c.a.m.e. caught up with Southern rock gods Flint at Little Manila Studios in Mississauga, Ontario. The guys would be appearing at Toronto's Air Canada Centre later that weekend and played Rico Simon's Club Duke that night (with opening act Senor Throwdown). Flint is busy in the pre-prep stages for their follow-up album to White Trash Folklore. Titles they are throwing around are Redneck Jedis (in deference to this May's Star Wars Episode I), Public Disturbance (in deference to keyboardist Doug Cherokee's recent battles with the papparazzi), Knights in White Trashland or the sarcastic suggestion of White Trash Folklore II.

Cody (left) and Juwan (with guitar) work on songs for their second album.

For those Canadians that don't know Flint's story, the band is made up of multi-instrumentalist, multi-talented Juwan Pilgrim, 24, tempermental keyboardist Doug Cherokee, 24, and mouthy singer Cody Jackson, 24. Touring with them are recent additions Lance Overmars, 22 and Pierre Young, 22. The band started in their sleepy trailer-park villa of St. Titosburg, Florida in 1991. Pilgrim was on his way to a football scholarship at a Florida university until a knee injury derailed his dream and Jackson was a fan favourite and title contender for the American motocross tour until a ruptured Achilles tendon forced him to give up the sport he loved. Cherokee, in his own words, "did some time in juvy and sniffed a lot of name brand liquid paper". Determined to make it out of tiny St. Titosburg, the trio formed Flint and began playing local gigs. They attracted quite a following and eventually quite a bidding war among record labels. Overlord Records, a small, southern outfit won the rights and helped release last year's semi-smash White Trash Folklore.

At Little Manila studios, Flint live up to expectation and refuse requests to pose for the camera, which ended up infuriating our art department. Among the various bottles of liquor, Flint seem dedicated to constructing an album strong enough to avoid the dreaded sophomore jinx. They stay hard at work and tell our camera-woman to just shoot what she sees. "Just forget the staged b*llshit." Jackson says.

Juwan's irritation with us is obvious by his expression while Cody's similar expression is in response to one of Doug's lyrics.

It seems agitating Flint is never a good idea. After we continue to beg to do a real shoot, Cherokee explodes "We're working here. This is the core of what Flint is -- a couple of bottles, a guitar and a drum kit. I thought Canadians were supposed to be polite, damn! Take your pictures and get out." Like Donnie in New Kids, A.J. in Backstreet Boys and that gnatty dredlocked guy in N Sync, Doug Cherokee fancies himself Flint's hard-core badass. Of course, he has an ongoing feud with photographers, having thrown one through a nightclub window and brandishing a sword against another. My photographer fearing that Doug might hit a girl and she'd be victim #3 decides we should snap a few 'action' shots and get out.

There is no doubt that Flint is a talented band. A consensus among the writers at c.a.m.e. would put Flint's debut in the top ten albums of 1999 so far. However, the egomaniacal behaviour of the Flint boys would suggest that they have the all-important sales total to match it, which they clearly don't. Maybe even one day, they will be as big as they already think they are.

After hearing about his band's boorish behaviour, Overlord Records chairman Harrison Lee Wingate sent us twenty-five copies of a live sampler taken from Flint's shows in Toronto on the weekend of this interview.
To receive a copy, answer this skill-testing question: How many children has singer Cody Jackson fathered?

click here to check out a copy.

click HERE to check outtakes from this particular photo-shoot. Special thanks to P. Niscombe of c.a.m.e. for sending those shots to us.