Case launches ‘Flying Saucer Blues’

• An interview with the former Plimsouls frontman

By Steve Stav, for the Ballard News-Tribune, Seattle, 2000.

Throughout his career, Peter Case has followed his own intuition, and the Midas-like results have always left the genre-hopping singer/songwriter sitting pretty.

Most music aficionados over the age of 25 remember Case as the rough-voiced frontman for the semi-legendary Plimsouls, whose 1983 album Everywhere At Once was considered by many to be among the best of the decade. Before that, he was in another L.A. group -- the Nerves, a groundbreaking punk band. And before that effort? Case started his musical odyssey by playing pretty much what he's been performing over the 15 years since the Plimsouls initially broke up -- folk and the blues.

Sound a bit far-fetched? Not really, when you consider that Case considers himself to be an American songwriter first and foremost -- to him, a style of music is simply a tool to get his ideas across. Case conveys his thoughts magnificently on his new CD, Flying Saucer Blues, an instrumentally rich departure from the bulk of his raw earlier works. Admittedly inspired by the Beatles' later forays into country-folk music, the album also draws from the workingman blues of Case's youth.

SS: We've had Tim Finn, Lloyd Cole, Stan Ridgway and Colin Hay - all singers who fronted bands in the '80s - roll through Seattle over the past six weeks. How does it feel to be a trendsetter for the pop star turned singer/songwriter movement?

Case: Yeah, I guess I was probably the first guy from that whole gang to quit my perfectly good rock band and go solo. For me, it felt really natural, it was something I had to do, it was dictated by the songs. The band was still gaining altitude, actually. Some people thought I was nuts to break it up, but it was sort of one of those musical decisions. I guess these days the label would have encouraged me to try to do both, but back then I felt that everyone really laid it on me -- I had to choose one direction or the other. I felt that I needed to write the songs I was supposed to be writing -- "true writing," the story-songs that popped up on the first album.

SS: Commercially that was certainly a bold move to make, embracing folk and blues in the mid-'80s. Was there ever a time where you were discouraged enough to think about quitting and trying something else?

Case: No, I had a really strong feeling that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. It hasn't been easy, though. I've always been a musician, only for a few years I was in any sort of limelight. I used to be a street musician, and now I play these shows ... it's like I'm coming onto the radar of people who want to hear this sort of thing now.

SS: It must be nice to reach point in time where you have some people coming to your shows that have never heard of the Plimsouls.

Case: Yeah, that's been going on for a while now. There was a break ... I took some of the Plimsouls fans with me, but a lot of them just couldn't make the leap. It just might not a natural leap for everybody, but it was a natural leap for me, coming from where I came from. For a lot of the fans out here in California, they might not have gotten it. I had to build up a whole new thing. So, really, from the first album onward, there was a lot of people that liked it that never got into the Plimsouls. I feel that what I do now is a lot stronger than the Plimsouls. The Plimsouls were my first attempt to put anything together... it had a lot of power to it, we were a great live band, but I've written better songs than "A Million Miles Away."

SS: I read that you journeyed to North Beach as a teenager. People always associate San Francisco with psychedelia, but there sure was a lot of folk music there.

Case: There were a lot of folk musicians and blues musicians... You know, Sonny Terry and Doug Sahm were living there at the time, Jorma Kaukonen, the guys from the Charlatans as well. There, was a great folk club called the Coffee Gallery, which was the first place I played... an incredible scene of street musicians, a lot cooler than it is now. It was very exciting around '73.

SS: Growing up in upstate New York, did you ever see Dave Van Ronk play?

Case: Yeah, I saw Dave Van Ronk and other artists that were lesser known, like Cedric Smith, people from Canada... there was this whole folk scene up in Canada. I used to take off from home and hitchhike up to Ontario and see these guys. I also used to hitchhike to Boston, and see people like Lightnin' Hopkins play. There was this traveling R&B scene back then, these road shows that would come and play a while. Guys like Muddy Waters, or the Bo Diddley Band or Charlie and Inez Foxx, they would come to Buffalo and stay a week, play two-three sets a night ... that was a lot cooler than these onenighters.

SS: Do you still look for inspiration in old albums?

Case: Yeah, I do, actually. Especially the old blues guys... for years, I've listened to Sleepy John Estes, and I just re-purchased this album that I've had on vinyl forever.

SS: I've never heard of Sleepy John Estes.

Case: You've never heard of Sleepy John Estes? Dude, order this record called Broke and Hungry on Delmark. It's one of the greatest blues albums ever made. It's recorded as if Memphis was on the Nile or something.

SS: You're an excellent storyteller, which implies you're a good listener. Whose stories do you enjoy the most these days?

Case: I don't know, man... most of the stories in my songs are from people I know or things I've seen happen... like the story on my new album, "Two Heroes," that happened in the building a little while back, this guy I was writing songs with, he was the guy that broke up the robbery and went to jail. I had to listen to myself tell that story a few times, in different bars and places, until someone told me I had to put that to song.

SS: Are you touring solo, or will you have some accompaniment?

Case: I'm with my fiddle player, David Perales, he sings and plays violin, he's from San Antonio. He's a really great fiddle player with a deep tone, and he sings harmony as well.

SS: You recently met Sir George Martin (he performed with Martin and an orchestra). Have you ever met Sir Paul, or the most overlooked Beatle, George Harrison?

Case: No, I haven't. But I am really influenced by the Beatles on this record. I think part of it was due to that show with Martin, and hearing those songs, and singing them with all those people at the Hollywood Bowl. It really moved me -- the Beatles had a way of being deep and catchy at the same time, and that was what I was trying to catch on this album.

SS: Perhaps Lennon provided the "deep" and McCartney supplied the "catchy."

Case: I'm not so sure of that. I think Paul, in many ways, is a pretty powerful songwriter. The best song the Beatles ever wrote, in my opinion, is "Penny Lane" -- which I believe is Paul's song. It's inspired by Lennon, it's about his neighborhood... but it's possibly the closest they came to writing a Dylan-esque lyric, held together as in a poem.

