Interview with a Jampire
Des Aggines has appeared in several forms around the Little Rock music scene. He debuted his talents in the acclaimed rap group, Trauma Team and continued as a solo artist with Anti-Christ Sperm Donor. On his next album, Jampire Loves You, slated for a winter release, he is back badder than ever. Drawing on what seems to be an influence of DC Comics Vertigo Collection and Comedy Central's The Daily Show, Jampire weaves tongue slashing tales of political satire and apocalyptic revelation. With pounding production that echoes a past with the sound of drum and bass, and nods to the futuristic tribes of a post-apocalyptic landscape, Jampire ups the ante for those betting on the death of hip hop.www.myspace.com/jampyre
Localist: Where were you born?
Jampire: I was born in Britain.
L: Is that where you grew up, though?
J: Lived there ‘til I was seven. Stayed there ‘til then, but I’ve been in Arkansas for twenty-five, twenty-six years.
L: Do you remember anything from living in Britain? Like do you have a lot of memories?
J: Yeah, you’re just learning about the world, so I didn’t really know that much about racial conflicts. Didn’t know that much about not being near my family, near my cousins, my uncle.
L: And your dad’s from Ghana?
J: Dad is from Ghana.
L: Your mom is from Guyana, in South America. And where did they meet?
J: They just met in Britain. They were both studying nursing or something.
L: Where all the beats on this album produced by Jason, The Mad Trucker?
J: Jason, me, Bobby Redd.
L: What’d Bobby Redd do on it?
J: He did the beat for “Lycanthrope Slide Show”. We added some stuff to it. We added drums, and a few sounds in the background.
L: That’s cool. Does he play guitar in any of it?
J: Bobby Redd?
L: Yeah.
J: On “Lycanthrope Slide Show”, it was actually just a beat that he had made to give to Mad Trucker to give to me, but then Mad Trucker, remembered it after Bobby Red passed.
L: But he purposefully went and got something of Bobby’s as a tribute to him?
J: Bobby Redd had given it to him to give to me, and he didn’t remember. But he finally remembered, and I was like “Well, maybe it’s something we could use on the new production we’re trying to come up with”. These guys [Bobby Redd and Michael Tustison] died right around the time we were really working on this stuff.
L: And Mike plays guitar on most of the tracks, right?
J: He doesn’t play on “Undead”.
L: He plays on “Lost in the Abyss”.
J: He plays on “Lost in the Abyss”, “Instruction for Destruction,” “Cauldron Bubble,” “No Soul”.
L: What was your idea when making 1984? Did you have the lyrics, and then you were like “I want the beat like this”? What happened?
J: I wanted to make a song that was different, a song that would kind of explain my main point in a little more radio-friendly manner, maybe. Jason made this beat...
L: “1984” is radio-friendly to you?
J: Hahaha! Well, yeah, because it’s not explicitly talking about killing, about torture. No curse words.
L: That’s true, but when you’re talking about torture, though, you’re not talking about it just to be gory, but you have a point with it.
J: I’m speaking about it like—I guess I’m trying to be funny with it.
L: But it’s also a political message?
J: Yeah, there’s a political message involved. Just like I say on “1984,” you know, “legal torture is now a part of our plan.” It just seems like a warped version of what the USA is supposed to be.
L: Man, “Lost in the Abyss” how would you describe the beat on that, musically?
J: I’m not very articulate when it comes to describing music.
L: Me, neither, but wouldn’t you agree it’s not drum and bass, right?
J: No, I wouldn’t say it drum and bass.
L: It’s not really like a breakbeat.
J: No, it’s not a breakbeat.
L: So what would you call it.
J: Well, I don’t know. The title for me kind of sums up what the sound of the music is on that track.
L: That’s true.
J: It’s just like—It’s obviously not an up-tempo type of track. It’s kind of metal, but it’s also got a lot of Mad Trucker elements in it. The way he likes to make music, his approach to making sounds.
L: And sometimes it really goes off well, and I think this is one of the times.
J: It’s the combination of the way Mike Tustison does music and the way Jason does it, the mixture of both of them. Part of that is seeing them in other aspects—seeing them in Fire in the Tree House, seeing them in Drunken Spider, seeing them do live shows with Jason, Mike, Eli, Marilee, Paige, me. Just seeing all that together just shows you different versions of how they exist musically.
L: One day I was telling your dad about how I thought you were like a genius. Well, I didn’t say you were a genius, but I said some of your lyrics were genius lyrics, and he disagreed. Not that you weren’t talented, but he definitely had an opinion about it, you know what I mean?
J: Well, I mean, I don’t understand that, because my father is the one who has been very influential in my life, who has influenced my political ideas, who I am, everything. For instance, when I was young my dad used to watch the news. I started watching the news with him. He had a certain view of politics in America, because he’s lived in different places in the world and just kind of felt like there the news was not as well-rounded as in some of the other places. So it just kind of made me think the news you see on TV is not the only and final word on everything. Just putting little ideas like that into my mind, all this is a result of him. So we fast forward to 2004, when I made that song, that was the only thing I could do to express my feelings about how things aren’t really going in the right direction.
L: I think it was because of the “Kill the President” song you used to do.
J: I read the first verse for him, and he said, “That’s very, very good. If I were you, I’d never read that again for anybody else.” That’s what he told me. Then I was doing a show at Vino’s, and I told him I was going to perform that song, and he was like “Don’t do this. Don’t get your brother involved in doing such things.” I mean, he’s talking from a perspective of living in a country where he’s seen a government that is not bound by any rules, that can treat you any way, just kidnap and kill you. So I understand that, but I live in America. I never lived in Ghana.
