All photos by Bob Hanham, not to be reused without permission
Even though Paul Pigat is a local fella, it was a Texan, the Reverend Horton Heat, that turned me on to him. Jim Heath – the Reverend – brought him up in a Straight interview I did, telling me how Paul was his favourite Vancouver guitarist; I hadn’t, at that point, heard Pigat play. A tour or two later, Jim would have Paul join him onstage at the Commodore for a show I sorely wish I’d been at, after an afternoon the two men spent eating sushi together and socializing, which Paul discussed in a subsequent interview, here...
While I missed my chance to see them onstage together, having now seen both men separately on a few occasions, it's obvious to me that musically, the two are deeply kindred spirits. And while not every track on Pigat’s new album – Cousin Harley’s Let’s Go – is in the same muscular hard rock-meets-rockabilly vein that Heath is known for mining, it contains some of the hardest-rocking music I’ve heard Pigat make – especially the title track, “Let’s Go,” which (I think) is as close as Cousin Harley have come on album to living up to their nickname, the Motörhead of rockabilly. (Live, they live up to it effortlessly, but their recordings have been a bit stronger on the country-swing/ rockabilly / roots music end of the spectrum than the Motörhead one, that I’ve noticed – and indeed, those genres are all present on Let’s Go, as well, but in a context overall toughened up by the rock tunes).
Pigat has a birthday show lined up for Cousin Harley at the Rickshaw on September 25th. With other gigs (like Heavy Trip, the night before) getting cancelled or postponed due to COVID), if you’re craving a little burst of live music while you can, you might want to seize the opportunity - this is going to be a hell of a show - also featuring local supergroup The Imperial, who I spoke to here - and there may not be that many in the near future!
Questions and answers with Paul Pigat – who kindly assented to an email interview - follow.
Allan: How have you weathered COVID? (How was your income as a musician affected? Did the government step up to bat?). Is the new album something you had in the works since before the pandemic?
Paul: Well, it’s been interesting to say the least. It’s the longest I've ever gone without working as a musician since I was 15, I think. I'm not one to sit around and enjoy the leisure of time off though – I've been building and restoring guitars throughout the pandemic. It’s something I've always done but to say I was adequate before would be an overstatement. I've really learned a lot (thanks to the tutelage of Warren Murfitt) and I'm building some really nice stuff now. I also finished up the Cousin Harley CD as well as an all-instrumental project called the Shut-Ins with Kevin Breit, Damian Graham and Tommy Babin. The Shut-Ins was all recorded remotely (LA to Ontario) and I mixed and mastered it myself. It was my first time doing all of it on my own. Exhausting but fun! The Cousin Harley CD was recorded just prior to the lockdowns so everything was there, we just had to mix it and send it off for mastering. Erik Neilson and Marc L'Esperance did a great job and I'm hopeful we will get a chance to tour it soon!
Financially, it was tough but I've always taught as a second source of income so I was still working. Unfortunately, I was about a hundred bucks a month over the allowed income, so I wasn't really able to get assistance on a regular basis. I think I was able to get two months. All in all I've done OK though. I've been poorer than this in the past!
I gather Jim Heath made some folks angry by not cancelling shows due to the pandemic, early on. At the time, I could sympathize a bit - you gotta work, and there were all sorts of ideas out there about levels of safety and so forth. I thought he was making a wrong call but also felt sad to see him getting pilloried online for it... Any contact with him? How is he doing?
I haven't spoken to Jim in awhile. I think there were a lot of folks that just needed to keep the wheels turning. It’s really hard to stop doing something that has been your only focus for decades like… well, I guess, like both of us. I went through SARS in China so when it jumped over to North America I knew it was time to ease off the gas. I think that experience made the decision pretty easy for me, but… I like Jim. He’s a ton of fun to hang out with. We don't talk politics or religion and that’s cool with me. And he’s one hell of a guitar player!
Cousin Harley, L-to-R: Paul Pigat, Jesse Cahill, Keith Picot. Photo by Bob Hanham, not to be reused without permission
I gather last year you had a mishap last year and suffered an injury... What happened, and are you fully recovered? Were you afraid it would impact your playing?