Peter Case • Flying Saucer Blues • 2000 • Vanguard Records 

Originally published in the Ballard News-Tribune, Seattle, Wash., 2000.

copyright 1997-2011, Steve Stav

From Enz to ‘Say It Is So’

• An interview with Down Under pop icon Tim Finn

By Steve Stav, for the Ballard News-Tribune, Seattle, 2000.

Tim Finn, you might recall, was the driving force behind Split Enz, a group known for its avant garde performances and songs such as "Dirty Creatures," "I Got You," and "Six Months In A Leaky Boat."

Tim brought his brother Neil into the band just as the sensation known as "New Wave" was starting to reach large numbers of American listeners; before Split Enz could fully capitalize on the trend that they helped create, the band dissolved.

Neil Finn shaped remnants of this influential group into Crowded House; Tim launched a solo career.

Darting and dabbling here and there for years, the elder Finn released infrequent albums, and immersed himself in critically acclaimed side projects. He rejoined his brother in Crowded House for one wonderfully moody CD, "Woodface," and also on the recent "Finn Brothers" effort.

The singer/songwriter's new CD, "Say It Is So," is undoubtedly his finest work yet. Recorded in Nashville with noted producer Jay Joyce, it's a refreshingly vital blend of his trademark pop stylings and offbeat, subtly complex musical landscapes. "Say It Is So" is the kind of recording that takes two or three plays to fully appreciate; after that, you're hooked.

Finn's slightly eccentric tendencies are well-documented, and I came ear-to-ear with the earnest individual who was, surprisingly, interested in talking about his fascinating past.

SS: In your press kit, you state that "Nashville was the last place on earth that I would ever have thought of going to record." How so?

Finn: Well, I only had the knowledge of the cliche of Nashville. I had never toured through here; like anybody else in our part of the world, we just think of it as a place where hokey, formulaic music comes from -- it's known as a music factory. You forget about the ancient past; the last 10-15 years have created this impression. That's an impression based on ignorance, really... it didn't seem like a place that has anything much to do with pop. Sometimes when you go to the least likely place, that's where you find exactly what you were looking for.

I guess the person I was looking for was Jay Joyce, but I wouldn't have known he was living here. I didn't know of him, I didn't know his work. I met him through a friend of a friend once we got here. Really, my wife and little boy and I came here on an intrepid adventure in a funny way -- I'd been trying to make this record in Australia, and I'd recorded 20 tracks and thrown them all away. I wasn't happy, and really didn't know where to go next, and a friend of mine said to me, 'You must go to Nashville.' It was a weird thing, it struck me the right way... but the first month or so here we weren't sure why we came.

SS: Do you find that you have to reintroduce yourself to mainstream America every time you come here?

Finn: Yeah, because I come here so rarely. I mean, the last time I toured here solo was about six years ago. I've done a Finn Brothers tour since then, and I've toured around with this Irish band called ALT. I've jumped around from style to style, band to band, and it would be hard to imagine that people would remember who Tim Finn is every time. I accept that, I'm not interested in careerbuilding. I've never actually thought of it as a career, it's not a career, it has no logic or path or payoff. I'm a songwriter and I've found incredible richness in my life in pursuing that; there have been times where I've been frustrated -- with Split Enz, all those years ago.

That was a band I believed in with all my soul and like with any band, you have the desire to conquer the world, be the best band -- if you don't feel that way, it's probably not worth continuing. But that was a shared quest; on my own, it's been more of a stumbling, rambling journey... and I've accepted that now, and I take what comes.

SS: Do you ever run into your contemporaries Down Under -- like Paul Kelly or Mental As Anything, or Men At Work anymore?

Finn: Oddly enough, I actually saw the guys from Mental As Anything just the other day. There was a big event in Sydney where they're trying to bring about some sort of reconciliation between the Aboriginal people and the European people... it's a terribly painful, protracted sort of thing that will go on for a number of decades, I'm sure. There was a big march across the Sydney Harbor Bridge -- maybe 200,000 people -- and there was a series of free concerts afterwards, and I was part of that with Mental As Anything. It was really good to catch up with those guys, I feel completely part of their world somehow.

SS: What's your position on reconciliation? Have you been actively involved in that issue?

Finn: Not a politically active part. As an artist, I've been asked to do several things, like concerts. I've grown to love Australia, though I'm a New Zealander. I feel a part of that place. I've met Aboriginal songwriters through the years, people like Archie Roach, Yothu Yindi; when you actually meet these people and have a chat with them, you begin to feel it.

SS: Everything you do is compared to Split Enz. I imagine you would get tired of people bringing up that experience.

Finn: Absolutely not. I'm not jaded about that at all. I love Split Enz, I love the fact that I did it. If people talk about it, that's great; if that's the greatest thing I ever do in my life. I don't agree, but that's fine if people think that. I don't have a problem, with any of it.

SS: Describe growing up in New Zealand, and the surroundings that shaped your early musical career.

Finn: There was always music in the house. I think we grew up knowing that live music was exciting, and that it tended to make people loosen up, go crazy, do things they normally wouldn't do. I'm talking about when I was a very young child; the whiskey would come out, there would be a guy playing piano in a corner of the room, stubbing out his cigarettes on the piano, because he couldn't stop to butt out his cigarettes. That kind of intensity of performance... women flirting with priests, parents letting us do anything we liked, that sort of subversion of normal roles... the energy and heat was not coming from the alcohol, but the music.

Falling in love with Beatles records, and hovering around the record player at school -- someone would bring in the latest Beatles record, and 40-50 boys would gather 'round -- that sort of intensity, a devotion to pop music... that's how I grew up. I played and sang live music in school and wherever I could.

SS: Your musical relationship with Neil has been off-and-on over the years, and there's always been speculation about an Everly Brothers-type feud... What sort of hurdles do you have to leap when the two of you collaborate on something?

Finn: We don't have tq leap any hurdles... if the time is right, and we both seem to know when it is -- and it isn't very often -- it just happens like magic. That's what it was like with 'Woodface' and the 'Finn Brothers' album, we worked up the songs very quickly, and we didn't have to struggle with themes or ideas, they just came up. I guess the timing is everything, there's no point in trying to force it or rush it. When we get in a room with our guitars, it's just so easy to tap in -- tap in to shared memories -- not that we sing about them, though sometimes we might touch on things that come from our past directly. Mostly, it's just knowing it's there like a wellspring, and then we can draw inspiration from it at ease. It's a very easy thing for us to do...