L: And you said your dad gave you that book 1984 when you were a kid?
J: He gave me lots of books to read, but it really affected me. It made me feel pretty bad, you know? Imagination just runs wild, and that’s exactly what mine did. It also made me stop reading books for about two years.
L: Really?
J: Ignorance is bliss, you know what I mean? Hahaha!
L: Yeah.
J: Plus, it would’ve been smooth if a whole bunch of controversy was generated by that song, something to get mine and Adrian’s music out there. Or if I got deported because of that song, and got to go back to England for free—that would be tight.
L: You’re scared to a degree that you don’t put it on the internet, all over the place.
J: Number one, I researched it myself at the law library, and I also went and consulted with my professor. He said I had done the appropriate research, but added that generally within the context of art, you can make whatever sort of statement you want to make. But that’s not to say that things cannot totally change, if the public is against you that the court would follow. Politics matter. Law goes by precedent, and according to the cases that have come before, you have a certain degree of freedom of speech.
L: But, that being said, people are going to jail for being so-called terrorists all the time, without a trial.
J: Politics can totally change, and all that can be thrown out the window. I mean it was a time, when look at how black people were treated in this country, and look how they’re treated today. I don’t want to get too deep into a discussion about that, but you know.
L: But you’re right, I mean all the things that happen, we’ve got to constantly struggle for freedom.
J: But I think my father—if I do something and he gets mad at it, he’s always going to share a part of the responsibility. He’s equipped me with my knowledge, with my intellect, with my experience. I mean, I’m not an evil person. I’m not trying to do something bad. I feel like I’m doing something good.
L: But that’s not what your aunt thinks.
J: They live in the southern part of Britain, Hastings.
L: Didn't you tell me one of your aunt's thinks you’re into black magic?
J: But, yeah, it’s all very weird to me because I was raised in a very rational, scientific environment, and I don’t really know anything about magic. It’s not that I don’t believe in it, it’s just that I don’t use it, and I don’t think it really exists in my life. So she’s like the total opposite of that. I wish we could talk and have some rational conversations.
L: Well, I’ve listened to your songs like a bunch of times, and I like them. “Lost in the Abyss” is definitely my favorite.
J: That’s because I’ve been putting voodooshi spells on you to make you listen to it.
L: What kind of spells?
J: Voodooshi. That’s like real voodoo. That’s what my dad calls it. Voodoo is a more westernized version of, you know, that’s the name for these traditional African beliefs. Each tribe has its own set of beliefs and its own name for those beliefs. I can’t really describe it.
Smoke Up Johnny
Rescuing Rock and Roll from Irony’s Cold Grip
“Okay—who wants to play?”
It's an auspicious beginning for any rock and roll band to have their first practice busted by the cops. It was the fall of 2005, and Smoke Up Johnny had come together in bassist Matt Floyd's back-yard garage in Levy. Apparently the neighbors felt that North Little Rock's finest deserved an invitation, and before the band could get through a six-pack they were asked to relocate to the other side of the river.
Two years and several destroyed practice spaces later, Smoke Up Johnny have released their self-titled debut, on Thick Syrup Records. The band formed, as many bands do, somewhat by accident. Frontman Alan Disaster (no, it's not; you can ask, but he won't say much more than "It's a West Coast thing...I was drunk a lot"), drummer Jon Rice, and then guitarist Andy Conrad (a.k.a. A.C. Danger) had played together in Queen Cobra (along with Ryan "Straw" Britton and the late Steven Calhoun); Disaster and Floyd had been buddies for years but had never played together, despite talking about it many times.
Smoke Up Johnny is the product of a shared compulsive need to play music coupled with the simple fact that the band did not already exist. "If I'm not in a band, I'm thinking about what my next band is going to be," says Disaster. "Sometimes when a band breaks up, it's like 'Wow, on my days off I can just sit around my house.' But then a couple months later, it's like 'Okay—who wants to play?'" Rice seconds that emotion: "I've probably in the last 11 years not been in a band for about a month and a half total." A drunken argument disbanded Queen Cobra, which Disaster describes as a "musical mess," in 2003; in late 2005, the timing was right for Disaster and Floyd to finally combine punk-rock/hard-rock forces. Danger hopped right on board, and Rice followed with a bit of persuading.
It was a rocky start. "For the first six months, everyone called us 'Break-Up Johnny,'" says Floyd. Everything that could possibly go wrong—starting with the police showing up at their first practice—went wrong. They were kicked out of one practice space. They blew the electricity first out of the downstairs, then the upstairs, of another. Amplifiers were fried. Cops were called (again). Practices were canceled because everyone was too drunk to play.
"We've been through fucking hell," says Rice. But they kept at it, and that hell finally culminated about six months ago with the band's decision to oust guitarist A.C. Danger. "Basically, he was missing a lot of practices," explains Disaster, maintaining that they are personally on good terms. Within a few days, they had recruited Corey Bacon, of Real Fighting, who brings to the band not only an extensive collection of Thin Lizzy t-shirts but a smoking (ha) guitar technique that requires no on-stage acrobatics to prove its impressive point. He was their first choice, and was incorporated upon arrival at his first practice. "We told him he was in before we even asked him if he wanted to be in," says Floyd, laughing. It's been onward and upward ever since.
Though Alan admits that the band in its infancy lacked a definitive sound, that sound did eventually develop into what he now describes as straight-up, solid "good time rock and roll." That may seem like too simple a description, but it's accurate. The music is propulsive and catchy, hooky without being cloying, and crafted of familiar chord changes built upon a foot-stomping, head-shaking, air-drumming foundation.
