Eugene Chadbourne comes to LanaLou's: On Frank Zappa and Jimmy Carl Black, Kacey Musgraves, and various cages (some big enough, others not)

So there's a first: I designed a gig poster, aprops of Eugene Chadbourne's upcoming show (next Friday, a week today) at LanaLou's. Erika helped. I had wanted to include Boris Karloff in there, too, as Doc Chad has cited Bugs Bunny and Boris Karloff as influences, but there really was no room. (The guy in the bottom right, the Ymir, will be explained presently).

The image in the poster was taken from this spot-the-difference photo of the Doc and Ed Hurrell that I took the last time Eugene was in town... It isn't the best pic of Doc Chad, but I figured it would be just goofy enough to fit with the Romero original we're riffing on. 

Local artist ARGHH! - AKA Ed's buddy Ken, AKA Nick Mitchum, AKA the Drunk Mailman and probably a few others also designed a poster, and I'll be printing a few up and putting them in choice places over the next week.

I've already blogged a little teaser to his music, only just yesterday realizing that I forgot to link the singularly terrific collaboration he did with the Sun City Girls (and Elliott Sharp). There's also a very recent set of him performing live in New York with Jim McHugh here. They do a Circle Jerks cover around the 21:00 minute mark, followed by Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" for banjo, but there is no reason to think either of these songs will be in Eugene's set by the time he reaches LanaLou's next Friday. I think he's pretty spontaneous about what he chooses to do...

There's lots else you can find online, including many other things by me. Eugene will be at LanaLou's on July 22nd, with an opening set from some permutation of Red Herring. For those of you on the other side of the bridge, he'll also be performing in Surrey on July 23rd (a free show, but it's a restaurant, so you're kinda expected to sit and buy a meal! The food is good, tho'). As usual, I'm in italics - Doc Chad is not.

How has the pandemic been for you?

For me it could really have been much worse. I got quite a bit of government support in various ways unavailable before and had a break from touring for the first time since the mid 70s. That activity was generally getting harder and harder to pull off, I'll have to see how it goes as touring starts up again.

Do you have vaccine-hesitant friends?

 
I know people like this, also I hear about others....I take care of a granddaughter so taking every possible precaution was the only option.

Are you having to do anything differently?

We've been stressing outdoor shows. Some performances have had to be done masked. Basically however I am not dealing with the rip-roaring boogie-til-you-puke mass crowd events.

I'm looking at [one of Doc Chad's self-released recordings] In the Museum of Things. What is the Mike Pence "Dang Me?"

It is a parody version of the Roger Miller song Dang Me with lyrics about the attempts to hang Vice President Mike Pence on January 6

We've talked about Zappa before - 

I'll accept your word on that.

You don't have to! See here, we talk about Jimmy Carl Black and "I Got More Pussy than Zappa." There was something else too, but I can't find it. But, uh... 

a) besides Jimmy Carl Black, have you ever gigged with any Zappa sidemen? (Any you would particularly want to play with?).

I have played with Bunk Gardner, Don Preston and Mike Kennelly. Jimmy was always the one I was particulary interested in though.

b) Murray Acton reports hearing from Ike Willis, I think it was, that Zappa would randomly piss-test his band members (I believe Ike said this by way of refusing a joint Murray was passing - they ran into each other at a coffee shop). Curious if you ever heard this before, or other stories about Zappa's requirements of his band...

Jimmy told me he would do a sight reading test for the Turtles guys if he smelled weed coming from their room, but they could sight read anything so he never got them in trouble that way.

c) What do you make of Zappa's take on drugs? I can't think of another musician whose music has benefitted more from my listening to it high, but Zappa's stern remonstrations to his audience ("that stuff you are smoking is very bad for you") always ring in my ears..

.
Meanwhile he smoked multiple packs of cigarettes every day. I never got tired of hearing Jimmy say "When you come right down to it, Zappa was full of shit."

d) Did Jimmy have any stories about Zappa that you remember/ care to share? I gather he was involved in some sort of lawsuit with him at one point. - did he ever talk about that? Was his overall impression of working for Zappa positive or negative?

Zappa promised to make them rich and famous, well Jimmy would say he made them famous. They sued over royalties at one point and won, which really made Zappa mad. He said the lawyer bought a sports car. I don't know how one could determine an "overall" in his attitude, he had plenty of negative and positive feelings.

e) What is your favourite Zappa band/ period/ album?
The original group and the first few albums, although I don't listen to Freak Out much.

f) What do you think Zappa would make of your approach to his music? (I think of what you do as virtuosic but loose, whereas he seems to go for virtuosic and tight...). Did Jimmy ever comment on your similarities/ differences?

 
He said Zappa just wanted to be avant garde, Captain Beefheart was really avant garde. Jimmy said he never played improvised music until he played with me, Zappa never improvised anything. I am not sure as to what his opinion about me would have been, I don't think about that sort of thing and it is always surprising to find out for instance that Ric Ocasek liked my guitar playing or Mason Williams thinks There'll Be No Tears Tonight is the greatest country and western record ever made.