Eddie Vedder lives there in Seattle, right? We bumped into Pearl Jam in New Zealand once, got up and sang 'I Got You' with them, it was really a blast... I was just jazzed to get up and play some of those Split Enz songs with Pearl Jam, 'cause it was heavier than they'd ever sounded, and they sounded great.

Tim Finn • Say It Is So • 2000 • What Are? Records

Originally published in the Ballard News-Tribune, Seattle, Wash., 2000.

copyright 1997-2011, Steve Stav

The Girl-Next-Door

• Tremendous talent doesn’t corrupt ‘down-to-earth’ chanteuse Heather Duby

By Steve Stav, for the Ballard News-Tribune, Seattle, 2000.

To put it quite simply, Heather Duby has a beautiful voice. Frequently compared to Everything But The Girl's Tracey Thorn, the 26-year-old chanteuse's delivery is at once delicate and powerful. Haunting and seductive, it soars and dips, enveloping the listener in a strangely warm haze.

Last year, esteemed producer Steve Fisk put her voice in front of Massive Attack/Pet Shop Boys-style electronica -- and the collaborative result, Post To Wire, was lauded by many critics as one of the best Northwest CDs of 1999.

One might surmise that Duby might have affected an aloof, Eurochic attitude to match the sophistication of her moody songwriting, but, in fact, she's remarkably well-grounded. In spite of her soaring career, Duby comes across as the girl-next-door -- a girl-next-door that could very well be an international star by this time next year.

SS: You came to Seattle from Portland when you were 20. What were you doing the first couple of years you were here?

Duby: I was a barista, I had various coffee jobs and played solo-acoustic gigs with my guitar, working on my songwriting and arrangements. I played at the Colourbox and other small places. Then I formed a band, Clementine (which included Reggie Watts, now Maktub's frontman) and started playing bigger venues, like the Crocodile.

SS: Were you involved in music growing up?

Duby: Yes, I played a lot of piano at home. I sang a lot, I was into choir and theater and dance.

SS: Did you fit in well in high school? Were you a moody kid?

Duby: Moody? [laughs]. Probably. In school, I couldn't really identify what sect I came from, because I managed to get along with everybody. It was really strange... I didn't really enjoy high school, if that's what you're asking. It was probably the worst four years of my life.

SS: Back then, did you listen to the 4AD ['80s mood/gothic/ambient label] stuff that you're compared to now?

Duby: Uh-huh, I listened to a lot of the Cocteau Twins, and lots of different things. I was a big Erasure fan when I was younger, and I got into punk, kind of sporadically -- Pegboy, the Dead Kennedys. I listened to the Pixies, New Order, the Cure, the usual stuff. I'd go to shows, see the Dead Milkmen and Pigface.

Portland has a really good independent music scene, and it's accessible to underage kids. They've got the bars in the back, but the kids could still come in and see the show. Seattle should operate that way, it would keep the live music scene busy.

SS: The end of last year finds Post To Wire in everybody's best-of lists, and you were getting regular airplay -- was there a time when the attention started to freak you out?

Duby: Mmm, no. It was pretty exciting... what's strange is -- because l still work in a restaurant -- people will come in there and recognize me. I’ve worked there for four years, bussing tables and everything, there's nothing glamorous about that!

It's been hard to stay in that position, and at the same time, be changing as a person. You get kind of frustrated, you just want to tell people, I have a record out, dammit! The reason I've stayed there so long is the people who work there are so good, they're wonderful, but ...

SS: When you actually got down to recording the album, was it hard to contradict Steve Fisk, a producer with so much experience?

Duby: It was really difficult. Fortunately, there wasn't much I had to contradict him on. I mean, Steve's a great producer in the sense that he's good at helping artists access their own ideas. He's very supportive and open. At the same time, however, he's got strong opinions about the things he thinks will work ... he's got 15-20 years on me, so it was very intimidating at first -- he's pretty much a genius [laughs].

It was a daunting task for me to enter into, especially since I'd had no experience with electronic music -- I'd only been in a three-piece band, and that was only for a year and a half. It was difficult, but I think it was the only way I'd ever want to do it, because I learned so much.

SS: With lyrics that seem to be so personal, was it strange to get up in front of a room full of people and sing them?

Duby: I really don't think so, if you've done it enough in different venues. I don't really know of any music that isn't personal in some way... it pretty much comes with the territory. I do think it's been difficult to translate the album into a live project, because it was such a studio piece of work. The concessions and compromises you have to make when you deal with different people -- it's a totally different environment. I really don't want to do everything off of a DAT, and if we were trying to approximate the album's sound, that's what, we'd have to do.

The people in the band are my very best friends... they're wonderful people to work with, and it's been a very fun and positive experience. In terms of being the person in charge, and the person who's supposed to be running things -- which I don't necessarily do well -- it's been a real education, because I'm used to being by myself.

SS: I hear you've done some recording lately. Will you have a new album out shortly?

Duby: We're working on a split-EP with Elemental, which is Reggie Watts' live drum-and-bass project. We're going to be doing some touring this summer, and once we're done with that, I'll start working on the next album ... it won't be for a while yet.

SS: You'll be playing the Tractor soon. The Crocodile and the Showbox are your usual clubs -- are you a little nervous about journeying to the Wild West?

Duby: No, I'm actually excited. I really like Ballard, I like the Tractor, I think it's a great showcase room. It will be a nice change of pace.

SS: Since you started singing professionally, what's the best piece of advice you've gotten?

Duby: Stay in school [laughs], go to college. Doing this is not easy.

Heather Duby • Post to Wire • 1999 • SubPop Records

Originally published in the Ballard News-Tribune, Seattle, 2000.

copyright 1997-2011, Steve Stav

O’Keefe still has the blues

 • Singer/songwriter divides time between music, raising environmental awareness through his Songbird Foundation

By Steve Stav, for the Ballard News-Tribune, Seattle, 2000.
 

