 1993.

           Just before the Gibson Bros.’ implosion, Don started what would become his longest-running project, the Bassholes, with drummer Rich Lillash. Releasing much of their output with In the Red, the Bassholes were a fan favorite; however, Don’s regular and laudable job as a teacher prevented prolonged touring. Lamont “Bim” Thomas took over for Lillash, starting with 1997’s Deaf Mix Vol. 3. Howland played in a brief yet notable project, Ego Summit, in 1997 with fellow Columbus heavyweights Ron House, Michael Hummel, Tommy Jay and the late Jim Shepard.

           Lately, Don Howland has been releasing records under his own name. 2015’s Life Is a Nightmare is one of Howland’s best records. Another solo full-length, as well as a long-awaited Burning Bus LP, will be available soon from In the Red. The Bassholes are still playing when time is available. 2013’s Boogieman Stew on venerable Columbus Discount was, like most of Howland’s output, excellent and overlooked.

Interview by Ryan Leach

Photo by Mor Fleisher-Leach

Ryan: You’re originally from Columbus, Ohio, correct?

Don: That’s right.

Ryan: What were you interested in growing up?

Don: My childhood was super bland. My parents moved to a very white suburb of Columbus because they wanted me to go to good schools. My school years were basically ones of total alienation. I didn’t fit in; I didn’t join anything. It was miserable. I ran long distance as a way to beat down depression. I got into rock music. I had one friend who was into Creem magazine. We were into Lester Bangs and all that. I got the Ramones (Self-titled) album the first day it came out.

Ryan: Were you in high school when punk hit?

Don: Yeah. I was a senior in the spring of ’76 when the first Ramones record came out. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. The Ramones record had a sense of humor and a way of looking at the world that was similar to my own. It was just someone else doing it, and it sounded really, really good. The simplicity of their music appealed to me. I’d been into metal before. Music really grabbed me then.  

Ryan: Were you playing music then?

Don: I didn’t play music for a while. I started writing about music first. I did a punk fanzine. It was modeled after Xerox sheets like Sniffin’ Glue, which I ordered through Bomp! I did a couple issues of that, but it was terrible.

Ryan: What was your zine called?

Don: It was called Shake It. It was the name of a Human Switchboard song. They were sort of Columbus royalty at the time. Columbus really didn’t have a punk scene. Columbus was a Quaalude and whisky town

Ryan: Sounds a lot like Memphis at the time: ‘ludes and alcohol.

Don: Columbus was probably a lot like Memphis. You don’t really think of Memphis and punk rock until Tav Falco came along. There wasn’t a lot going on in Columbus at the time.

Ryan: Was Used Kids Records around when you were in high school?  

Don: Yeah, but back then it was called Mole’s Record Exchange. It was in a walk-up office building, in  a small office, maybe thirty-by-twenty feet. I remember the first time I went there in high school—it was like the store had a force field surrounding it; like I wasn’t cool enough to go in. Eventually, I started hanging out there. Everything fell into place. Used Kids started when Moles had to move and the owner quit.  Dan Dow kind of attached himself to School Kids Records a couple blocks north. School Kids wasn’t a chain but there was one in Columbus and one in Ann Arbor. School Kids sold all new records.

Ryan: So Used Kids was a play on School Kids because the former sold used vinyl?  

Don: Right. I never liked that name: Used Kids. It’s like a lot of bad band names I hear today. “Really? You couldn’t come up with anything better?”

Ryan: “Has the list been exhausted?”

Don: Exactly. Used Kids was sort of the center of the Columbus scene, much more so than any band or venue. In the mid ‘80s, I started playing bass in Ron House’s band.

Ryan: How did joining Great Plains come about? Did you learn bass to play in the band?

Don: I did. I bought a bass from a kid in a trailer who needed money to buy a gun. Bass isn’t hard to learn. I was good enough to play pretty quick. There were only ten or fifteen people in the Columbus scene. Ron and I knew each other from the record store. Amrep (Michael Hummel) and Jim Shepard were around—all the Ego Summit guys. In a bigger city we would’ve likely been acquaintances, but in a city the size of Columbus we all became compadres I guess. I was the youngest in the group. I was an outsider, being from a white flight suburb, but it was no big deal.  Tim Anstaett of the Offense went to my high school, so when he moved back to Columbus from Florida there were two of us.

Ryan: You wrote for the Offense and contributed to some of the last issues of New York Rocker.

Don: That was thanks to Tim Anstaett from the Offense. He gave people free reign. Tim had an insane work ethic. Whatever his passions were at the time, he’d devote thirty-six hours a day to them. He wrote a telephone book-sized tome on bass fishing in Florida. Andy Schwartz and Ira Kaplan at the New York Rocker were very open to the fanzine vibe.  Through New York Rocker—I also sent some of my work with the Offense to him—I got to know Robert Christgau at the Village Voice. I started writing for the Voice. Christgau was a super nice guy. I probably learned more about writing and English from him than from anyone else, and I’ve taught English for twenty-one years. Christgau would spend two-and-a-half hours editing a two-hundred-fifty-word piece. That was a great experience. I started with the Voice in ’81 and wrote for them until the early ‘90s. There wasn’t a whole lot of great music going on then. The early ‘80s were rough. When punk died—and you could tell it died—hardcore came along and it’s like, “Shit. This is not the same. There are no girls here anymore. It’s just like a football game.” I wrote for Spin as well.