"Good time" is a key phrase here—within a couple of minutes of watching them it becomes endearingly evident that these guys really like to play together. At a recent practice, they arranged themselves in a square and watched each other, laughing, while they played. It looks at times as if they are participating in a sport in which guitars serve as rackets: Floyd will play a little something, look at Bacon, smile, and toss the line to him; Bacon, grinning broadly, will catch it and play something back. Watching this sort of interaction is a little like watching people having an obviously delightful conversation in another language—you might not know exactly what they're talking about, but you know they sure are enjoying themselves.
“I say ‘fuck’ in almost every song.”
Their enthusiasm for playing makes the songs more fun to listen to, as does the fact that their music is completely devoid of agenda, posturing, and affectation. It's honest. They make the recent years' crop of bring-back-rock-and-rollers look like media-constructed automatons who beg the question "bring it back from where?" "I hope we're never compared to the Strokes," says Disaster. According to Smoke Up Johnny, rock and roll has been here all along.
In keeping with the good-time feel, band practice is largely about beer (as is their practice space—PBR should pay them for the advertising that visitors are subjected to). Between takes, they tell stories of the hard livin' bad old days before wives, kids, and the physical realities of being 30-plus reduced the party-hearty lifestyle to so many 45s in the anecdote jukebox. And this is not at all to say that we're dealing with a bunch of straight-laced old fogies here—the youngest member of the band is 24, and the oldest, at 39, is the wildest. The space's unofficial mascot is a mounted deer head named "Cokie" whose nose looks sort of melted and leaks plaster dust when tapped with a drumstick. They use a lot of euphemisms. They can't get a song on NPR.
"I say 'fuck' in almost every song," says Disaster matter-of-factly, referring to the 11 tracks that make up the band's debut record, which was recorded at the Terrarium over two sweltering weeks in August, with Will Boyd (Evanescence, Big Boots, American Princes) and Zach Reeves (Tel Aviv) working the boards. The album is a collection of ten solid originals and one stellar cover (into which the word "fuck" has of course been inserted), all of which contain curse words, as well as references to drugs or some other unsavory, not-fit-for-primetime subject, or both.
Tempering that foul mouth is the band's musical tendency to make shamelessly sincere references to some rather perky classics of early 80s rock and pop rock. (This shouldn't come as a surprise, really, as the band's very name is a semi-inadvertent reference to the 1985 brat-pack standard The Breakfast Club.) "I probably like a lot of stuff that people would make fun of me for," says Alan, who feels that if a riff is good it's good, no matter where it comes from. The album's central track, "The First Time (I Was Alive)," is a contagious anthem about a boy's life-changing first encounter with rock and roll. It's in the vein of Bryan Adams's "Summer of '69," but it lacks entirely the sentimentality that could make that an unflattering comparison. While some bands could only admit that such easily digested ditties are a part of their lexicon by jabbing at them in ironic imitation, Disaster doesn't "appreciate a band that does that." He happilly gives credit where credit is due, so don't feel guilty when you pick Rick Springfield out of a new track already slated for a 7" release in the near future.
“It’s desperate, fucked up, crazy livin’, but it’s okay.”
Rock and roll has long been the province of disaffected youth, and the album is embedded in the genre without being sneering or obnoxious. Common themes like disappointment in people who've changed their colors ("12th Street"), or angsty frustration at the baseless inability to pull off a simple good night ("Right Tonight") mix with darker subjects like addiction and the death of friends, and all are articulated with a SNAFU-like acceptance that keeps anything from becoming maudlin "What I'm kinda trying to say is that it's desperate, fucked up, crazy living, but it's okay," explains Disaster, who writes the lyrics. "It's like when you listen to X, or Merle Haggard—they're these depressing lyrics, but you feel all right."
Nowhere is this attitude more evident than on "Popped Up Collar," one of two songs about friends who've passed away. This one, about the young victim of a drug overdose, details things that went wrong and ways they could have been different, and carries a simple and upbeat refrain of "It's gonna be all right." Rice and Disaster agree that anybody who knew the subjects of the songs will recognize them, and that there was no question that they would be written. "It's almost a way of coping with it," says Floyd.
One surprise, and a standout on the album (I'd say "instant classic" if the phrase didn't make me gag a little), is a cover of Otis Redding's "How Strong My Love Is," which was chosen because it is one of Alan's "favorite songs ever." The song is the perfect vehicle for what Rice refers to as the "Smoke Up Johnny stop"—that pause between phrases after which the music resumes with a resounding, gleeful head-slam.
Needless to say, they're happy with the album. And humble about it, too. "I think every band does that—you write a song, record it, and say 'yeah, I'm badass,'" Rice says, laughing at himself. If the album's finally coming into existence is a sign that the band is ready to get serious and break out of the practice-and-play-around-town rut, they're humble about that, too. When asked who their ideal tour-mates would be, Disaster declares friends and fellow Little Rockers the Moving Front. "Or Hoobastank," jokes one band member (who shall remain nameless), "but don't write that."
Grim Determination
YK—Who Do's it Vol. 3
"Is there anything outside of music that you would like to do?"
The question hangs in the air like the putrid smell of a dream unfulfilled. After the brief moment of silence passes, the Arkansas-based 26-year-old rapper-producer known as YK, sitting in typical G uniform (white T-shirt, dark jeans, and corn roll style braids) contemplates his answer. A sinister grin appears as he looks slightly to the left, as if the thought alone invokes images of the more deviant lifestyle one might be drawn to in the event of a musical demise, before offering a simple "Nope."
