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 last left our heroes during an in-depth conversation about music, Kentucky music history, and touring with the Rev and Unknown.
Get your tickets here.
By Jesse Davidson
Davidson: A lot of people I talk to, either interviewing them or casually, seem to be waiting for the next “Sex Pistols” or “Ramones” moment where a band comes along and just turns things on it’s side. Have you seen anything like that recently during your time on the road?
Wilkes: Well, not really. The only place I see music going is in a more traditional direction. To break anymore ground, you’d have to go back to the basics. You see that with a few R&B singers trying to go for the 60’s/70’s Al Green thing. I think what would really do that would be an all black rock and roll band doing Little Richard style Jump Blues and selling it hard. That would be the thing because Rockabilly was only around for maybe five years. After that, you had Surf music and Garage and that was a craze for about five or six years. You had the Beatles and they came in about ’62 and disbanded in ’71. So they had a good run of about ten years. There’s these genres that come and go like Arena Rock, Disco, etc. Hip-Hop however, has been around since the 70’s and rapping over samples has been around forever. The only place for black music to go to is back to something organic. Hip-Hop has already done the rappity-rap thing about the bitches and the hos. I think they understand there is this perennial turn over of teenage boys that always want to hear something violent and dirty. That’s whose really propping up that market.
But that’s not good for everyone else. The stuff that I see that wins all the Grammys and everyone loves is the stuff that sells the records but the people don’t have any taste. They aren’t grown up. It used be that grown ups bought music. They’d take an LP, turn off all the lights, smoke a joint, listen to it and really get involved. This was like a ritual people did. Now it’s turned into this .99-cent happy meal thing. A constant turnover of this Jelly of the Month, Jelly of the Week and Jelly of the Day crap. The only thing I know that could turn it around would be an all black rock and roll band. There used to be a band in the 90’s called the Atomic Fireballs and for whatever reason, they broke up. Oooh, that was so close! That would be a great thing for America to get some classic R&B going. I think the underground would love it. I think it could cross over into the mainstream and pull more people into cool music, kind of like what The Dap Kings do a little bit but a little more primal and something that’s just undeniable. I would love to see that.
D: Yeah. That’s what I’m looking for out of it myself. Just something that’s more edgy. I love Gary Clark Jr. When he is playing a solo and he’s really reaching for it, you get that feeling out of him. I love Alabama Shakes because it can get really loud and intense but it’s also pretty mellow too. Something really edgy would be great.
W: Yeah just something undeniable for everybody. Your rockabilly kids would love it. Your hipsters would love it. I think it would be good for America. There was a front man for this band. It was Vintage…
D: Vintage Trouble?
W: Vintage Trouble! He’s a great front man. I think take him out of that band and put him with some of these other folks and that’d be great. Carolina Chocolate Drops were able to sort of hip-up old time music as well.
D: Yeah. The good thing about Hip-Hop now is that artists are bringing in an actual band play with them or bringing in Jazz musicians to play behind them while they tell a story about their experiences. It’s interesting because they’re going back to their roots in a way.
W: I love that they have the musicians there and I don’t have a problem with the rapping on top of that at all. It’s the time signature and the drumming I have a problem with. We’ve had variations on the same beat for 40 years. We need it to swing. I hate it when they take an old jazz song and remix it with a Hip-Hop beat. The Hip-Hop beat is, to me, cliché now and the only place to go is back to swing. Rap on top of that. You might find something cool. One of my favorite records is Jack Kerouac rapping on top of Steve Allen’s Jazz piano. That’s a great record. Its spoken word but you could consider it rap. It’s free form but it has dynamics to it that are so interesting. To square it all off with a Hip-Hop beat is just numbskulling it to death. The tradition that came out of Jazz drumming that started off in the military with paradiddles and the way they took that and made it swing was just infectious. It gives such a depth and a layer to the music that made you think, “Who would have thought the drums can do that?”