Ryan: New York Rocker was a great magazine.  

Don: It was.

Ryan: What was your brief tenure in Great Plains like? You played on an EP (The Mark, Don and Mel E.P.). Did you tour at all?

Don: We played in Louisville with the Dancing Cigarettes. That was the highlight of the band for me. I didn’t like the music (of Great Plains). That was the bottom line. I don’t like pop music played by rock bands. I do like pure sugar pop; I can handle that a lot better. That’s why I didn’t use my name on the record.

Ryan: I always wondered why you used that pseudonym (Hank O’Hare).  

Don: I just didn’t want that record to be on my resume.

Ryan: How did Ron and the rest of the band take it?

Don: Not well. I came up with the name Great Plains. It’s not like I’m a super genius or anything. But later on, some other band that signed to a big label…

Ryan: Right. There’s always that disambiguation with the band name “Great Plains.” The other Great Plains (from Nashville) labeled themselves as “progressive country.”

Don: Really? Great. I think their record company ended up giving Ron and the band five or ten-thousand dollars to use the name. That was the first and maybe only big payday for Great Plains. They ended up giving me, I think, twenty-five dollars for it.

Ryan: Signed to Homestead and not selling a ton of records, that was likely Great Plains’ biggest payday by far.

Don: I know. It was a big deal. I recall being at the Used Kids counter, talking about it. It was like a board meeting. I wasn’t really in on it. I was an expat. I was clear about not liking the music from the get-go. But I wasn’t bitter about it or anything.

Ryan: That goes back to what you were saying earlier. You were all working together due to a sheer lack of numbers. A similar ethos with slightly different tastes seemed to be the glue. You clearly got along together as people.  

Don: We got along well. I was into Redd Kross and they were into the Replacements. It’s not like parallel universes. There was some overlap. I think Ron House’s stuff with Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments is fantastic. He was trying to sing with Great Plains and Ron doesn’t have a great singing voice in terms of carrying a melody. Ron has an expressive voice. There’s no hard feelings or anything like that.

Ryan: Did you go to Ohio State University?

Don: For part of the time, yeah. I ended up getting my Master’s in Education so I could teach. I went to Ohio Wesleyan as an undergraduate. It’s a Methodist school. I met Tom Shannon there. I was a senior in college when Tom was either a sophomore or freshman.  

Ryan: Jeffrey Evans went to Ohio State for an MFA in photography. Where did you first meet him?

Don: After Great Plains, I followed a girlfriend out to New York. This was the old days. I’d drop off my articles to the Village Voice that I’d written on a manual typewriter to the person at the counter of their offices. I’m claustrophobic; I felt really pinned in there. I’d go to Central Park a lot and lay down on the grass so I wouldn’t have to stare at the buildings…

Ryan: Did you visit New York City frequently or did you move there?

Kid Congo Powers was a founding member of the Gun Club. He also played with The Cramps and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Powers currently fronts Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds and recently completed a memoir, Some New Kind of Kick.

           The following interview focuses on Some New Kind of Kick. In the book Powers recounts growing up in La Puente—a working-class, largely Latino city in Los Angeles County—in the 1960s, as well as his familial, professional and personal relationships. He describes the LA glam-rock scene (Powers was a frequenter of Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco), the interim period between glam and punk embodied by the Capitol Records swap meet, as well as LA’s first-wave, late-1970s punk scene.

           Well written, edited and awash with amazing photos, Some New Kind of Kick will appeal to fans of underground music as well as those interested in 1960-1980s Los Angeles (think Claude Bessy and Mike Davis). The book will be available from In the Red Records, their first venture into book publishing, soon.

Interview by Ryan Leach   

Kid Congo with the Pink Monkey Birds.

Ryan: Some New Kind of Kick reminded me of the New York Night Train oral histories you had compiled about 15 years ago. Was that the genesis of your book?

Kid: That was the genesis. You pinpointed it. Those pieces were done with Jonathan Toubin. It was a very early podcast. Jonathan wanted to do an audio version of my story for his website, New York Night Train. We did that back in the early 2000s. After we had completed those I left New York and moved to Washington D.C. I thought, “I have the outline for a book here.” Jonathan had created a discography and a timeline. I figured, “It’ll be great and really easy. We’ll just fill in some of the blanks and it’ll be done.” Here we are 15 years later.

Ryan: It was well worth it. It reads well. And I love the photographs. The photo of you as a kid with Frankenstein is amazing.

Kid: I’m glad you liked it. You’re the first person not involved in it that I’ve spoken with.  

Ryan: As someone from Los Angeles I enjoyed reading about your father’s life and work as a union welder in the 1960s. My grandfather was a union truck driver and my father is a cabinetmaker. My dad’s cousins worked at the General Motors Van Nuys Assembly plant. In a way you captured an old industrial blue-collar working class that’s nowhere near as robust as it once was in Los Angeles. It reminded of Mike Davis’ writings on the subject.

Kid: I haven’t lived in LA for so long that I didn’t realize it doesn’t exist anymore. I felt the times. It was a reflection on my experiences and my family’s experiences. It was very working class. My dad was proud to be a union member. It served him very well. He and my mother were set up for the rest of their lives. I grew up with a sense that he earned an honest living. My parents always told me not to be embarrassed by what you did for work. People would ask me, “What’s your book about? What’s the thrust of it?” As I was writing it, I was like, “I don’t know. I’ll find out when it’s done.” What you mentioned was an aspect of that.