Last time we spoke, I believe you said you and one of your daughters was getting into Kacey Musgraves. Do you do any of her songs?

We did "Slow Burn" at a Father/Daughter Banjo Concert

Who are your favourite active country musicians? (I've been catching up with the music of Gillian Welch lately...).

Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson.

 I was delighted that you did "Pile Up All Architecture" at your last show in town, and then stunned that I couldn't find the lyrics online. Or "Hendrix Buried in Tacoma," or... a bunch of other classics (maybe I just didn't look in the right places). If there are any Shockabilly songs that you think you might play, can you give the lyrics and some backstory as to how they got written? (Did you ever actually dream about bleeding?) 

"Pile Up," which is based on a dream, is one I played a lot. Hah I looked up "Vampire Tiger Girl" for a Halloween concert last year because I couldn't remember the lyrics. The "Bleeding" thing ["When You Dream About Bleeding"] was from a dream plus also a reference to the "Billy Bing Dreambook" which provided interpretations of dream images cross referenced with lucky numbers on the numbers game.

 
I like all the originals Shockabilly did and a plus for me is that we performed most of them so much live that while I might forget a few details I basically remember how to play all of them.

Was touring a direct influence on "Your USA and My Face?"

Of course!

Do you have an updated version of "Let's Go Back in Time" apropos of the Supreme Court...?

Nothing to update except adding "posse" to the line after "Let's say we're just like Ghandi" 

Does it bug you that the song is still relevant?

Sure.

Besides the electric rake, do you have a favourite homemade instrument or stage prop that you've put together? Do you still experiment with such things?

Not so much, my favorite remains the Toast-Ar and the ability to make toast for the audience while soloing. That suffered from bad engineering though, no toaster ever manufactured can take the transition to live noise music performance the way a metal rake can.

 
After a recent "donation" from one of my daughters, we may see the birth of The Breast Pump.

Shockabilly at the Railway Club, 1983, by bev davies, not to be reused without permission

Paul Leary remembered seeing Shockabilly in Texas and as he recalls, you had miked a bird cage so that when the door slammed shut, it sounded like a giant prison door clanging shut or something. What was the inspiration for that?

Greensboro's madcap composer Gilfred Lee Frey said once in an interview he felt like he and I were engaged in a competition to create the weirdest music of all time.

 
Did you have a pet bird at some point, or did you buy the cage specifically to make an instrument, or...?

No, bird cages get tossed out all the time.

I took part in a They Might Be Giants theatre performance in New York one summer, they rented this place and were drawing huge crowds with their sets and various guests. I remember I brought a birdcage on the flight in a shopping bag and the inspection guy didn't say anything about it, even noticing it had a contact microphone taped to it. Then on the way to the theatre my friends and I found a giant bird cage someone had put on the street, this was big enough for me to climb into! So we made that part of the show.

Did you use that particular prop on record?

That is on the cassette "The Birdcage."

Did it have any musical purposes besides the clanging shut door? (Out of curiosity, were there particular songs you used that prop with, like, say, "Too Big for Its Cage?")

I always thought the Birdcage sounded like an amplified harp of some sort. "Too Big for its Cage" was about the Ymir monster in the movie 20 Million Miles to Earth.

TOO BIG WAS ABOUT THE YMIR?!!!! Very cool.

I hadn’t thought about this song in ages but if you check the lyrics out….I always liked the melodic line “cowboys found him on a beach," and the slow space coda concluding the piece is supposed to be from the Ymir’s point of view

Anything else we should plug? The Book of Heads? 

It is The Head of Books, the daily free use suscription series. Please plug! ["The idea is to record and distribute a guitar solo every day during this period," Doc Chad's website says, the period ending some time in 2025. The solos will be sent out as download links via we transfer and are high quality wav.files... The solos are “free use” and indeed, collaborative recycling of the material by the participants is encouraged... A nominal $2 charge is connected with the sign up, you will then receive a download link to a document with information and answers to questions about this initiative. The important thing for us to receive from your end is an email address to send the wav. files to. In order to sustain the program it is important to make more substantial donations than the sign up charge."]

Any other upcoming projects?

 
New CDs Cackalacky Massakree with David Licht, David Menestres, Jeb Bishop, Jim McHugh and David Menestres, solo We Can Stop Them If We Try featuring "Let's Go Back in Time." And coming soon the Horror series restarts with Volume 14: A Heavy Metal Band Moves In Down the Block and It Practices A Lot, featuring the Italian heavy metal band Rideout.

Thanks, Doc Chad! Looking forward to seeing you again! 

See here for Eventbrite tickets for Eugene Chadbourne ($20 plus service charge) at LanaLou's, with guests Red Herring (see here for more on them. And a  bunch of other places!). Doors at 8pm.