He offers no further explanation, and from one professed music lover to another, none is needed. We smile, and there's an unspoken mutual understanding that requires no extra explaining. He hasn't had a traditional job since 2000 and won't be searching the newspaper want-ad section anytime soon either, he acknowledges. "I may not be good at too much of anything else." Any hard driven music maker in pursuit of his own vision will have to admit, the music business is a full time job in itself.
He's not only the producer and main recording engineer of power house label Grim Muzik, home to a host of A-state hard hitters, but Kevin "YK" Mitchell shares the CEO chair with his brother David "Big Dave" Mitchell and has produced beats for many artists here locally, as well as big name national acts like E40, Paul Wall, and Juvenile.
"My motivation comes from life itself."
He was born in Arkansas but moved to San Diego, California, in what would be a life-altering experience. He reminisces on the Golden State with a mixture of emotions. "California was crazy. Things moved a lot faster there. I guess that could be a good thing and a bad thing." The shimmering beaches, breath taking sunsets, and temperatures that averaged from an easy 71 to 48 degrees year round wasn't all that the place dubbed “America's finest city" had to offer. His expression is blank as he remembers, "There was a lot of crime, a lot of murders, people getting killed." The rising crime rate and the high cost of living made YK appreciate the slower pace of the South.
In 1998, his senior year in high school, he returned to his hometown for a much needed respite. The return, however, proved to be bittersweet. Soon he found himself struggling to cope with the loss of his older brother, Eric Mitchell, and the uncertain circumstances surrounding his death, along with the realization that he may not be eligible for graduation. He discovered that many of the thirty-something credits from his California school wouldn't transfer to Mills High School. Two weeks before his graduation ceremony, YK, as he puts it, "quit-uated." That would be, in his words, "the opposite of graduated." He says dryly, "I went to Metro but was too thrown off balance after my brother died." About the only pleasant thing that came out of this repository of memories was the destined meeting between YK and fellow future label mates P.I. and Playa Spade. They would all become key members of the Grim Muzik Camp, which was derived from their first group name G-riders and was an acronym for "The Greatest Rappers in Muzik."
"Music still has a heart beat."
Yes, as children of the 90's, we have a weakness for gangster rap, like some guilty pleasure that forces us to involuntarily nod our head to bass-heavy depictions of street life. It would be easy to dismiss YK as yet another rapper still holding on to the pistol grip of our late great gangster past. He has the confident swagger of any given rapper in any given hood—the game’s the same. But let's face it, when all the "fast cars and bad broads" are gone, it all comes down to sixteen bars. To be or not to be an MC: that was the question.
I closed my spiral and slipped the Grim Muzik official mixtape, Who Do's It, Vol. 3, into my bag and nodded. Impressive packaging. There was no Sharpie-sketched John Hancock sloppily applied to a CD-R. I'm no Russell Simmons, but hey, packaging is important to hip-hop heads and suburbanites alike. If you don't care enough about your product to put money in it, why would we?
"I want to do music my way. I want my songs and style to show leadership."
The first track, “Ridin in the A-state,” was a good clue as to what was to come, a true rider's anthem that reeks of candy paint and Black and Mild's. The hook-verse formula seems simple, but one would be surprised at how many artists forget to actually write a song. With this first track you get the feeling of a complete song. Add the heavy bass guitar, courtesy of Joey G, and the soulful, 70's style vocals of Wax, Platinum Black, and stand-out Shea Marie, the label Ms' with the rare jewel of a voice that's easily comparable to Mary J., and what you have is the makings of a hit. This is not just a radio-friendly ring-tone-ready song either, but one G's can lean back on their leather and wood and appreciate as well.
"Starving artist couldn't even eat off my table scraps."
From top to finish the album seems to be a glance into a day in the life of a trapper turned rapper, or maybe the reverse, who knows. And who's snitching? I'm just appreciating good music. Okay, maybe I am still listening to Richboy's own version of his hot tracks, and YK rolled up and snatched them D's right off the top of the charts and put them on his mixtape. But if it’s hot, it’s hot, and as YK puts it, "We gonna take what's hot and rock it a little better." His lyrical proficiency runs laps around the Alabama beat, and it works. That's how he do's it. So in the tradition of West Coast hero Ice Cube, he's jacking—for beats that is. He even manages to go dumb on some Bay Area Hyphy music on track 12, titled, “Candy.” It’s all out of California love, though. "I love the Hyphy energy. It’s kind of like crunk, but more West Coast," he states.
The overwhelming theme seems to be summed up on track 8, “Money, Money, Money,” pulled from the classic Mario Van Peebles film New Jack City. Guest appearances range from duo Dre and Jontai, who are most known for their hit, “Jump Rope,” to local favorite 607, to the young Grim Muzik protégés, Combination, who throw in some good down-South party music with "Just Twerk," a decent club banger. Over all, the album has consistency and gives us a grim view of life, music, and money. There's even six original tracks, so don't sleep on his production skills. Although he'll be the first to admit, "Rap is my first love," production is like his girl on the side, who no doubt has been taking up a great deal of his time.
REALMADDDDD
The Localist Interview: Mad Trucker
Localist: When was the character Mad Trucker conceived?
Mad Trucker: While I was in the band, Fire in the Tree House, I had certain inclinations to do something else. So I did this CD called “Sir Eel: The Ghost Creek Conspiracy”. So at that time, Sir Eel was supposed to be my name, and Mad Trucker was just sort of like another alter-ego, an excuse for me to do different identities.
L: Would you say that’s kind of when you began to be more of a straight up hip-hop act? Well, I wouldn’t even say straight up hip-hop, because you’ve never done straight up anything.
MT: Yeah, because I was rapping a little bit when I was with Fire in the Tree House. You know, I was making that a part of it. But it really started to reach that point when it wasn’t cool to mix those two any more.