           When I started the book and all throughout the writing I had gone to different writers’ workshops. We’d review each other’s work. It was a bunch of people who didn’t know me, didn’t know about music—at least the music I make. I just wanted to see if there was a story there. People were relating to what I was writing, which gave me the confidence to keep going.

Ryan: Some New Kind of Kick is different from Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s autobiography, Go Tell the Mountain. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but think of Pierce’s work as I read yours. Was Go Tell the Mountain on your mind as you were writing?

Kid: When I was writing about Jeffrey—it was my version of the story. It was about my relationship with him. I wasn’t thinking about his autobiography much at all. His autobiography is very different than mine. Nevertheless, there are some similarities. But his book flew off into flights of prose and fantasy. I tried to stay away from the stories that were already out there. The thing that’s interesting about Jeffrey is that everyone has a completely different story to tell about him. Everyone’s relationship with him was different.

Ryan: It’s a spectrum that’s completely filled in.

Kid: Exactly. One of the most significant relationships I’ve had in my life was with Jeffrey. Meeting him changed my life. It was an enduring relationship. It was important for me to tell my story of Jeffrey.

Ryan: The early part of your book covers growing up in La Puente and having older sisters who caught the El Monte Legion Stadium scene—groups like Thee Midniters. You told me years ago that you and Jeffrey were thinking about those days during the writing and recording of Mother Juno (1987).

Kid: That’s definitely true. Growing up in that area is another thing Jeffrey and I bonded over. We were music hounds at a young age. We talked a lot about La Puente, El Monte and San Gabriel Valley’s culture. We were able to pinpoint sounds we heard growing up there—music playing out of cars and oldies mixed in with Jimi Hendrix and Santana. That was the sound of San Gabriel Valley. It wasn’t all lowrider music. We were drawn to that mix of things. I remember “Yellow Eyes” off Mother Juno was our tribute to the San Gabriel Valley sound.

Ryan: You describe the Capitol Records Swap Meet in Some New Kind of Kick. In the pre-punk/Back Door Man days that was an important meet-up spot whose significance remains underappreciated.

Kid: The Capitol Records Swap Meet was a once-a-month event and hangout. It was a congregation of record collectors and music fans. You’d see the same people there over and over again. It was a community. Somehow everyone who was a diehard music fan knew about it. You could find bootlegs there. It went from glam to more of a Back Door Man-influenced vibe which was the harder-edged Detroit stuff—The Stooges and the MC5. You went there looking for oddities and rare records. I was barely a record collector back then. It’s where I discovered a lot of music. You had to be a pretty dedicated music fan to get up at 6 AM to go there, especially if you were a teenager.

Ryan: I enjoyed reading about your experiences as a young gay man in the 1970s. You’d frequent Rodney’s English Disco; I didn’t know you were so close to The Screamers. While not downplaying the prejudices gay men faced in the 1970s, it seemed fortuitous that these places and people existed for you in that post-Stonewall period.

Kid: Yeah. I was obviously drawn to The Screamers for a variety of reasons. It was a funny time. People didn’t really discuss being gay. People knew we were gay. I knew you were gay; you knew I was gay. But the fact that we never openly discussed it was very strange. Part of that was protection. It also had to do with the punk ethos of labels being taboo. I don’t think that The Screamers were very politicized back then and neither was I. We were just going wild. I was super young and still discovering things. I had that glam-rock door to go through. It was much more of a fantasy world than anything based in reality. But it allowed queerness. It struck a chord with me and it was a tribe. However, I did discover later on that glam rock was more of a pose than a sexual revolution.

           With some people in the punk scene like The Screamers and Gorilla Rose—they came from a background in drag and cabaret. I didn’t even know that when I met them. I found it out later on. They were already very experienced. They had an amazing camp aesthetic. I learned a lot about films and music through them. They were so advanced. It was all very serendipitous. I think my whole life has been serendipitous, floating from one thing to another.  

Ryan: You were in West Berlin when the Berlin Wall was breached in November 1989. “Here’s another historical event. I’m sure Kid Congo is on the scene.”

Kid: I know! The FBI must have a dossier on me. I was in New York on 9/11 too.

Ryan: A person who appears frequently in your book is your cousin Theresa who was tragically murdered. I take it her death remains a cold case.

Kid: Cold case. Her death changed my entire life. It was all very innocent before she died. That stopped everything. It was a real source of trauma. All progress up until that point went on hold until I got jolted out of it. I eventually decided to experience everything I could because life is short. That trauma fueled a lot of bad things, a lot of self-destructive impulses. It was my main demon that chased me throughout my early adult life. It was good to write about it. It’s still there and that’s probably because her murder remains unsolved. I have no resolution with it. I was hoping the book would give me some closure. We’ll see if it does.

Ryan: Theresa was an important person in your life that you wanted people to know about. You champion her.