Over the years, Danny O'Keefe's mystique has been amplified by his infrequent album releases. Of course, O'Keefe was, not exactly an instant sensation to begin with. After graduating from Wenatchee High School in 1961, it took this supremely talented singer/songwriter 10 years to finally capture the music industry's attention -- stepping up to the spotlight with the modern standard, "Good Time Charlie's Got The Blues" from 1972's Danny O'Keefe album.

O'Keefe followed that smash with 73's Breezy Stories, and its famous pulp fiction cover; six years passed before he reemerged with The Global Blues. His next, The Day to Day, was presented in 1984, and re-issued (and re-recorded) in 1989's Redux. This handful of recordings all had one thing in common: they were fantastic, with unforgettable, introspective songs sung with a unique, unforgettable voice.

The world has seen very little of this legendary artist over the past decade -- but his relative seclusion has recently come to an end. He's got another fabulous CD, Runnin’ From The Devil (Miramar) on the shelves; on May 2, he hosted a benefit for his Songbird Foundation in Philadelphia that featured Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne.

O'Keefe spoke to me via telephone from his Vashon Island home, where he was preparing for an upcoming Songbird benefit performance at the Tractor Tavern, which will also feature Colin Hay of Men at Work fame, as well as veteran power pop-rocker Tommy Tutone.

SS: Ten years is a long time to be absent from the public eye. What kept you busy in the '90s?

O'Keefe: For a period of time, I wrote for a couple of different publishing companies as a contract writer -- one of those companies was one owned by Bob Dylan. I wrote a song with him during that time, "Well, Well, Well," which is on my new CD. Five of the last 10 years, I worked in Nashville with other writers -- several of those songs are on the CD as well.

About three years ago, I started a nonprofit organization called the Songbird Foundation, to essentially deal with issues of sustainability, but particularly as they apply to the migratory songbird populations that in many cases are rapidly declining... and the relationship to coffee agriculture.

It sounds very complicated, but it really isn't -- when you cut down the trees in "coffeeland," you begin to lose birds, because that's where they go for their winter migration. It's part of a pattern that we see worldwide... most people are, or choose to be, completely unaware of it.

SS: How did you become interested in this cause?

O'Keefe: It kind of goes back to one of the fundamental works in conservation, Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring." There's a profound question that's asked in the context of this book, a question that I felt was being asked of me several years ago, which is: these other creatures, they provide delight in our lives, but more than that, they have a fundamental, existential right to be alive, and is it immoral to create processes that destroy their web of life?

If all of this was happening because of our appetite for coffee there seemed the potential... if you informed the coffee drinker about the choice of drinking sustainably (shade, or traditionally-grown coffee) and preserving habitat and helping people earn more than a subsistence living -- which are the coffee workers -- that people would pay a little more for a cup of coffee if they knew that would help that process. A lot of other groups are working towards this ideal, as well.

SS: How did Colin Hay and Tommy Tutone get involved in this benefit show?

O'Keefe: Tommy Tutone is an old friend of mine. We initially met through agents in common, and Tommy's agent now also works with Colin Hay. He suggested that Colin would fit in well in this showcase, and could help raise some money for the Foundation as well. Colin said, "Sure"... I haven't seen him perform by himself, I'm really looking forward to it. Men at Work's song, "The Land Down Under," is going to be the theme for the Olympics this summer, so were going to hear a lot from Colin Hay.

SS: Tommy Tutone is going to do an acoustic set as well?

O'Keefe: Yeah, he'll open, I'll play second and Colin will close the show... and in between, we'll try to tell people a little bit about the Foundation.

SS: You've been with a few different labels. How's your relationship with Miramar coming along?

O'Keefe: I'm a hard sell, because I have been away for so long. With this album, I didn't intend it to be one loaded with "hits" -- it's a personal experience, and it's always harder to sell something that's perhaps more intensely personal and not designed with a commercial intent. I think that Miramar's doing an admirable job, considering what they have to work with [laughs].

SS: Are you going to have a video on VH1 again? ("Along For The Ride," from Redux, was filmed around Conway, Wash.)

O'Keefe: I don't know if well do a video, I think the internet is the experience that we're looking for... perhaps a half hour concert.

SS: "Good Time Charlie's Got The Blues" is still being covered. To what do you attribute that song's longevity?

O'Keefe: It's two essential elements: it's very simple, and everyone relates to it. There's a certain inherent "identifiability," a truth, if you would, to it. It's almost like haiku, it's so simple -- although it's not as poetic as haiku. Everybody's had that experience, a dislocation. You come from, say, a peer group; and that peer group's started to fragment and go its own way, and you have to make a choice: which will be the road taken, or not taken.

SS: Was it a song that you wrote while you were preparing the Danny O'Keefe album or did you have it in your repertoire for awhile?

O'Keefe: "Good Time Charlie" is what essentially got me the deal with Ahmet [Ertegun] at Atlantic. I realized it was a piece of business fairly soon after I wrote it. It was one of those things where it was one of three songs that you audition for people, and that was the one that smelled like money to them. "Good Time Charlie" was never written that way, though; it was literally a gift that came through me in about a half hour or 45 minutes of just sitting there with a guitar, writing notes and... bam! there it was.

"Running From the Devil" • Danny O'Keefe • 1999 • Miramar Records

Originally published in the Ballard News-Tribune, Seattle, Wash., 2001.

copyright 1997-2011, Steve Stav

Of tube radios and AM airwaves

• A candid conversation with Deke Dickerson

By Steve Stav, for the Ballard News-Tribune, Seattle, 2000.

Missouri native Deke Dickerson has the distinction of having garnered a cult following with three different groups.

In the late 1980s, his band Untamed Youth cut its own niche out of the then-underground surf/garage scene. Then, in 1991, he embraced his lifelong passion for rockabilly and classic country with the critically praised Dave and Deke Combo.

Following that group's breakup, Dickerson took that passion one step further. The singer and guitarist has released two CDs with the top-notch band the Ecco-Fonics ("Number One Hit Record" and "More Million Sellers"), putting his own unmistakable stamp on a sound that originated almost 50 years ago.

