By Casey Lombardo
Long Beach Union
I arrived at the Troubadour about an hour late for my interview, thanks entirely to the inevitable clog in the artery of the I-405 known as LAX, and certain that I had missed my chance to grill the greatest rock & roll band ever to crawl out of the sticks of Knoxville, Tennessee. However, much to my delight, I was greeted at the sound check with a slice of that good, old-fashioned Southern Hospitality that Blanche Devereaux always hinted at on The Golden Girls. The bandleader, John Davis, informed me almost apologetically that they would be done setting up in a few minutes, and I withdrew into my traditional pre-interview gestation, mentally berating myself for coming up with such absurdly crappy questions.
An incredibly good-humored trio, Davis lent insight and charm, while drummer Don Coffey, Jr. exuded a Saharan dry wit, buttressed by a masterful array of expletives. Sam Powers, the new bassist, would remain mostly reserved, but supplied an unexpected yet essential glimpse into the dark underbelly of Kentucky Fried Chicken. The supporting band, the Put-Outs, remained in the room to supervise the inquisition so that, in their own words, “We can call bullshit when we hear you start lying.”
“You were never in the Mickey Mouse Club!” Davis cried out in mock-accusatory indignation and continuing the joke.
How has the tour been going? Have you been getting warm receptions everywhere?
JD: Except for Arizona, we’ve been doing pretty good. Well, this tour we started out in New Orleans, and that was pretty decent, and then we had three really good shows in Texas, and that was cool. But we had a show in Tempe and a show in Tucson—I don’t think there was any advertising or any real promotion going on so the crowds were pretty small. Especially in Tucson, where basically we played for the Put-Outs and they played for us, but that happens sometimes.
What’s it been like minus one guitar?
JD: Well, in some ways, things are a lot easier, just the three of us because we’re three really likeminded dudes. We all like the same kind of beer, we all like to load in and load out and do all that stuff, and everybody just kind of pulls their own weight. In musical terms, it seems like just from talking to people they don’t seem to really miss the second guitar all that much. I started carrying two rigs just to try to fill it up a little bit, fill in some of the gaps. Even when we had Brandon [Fisher] and then Willie T., I played a lot of the leads then, so I haven’t really had to change all that much just as far as playing-wise. I don’t know. Don, what are your thoughts on the three-piece?
DC: One of my favorite bands is Hüsker Dü, so if they could do it, we could do it. Maybe not as well, but we can give it a shot. Definitely, it makes the day to day [easier]—just having one less person around to take in their opinion. [laughter]
SP: Like you pay attention to that anyway, Don…
DC: Well, I’m driving usually, so we eat where I fucking want and that’ll be all there is to that. No vegetarians in the band, no wine drinkers; you know it’s all good for me. We like good old American Cheese, none of that Gouda shit.
Have you guys considered going abroad at all with this album?
DC: I considered going with some broads all the time [laughter]. That’s generally not up to us, and if we could bankroll it ourselves, we’d probably all go in a second, but if you can’t get your record distributed overseas, then the chances of you getting to go over there are pretty slim. We had that problem even when we were on Elektra, so I don’t foresee us going over there anytime soon, unless we go with somebody else.
What have you all been reading?
JD: Let’s see, I got this complete Jack the Ripper encyclopedia for Christmas, and I’ve been reading that a little bit. Not too long ago, I started trying to read all of the James Elroy books, and I think I’ve got almost all of them. I like that stuff, all of that kind of 50’s crime noir-type shit, I think is cool. Other than that, I can’t really think of what else.
SP: I’ve been reading a bunch of Harry Krug’s stuff. He’s a Southern writer; hard drinker, hard living kind of dude.
JD: Does he play guitar?
SP: Well, he’s almost seventy.
DC: Perfect. [laughs]
SP: We might get an AARP discount. [laughter]
So, about the new album, it’s kind a return more to the first album’s sound, so some Head Trip fans might miss the kind of experimental stuff. Are you still interested in doing stuff like “She Is a Holy Grail,” and “I’m Expanding My Mind?”