Kid: I wanted to pay tribute to her. She changed my life. I had her confidence. I was at a crossroads at that point in my life, dealing with my sexuality. I wanted people to know about Theresa beyond my family. My editor Chris Campion really pulled that one out of me. It was a story that I told, but he said, “There’s so much more to this.” I replied, “No! Don’t make me do it.” I had a lot of stories, but it was great having Chris there to pull them together to create one big story. My original concept for the book was a coming-of-age story. Although it still is, I was originally going to stop before I even joined the Gun Club (in 1979). It was probably because I didn’t want to look at some of the things that happened afterwards. It was very good for my music. Every time I got uncomfortable, I’d go, “Oh, I’ve got to make a record and go on tour for a year and not think about this.” A lot of it was too scary to even think about. But the more I did it, the less scary it became and the more a story emerged. I had a very different book in mind than the one I completed. I’m glad I was pushed in that direction and that I was willing to be pushed. I wanted to tell these stories, but it was difficult.

Ryan: Of course, there are lighter parts in your book. There are wonderful, infamous characters like Bradly Field who make appearances.

Kid: Bradly Field was also a queer punker. He was the partner of Kristian Hoffman of The Mumps. I met Kristian in Los Angeles. We all knew Lance Loud of The Mumps because he had starred in An American Life (1973) which was the first reality TV show. It aired on PBS. I was a fan of The Mumps. Bradly came out to LA with Kristian for an elongated stay during a Mumps recording session. Of course, Bradly and I hit it off when we met. Bradly was a drummer—he played a single drum and a cracked symbol—in Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Bradly was a real character. He was kind of a Peter Lorre, misanthropic miscreant. Bradly was charming while abrasively horrible at the same time. We were friends and I always remained on Bradly’s good side so there was never a problem.

           Bradly had invited me and some punkers to New York. He said that if we ever made it out there that we could stay with him. He probably had no idea we’d show up a month later. Bradly Field was an important person for me to know—an unashamedly gay, crazy person. He was a madman. I had very little interest in living a typical life. That includes a typical gay life. Bradly was just a great gay artist I met in New York when I was super young. He was also the tour manager of The Cramps at one point. You can imagine what that was like. Out of Lux and Ivy’s perverse nature they unleashed him on people.

Ryan: He was the right guy to have in your corner if the club didn’t pay you.  

Kid: Exactly. Who was going to say “no” to Bradly?

Ryan: You mention an early Gun Club track called “Body and Soul” that I’m unfamiliar with. I know you have a rehearsal tape of the original Creeping Ritual/Gun Club lineup (Kid Congo Powers, Don Snowden, Brad Dunning and Jeffrey Lee Pierce). Are any of these unreleased tracks on that tape?

Kid: No. Although I do have tapes, there’s no Creeping Ritual material on them. I spoke with Brad (Dunning) and he has tapes too. We both agreed that they’re unlistenable. They’re so terrible. Nevertheless, I’m going to have them digitized and I’ll take another listen to them. “Body and Soul” is an early Creeping Ritual song. At the time we thought, “Oh, this sounds like a Mink DeVille song.” At least in our minds it did. To the best of my ability I did record an approximation of “Body and Soul” on the Congo Norvell record Abnormals Anonymous (1997). I sort of reimagined it. That song was the beginning of things for me with Jeffrey. It wasn’t a clear path when we started The Gun Club. We didn’t say, “Oh, we’re going to be a blues-mixed-with-punk band.” It was a lot of toying around. It had to do with finding a style. Jeffrey had a lot of ideas. We also had musical limitations to consider. We were trying to turn it into something cohesive. There was a lot of reggae influence at the beginning. Jeffrey was a visionary who wanted to make the Gun Club work. Of course, to us he was a really advanced musician. We thought (bassist) Don Snowden was the greatest too. What’s funny is that I saw Don in Valencia, Spain, where he lives now. He came to one of our (Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds) shows a few years ago. He said, “Oh, I didn’t know how to play!”

Ryan: “I knew scales.”

Kid: Exactly. It was all perception. But we were ambitious and tenacious. We were certain we could make something really good out of what we had. That was it. We knew we had good taste in music. That was enough for us to continue on.

Ryan: I knew about The Cramps’ struggles with IRS Records and Miles Copeland. However, it took on a new meaning reading your book. Joining The Cramps started with a real high for you, recording Psychedelic Jungle (1981), and then stagnation occurred due to contractual conflicts.

Kid: There was excitement, success and activity for about a year or two. And then absolutely nothing. As I discuss in my book—and you can ask anyone who was in The Cramps—communication was not a big priority for Lux and Ivy. I was left to my own devices for a while. We were building, building, building and then it stopped. I wasn’t privy to what was going on. I knew they were depressed about it. The mood shifted. It was great recording Psychedelic Jungle and touring the world. The crowds were great everywhere we went. It was at that point that I started getting heavy into drugs. The time off left me with a lot of time to get into trouble. It was my first taste of any kind of success or notoriety. I’m not embarrassed to say that I fell into that trip: “Oh, you know who I am and I have all these musician friends now.” It was the gilded ‘80s. Things were quite decadent then. There was a lot of hard drug use. It wasn’t highly frowned upon to abuse those types of drugs in our circle. What was the reputation of The Gun Club? The drunkest, drug-addled band around. So there was a lot of support to go in that direction. Who knew it was going to go so downhill? We weren’t paying attention to consequences. Consequences be damned. So the drugs sapped a lot of energy out of it too.

