Ever wonder what it was like to grow up playing in bars? Coming up through rough beer joints and honky tonk bars where the foreman who has had a little too much booze starts a brawl with you just for looking at him cross?
JD Wilkes knows along with the rest of the Legendary Shack Shakers. They came up in an era where you had to engage a rough crowd and it meant something to come out on top. Now they are about to go out on a two month tour and are making a stop at the Canyon Club in Agoura Hills, CA along with Unknown Hinson and Reverend Horton Heat. We’ll be reviewing the show but in the meantime, we had an hour long conversation about music, touring, art, and playing in front of a modern audience.
Get your tickets here.
By Jesse Davidson
Davidson: Thanks for giving me a call today, JD. I really appreciate it.
Wilkes: Yeah no problem.
D: What are you up to this fine afternoon?
W: I’ve been out running errands in my own hometown. Over at my parents right now just visiting and getting in all domestic stuff while I can before I leave. Just being very normal.
D: It’s always good to get that in. I was looking at the tour schedule today for the Legendary Shack Shakers today and it looks like it’s pretty extensive over the next two months.
W: Yeah.
D: Is that something that has picked up recently since coming back from the hiatus or that how it’s been the whole time in the Shack Shakers?
W: Well, we got back to touring about a year and a half ago. We were doing about ten days a month but then this record (The Southern Surreal) came out. When we go out west that will be about a month. Then if we go over to Europe, we’re looking at about a month a way. If it’s on our side of the country, we can get away with little ten-day legs and cover a lot of ground. That’s about all I can tolerate anymore but it’s work so you have to go out and do it. If California calls or you gotta go to Europe, it’s part of the job.
D: Yeah, absolutely. That was something I was actually curious about. How do the Shack Shakers go over in Europe?
W: We do great. We usually pack it out. Like mid-sized clubs and things. Not theatres or anything like that. We’re a working band in the underground. But attendance is really great over there and it’s consistently great. And for a twenty-year-old band, that’s really good. It’s almost like a cliché now to say that American music is more popular over there because it’s exotic to them and they dig it. Especially when you’re a Southern band, there’s a fascination with that, I think. So we benefit from that.
D: Definitely. That’s part of why I ask because a lot of American music, traditionally blues artists, have always had a much bigger response there than in the States.
W: Right. Here’s, it’s kind of a “been there-done that” thing, which a lot of people take for granted. Over there it’s special to them.
D: Right. I think in more recent years with the rise of artists like Gary Clark Jr. and Alabama Shakes, it seems like Blues and Soul is coming back. And I’ve been hearing more about L.S.S. in the last few months than in previous years. It seems like you guys have a great team behind you right now.
W: Yeah. I think going away for a while helped too, you know? You’ve got to make them miss you sometimes. You’ve got to leave them wanting more and then you come back. Then, you give it another run. You kinda tease them little bit, you know? Put out a new record and generate some excitement. It helps. You don’t want to turn into one of those bar bands that just slugs it out and gets tired. So taking a break is a good thing.
D: Absolutely. Especially with being around as long as you have, it seems like bands earn a right to take a break when they want and not be worried about losing their audience.
W: Uh-huh. As much as I bitch and moan about it, the Internet does help. We’ve got fans now that we picked up during the hiatus. Technology kind of advanced while we were on mothballs. We were able to come out and see new people we haven’t met yet. Things being the way they are on the Internet and word traveling fast, we’ve gained new fans.
D: Honestly, even me being a younger person, I’m not sure how to feel about it either. I’ve seen it work to people’s favor and I’ve seen bands that now have to do the jobs of three people or more. They have to be a blogger, a visual person, and active on social media along with being an artist and businessperson.
W: Well, I think it’s a good thing to try and be as multi-faceted as you can. I don’t like the Internet side of things we have to deal with so our management does that. It’s kind of their job to gin up interest online. It’s upon me to come up with content. I like the fact I have to put out more. I have to work harder to create art, to create music, to create a mythos around the band. The stakes are higher, which is a good thing and I think it will weed out those that are just the flash in the pan bands. Because, we are trying to earn a living making art and making music. There’s such a glut of new bands now, you have to something that makes you stand out and I think the hard work the renaissance aspects of this band/brand will help us in the long run.
D: I think it’s interesting to talk about creating a mythos around the band. Can you talk about that more in detail?
W: Yeah. There’s a cultural aspect to everything that I try to do in the band and in the surrounding projects. It has to do with southern culture, regionalism, art, and imagery that go along with these southern gothic and cultural themes that I touch on. Any other band might be all about how cool they dress or how hip they fit in with the new trends and the fashion side of things. Our thing has always been a sort of unique, cultural, southern brand that touches on the aspects of southern that might get over looked by the media. We’re feeding the audience culture more than just our own ego and our own fashion. So I think it’s a more rewarding and enriching product as a result.