L: So you’d say Mad Trucker is a hip-hop artist.
MT: Yeah.
L: And it’s from hip-hop that you approach making music?
MT: Totally hip-hop.
L: What hip-hop is a part of Mad Trucker?
MT: Okay, let’s rewind to back when I was in junior high with Yo MTV Raps and looking at BET Rap City. And I would watch the whole episode just to see one De La Soul or one Tribe Called Quest video. So really it was the Native Tongues. Because when I was in junior high, I didn’t understand why I was getting beat up. So I saw NT and I was like "They’re not even rapping about being violent. They’re not even rapping about being what all these people who are beating me up are acting like.” So I was into it right away, I wanted to champion what they’re doing.
L: As you got older, what were some of the other hip-hop groups that you started to get into.
MT: Well, 1995 changed me like it changed a lot of rappers. At that point, everything was hard-core.
L: What’s important about ’95?
MT: 1995, 95 beats per minute. The Roots were at their darkest point—they still got darker—but Mob Deep was the first violent group I heard, and it’s so violent and wrong and terrible. And I was against that forever, but they turned me over. Sorry, what was the question again?
L: From there, where’d you go in your interest?
MT: Well, Mad Trucker was really supposed to be a hard-core thing. You look at me and I don’t look like a hard core rapper, so I came up with this alternate persona.
L: So you wanted to be darker as Mad Trucker?
MT: Darker, more intense, like you just couldn’t imagine me doing that when you heard it.
L: Going back to some of the groups you were in prior to the Treehouse, one of the people who was a big part of that and who is still a big part of your music is Paige Harrington, and she is also your wife.
MT: Well, I mean I think music was a big part of both of our lives, and I don’t know exactly if she was always interested in playing music, but with Fire in the Tree House you couldn’t be in the room and not pick up an instrument. It was almost against the rules. You know, everyone started out messing with hand drums. Then Paige went further and learned how to play the guitar, which was interesting, because she didn’t really have any family that played guitar—her mom didn’t, her sisters didn’t, nobody really, so that came out of nowhere. And then she was in a guitar store, and one of the guys was like “Do you normally play bass?” And she was like, “No.” And from there, she was the bassist for Fire in the Tree House.
L: What role does Paige play in Mad Trucker's music today?
MT: She is the total engineer. She’s producing half the music with me.
L: And she plays instruments on it?
MT: Bass on one song, a lot of sequencing. She even does some of the drums on some tracks. Mainly, I’d say, synthesizer.
L: You recently lost a longtime friend and musical companion, Mike Tustison, better known as Shaggy. He has been a part of your music since you started. Tell me about how you have had to adjust in your music.
MT: I always made music with him, for twenty-two or twenty-three years. So now I have this feeling like I’ve underestimated some of what he does. I’ve always appreciated it, and when he came in it was like magic. He took the emotion of the song deeper. So now, with the new album I only have the benefit of having him on three songs…I see myself as I grieved through this album more than any other method. It goes through stages of being angry about what happened. It goes through stages of, you know, trying to be positive—trying to not just dwell in negative emotion like I’ve don’t with a lot of my past work. But more than anything else, I’ve had to understand what his guitar did, to try to learn how to do that myself. You know, try to learn how to let the melodic score low. I’m a loop man. You couldn’t make him loop if you wanted to. You could record like a little short part and loop it, and he’d be like “No, you gotta play the whole song, man. You can’t do that.”
L: You had Eli and Maralie of Soophie Nun Squad on the last album, Recklessly Zooted, they were guests on it, playing instruments and singing. They took a bigger role this time. Tell me about that.
MT: I think that coming back from tour overseas to find me with an album completed motivated them to get more involved. They actually took all the tracks over to their studio, pulled instruments out, made the tracks unzip further before they put them back together. They had parts where my vocals were taken out, which totally reformed this section of vocal. So she didn’t write lyrics for it, but she was a big part of influencing me.
L: So for this release, you’ve really allowed a lot of other creative input. And not just input, but taking away, minimizing. Do you think it’s helped?
MT: I definitely do. There’s definitely been a lot of subtraction. I think I’m a man known for excess, I like to busy things up.
L: You referred to this CD as your most accessible release to date. Why would you make music that isn’t accessible?
MT: (laughs.) I want the music to challenge you extremely. I play with sounds more than music. I collect sounds, sort of like music concrete. Even though I’m using a sequencer and running the drums through an amp simulator, and stuff like that.
L: So let’s talk about what you plan to do live. How are you going to approach it?
MT: That’s interesting, you know, because recordings and live performance are different. And I don’t think enough people make that distinction. Whatever you do with a song onstage doesn’t have to be limited to what you did with it in the studio. So I’m really interested in going back to the drum machines and samplers….I want to get that improvisation. I want to marry that with very strong material. That’s what I’ve always tried to do. There have been times I free-styled the whole show and fell on my face. Or where I did the whole material rehearsed. I’ve done both and been successful at both. I want to have a little bit of freestyle and a little bit of give and take with the audience.
L: So would that be the foundation that of what you are working off. Is the beat going to be the same [as the one on the album]?
MT: I’m coming up there with ammunition. You know, in my sampler, I’ve got it loaded up and I’ve rehearsed the set. Last time I dropped an Arcade Fire loop on "I Hate You Assholes." People didn’t recognize the song necessarily, but that’s the thing I’m looking to do. Drop a lot of loops from non-hip-hop music and have a big boom bap.
L: You've mentioned your ideas of promo, and about this thing you’re calling the Nerd Alliance. Talk to me about the Nerd Alliance.