           I recorded the one studio album (Psychedelic Jungle) with The Cramps and a live album (Smell of Female). The live record was good and fun, but it was a means to an end. It was recorded to get out of a contract. The Cramps were always going to do it their way. Lux and Ivy weren’t going to follow anyone’s rules. I don’t know why people expected them to. To this day, I wonder why people want more. I mean, they gave you everything. People ask me, “When is Ivy going to play again?” I tell them, “She’s done enough. She paid her dues. The music was great.”

Ryan: I think after 30-something years of touring, she’s earned her union card.

Kid: Exactly. She’s done her union work.

Ryan: In your book you discuss West Berlin in the late 1980s. That was a strange period of extreme highs and lows. During that time you were playing with the Bad Seeds, working with people like Wim Wenders (in Wings of Desire) and witnessed the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the GDR. Nevertheless, it was a very dark period marred by substance abuse. Luckily, you came out of it unscathed. As you recount, some people didn’t.

Kid: It was a period of extremes. In my mind, for years, I rewrote that scene. I would say, “Berlin was great”—and it was, that part was true—and then I’d read interviews with Nick Cave and Mick Harvey and they’d say, “Oh, the Tender Prey (1988) period was just the worst. It’s hard to even talk about it.” And I was like, “It was great! What are you talking about?” Then when I started writing about it, I was like, “Oh, fuck! It really wasn’t the best time.” I had been so focused on the good things and not the bad things. Prior to writing my book, I really hadn’t thought about how incredibly dark it was. That was a good thing for me to work out. Some very bad things happened to people around me. But while that was happening, it was a real peak for me as a musician. Some of the greatest work I was involved with was being done then. And yet I still chose to self-destruct. It was a case of right place, right time. But it was not necessarily what I thought it was.  

Ryan: Digressing back a bit, when we would chat years back I would ask you where you were at with this project. You seemed to be warming up to it as time went on. And I finally found a copy of the group’s album in Sydney, Australia, a year ago. I’m talking about Fur Bible (1985).

Kid: Oh, you got it?

Ryan: I did.

Kid: In Australia?

Ryan: Yes. It was part of my carry-on luggage.

Kid: I’m sure I can pinpoint the person who sold it to you.

Ryan: Are you coming around to that material now? I like the record.

Kid: Oh, yeah. I hated it for so long. People would say to me, “Oh, the Fur Bible record is great.” I’d respond, “No. It can’t possibly be great. I’m not going to listen to it again, so don’t even try me.” Eventually, I did listen to it and I thought, “Oh, this is pretty good.” I came around to it. I like it.

Ryan: You’ve made the transition!

Kid: I feel warmly about it. I like all of the people involved with it. That was kind of a bad time too. It was that post-Gun Club period. I felt like I had tried something unsuccessful with Fur Bible. I had a little bit of shame about that. Everything else I had been involved with had been successful, in my eyes. People liked everything else and people didn’t really like Fur Bible. It was a sleeper.

Ryan: It is.  

Kid: There’s nothing wrong with it. It was the first time I had put my voice on a record and it just irritated the hell out of me. It was a first step for me.

Ryan: You close your book with a heartfelt tribute to Jeffrey Lee Pierce. You wonder how your life would’ve turned out had you not met Jeffrey outside of that Pere Ubu show in 1979. Excluding family, I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who’s had that sort of impact on my life.

Kid: As I was getting near the end of the book I was trying to figure out what it was about. A lot of it was about Jeffrey. Everything that moved me into becoming a musician and the life I lived after that was because of him. It was all because he said, “Here’s a guitar. You’re going to learn how to play it.” He had that confidence that I could do it. It was a mentorship. He would say, “You’re going to do this and you’re going to be great at it.” I was like, “Okay.” Jeffrey was the closest thing I had to a brother. We could have our arguments and disagreements, but in the end it didn’t matter. What mattered was our bond. Writing it down made it all clearer to me. His death sent me into a tailspin. I was entering the unknown. Jeffrey was like a cord that I had been hanging onto for so long and it was gone. I was more interested in writing about my relationship with him than about the music of the Gun Club. A lot of people loved Jeffrey. But there were others who said they loved him with disclaimers. I wanted to write something about Jeffrey without the disclaimers. That seemed like an important task—to honor him in a truthful manner.

Ryan: I’m glad that you did that. Jeffrey has his detractors, but they all seem to say something along the lines of “the guy still had the most indefatigable spirit and drive of any person I’ve ever known.”

Kid: That’s what drove everyone crazy!

Ryan: This book took you 15 years to finish. Completing it has to feel cathartic.  

Kid: I don’t know. Maybe it will when I see the printed book. When I was living in New York there was no time for reflection. I started it after I left New York, but it was at such a slow pace. It was done piecemeal. I wanted to give up at times. I had a lot of self-doubt. And like I said, I’d just go on tour for a year and take a long break. The pandemic made me finally put it to bed. I couldn’t jump up and go away on tour anymore. It feels great to have it done. When I read it through after the final edit I was actually shocked. I was moved by it. It was a feeling of accomplishment. It’s a different feeling than what you get with music. Looking at it as one story has been an eye-opener for me. I thought to myself, “How did I do all of that?”

Photo by BullyRook

Like rockabilly pioneer Charlie Feathers, Jeffrey Evans is a musician whose influence can’t be judged in record sales. For more than twenty-five years, Evans has fronted some of the best rockabilly and garage-rock bands around: The Gibson Bros., 68 Comeback, CC Riders, and Jeffrey Evans and his Southern Aces.