The singer and guitarist, like some sort of New Age channeler, taps into the pure vitality, the essence of early rock'n' roll and '50s country. The result is incredibly authentic-the only thing missing is the hum of a tube radio and the crackle of AM airwaves.

When I spoke to Dickerson last week, the band was en route to a gig in Kansas City, Mo. The band will be making a stop at the Tractor Tavern this Saturday night.

SS: Deke, with all of the legendary artists that you get to play on your CDs, you must be like a kid in a candy store?

Deke: As a kid, you'd never think you'd be able to hire the guy that did the 'Beverly Hillbillies" theme song to perform on your CD, but it's not that hard.

SS: Once you get started?

Deke: Yeah, as with the first CD, I sort of sat down with a list of people that I wanted on it, and I wound up getting everyone on my list.

SS: How did the duet with 86 year-old singer and actress Hadda Brooks, ["You're My Cadillac"] come about?

Deke: I've got a lot of Hadda's old records, and I just thought it would be a real kick to get her on the album doing a rockabilly sort of thing. I knew she was still kicking around L.A., and it really only took about two phone calls to get her manager on the phone. The next thing you know, she's down in the studio singing with me.

SS: Musicians like former Bill Haley and the Comets' saxophonist Joey D'Ambrosio and boogiewoogie pianist Carl Sonny Leyland make such an impact on your albums. Have you considered putting on an all-star show in L.A. where you could feature some of these people with the Ecco-Fonics?

Deke: I've tried, believe me, I've tried, but unfortunately, it's just impossible, everybody's got their own schedule. It's one of those things that you can assemble it in the studio, but it would never happen live.

SS: What are some of the musicians on your next "guest list"?

Deke: Acually, as much fun as I've had with the whole "guest star" thing, I definitely want to downplay that on my next CD. I've heard so many people -- critics, mostly -- that seem to think that if you have a good time, if you have guest stars and that sort of thing, that it's some kind of novelty act or something.

SS: Thats a load of crap.

Deke: Well, that's what I think, but what I'd like to do with the next CD is to get one really amazing guest. I'm actually trying to get Chuck Berry to do something with me, which is kind of funny because one of my old high school teachers here in Missouri is good friends with him, so we're working on him that way. If that works out, I'd like Chuck to do one song with me, and then have the rest of the album proving just how me and my band kicks ass on our own.

SS: Your recent tour with Mike Ness must have expanded your fan base some?

Deke: [Laughing] On this trip, we get at least 10 or 15 punk-rocker types per show coming up and saying, 'I saw with you with Mike Ness last summer, now I'm a big fan.' It's pretty funny.

SS: There's a song on your new CD, "My Name Is Deke." What's it like to have achieved a one-name status, like Prince or Madonna?

Deke: I tend to think of Cher... You know, the original band name was the Dekes of Hazzard, but we changed it because we had too many people saying, 'The Dukes of Hazzard.' 'No, it's the Dekes Of Hazzard,' we'd say. It's nice to be known by one name amongst a small circle, but it does me no good at the Taco Bell, you know.

SS: Your style is hard to describe in one sentence. I wrote recently that "Deke Dickerson manages to straddle that historical intersection of country, rhythm and blues, and early rock'n'roll." Does that come close?

Deke: Actually, I like that the best of anything I've ever beard, to tell you the Gods honest truth because that's what I listen to. People always try to make you into something -- country or whatever. I tend to think of myself as one of those guys like Carl Perkins was. He was a country kid who wound up listening to a lot of hillbilly records and rhythm and blues and came up with the whole rock'n' roll thing. I'm not saying that I'm an originator by any means, but I listen to an awful lot of country and rhythm and blues, and rock is sort of the end result.

SS: How do you account for the classic country/swing/rockabilly phenomenon?

Deke: I really can't account for it, all that I can say is it's been amazing to watch it grow. When I started the Dave & Deke Combo with Dave Stukey back in '91, we did a national tour and there was three or four rockabilly kids in every town, and that was about it. It's incredible how big of an audience there is for it now.

SS: As far as making country albums go, Nashville seems to have traded places with sections of Los Angeles.

Deke: I don't know what the hell Nashville is thinking. It all sounds like '70s lite rock or '80s pop... anything that has anything to do with country music: drinkin' and cheatin' and so forth, it's like a disease to them, they don't want any part of it. It's really weird, I can't understand it.

SS: How's the tour coming along?

Deke: The shows have been really good. We had one dud gig in Tampa, Fla., but I don't think anybody has a good show in Tampa. We've played at the Tractor before, actually, we've done, really, really well there. Seattle's one of our strongest cities in the whole U.S., so we're looking forward to gtting back there.

Deke Dickerson and the Ecco-Fonics • More Million Sellers • 2000 • Hightone Records

Originally published in the Ballard News-Tribune, Seattle, Wash., 2000.

copyright 1997-2011, Steve Stav

Peter Murphy: Just For Love

• A candid conversation reveals the lighter side of Goth-rock’s Dark Prince

By Steve Stav, for Pandomag, Seattle, 2000.

Searingly powerful and eerily seductive, Peter Murphy's hypnotic voice has been on public display for twenty years now. While it would have been easy to become a caricature of his famous "persona noir" more than a decade ago, Murphy continued to musically distance himself from his beginnings as Bauhaus' frontman; albums such as Love Hysteria (1988), Deep (1990), and, more recently, Cascade (1995) blended a certain languid exoticism with the erotic intensity he developed early on in his career.

On the heels of a wildly successful Bauhaus reunion jaunt and a mesmerizing solo "greatest hits" tour, the Dark Prince is back - and still in a retrospective mood; Murphy's new venture -- a "stripped-down" performance with two accompanists -- is a dive into the black, rarely-tapped well of his early solo material, with the Gothic icon collecting sonic bits from more recent years on his way back to the surface.

Two weeks into the tour, on Nov. 10, the surprisingly self-effacing and expectedly eloquent singer candidly discussed this bold new step, the inspiration for it, and the nightly encounters with his fans... and their expectations of him.