MT: Well, Ill Chemist has been inspiring me a lot lately. We have a lot of communication since we’ve both had office jobs, and he told me he really wanted to do a Revenge of the Nerds type of show with the sweaters and just really going all out. And I told him “Let’s see if we can coordinate everything that all of us are trying to do.” But now as far as what it means, what is the meaning behind it… We’ve been in this town a long time, you know? People felt like a fish out of water a little bit. Jampire and I are not exactly your typical “down-South.” Ill Chemist and O.T. are certainly not. These people have been constantly inspiring me, so I just thought, maybe there’s a slim chance that we can show another side of the South to the world. You know, there’s a slim chance that we can just push it so hard that they’re like, “Well, it’s not just thuggish in the South." I really just wanted to show that other side of the South and bring together these people I thought also showed that other side. I think that’s the best way to summarize it.
L: You’re going to do some releases and shows. Tell me about that.
MT: My new release will be coming out September 29, the date of my release party. Jampire will be following that in late October. Then following him, probably November, or maybe even December, it will be O.T. In late December we’re having a big show and try to mix our sets a little bit.
L: So it’s something you plan on being a long-term effort.
MT: At least for two years.
L: I’m really big on the people here who create music and their relationship to being in Little Rock—tell, me, how does living in Little Rock effect your musical output.
MT: I was real frustrated a while back, like “Aw, you know, I really want to move to Austin, you know, somewhere besides here that’d drive me crazy to not fit in and all that" G-force said "Well, if you go there it’s going to be stiffer competition. Here, standing out is a prize mark, you know?" I mean, I’m paraphrasing, but he’s saying “Here, to stand out really means a lot more than to go somewhere where everyone’s trying to stand out.” It’s very challenging to be in the Bible Belt and to be more into liberal things, the arts. I mean, I’ve always been a painter, written poetry, but I forget sometimes that it’s really weird to do that here. You know, it’s really weird instead of picking up a hunting rifle.
L: But there are lots of great writers and artists who have come out of the South.
MT: I mean it’s hard being in the South….cut off from other scenes and each generation you’ve got to teach them all over again. I've done MC battles, when I first started off, it was like “Oh, okay, it's like that.” Then it seemed like every year, I had to come back and redo the exact same thing to remind all the new faces. You get on the internet and you download music, right? And there are guys in San Francisco who are just like us, and they’re the shit. They look like indie rockers, and they make hip-hop. And it’s pretty much an accepted—it’s pretty much called indie hip hop now. But here that is still such a challenge.
A Satirical View of a Bad Guy
Goines--Lead by Example
The Prejudgment
Illusions of Grandeur
“Rapper is not the first thing you think when you see me,” acknowledges the 28-year-old Pine Bluff resident, Andrew Goins, who goes by the pseudonym Goines. My first encounter with the self-appointed “Go-to Guy” was unofficial; we were drawn together by our sheer adulation of hip-hop. I was taking a moment from the music while the stage at Little Rock’s Revolution Room was being prepped for Guru, the former GangStar member’s concert. His disposition introduced him before I could even form my own opinion.
From his brown gator-style shoes to his closely cropped natural, I half expected to see a guitar strap hanging from the back of his fitted pastel color polo, instead of the dark colored satchel that hung at his side. I imagined his bag being full of half-written poems and incense, instead of the 20-track disc neatly pressed and packaged. The large “G” tattoo etched into his neck was the only hint of the hardcore rapper that bubbled beneath the surface. I knew him only as one half of the rap duo known affectionately as Suga City, a group that consists of Goines and a more brazen Stuttgart native who calls himself Arkansas Bo. He’s the other Guy.
Goines is a contradiction of a sort: store clerk by day, rap star by night. Not even the customers he rings up at the local Wal-Mart would place the slender, unassuming guy at the checkout on a stage at a night club. His stage name, which came as a clever manipulation of his own last name, by adding the letter ‘e’, is also a tribute to the influential African-American author Donald Goines who was known for his very vivid street depictions.
The author, who gained celebrity in the 1970s for publishing sixteen books in five years, was famous for detailing urban street life and giving voice to the voiceless in novels such as Inner City Hoodlum and Never Die Alone, which was the inspiration for the recent film adaptation of the same name. Generations later, the rapper stands in this symbolic shadow and surmises to achieve the same thing through music. He respects the author because, as he puts it, “He stuck to what he lived and made things as visible as possible”—something Goines feels is paramount to being an artist.
Between The Lines
“Ten years plus and still where I started from.”
The story behind Goines reads like the standard autobiography of just about every young male I know—a small representation of a whole generation. It’s like flipping open a chapter of Black Man’s Grief…and finding a surprise ending. Still, it couldn’t have been written anymore interestingly had the ghetto literatus penned it himself.
Goines, born Andrew Goins in South Central Las Angelo’s, witnessed inner city struggles at a young age. In the midst of urban decay, rampant drug wars, and the police corruption that swept through southern California during the early mid 70s, Goines was fortunate enough to have the positive influence of his father. The elder Goins was a bus repairman who taught his young son the value of hard work. Goines admits “We didn’t want for nothing.”
In fact, his father was his first real mentor. “I wanted to follow in my fathers footsteps and continue the family business,” laughs Goines. However, as the uncertainty of manhood crept up, like a lot of kids do who grow unsure of their destiny, it was easy for him to fall into the bracket of kids who just don’t care. He was existing only. Thinking back solemnly he explains, “I was the raw essence of blank.” He remembers wandering aimlessly in search of himself.