            Originally from the small city of Findlay, Ohio, Evans spent his early years collecting records and pursuing photography, eventually earning an MFA from Ohio State University in photography. In Columbus, Ohio, Evans formed The Gibson Bros. with Don Howland (ex-Great Plains, future frontman of The Bassholes), Dan Dow, and Ellen Hoover. Although obsessed with American roots music, Jeffrey Evans—like Tav Falco before him—wasn’t interested in replicating early rock ‘n’ roll by the numbers. The Gibson Bros. seamlessly placed Alice Cooper covers next to traditionals. Humor was another element of The Gibson Bros. live show and recordings, captured in Jeffrey Evans’ onstage banter and songs like “Bo Diddley Pulled a Boner” and “Poor White Trash.”

            Although hard to believe now, The Gibson Bros. really pissed off rockabilly purists in the mid '80s (they possibly still do). Myopic greasers likely missed the deep reverence Jeffrey Evans had for rockabilly; his thorough knowledge of the genre was already present on the first Gibson Bros. album, reviving obscure rockabilly gems like Sparkle Moore’s “Skull and Crossbones” (featuring a great vocal by Ellen Hoover). Unlike the ossified records of rockabilly revivalists, the vitality of The Gibson Bros.’ catalog remains intact more than two decades later.  

            In the early '90s, Jeffrey formed 68 Comeback. Numerous heavyweights of the '80s/'90s garage-rock scene passed through the band: Darin Lin Wood, Mick Collins, Greg Cartwright, Peg O'Neill, and Jack Oblivian. However, outside of sole constant Jeffrey Evans, late guitarist Jack Taylor likely left the most indelible mark on the band, employing his deconstructivist  style to Evans’ originals and choice of covers. 68 Comeback toured constantly, traveling across the United States in an early '70s Cadillac hearse. After a succession of great albums on Sympathy, 68 Comeback wound down as the 1990s came to a close.

            In the early 2000s, Jeffrey Evans formed The CC Riders. A heavy lineup—Alicja Trout (drums), Jay Reatard (guitar) and James Arthur (guitar)—and limited-run CD-R on Trout’s Contaminated label followed. For much of the past ten years, Evans has been playing with fellow Memphis legend Ross Johnson (formerly of the Panther Burns). Jeffrey Evans’ newest band, The Southern Aces, released a single on Big Legal Mess a few years back. A full-length record has been completed and should be out soon.

Interview by Ryan Leach

The following interview originally ran in Razorcake #73 (www.razorcake.org)

Ryan: You formed the Gibson Bros. in Columbus, Ohio. Is that where you’re from originally?

Jeffrey: I was born in Northwest Ohio in a city called Findlay. I moved to Columbus when I went to college. That’s where I met the other members of the Gibson Bros.

Ryan: You were born in the late 1950s. When you were in high school, glam rock would’ve been popular. On I’ve Lived a Rich Life you mention your parents telling you to play Johnny Cash. Were they big country fans?

Jeffrey: Totally. They’d watch a lot of the country shows that were on in the late ‘60s. Buck Owens and Porter Wagoner had shows.

Ryan: Johnny Cash did too.  

Jeffrey: Yeah. I’m not the first to say it—rock ‘n’ roll, blues and country have a lot of the same chord progressions and lyrical messages. I absorbed a lot of the music my family was into. There were also dance shows on after school at that time like Hullabaloo. Lloyd Thaxton had a show. Being from a small town, I got a lot of my exposure to music from television. Live music was almost unheard of in Findlay. I remember going into the grocery store and they’d have three bins of LPs. Above them were the 45s. Being a kid, I didn’t have any money. I’d look at the records and dream about what they sounded like. I’d check out the clothes the bands would wear and try to get a hold of them; the big square belt buckles. What I couldn’t get on TV, I’d just make up the rest in my mind. I started taking guitar lessons at nine years old. But I didn’t really apply myself. When I was a teenager, I got my guitar out again. I started playing in bands with people who were more advanced in their playing than I was. I learned things from them much more quickly than had I kept taking lessons.   

Ryan: I know that Charlie Feathers ranks really high with you. He also had a big impact on Tav Falco and Nikki Sudden. A lot of younger people reading this may not be familiar with him. Can you talk about the influence Charlie Feathers had on you?   

Jeffrey: Charlie was at Sun before Elvis, cutting demos. Charlie would bring a song to Sam Phillips. Sam would say, “That’s not right for you, Charlie.” That’s what happened to “Tongue Tied Jill.” Charlie later recorded for King and Meteor, but Sun Records was the Cadillac of record labels. There was a tribute to Sun that aired; I can’t remember what it was called. Younger guys did songs with some of the older guys. Paul McCartney was on there. It was a good thing. Billy Lee Riley, who had some success in his later years, still had a chip on his shoulder about his time with Sun Records. He had a song that was released around the same time Jerry Lee Lewis had one out. Sun only had so much money for promotion, so they spent it on Jerry Lee. Billy kind of got pushed aside. But those guys felt like they only had one chance. They didn’t see music as something they’d be doing at fifty. They were twenty-two and didn’t see their careers lasting more than a couple of years. They were hoping to make enough money in that short span to see them through later on. Your success was based on how many records you sold. Carl Perkins picked cotton.

Ryan: Billy Lee Riley picked cotton too.      