I fell off a ladder cleaning gutters. It just proves that I'm not much good at anything but playing guitar! I was pretty bruised up and had four broken ribs. When I finally got my wind back right after the fall, the first thing I did was wiggle my fingers and toes. They were working, so it certainly wasn't as bad as it could have been. I knew I had broken a few ribs right away but I still wish I went to the hospital that day! I could have used those painkillers!!
So many people helped me out when I got back to town with food, chairs to sleep in, CBD gummies to help me sleep. I even had some friends I've made touring over the years that all congregate on the Gretsch Pages (a Gretsch appreciation website) do a fundraiser for me. It was great and I can't thank them all enough. I'm pretty lucky on many fronts.
Glad to see you're back in action. What informed the decision to go in a harder-rocking direction for this album?
We've always dabbled in heavier sounds than the status quo rockabilly thing. I'm an old metalhead and you can't just give that up! Also, I don't like my music pure. I like to mix things. This is just what I was feeling when I started writing the disc.
I sometimes wonder if the niche of rockabilly keeps you from reaching the widest possible audience - if this album is, like, a calculated move to reach a larger spectrum of hard rock listeners, or if you just wanted to swing in the other direction after making a very rootsy album (Blue Smoke:The Music of Merle Travis) or...
I think that this has always been a bit of a barrier for us in a way. We are too rockabilly for the rock crowd and to rock for the rockabilly crowd. That’s why I never introduce us as a rockabilly band. It’s roadhouse music: it’s fun, its fast, and its greasy. Sometimes it’s sophisticated and sometimes it’s lowbrow. It’s all the music I like, so I put it all together. If people like it, that’s great! if they don't, well, I still have fun playing with the band.
Looking at the album, then… Do I detect a narrative arc in the lyrics? Someone shows up who brings trouble: "Right Back with the Blues" - then you roll with it - "Let's Go" even though you know it's a bad idea, have some fun ("El Swartho's Big Adventure"). Then you SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES ("Rained like Hell") and have your baby thrown in jail or such ("She's My Baby...)" I haven't been able to completely devote my focus to it - how does the story end?
I think that next time I need to put song order together, I'm going to get you to do it! That would have been a great way to format the disc. [Editor’s note: actually, it kind of IS the track listing for the first few cuts of the album, so I’m not sure why Paul is getting hypothetical, here]. It would have been like an audio play then! I guess, as a whole, this is a bit darker a record for us, so I was tapping into that when writing the lyrics. Many of these tunes started out very differently – more trad hillbilly/ rockabilly stuff. That’s an easy way of writing for me, but I wanted to get away from that for this CD. We've done trad rockabilly, hillbilly and western swing CDs and I just wanted to do something different, with different lyrical content, new progressions and more challenging forms. I've said it many times but I get bored doing the same thing over and over. Some bands are great at it and it establishes their sound. I go the other way: the sound is the performers, not necessarily the material, so I get a lot of leeway with this group.
I guess if you want an ending to the story it’s “Gone Gone Gone.” That seems to be how most things end. Our disc It’s a Sin is similar in concept but not quite as cohesive as Let's Go.
The story seems to be straight out of vintage noir - maybe a classic killer-couple on the run flick like Gun Crazy or They Live By Night? Are you a fan of that sort of film? Are there any movie influences in the lyrics?
It certainly has a bit of that vibe to it. I'd been listening to a lot of Big Lazy when I started writing the disc. If you aren't familiar with them check them out – an all instrumental band from NYC; it’s amazing what kind of imagery you get from a music without lyrics. Although this CD sounds nothing like them, I can't shake the feeling that their music was influencing my lyrics.
I used to read a lot or Raymond Chandler so I'm guessing there’s inspiration from that as well. I'm not the fella that writes about rainbows and unicorns. These are all stories of the trickier parts of life. Let’s be honest, we all make crazy decisions in our youth and have to deal with the consequences! Or is that just me??