Muscle Music
“A mike and pen marriage…”
And then there was rap, and it was good. It wasn’t until the age of sixteen after moving to Arkansas that Goines began to realize his love of hip-hop. “Rap wasn’t really in my house; I didn’t even own any CDs,” he laughs. But in 1997 everything changed when he copped his first three CDs. He got a crash course in lyricism, metaphor and simile usage, and street vernacular by way of the east coast fines, Nas, Biggie and Jay Z.
He jokes, “At the time I didn’t give southern rap a chance.” Ironically he would come to help revolutionize the perception of southern rap. Everyone dreams of a place that true rappers reign supreme. A place where you can go and only the real MC’s make the top ten. “Pac called it Thug’s mansion….for outcast its Stankonia… for Arkansas Bo and Goines, this place is known as Suga City,” according to Goines. Suga City is a place where one can unleash their inner MC and not be confined by stereotypes and misperceptions. Goines knows better than most how being different can lead to being misunderstood.
The use of the Arkansas town Stuttgart’s nickname, Suga City, came as the result of a disbanded four-member group called Varsity of which Goines and Bo were both a part. After chasing rap dreams as far away as Chicago and Denver, Bo and Goines decided to stick to the familiar and debut as Suga City in 2004, independent of any label. They performed together at local venues, sharing the stage with other members of the Conduit Family.
Like the id and the ego, Bo and Goines together form a complete body of music. Even with the amazing chemistry between the pair, Goines felt the need to explore his own creativity, be his own dude behind the desk. “I wanted to let out what was really in me, I didn’t have a project and people don’t take you serious until you do something.” He was catching a lot of slack due to his unconventional look. In a world where image is everything, he found it disheartening that his proficiency as an MC came down to the fit of his pants.
He boasts, “Don’t count me out,” and delivers a one-two punch at his first solo mix-tape debut titled Lead by Example. The subtitle sums up his feelings on the project: The Satirical View of Being the Bad Guy. In an attempt to “make light of a bad situation,” according to Goines, he decided to use mockery and sarcasm to poke fun at peoples’ perception of him. And in a strategic and funny way, it works.
What is even more ironic is the fact that while differentiating himself from the run of the mill snap-and-trap rappers of today’s radio, he manages to capture the essence of the true original gangsters—the ones who speak in retrospect, the ones who have tired of the lifestyle and encourage the younger generation to make wiser choices. Goines’ intricate rhymes weave through the mirage of fast money and women. He brings the artist back to rap and doing what was originally intended with the inclusion of other genres of music. You can listen to tracks 7, 10, and 13 and know all you need to know about the album: a little funk, a little contemporary, and a little party.
His flow is thick like southern molasses, dragging the listener smoothly over the bars and conjuring up images of life in the South. Where many are afraid to step outside the box, Goines lives there. You can hear the civil rights influence like a call and response of past meets present, as Martin Luther King’s voice sermonizes the 2nd track, The Prejudgment. Goines, too, has a dream—that one may not be judged by the gimmicks in their music but by the content of their album. He intertwines samples of Canadian singer/songwriter Esthero with Trip Hop Band Portishead, a group from Bristol, England, who uses jazz samples and an intentional lo-fidelity sound. He adds contemporary R&B sound via Deangelo and Brandy for spice, and like most true hip-hop heads, understands the importance of rapping over an Ice T beat for authenticity. One must be able to incorporate at least one pioneer in their music. He even manages to slip in the 1973 classic blaxploitation icon Goldie from The Mack, as Max Julian’s ghost boasts over a funky old-school sound, “There were no heroes… We got all sorts of heroes now… I mean, I got little kids out there who look up to me.”
Little Rock’s Velvet-Tongued Troubadour
Chris Denny at the Threshold
Chris Denny’s voice comes without introduction from a creature of unclear age, location, gender, or historical setting. Himself a 23-year-old boy from Turn-of-the-21st Century Little Rock, his music could just as easily be that of a 53-year-old man or woman from some turn-of-the-20th-Century rural Arkansas Delta town.
First-time listeners will experience an initial intrigue before full, unwavering acceptance sets in. In this phase, one is preoccupied with nailing down Denny’s vocal ancestry, and the responses come from all periods and genres—Roy Orbison, Nashville Skyline Bob Dylan, Jeff Buckley, even Tracy Chapman. The sound of his voice over the boxy, twangy music of his band is like new upholstery on an old rocking chair. You may have heard a band like this, or even heard a voice that is somewhat similar, but Chris Denny’s music strikes the ear as something suddenly antique and nostalgically new.
Off-stage, Chris Denny is as unassuming a person as any—polite, humble, soft-spoken. He may even seem unequipped for the task of making music like he does. From the stage, however, he is forceful and confidant, loudly. Completely at home on stage and in his element before a packed Whitewater crowd, he will hold an audience without interruption for over four hours like a tent revival preacher in summertime. He’s easily among the best live acts in Little Rock and, according to a vast majority of local scene-watchers, has got the best futures of any artist in town, as well.
“The shadows on the ground were tunnels into my past I cared not to go down.”
“I was born into a Lynyrd Skynyrd family, but I always wished I was born into a Neil Young family,” Denny admits, but this is as far as he’s willing to take a discussion of his growing up. Suffice it to say his Arkansas childhood probably came up short of a Norman Rockwell painting; anyone who’s known him long will say “He’s had it hard.” On the bright side, his childhood probably outfitted him with enough primary source material for a lifetime’s worth of country songs.
However, a search through his lyrics for reflections on his history will prove fruitless, too. “Music is an escape from all that,” he says. His songs primarily concern the immediate past and the trials he’s been through getting over his lovers. This is not to suggest, however, that he is content with a stoic, manly tear in his beer. His songs are candid, bare ballads about visceral reactions to love and major transformation in the face of emotional adversity.