Jeffrey: Making records was clean work. It wasn’t picking cotton. When “Blue Suede Shoes” came out, Carl Perkins was living in public housing. As the song went up the charts he was still living there. The labels don’t tell you that you don’t get paid that day. It takes a while. Back to Charlie Feathers: He could sing and write as well as anybody. People have pointed out that he was illiterate. I remember him signing autographs at Shangri-La Records. It took him a couple of minutes to sign his name. It wasn’t like Charlie was going to write a paragraph on your record. He could sign his name and that was about it. People like to make that out as a level of Charlie’s intelligence, but it wasn’t. He phrased things well. He had that song, “We’re Getting Closer To Being Apart”. It was a clever play on words. He had so many of those. They show the depth of his emotion. Whether you can write your name or not, you can write a song. I always tried to take that lesson to heart. Don’t sell people short. There was also a change that happened to rockabilly singers. Johnny Mathis later cut pop and country records. Jerry Lee Lewis and Charlie Rich went country. Charlie Feathers never changed. He stayed with his own version of rockabilly. In the ‘70s, his son (Bubba) played lead guitar for him. He had embraced the wah-wah pedal. Things that were not considered straight rockabilly, Charlie went with. It’s funny. Being from California, I’m sure you get a lot of the retro rockabilly bands. They play letter perfect songs. Straight out of 1954, with absolutely no distortion on their guitars; the amps are set at three. I liked Charlie’s approach. He didn’t change his music but he kept his mind open. “Well, my son plays guitar this way, so we’ll throw that in the mix.” There was something about Charlie Feathers, and people like Gene Vincent and Bobby Lee Trammell, that really appealed to me. I remember when I met Cordell Jackson for the first time, she said, “I think I have a song you can sing.” It wasn’t a criticism of my voice. It fit my vocal range. I’m more of shouter. They thought like that.

It’s odd, thinking about the monetary success versus the actual art that was produced on those 45s. There were records released on smaller labels than Sun. They might have had only a few hundred pressed up, but they’re world-famous records. You can find a great rockabilly or garage 45, put it on eBay, and someone in, say, Finland will buy it. It’s likely they know more about the record than you do.

When I moved to Memphis Charlie had stopped playing regularly. I did get to see him play live two or three times. But I don’t know what it was like back in the day.  

Ryan: You have that great line in “In The Company of Kings”: “I think about Charlie Feathers and what must have been going through his mind.”

Jeffrey: Yeah. All of those guys were at the same place (Sun Records) where greatness struck. Elvis was considered too wild. Of course Charlie Feathers, Billy Lee Riley and Jerry Lee Lewis were much wilder. Elvis was living in a mansion while Charlie was living in a modest house. The music we are involved in today has no commercial potential. But back then, there were regional markets and airplay. Someone could have success.

Ryan: That’s right. That reminds me of the story of Tommy James and The Shondells. The group had fallen apart, but a DJ (in Pittsburgh) found their “Hanky Panky” 45 long after it was released. His airplay made it a regional hit. It revived James’ career. Nowadays, everything is much more spread out. Like you were saying, someone in Finland might buy that rare 45 and know everything about it.

Jeffrey: We’ve got the Internet now. I like to joke that, “The fanzine world is my private world. But the Internet is something my mother has the same access to.” I remember we were playing in Holland, and they were streaming us playing live. My mother was watching it back in Ohio. It’s bizarre. But I liked it better when it was a secret world. It wasn’t that long ago. Only about thirty years ago.

            There was a glimmer of hope in the early ‘90s. Nirvana was playing a different type of music than us. It was unsettling to a lot of people but it started selling. It got you thinking, “Maybe our music will catch on and we can make a living at it.”

Ryan: It’s easy to see the parallels between Charlie Feather’s career and your own. Charlie did a lot of blue-collar jobs throughout his life. While he might not have had much commercial success, it didn’t stop him.

Jeffrey: Oh, yeah. You used a good term there: blue collar. Charlie was blue collar. Of course, Elvis was too. He was a truck driver and an electrician by trade. I’m not sure if Elvis became an official electrician.

Ryan: He drove the company’s truck.    

Jeffrey: He did. There was a show called Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour. Elvis wasn’t on that show, but The Rock and Roll Trio were. Paul Burlison, the Rock and Roll Trio’s guitar player, worked at Crown Electric with Elvis. Elvis was a pretty good truck driver. Paul Burlison and Elvis didn’t think playing guitar would put food on the table for any prolonged period of time. Peter Guralnick described Charlie Feathers as a part-time stock car racer and ambulance driver among other things. But Charlie considered himself a musician, a songwriter.

Ryan: Before you formed the Gibson Bros, you went to Ohio State and got an MFA in photography. You were a teacher there as well.   

Jeffrey: I did. I taught as a graduate student. They gave me free tuition and health care. I got a $500 a month stipend. And you could live off that back then. I had three old Cadillacs. It was about a half hour procedure to decide which one to drive that day. I had a leaky transmission in one, so I’d have to fill it up every time I’d drive it. That was an interesting period of time. I worked for a weekly newspaper, taught, and shot one or two weddings. I figured out photography wasn’t for me. At the same time I was doing music. I formed The Gibson Bros. during that period. Music was a much more immediate thing. You can get a show in a week. With photography, it can take two years to get an exhibition together. Music had a better rush to it. I was going to flea markets two to three times a week, buying records. I’d say to the band, “We should cover this song off this record I just bought.” We’d learn it on Wednesday and play it on Thursday at a bar.   