Nope! ...So, "Who's That Lyin'" is one I haven't been able to figure out. What's going on in that song? Was it consciously a lyrical riff on "John the Revelator," where instead of revelation you get lies...? (It sure seems like a musical riff on that song.)
The beginnings of that tune had been bouncing around my head for quite a while before I decided to finish it for Cousin Harley. I originally started writing it with the intention of giving it to the Sojourners when I was working with them – it had more redemption in it then. I guess it’s like the little angel whispering in your ear, while all you've been listening to is the devil on your other shoulder. Only the lucky get redemption. There’s lots of other stories where they don't… I guess its up to the listener to decide which it is. And yeah! Its definitely a take off on “John the Revelator!” Son House is awesome!!!! (I was thinking of the Blind Willie Johnson version but the Son House is awesome too).
"Let's Go" has a real fun video. Was Keith [Picot, Cousin Harley bassist and sometimes filmmaker] involved in the making of that? That's my favourite song on the record - are there particular inspirations? Is it (correct me if I'm wrong) the hardest "rock" song you've done?
Its definitely one of the most "rock" songs we've done but not the only one. The main riff was something I used to use on a cover of “Built for Speed” years ago. I never like to cover something too close to the original and that riff really changed the tune and always reminds me of race cars. It’s such a fun riff that i thought it deserved a tune of its own. It’s a pretty saucy lyric with very thinly veiled innuendo that keeps things fun and on the edge of appropriateness The video was done by Adam PW Smith – I can't take a shred of credit for that. He offered to do it, came up with the concept, found all the footage and put it together. I was expecting something fun from him but the final product blew me away!
Curious when you write with the band - do you demo songs for them? Do you record all the instruments at that time? Do you play all of them? I wonder about the drums, because Jesse [Cahill] is really versatile and driving and really propels some of the songs - I noticed this on "Rained Like Hell" in particular. So did you come up with that drum beat and demo it yourself, playing all parts, or is it some plug-in, or...?
There were a few firsts for us on this disc. I wrote all the tunes at home and recorded guitar beds. I formatted and arranged them all before the guys even got a chance to hear them. This is also one of the few CDs we did to a click. It had to be done that way for them to play to the guitar bed tracks; it’s kind of ass-backwards as the drums and bass are usually the beds. I did the first Boxcar Campfire record this way and I find I can really hone down the tune before we get in the studio. That being said, playing to the click can be very sterile for me and everyone swings differently, so I went back and re-recorded all the guitar tracks to the band. So I guess they played to me and then I played to them.
I always wonder about things like the words "full frequency stereophonic sound" on the album cover - I am assuming that is a design element to give it a throwback feel, or, like, does it actually mean anything? (Are there a lot of CDs being recorded these days that are not "full frequency stereophonic?"
Rich Katynski did a great job on the cover. I gave him free reign to do what he wanted and if you look closely there’s a lot of references to the lyrics there. The "Full Frequency Stereophonic Sound" is kind of a nod to those early stereo recordings, so its purely design. That being said, when I mix a record, I like the stereo spred to be quite narrow. This one is a bit wider, so it’s as "stereophonic" as we've gotten to so far!
Aha. Okay. So... I might have asked before, but who are your favourite local guitarists?
Man, Vancouver is filthy with great guitar players!!! I couldn't possibly list them all but here’s some of my faves off the top of my head
Stephen Nikleva
Jimmy Roy
Paul Rigby
Gord Grdina
Scott Smith
David Sikula
Don Alder
…man I could go on and on.
Setting aside rockabilly, who are your personal guitar heroes in the world of metal and hard rock? Have you crossed paths with many of them? How have they had influence on you as a guitarist?
Metal and hard rock? Dave Murray and Adrian Smith. Angus and Malcolm Young. I've loved a lot of other players over the years (Vai, Van Halen, Malmsteen etc) but I don’t think i will ever tire of listening to these guys. I've never met any of them (RIP Malcolm) but man, I would love to get the chance one day!! Funny that I would choose double guitar bands. Maybe I need another guitar player to work with!!!!??
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