SS: I understand that this tour is quite a departure from past performances. Was the popularity of your acoustic encores part of the motivation for a stripped-down show?

Murphy: Yes, it was. It was the first time, during the last tour, that I really played any of my songs in a very stripped-down version. The songs had a very different quality to them; I wanted to go on a low profile tour, and "re-approach" my back catalogue, as it is, with that approach.

I'm previewing some new material that I've been working on this year, and particularly the songs that I've been writing with Mercan Dede, he's a Turkish musician who works in Montreal. It's almost like I've been exploring (while) working with him because, for one thing, he has a great knowledge of traditional Turkish music, but on the other hand, he's like a... DJ. There's a very interesting cross-breed between an ethnic-organic-acoustic approach with a lot of electronica effects which is something that I’ve incorporated into my work in the past... though not on such an overt, "trancy" level, I suppose.

So, it's really a natural continuation, if you like, on the kind of atmospheres and textures that I've worked with in the past, which have tried to blend that "Turkish" atmosphere with a technological approach. Those two songs ("Just For Love," "No Home Without Its Sire") are basically songs that we threw together during a three-day writing session, and they worked out so well, that I wanted to put them out now. They're in an early, sketchy form now, and have fuller arrangements.

Most of the other material [on the tour] is very... naked. This is almost like a busking tour... I've got Peter DiStefano, who was the guitarist on the last tour, and an extraordinary violin player, Hugh Marsh. I'm really adding textures - replacing atmospheres, the soundscapes that occur in the original songs, stripping them to their essential forms. It's not exactly "unplugged," but I wanted to prove to the audience, and to myself, that without the artifice and decoration around a concert, that it can work and be just as powerful without them.

SS: I felt that those encores [during the Wild Birds tour] were the most intense aspect of the show.

Murphy: I was feeling that, also. It was kind of like meeting the audience "face-on"... it was very, very strong, in that sense. I'm glad you saw that, too. So this is really trying to extend that "space"... the only risk, of course, was could I make it work over an hour an a half? That was a challenge... a month ago, we started rehearsing. We rehearsed for ten days, just the three of us getting together, making it work and exploring. I probably had about thirty songs that I possibly was going to play, and some of them I just wasn't comfortable playing without fuller arrangements. The ones that I've distilled out of all that happen to be songs that I've rarely played, or played early on in my solo career -- so there a real freshness to the show, and it's a... contemplative one, as well.

SS: So we're going to hear a real violin play "Cuts You Up."

Murphy: Yeah, Hugh is a virtuoso, basically. I would say he's like the Michael Brooke of the violin, in that he's an experimentalist -- he likes to treat the violin, process it. He can switch from traditional violin to any sound he wants. As does Peter DiStefano, I mean he's not only playing guitar, but he's sometimes playing piano along with the guitar. He's creating all of these interesting, undulating sort of sounds. We're all experimenting quite a bit. And then, of course, you've just got me in the middle of it... the songs with no theatrical trappings, if you will. So, I'm not really able to hide anywhere [laughs]. It has a real "precipice" feeling to it -- it could fall apart, or it could be really wonderful. There's that danger to it... which I think the audience really feels, too. I've tried to communicate the nature of the performance to the audience before the show -- through the press. But obviously people are going to come and kind of expect more of a "rock show," if you like. It's interesting to see the audience not leave, actually [laughs].

SS: It seems that your voice will be focused upon more than ever. Did you grow up singing, or is that something you had to be coaxed into?

Murphy: Singing was like a therapy for me, and I guess it's still a therapy. As a child, I would sing all of the time, and search out harmonies, listening to my favorite records. Of course, the family was a great singing family. My father would sing -- being an Irishman -- and as the youngest of seven children, I had a lot of brothers and sisters who would play everything from Doris Day to Elvis, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, the whole British explosion of the Sixties. I was surrounded by music... I remember singing at school, on the way to school, at home, everywhere.

And, of course, when we're playing live... the other point you brought up. For years, people have told me I should do very "minimal" music, with more voice arrangements, because there's always been a great comment on the quality of my voice... which I take as a great complement. Definitely, this tour has really been giving me a platform, an opportunity for the audience to hear what I sound like [laughs] over and above the arrangements. It's like a showcase -- either way -- as to whether I can really pull it off, it's like I'm proving -- either way -- whether I'm a singer or not. There is a lot of texture to my voice, I do play around with range, tones and harmony a lot -- perhaps people get this subliminally by listening to the albums, but here you'll be actually hearing the real thing.

SS: I saw Bryan Ferry attempt a similar feat very successfully earlier this year, with the vocals way out in front...

Murphy: Was that with the album he just put out?

SS: Yeah, the jazz album [As Time Goes By].

Murphy: I saw him do that on the Jools Holland show, he was brilliant. I also saw him play at the Istanbul Jazz Festival [last July], where I also played. I think it worked very well, he had full arrangements -- violins, horns, percussion. I was really happy for him... there was something very genuine about it... he was doing it because he wanted to do it.

SS: Was Ryuichi Sakamoto's perfornance at that festival an inspiration for this "minimalist" tour?

Murphy: It's very interesting that you've brought up Sakamoto. I didn't know what to expect... it was kind of a jazz/electronica/modern experimentalist/avant-garde show, with an ethnic aspect to it, which was quite amazing. Sakamoto is very much an intellectual, but it didn't come across as "dry" at all. His Music has that very Japanese inner quality, that "stillness" that works very well. I could never compare myself to someone like Sakamoto, because basically I'm a working-class post-punk... my stuff's "beautifully inept," if you like, my work is a sort of reflex. I really loved that show, and I wanted to meet him afterwards, but I'm too shy to go and say hello [laughs]. Whether he had an influence on me or not, I don't know... it proved to me this sort of thing can work. Also, working with my wife, she's a choreographer -- she's the artistic director of a modern dance company in Turkey. I'm involved in a lot of her work - and have been for years -- and having this theater to come and watch, be a spectator of, there's a lot of great inspiration I get from watching her company perform.

SS: You have a trademarked method of commanding an audience, but those who saw you perform last year had an occasional glimpse of your lighter side -- has your attitude towards performing changed?