Denny remembers first performing—in front of a thousand people, mind you—at a junior high talent show, and then at a high school homecoming assembly, again before hundreds of people. One of these tunes was “With or Without You”; the other he can‘t remember, but it was probably something along the same lines. Folks around town remember him performing Radiohead and Chris Isaak at birthday parties and contemporary worship hymns at church services. Longtime friend and accompanist Justin Carr points to a particular evening, around a campfire and atop a mountain even, where “Chris just belted out this song, and we all realized he had a different kind of talent.” Chris Denny had already been at work on his voice.
Who knows what the rest of American teenagers were listening to when Chris Denny first picked up a guitar, but it’s probably a safe bet they weren’t stacking their Jeff Buckley and Radiohead on Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan. His connection with these artists is palpable, and if he was escaping anything as a youngster he was running directly into the arms of Lefty Frizzell and Neil Young.
From the moment he heard these artists with different kinds of voices, he was training himself to sing in a new way. “I knew I had to have a unique voice, or it wouldn’t really matter,” he says. He built his voice from the ground up to be what it is now, gleaning elements from his musical mentors and shaping them into a cohesive, reverent, and important addition to American roots music.
“All the houses that I passed by were lives that I could choose, different journeys that I could try.”
Denny admits having to juggle with different performance styles over the last few years. Audiences at Whitewater Tavern expected something different than audiences at the Crystal Hill honky-tonks, where he has performed with his grandfather. “I used to be able to cater to different crowds, but I can’t anymore,” he says, and he believes this has happened naturally as he has grown into a sound of his own. He says it‘s near impossible for him to change back and forth for different crowds now. “It hasn’t been a conscious decision, but you have to get to a point where you say ’That’s enough!’ and start creating something.”
Denny’s band, the Old Soles (Marcus Lowe on drums and Chris Atwood on bass) were formed during the recording of Denny’s self-titled debut, recorded on Lowe’s label and at his North Little Rock studio. Lowe called Atwood (who played bass with him in Parachute Woman) in to play bass after relations with several other musicians deteriorated. “I had heard Chris and was in love with the sound, so I was happy to be a part of it,” Atwood says. Since then, the Old Soles have developed a crisp, Southern sound—it isn’t throwback country, and it isn’t alternative country. The diverse influences of the Old Soles result in a sound that speaks authoritatively to the history of country, rock, jazz, blues, and funk that touches musicians all over the South.
Carr, who grew up with Denny and has been playing and singing with him for years, currently accompanies Denny on stage with the Old Soles. “Chris Denny can play whatever you want to hear, but he’s settling into a sound that is his own,” says Carr. The constant performing Denny has done around Little Rock, and even on tours through larger cities, has centered him on a single style that he likes.
“It’s important for the sound to be authentic,” Denny says, and his music has always been something like a conversation between old masters and young whippersnappers. “Sounds connect generations.” He knows that if his music is to have any lasting quality, it must engage the older music as well as the new sounds. He hopes, and may even expect, that this sound will challenge both audiences to listen more closely.
“I wanna rip through this world with an age old hunger.”
Fans of the debut album who are hoping Denny stays boxed in to the wood-floored dance hall sound that the first album accomplished perfectly should brace themselves for Age Old Hunger. The new album features the six best original songs from the debut, two new covers, and three new original songs, and it is a more personal statement from Denny than his previous collection.
Having quit work with producers who wanted to reign in his sound, Denny found Jason Weinheimer (the Boondogs, the Libras, the Easys), who offered his studio. Denny and the Old Soles developed new arrangements and produced the album themselves, and Fred Kevorkian (Willie Nelson, Ryan Adams, the Walkmen) mastered it. The result was a matured, more thoughtful collection than his previous album. The noticeable echo from the debut album, which not only gave it its honky-tonk feel but also made the harmonica sound soaring and precise, is set aside for a more dampened, personal sound. This is Chris Denny up close-- he’s not singing to you from the stage on Age Old Hunger; he’s on your front porch. The proximity of the listener to Denny’s voice and harmonica is intimate, and politely demands that you take a break from dancing and listen.
“Gypsy into a Carpenter” is classically re-worked, with Denny’s whirling country vibrato lingering on all the right words, but the best reappearance is easily “Time,” whose new musical arrangement with rolling drums and playful guitar make the song as adventurous as the lyrics demand. Kris Kristofferson‘s “Lovin’ Her was Easier…” and Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone” are both welcome additions to Denny’s covers collection, and even though the harmonica doesn’t sound as flawless on Denny’s lively instrumental “Going Home,” it’s a welcome bit of merriment between these two sad songs.
The three new songs are the highlight of this album, though. “Westbound Train” begins with sweetly innocent guitar, until Denny’s voice cuts through like a soft siren in the night and holds the listener in a sleepy daze throughout. The soft chords of organ that push Denny’s stark vocals on “The Stars Above and My Heart in Your Hands” make it his best hymn of regret yet, and “Age Old Hunger” conveys his longing for youthful passion. The title track concludes the album with a shaky desperation to feel again as though anything is possible; its pace and tone disguise its hopefulness that we can gain control again.
“It’s hard to perform to get by. Little Rock can’t really support artists doing nothing but making music,” Denny says. “But I’ll always live here. It’s easier to base a career out of a small town than it used to be.” With a firm new sound and a sophomore album that is a tip-of-the-hat departure from its predecessor, Denny refuses to simply be the hollering soundtrack to barroom bacchanal. He conveys a contented angst that will not escape past and future demons, but wrestle them. All he needs is time.