D: Definitely. There as a newer rapper Kendrick Lamar that is doing stuff like that. He has a track that he brought in a jazz band on and he just raps over it.
W: That’s great. I have no problem with that. At the same time, I don’t think we’ve exhausted every possible melody that can be written. We kind of turned our back on melody back in the 90’s and that’s something that became a passé thing to sing come up with nice compositions. Before this era, we had the amazing era from Tin Pan Alley days of the early 20th Century to I guess the mid-sixties with the Hit Parade. You had this American Songbook of melodies and then it just ended. I think The Beatles continued it on and bands influenced by The Beatles but then it really tapered off. It was dead by the 90’s. If it came back, maybe that would blow people away. But again, are people so dead now that have to have everything spelled out? There’s no more nuance in music. There’s no mystery in what people mean anymore. You listen to a country song, it’s just bad. “I did this. I think this. Then this happened. Then this. This is what I believe”. There’s no subtlety in the lyricism and no melody to go along with it to enhance it. No creative drumming or musicianship to go along with it. And the recording quality is too clean and too perfect. Everything is so literal and high definition, it’s the only way we can understand anything.
It’s a shame…but here I am. I’m the guy that rips his shirt off on stage and jumps in the audience. What do I know? (Laughs) I’m definitely a bold cartoon version of myself. Flannery ‘O Connor says, “Sometimes for the hard of hearing you have to shout and for the almost blind, you have to draw large and startling figures.” That’s kind of what I’m doing. Trying to get their attention and lure them in.
D: With this tour cycle coming up, you’ll be out with Reverend Horton Heat and Unknown Hinson at the Canyon Club on March 19th. I’ve read online that the Shack Shakers have had an extensive touring history with Reverend Horton Heat. Is that true?
W: Yes that’s right. We were his opening band for many runs. We’re good friends with that whole camp.
D: That’s great. Were they the first band to take you guys out on the road or did you have experiences with other bands before them?
W: We went out with Hank 3 originally and Southern Culture on the Skids. We toured with Robert Plant across Europe. And The Black Keys. We did a run with them early on. We’ve probably done the most dates with The Rev. or Hank 3.
D: With that long relationship with R.H.H, have you thought about collaborating on an album together?
W: Well, he has played on a Shack Shaker record. About four tunes on our Pandelerium album. I was on a Reverend Horton Heat tribute record where we did “Love Whip” (laughs). He has threated to get me up onstage and play harmonica. Evidently, he’s a big blues harp fan and his first love was Little Walter. I might take him up on it on this next run. We’ll probably play “Love Whip” (laughs).
D: (Laughs) Have you played any shows with Unknown Hinson or will this be a first for you guys?
W: Well I was in Hank 3’s band for a month and we…oh yeah, you know what? We did open up for Unknown Hinson in Nashville once. I used to go and see him before he was signed playing at the Sutler in Nashville. This was back when he was selling tapes out of a shoebox. He had the whole shtick down. Boy, I laughed so hard. It was so hilarious. This guy standing on stage like a chauffer that didn’t budge. Staring at the audience through his sunglasses for like an entire hour and a half. Some guy starts heckling him and he pulled out a cap gun and shot the guy (laughs) then he laid on the floor for the rest of the set. Then he got signed and I think Marty Stewart helped him out with that. He has some of the funniest songs. I’m looking forward to seeing that every night.
D: I bet. I saw him at the Arcadia Blues Club a few years ago and got to watch him sound check without his shtick. He’s great.
W: And a guitar god on top of that. He’s a shredder.
D: Yep and an interesting tone too. Something you can’t quite put your finger on.
W: Yeah I’ll have to check that out. A couple of times I’ve seen him, I couldn’t quite hear him to well because the room was too echoey.
But yeah, funny songs. Polly Urethane, Foggy Windows, I Make Faces when I Make Love (laughs).
D: Alkyhal Withdrawl too (laughs).
With the music community in Nashville/Kentucky area, it seems really close. Everyone seems to know each other and it seems really tight there. Would you say that is true?