JD: Well, when we were getting ready to do this album, I think there was a conscious decision to bridge the gap in between the two [previous albums]. Because the first record was just straight up, more or less our live set that we had at the time, and we just kind of went in and banged the songs out—there were no bells or whistles, for the most part it was just the band. So, then we got ready to do the last one, we really wanted to go nuts and really make a real studio kind of record without having as much concern about being able to reproduce a lot of the stuff on stage. I think there are good things and bad things about that. So, this time I think songs like “Unprepared” or “The Warmth of a Tomb” might not have been out of place on the last album, but the majority of this stuff is definitely more rock-oriented and less studio-oriented. [laughs] Hopefully, there’s enough to satisfy fans of the last album or the first one or both.
The title of the new album could be interpreted as a stab at the state of music right now, but the album contains songs with titles like “Lighting the Way,” “Bright Pavilions,” and “True Believer.” Do you see Superdrag as a form of purity in the music world or did you just steal it from "The Hollow Men?”
JD: When I was writing that song, the title-song [“In the Valley of Dying Stars”], I was looking through this anthology of T.S. Eliot, and I just thought it was this really cool line, and it fit into the song. But the record really, I think a lot of it deals with loss, kind of losing someone or something and the kind of opposite ends of the spectrum. You know, you’re either really crushed by it or you’re really pissed off, and it seems like both of those are kind of covered at one point or another on the album. I guess you could look at it in a number of different ways; for me it was more to do with some of the themes that are dealt with in the songs, not so much like the music industry—you know, the first song kind of deals with that. The first day of the sessions, when we got ready to do the record, I had a death in the family, somebody that I was really close to, and for me that kind of set me off in a certain direction songwriting-wise that kind of went through to the end. But, I guess on each record so far we have at least one song that kind of lambastes the music business, which I don’t know if that’s something we really want to be known for, but sometimes you just call ‘em like you see ‘em and things turn out the way they’re going to turn out. But yeah, in the first place that line in the song definitely came from the T.S. Eliot—I’ll just admit straight out. It’s bound to be public domain by now, I hope. [laughs]
Speaking of loss, how important to you are songs like, “Ambulance Driver,” and “Unprepared?”
JD: Wow, well personally, to me, they’re super-important. When that [death] happened, writing a song or writing an album seemed to be the best way I could think of to make something good out of something bad. It was just one of those things where, when we were in the studio recording, we had them finished so we could listen to them—to me, it was successful. Just having them on tape the way they were, that was exactly what we set out to do. And after that you kind of hope that if somebody picks it up and listens to it, they can, even if it’s not a literal experience that they can relate to, then maybe in some way they can. It’s definitely the most personal stuff we’ve done.
DC: Especially those two songs, a lot of what was physically going on in the studio at the time gets lost in the translation. So, when I hear the songs on the record, I hear them in a completely different way than the average person would hear them. “Unprepared” was the biggest one for me, and I actually think—I’d like to think—that if you listen to it hard enough, that you can feel what it’s like underneath. Even if you don’t necessarily understand it literally, you can feel what was going into it because it was right after John got back, and it was just me and him and Nick [Raskulinecz, producer], and actually we tracked it on piano, and so it was just piano and drums. If you take all of the other stuff out of it, the exact moment, the way I felt when we were sitting there doing it, it felt like it was the most important song that we could ever do, but just for that moment. There’ve been other times where I’ve felt that way, like “Amphetamine,” or “Ambulance Driver,” was that way too, but to a different degree, it was just the timing of it. But sometimes I feel like what you’re really trying to put across sometimes just gets lost in the translation of what you end up with at the end, but you’d like to think that it doesn’t.
What’s your favorite James Bond theme?
JD: “Goldfinger.”
SP: Yeah, “Goldfinger.”
DC: I’ll go with it. [laughs]
JD: “Live and Let Die” was pretty damn good, too.
SP: You know, Alice Cooper wrote a Bond song, but I don’t think it worked.
On to Part 2 (of 2)
Back to Superdrag Index