I’ve written a book about Kentucky Barn Dances. I’ve made a film about southern music and storytelling. I do field recordings of old fiddle and banjo players from Kentucky and I have side projects where I play banjo. I take photographs of these far-flung dance barns and railroad tracks. Things that conjure up a mythology of a strange and awesome South that is disappearing. There’s an almost etymological side to it. It’s vaguely political but not overt. It’s reaffirming of the culture here in a way that is enriching and not divisive. All of those things when you put them all together become a broader brand that people check in with and enjoy exploring. The deeper they get in to the band, the deeper they get into the other side projects and find that it’s more rewarding.
D: I think that’s great. One could even say you’re just speaking from the heart on that subject. You’re not trying to pretend that you are from the South. It’s like the best version of your storytelling that you can do.
W: Yeah and it’s not preachy either, it’s fun. At the end of the day I’m still a wild front man, I love a good laugh, and people come out and see a crazy show. That’s what hooks ‘em in and as they dig deeper into the lyrics, the literature, and the artwork that surrounds the band, they’ll see that it runs deeper than just the sight gags, the flashing lights and stuff like that.
D: Absolutely. I haven’t gotten too deep into the side projects but I’ve really liked what I’ve seen so far. I’m hoping that you’ll have a few copies of the Seven Signs DVD available when I see you guys at the Canyon Club in March.
W: Yes indeed and we’ll have a bunch of copies with us. I’ll be sure to bring ‘em. We’re trying to get it distributed. At the time, there was no Netflix, streaming or Amazon. There might have been but it was really early. We’re talking about eight years ago. Now we’re trying to catch up with where technology is so people don’t have to go to a Shack Shakers show to buy it. You can buy it online now but it would be nice to have it streaming to dial up on your TV if possible. It’s one of the many projects that flesh out what were going for here.
D: The way you describe your art and your process, it reminds me of someone like an Iggy Pop. The way I equate that is an artist who can get things done. They aren’t very airy about what they do and they have a very working class vibe about them. If they had a flat tire or if you dropped them in the woods, they’d be able to figure things out and still be creative.
W: (Laughs) Yeah, I like that.
D: Is that how you see you see yourself as an artist?
W: Yeah I think that’s important. Coming from a blue-collar background, that’s the difference between the musicians came up playing…rough joints. Playing four-hour sets and packing your own P.A. There was no Internet and no GPS. You piled in the van. It was against your better judgment. The lifestyle was ridiculous.
D: (Laughs)
W: You know what I mean? To try and do it for a living was radical. I got started in the late eighties playing in church. No one does that anymore as far as roots music goes. Maybe they do but the crop of country musicians, if you want to call it that, in Nashville now are mostly Northern hipsters that have come down to escape the tax burden of New York. They don’t know the packing of the P.A. They don’t know the four-hour gig. They don’t know a world without GPS or Email. They’ve got the fashion sense down. It seems like it’s more important to look cool and be beautiful. This tragic beauty thing with the Yoko Ono hats and having a beard. It’s more important to look right and party with the right people than to slug it out in a bar fight and wind up in jail a couple times (laughs). All the things that we’ve went through to get to where we are. And still, we’ve scratched and clawed our way to the middle, let’s be honest. It’s a strange world when it is so successful and easy to choose a life of music. It shows you leisure time and affluence we have in a country where rich kids can just decide they are country singers all of a sudden, have a career and blow right past us professionally. It’s kind of disconcerting but in the end, I think people know we’ve been doing it for twenty years. I’ve playing bars for twenty-five.
Things are so different now just in the past five years. The industry is totally upside down from when I started. It’s just kind of baffling to see so many artists battle for the same attention. But we occupy our own space. We have our own niche carved out and we’ll keep at it.
D: It seems like there have always been those kinds of problems and the more it changes, the more it stays the same.
W: Yes, that’s right.
D: I think when people watch the Shack Shakers play; they can feel the twenty-year thing. I remember watching you play harmonica and thinking that I could do that. When I sat down to play, it was very humbling very quickly. It’s great testament to the band that you guys make playing looks so effortless that I think people can tell the difference.
W: I hope so, yeah. One thing that is kind of a mark against us is the amount of enthusiasm, humor and energy that is in the band. It’s a strike against us in a lot of ways because playing those honky-tonks and sports bars and cruddy beer joints; you couldn’t stand there and look bored. You’d get kicked out, fired or beat up if you liked you were too precious. You were there to entertain people for four or five hours and then maybe you’d get a break. It was somewhat blue-collar, I’d say. It’s not like I’m complaining. Even then, I had it good. But there’s something to be said for bands coming out of this old road. It’s almost a lost art to being an entertainer or a song and dance man. Someone who tries to entertain people beyond just the content of the song, but through the entire performance. And the entire band performing as four front men. Entertainers putting smiles on people’s faces. Now the audience just stands there looking at how cool the band looks. They get fashion advice from seeing how they are dressed and murmur amongst themselves if this is the right gig to be at.