W: In Nashville, yeah it’s always been kind of that way. Slightly competitive but “keep your enemies closer” so they all party together. There’s kind of a split in Kentucky between the East and the West. There’s kind of this weird rivalry. Regardless, they all celebrate if someone from Kentucky gets big and goes far. Bill Monroe was from Western Kentucky. He created Bluegrass music. Everyone thinks he’s from Eastern Kentucky but he’s really from my neck of the woods. Eastern Kentucky is a very different place from where I live. That’s the mountains and where I live is more like the Mississippi Delta. Very flat and very swampy. Historically speaking, we’ve got influence from New Orleans and Memphis. The river traffic brings a lot of Jazz and that’s why Rockabilly kind of happed around here. In Memphis, you had Blues, Country and all these influences come together. The same with Bluegrass, really. It’s mountain music meets New Orleans Jazz chord changes and progressions. The articulation of the guitar and banjo picking was them trying to sound like Merrill House piano players. That’s a little bit of tid bit of history there. There was a lot of collaboration.
D: Yeah that’s what I’ve been seeing and hearing. There’s a Music City documentary with Joe Buck and Hank 3 in it. They both talk about that and Joe has his song “Music City is Dead” in it.
W: Well I don’t believe in writing songs and making it a political thing. I know Shelton (Hank 3) and Joe Buck does that. I don’t want to make people feel bad as part of my product. I can talk nonchalantly in an interview about it and bemoan the way things have changed but I don’t want it to be my official output. It might be true but I don’t want to but people out with the songs I write. The things I write are more about folklore, culture and if you’re to the anthropology and history of the South. I’m not gonna do political song about “Fuck Nashville” or anything like that.
D: Totally. I think music is like your car. Some people put political bumper stickers on it and other people keep it to themselves. You might be outspoken about it but not have it reflect in the music.
W: I guess I just don’t want to distill it down to a bumper sticker slogan. I want to be thoughtful about my criticism. I also want to show how Nashville is a great town too. It’s a great city and close by me. I go there about once a month. I don’t want it to be an anthem for me that “Nashville Sucks”. Even though, it has changed a lot and times have changed. I just have to learn to adapt.
D: I get where you’re coming from. Here in the Antelope Valley, we are about an hour outside of L.A. Musicians from here will play down below and have bad experiences and hate it afterward. I’m not necessarily for L.A. but I’m not against it either.
W: Yeah, that’s it.
D: It’s a cool place but it’s not anything to hold to a high esteem. There are some cool places and not cool places.
W: Yeah, it’s complicated.
D: Do you have any other Shack Shaker or side project news you’d like people to know about?
W: I’m going be working on documentary that will follow up Seven Signs. Similar kinds of characters that will be more of a featurette I hope to have it out by the end of the year and then do a run with it. In the place where an opening band would be, we would have a film show and then the audience would see us play. Sort of like a multimedia event. Then probably going back to Europe this summer in August and probably recording a new album after that. What we are going to do is like a live lo-fi record. Maybe at my own house in a shack out in the woods and have it be a follow-up to Cockadoodledon’t and call it Cockadoodledeux (laughs) maybe not.
D: Well I’m a fan of great music and bad puns so I’m hooked already.
W: Cockadoodledon’t is kind of pun so it seems only fitting. We want to put the fun back in recording and not sweat it so much. Play it, put it out, and be done with it. Don’t belabor it.
D: Absolutely. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today. I always enjoy a conversation with a fellow music lover.
W: Yes. I think we solved a lot of problems today. We’ve figured it out.
D: (Laughs) Yeah it’s good. We’ve made real progress and we’ll turn our results into the committee.
W: Right. Crunch the numbers and see what happens
Thanks again JD. Be sure to catch the Legendary Shack Shakers at the Canyon Club on March 19th.
If you’d like more information on the band, click here.
JD Wilkes Interview: Part 1