Murphy: It changes according to the moment, in a sense. I'm definitely attempting to strip away the conscious artifice of the theatrical event... so my approach has been to consciously walk out alone, and put myself on the line without the histrionic and vital power of a band. It's something I'm walking through now, and feeling out; it's like that emptiness forces me to pull something out, without having to resort to the pure use of... charismatic power, if you like. [laughing] So, it's kind of very funny process, it's a very psycho-dramatic process, it's kind of like "I must be mad to do this," but at the same time, it's clearing my head. So my approach changes according to the nature of the show that I'm putting on, because there's a big part of me that is an actor, and I get into the role. Although, it's an unspoken, undefined sort of a role, it's kind of all about reacting to an audience, and the terror and the madness and the...audacity of walking onto a stage and assuming that people are going to listen to you.

SS: You're almost like a lion tamer onstage. I remember a woman screaming, propositioning you to father her children during a "quiet moment" -- it was in Sacramento, on the Holy Smoke tour. You stopped the band, and told her to shut up...

Murphy: [chuckles] There is that definite interaction with an audience. There is a lot of projected expectation of me. In Bauhaus, I was a lion tamer, in a sense. I mean, we were playing to audiences in England in the early days, where it was a riot, basically. We were never punk rockers, and we were dealing with an audience that was sort of pushing us to be violent and to be anarchic, and we weren't exactly that; we were like a sort of bizarre cabaret, which was like a mix of glam-rock casualties and art-rock, art-experimental rockers, more akin to what Bjork is basically about nowadays, or Tricky, whatever. And we were confronted by a complete, raging spitting machine; I'd walk off literally dripping with slime from the spit of the audience, which was their way of complementing me [chuckles]... and we weren't going to take that.

So I developed this sort of ... it's interesting for you to say that "lion tamer " a tamer of wild animals [laughs]. There wasn’t that confrontational aspect ... when I'm up there, I'm also baring myself completely, and I can feel the projected expectations from some of the audience -- not all of them -- that have been influenced by what I've done in the past. So, I'm sort of playing with it but rejecting it, resisting it, trying to find my own space... part of that is actually talking to the audience and reacting. You know, I may be on the stage, but I'm with you in that hall and I'm part of the collective there.

SS: I've pulled two songs out of the hat. How were "A Strange Kind of Love" and "Canvas Beauty" written, what inspired them?

Murphy: "Canvas Beauty" isn't being played... it's the first song I wrote as a solo artist, actually. It almost has no music to it, there's just two chords that jangle in this ambient sort of space, over which I wrote a song on a train, I was on my way to record with Howard Hughes, who was to become my cohort on that first album, Should The World Fail To Fall Apart. It was a continuation of the theme, the character portrayed in The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, and the relationship he has with the actress, Sybil Vane... lyrically, it's a love song about the necessity for a partner in your life to enable you to complete yourself.

SS: And "A Strange Kind of Love?"

Murphy: That song's got a quality to it that's very alluring and very moving -- it's a classic ballad, in a sense. It really relies a lot on... feeling and "state" if you like, the state of emotion in the performance of the song. "A Strange Kind of Love" is [about] the kind of awe that's felt in the safety and the comfort zone of your intimate moment with whomever -- whether it's your lover, your best friend... there's a moment where you feel completely in awe and safe and unified with yourself and that other person... it's almost like the both of you don't exist, there's only that one thing, this sort of “space.”

SS: Your hard-core fans have been clamoring for The Grid for years. What has prevented it from being shown until now, and could you tell me something about the film itself?

Murphy: I never felt it had the quality to it, that it was ready for release; but after Bauhaus' resurrection tour, there's been so much interest in "clearing out" the memorabilia of those days. It's a curious piece of memorabilia for those who have followed my work since then; it isn't a Bauhaus project, it's just a film that I made with my then-girlfriend, Joanna Woodward, the director. It was a handmade thing, made in the spirit of that whole period, where almost everyone was making art, some piece of creativity with no money, no technology. It has a sort of oblique connection with the kind of themes that I've been writing about in my work -- and I guess Bauhaus' work as well -- it also shows me in that very early state ... it was done within six months of Bauhaus' formation. It's quite an oddball, left-of-field, out-there film, really. Some people might hate it, but there will be people that will really get off on it, I think.

SS: So you have a movie as an opening act...

Murphy: Well, it's only 20 minutes long... this show couldn't have an opening act, it's so naked... unless I had just one person doing a magic act or something. I almost thought of having a magician go up there...

SS: Or you could have a real lion tamer up there, getting the crowd under control before you go on...

Murphy: [Laughing] A lion tamer? Yes...

Peter Murphy • Wild Birds 1985-1995: The Best of the Beggars Banquet Years • 2000 • Beggars Banquet Records

Originally published in Pandomag, Seattle, 2000.

copyright 1997-2001, Steve Stav

Squirrels go nuts in Seattle

 • Rob Morgan careens down Seattle’s twisted lane of musical memories

By Steve Stav, for the Ballard News-Tribune, Seattle, 2001.

The Squirrels are a crazy Seattle institution that, collectively, have evaded the oversized butterfly net of institutionalization for many years.

Just about everyone has been in the Squirrels -- from the Young Fresh Fellows and a Prudence Dredge expatriate to the Fastbacks' Kurt Bloch and members of the Posies and Dread Zeppelin. Inspired in part by co-founder Rob Morgan's obsession with the offbeat art-pop band Sparks and the theatrically-inclined Tubes, the Squirrels, like their ever-adapting name, have constantly evolved (or de-evolved) as members enter and exit the circle.

Rob (Capt.) Morgan's on-and-off band is the musical equivalent of the Seafair Pirates -- a loose group of talented musicians out to have a lot of fun without seriously injuring anyone in the process. The Squirrels' annual holiday shows are legendary -- memorable recordings parodying such unlikely subjects as John Lennon and the "Wizard of Oz" have attracted a small worldwide following. Their latest effort, a 2000 lampoon of Pink Floyd titled The-Not-So-Bright Side Of The Moon, is still garnering attention.