D: Yeah.
W: Before, it was hard-drinking, blue-collar people that wanted to see a show and dance. And there might be something that breaks out that’s wild. There might be a bar fight because you got ‘em all riled up or something. There was something different to those old days. The Nashville of now is a totally different place. It is a fashion runway with a lot of Johnny come latelies. I sound bitter and I kind of am but at the same time, I’m happy that we get to come out of the old way. That was an era that goes back to the rowdy minstrel show days and the old pubs of England. It’s what people wanted to see something go down. It lasted all the way to the early 2000s and all of a sudden, it switched. People started being self-conscious. We had Duane Denison from the Jesus Lizard in the band for a while. And they were a rowdy band. A rowdy, hard-rockin’ band with a wild front man that came out of Texas. When he joined the Shack Shakers, in the time that had elapsed from the end of the Jesus Lizard to him picking up with us, he just couldn’t believe how audiences were behaving so much differently. They had their hands in their pockets, they stood still, and they looked nervous or uneasy even though the band is having a ball onstage. Everyone just seemed so stiff and self-conscious that he couldn’t believe it and would yell from the stage, “What’s wrong with you people?!”
D: (Laughs)
W: You know it’s a rock show. Lighten up. Spin Magazine voted him one of the “Top 100 Guitarists of All Time” and he has to perform for a bunch of waxed figures that look perfectly quaffed. They’re supposed to be all rock n’ roll but rock n’ roll is on the inside, man. You’ve got to let it out. There are still a handful of people that like to come out and raise hell.
D: Yeah. I don’t why that is either. I’ve seen that working sound on shows, going to them or playing them as well. There’s an old music professor of mine, Nate Dillon, in the AV that has gotten his old punk band Dead Rats back together in the past couple years and been doing one off local shows here and they have somewhat of a following. One of the things they used was buy packs of Oatmeal Crème cookies from the dollar store and throw them at people from the stage if they looked tired and say, “You look like you can use some energy, eat!” The last few times I’ve seen them, people just stand there and get hit in the face with these packs of cookies.
W: (Laughs) Your normal human reflex is to dodge them, they are so dead.
D: (Laughs) Yeah, I don’t know man.
W: I know. You don’t even think a sugar fix would wake them out of their stupor. They’re not present. People walk around now and they aren’t present. They’re thinking about where they are going to be or what someone else is thinking. They’re present on Facebook. I had to scold an audience the other night. We were in Arkansas. I had to tell them, “If you like a song, you can clap. If you’re going to hang around, give us a little applause because in real life, that’s how you do the Like button.” And I have to explain the difference between reality and Facebook. Then, the next song ended and people started clapping. Ahh, okay, they do like it.
D: Depending on how many people are in the audience, that’s how many “likes” you got.
W: (Laughs) Yeah, exactly. People aren’t human beings anymore, they’re consumers. Internet consumers, cyborgs or something, I don’t know. People don’t really have blue-collar lives anymore. They do in certain joints. The joints we’re playing are like punk rock clubs with hip people that have good paying jobs. There are not really the agrarian, coal-mining people that there used to be. People who are machinists and whatnot. They’re not the ones coming to these kinds of rock clubs. It’s the kids that work at the Spaghetti Factory or wherever. It’s not like they have this growing, physically debilitating job that just want to get away from, to go drink and raise hell to blow off some steam from their shitty work week. People have a pretty cushy living now so sometimes a blue-collar band like us can fall on deaf ears. There’s so much leisure time now that people are getting soft and weird.
D: That’s interesting. I can’t really speak for people my age because I’ve never really related that much. I’ve never had that hard blue-collar life but I still go out and have a good time.
W: Yeah some people got it and some people don’t, you know? And I’ve always tried to avoid work.
D: (Laughs)
W: But the type of places I play are blue-collar so growing up playing them, I knew what a good time was in a rough club. I’m kind of spoiled in a weird way. I’m spoiled in a different way now because instead of a four hour set, I only do about an hour and I don’t have to pack my own P.A. There’s snacks they give us and beer tickets, which never happened fifteen years ago. In a way I’m spoiled by the old stuff too because people seemed more real. It was really bizarre. But I’m with ya. I’m not like a blacksmith or anything (laughs).
JD Wilkes Interview: Part 2