Ryan: The Gibson Bros. were doing something different.

Jeffrey: Dan (Dow) owns a record store now, but back then he worked at a record store for someone else. He was a collector and so was I. We were a good mix. I was interested in rockabilly and country. Ellen (Hoover) had a good sense of rhythm and timing. None of us had a great mastery of our instruments. There weren’t many subcategories in Columbus at that time. You had one crowd who supported all of the underground music. There weren’t rock or metal crowds. I had a vision of pompadours and matching cowboy outfits.

Ryan: The cover of Build a Raft, where you guys are playing at an elementary school, is so great. You’re grinning ear to ear, playing a huge hollow body. Ellen’s dressed up country, but it’s sort of ‘80s country. 

Jeffrey: Exactly. People have always been strict about rules. The Cramps were too far gone for people who were fans of traditional rockabilly. That’s what made The Cramps so great. It did cross my mind that covering someone like Hank Williams—there was a grey line where it could become irreverent. It wasn’t irreverent because of the attitude, but because of the volume and the use of fuzz and slide guitar. Thinking that it’d be irreverent to cover one of his songs in that way today would never cross my mind—we’re used to combining genres—but at the time it was more of a risk.

Ryan: I know what you’re saying. I interviewed Dave Alvin once and he said that blues purists in Los Angeles absolutely hated Jeffrey Lee Pierce and the Gun Club.     

Jeffrey: What Jeffery (Lee Pierce) was doing wasn’t irreverent. It just came out different. The purists were more professional. When we were doing The Gibson Bros., they’d tell us, “Use a tuner.” Well, we did use a tuner before we got on stage. But I guess we didn’t know enough to keep in tune. I play with Ross Johnson a lot now. He said to me, “The music you guys were playing—not only could you not get a gig, but you could get beat up for playing it.” Times have come a long way. Even commercials today use music that some would consider atonal. I remember the Rotters had that song about Stevie Nicks.

Ryan: “Sit On My Face Stevie Nicks.”

Jeffrey: Yeah. The nerve they had to put that song on a record is great. In some ways, that helped bring down the walls.

Ryan: What I really like about The Gibson Bros. was your transformative use of songs. On Dedicated Fool, you have “Lone Wild Bird”—a traditional song—but there’s also an Alice Cooper cover on it. They mesh so well together on the album.

Jeffrey: There was something uncool about covering Alice Cooper. It’s almost as if we were making a statement. It’s like having all the right clothes on but wearing the wrong shoes.

Ryan: You got to record at Sun Records with the Gibson Bros. For someone like you, who made the pilgrimage to Memphis, that must have been an incredible experience, although I know the circumstances surrounding the session for Memphis Sol Today weren’t great.

Jeffrey: I got to record at my dream studio a month before my band broke up. We recorded it the day after a thirty-day tour. We were tired, but really tight. It was bittersweet. It meant so much to me, but our drummer, Rich Lillash, had never recorded in a studio before. We had all these vintage guitars and amps that were available. Don (Howland) had this pawnshop, solid state Crate amp. It was a fifty dollar amp. I told Don, “Hey, why don’t you try one of these amps they’ve got?” He said, “No. I’m cool. I’ve got my tone.” That was pretty cool. The budget for the record wasn’t much. Sun was charging about one hundred fifty to one hundred seventy-five an hour. It sounded really high. The owner at the time had just worked with U2. That raised the price. Then again, we did the record in eight hours. It cost less than two thousand dollars. But we had just been in a lawsuit with Norton Records.

Ryan: That was from the A-Bones sample on The Man Who Loved Couch Dancing.

Jeffrey: Yeah. Homestead was really mad at us. They settled out of court with the A-Bones for a small amount. It was more of a symbolic victory. It might have been a month’s rent in New York City. Eight hundred dollars. All the press was favorable toward us. They ran photos of Miriam (Linna) posing in front of a Neo-Nazi organization. The A-Bones got all the shit thrown at them. We put the needle down on their record, recorded it, and spliced it onto our album. That was the era when Michael Jackson was being sampled by rap bands. It was like a seven second rule—any sample longer than that and you could get sued. We didn’t know the rule and we didn’t care. It was funny. The A-Bones went to the company that handled the Michael Jackson samples in New York. Homestead was pissed. I remember we got a call on tour from them. They said, “Don’t sell anymore copies of Couch Dancing at your shows.” I told them, “Sorry. That’s our gas money.”   

Ryan: Gibson Bros. records go for good money. Any chance of reissues?

Jeffrey: We signed a contract with Homestead that was for perpetuity. I’m not sure where the masters are. Long Gone John was interested in reissuing them. He was sent a letter, telling him that he couldn’t. He took the letter, peed on it, wrote in crayon, “Sorry, I didn’t know what I was doing,” and sent it back. I don’t know what’ll ever happen with that stuff. Luckily most of it is online. In the back of my mind, I always hope someone cool bought one of my records.

Ryan: Alex Chilton did. 

Jeffrey: He did.

Ryan: It’s all about quality over quantity.

Jeffrey: It is. And just trying to stay happy and not taking the business side too seriously. It’s a great hobby and great art form, but it’s a shitty business.