Last week, I spoke to Morgan (who outdoes Kevin Bacon in the six degrees game) about some of the events and characters that have contributed to his exalted status as Seattle Rock Icon.

SS: Let's start at the beginning. When did your fascination for the work of Ron and Russell Mael (Sparks) begin?

Morgan: Oh, like most people of my age, when I saw them on Don Kirschner's Rock Concert -- or it could have been In Concert -- they were on two or three shows about the same time, promoting Kimono My House (1974). It was unlike anything anyone had ever seen. Just about everybody on the Sparks mailing list my age tells the same story: they saw that and ran out and bought the album.

SS: The Squirrels have been around forever. How did the first incarnation get together?

Morgan: Well, I did the Pudz [notorious for their 1981 single, "Take A Letter Maria" b/w "Take Me To Your, Leader," recently included on an EMP/SubPop Northwest compilation] for a long time -- that folded up. I did the Pamona Boners -- that folded up; then I did the first run of Poplust magazine [his long-running publication] for a couple of years. Eventually, I decided that I wanted to get back to playing again.

About that time, I saw the Young Fresh Fellows at one of their first shows -- they had the sound and attitude that I was thinking of at the time. I cornered Scott [McCaughey] with the proposition of me joining their band as their singer; he hit me with a counter proposition of them just backing me under a different name. Basically, how it started was that when they'd go out of town, they'd take me with them. They would come out and open for themselves as the Mighty Squirrels, doing a bunch of covers with wigs on and stuff, with me hopping around. Half the time, the audience was too drunk to notice that it wasn't two different bands.

Eventually, they got rolling too good as the Fellows to keep this going -- me and Tad [Hutchison] wanted to keep going. That's when we drafted the late, great Eric Erickson [former schoolmate of Morgan's -- Morgan credits much of the group's musical diversity to him; Erickson passed away in 1996] on lead guitar, and we scouted around and found Joey [Kline] and Craig Ferguson, the bass player at the time, and changed the name to New Age Urban Squirrels and kept going. So it's been a gradual process of replacing people as they drop out ever since.

SS: So many local luminaries have been in the band over the years. Has any one of them proved to be wackier than you are?

Morgan: If there's ever been somebody that has scared me, if that's what you're asking, Joey can get pretty scary at times, when he's on a roll. I'm pretty used to him by now, though Baby Cheevers [a Cabbage Patch Doll that is somehow Kline's alter-ego ventriloquist dummy] gets pretty scary [laughs]. We're pretty fearless as a band. I've seen it all by now, about 35 [players] later. There's just a beauty and a freedom in the Squirrels that you don't find in a lot of other bands... nobody's taking things too seriously.

SS: What was the Squirrels' highlight show of the '80s?

Morgan: The Bumbershoot shows were pretty great. We played Bumbershoot several years in a row, we packed that joint. Once, we made a giant slingshot out of two microphone stands and some surgical tubing, and we shot Cabbage Patch Dolls out into the audience while the band played a heavy metal version of "I Dream of Jeannie" [laughs]. I think that's why they didn't ask us back much after that; they thought we were going to kill somebody with a Cabbage Patch Doll.

SS: What was the best thing about Seattle in the '80s?

Morgan: Oh, the fact that it was still pretty much under the radar and everyone could do whatever they wanted. There was a large enough scene to be an actual working, supportive scene, but it wasn't under the microscope and nobody had any illusions of "I'm going to get a record deal and be a rock star." Anybody who did think that way left and went to LA.

SS: What was the worst thing about Seattle in the '80s?

Morgan: Ironically, the worst thing is probably the same stuff as the best things about Seattle. It was a double-edged sword -- you were in a "big fish in a small pond" kind of situation. It was pretty much isolated from everything else. But as soon as Seattle did click, it ruined everything... every band from five states around that sounded like Pearl Jam moved here. All of the sudden, you're fighting with 1,200 bands over 10 rooms, with kids that are here to get into the music business.

SS: Not-So-Bright-Side Of The Moon was a long time coming. When and how did you get the idea?

Morgan: Eric and I used to want to do it... it was not long after the first album, in the late '80s. We thought the logical thing for the Squirrels to cover is an entire album. We thought of records to do, the first was Sgt. Pepper's, and we thought that was too easy of a call, that was off the list. We sat around and thought, Dark Side of the Moon, it had the most opportunities, the most things we could make fun of.

This album is the first album that we sat down and recorded everything at one time, with the same rhythm section and everything. We recorded it in 10 days [in 2000]. It was kind of a challenge... I was trying to make it appeal to people who like Pink Floyd, and make it appeal to who don't like Pink Floyd. I tried to play it straight down the middle. I think a lot of the humor is a lot more subtle than the blatantly jokey humor on some of our other records. A lot of the humor comes from the choice of a particular keyboard sound or whatever we chose to play. I think, musically, it's pretty funny in spots.

SS: How did [drummer] John Fleischmann become known as Hollis the Bug?

Morgan: [Laughing] That's a good story, too. Here's what happened -- he had just joined the band, he was 19 or something. We're doing a Halloween show, I think it was at the Crocodile. We decided to all dress up like different rock stars. Joey dressed up like Elton John, I think I was Alice Cooper, Mark Nichols was Rick Wakeman, and so on...

I remember looking for Hollis, we couldn't find Hollis. He's in the kitchen of this bar, and he's dyeing one pair of tights red in one sink, and one pair of tights black in another. He gets done with that, wrings them out and puts them on -- he's ripped holes in one pair so the color of the other shows through. He's got these wires and this Saran Wrap and he's making these big wings... he made himself this really dumb bug suit.

He's standing outside on the sidewalk talking to people between sets, and it's cold and raining and this suit's wet, and we looked at him and said, "Wow." When we introduced everybody, we said, "Here's Rick Wakeman and blah, blah, blah... and some kind of bug." We've called him Hollis the Bug ever since -- John's middle name is Hollis.


The Squirrels • The-Not-So-Bright-Side-of-the-Moon • 2000 • Popllama Records

Originally published in the Ballard News-Tribune, Seattle, Wash., 2001.


copyright 1997-2011, Steve Stav