Loblolly is a band from Milwaukee, Wisconsin who've been playing approximately two years -- Veronica Rusnak (psychotronic guitar, wailing, formerly of Fistful of Bimbos and the Psycho Bunnies), Dan Mullen (bedrock layer of thud, who moonlights as lead guitarist in Plasticland) and Mike Hughes (beater of round instruments, who apparently is content to play in one band at a time). So having raved and foamed at the mouth about their demo YOU'VE TAKEN TOO MUCH ACID last month, i thought it might be amusing to hear from the band... so here they are (well, Veronica, actually). Read this NOW or i'll force you to listen to my copy of METAL MACHINE MUSIC... all four sides of it.... OUCH....
DA: So when/where/why was Loblolly formed?
VR: At lot of that goes back to why I picked up a guitar in the first place. I think as far back as I can remember I was into music. Any kind at all. I grew up listening to the radio, falling asleep to it, watching the Monkees and the Partridge Family because they were shows about people who made music. Riding my bike around with a Panasonic toot-a-loop radio hanging across the handlebars, and spending my paychecks at the record store. I can pretty much recount my whole life through my record collection: "Gee, that Aerosmith record is from when I was a sophomore in high school"...."that devo record is when I was a senior... I remember seeing them on Saturday Night Live, and how polarized our whole school got by people's reactions to it, if you liked them, people thought there was something wrong with you"..."Wow, I broke up with my first real boyfriend while listening to the Flying Lizards."
The 12-year-old argument was who was better, Elton or Olivia Newton-John. The 16-year-old argument was Jimmy Page, or Jeff Beck. And as I'm finding out now, 40 year olds are still having that argument. The funny thing is , as I've posted on rec.music.makers.guitar, why this rich, successful musicians need us arguing on their behalf is beyond me. Except that its fun to argue. But I digress..... (as I often do!)
By the time I got to college, I was working as a dj for the student station, writing reviews for the student paper. I went to school in Champaign, IL, and I was one of a crop of people behind a fanzine called the Psychedelic Boneyard. The Boneyard gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of people who were making the music that was really the soundtrack of my life, to coin a cliche. By the time I graduated (with a degree in English.. gee I'm sure you can understand how many fortune 500 firms lined up to hire me!) I was really restless and I hit the road as a political activist. I drifted all over the east coast, and landed in Wisconsin by sheer chance. Finally it dawned on me that instead of writing about it, talking about it, sleeping with it, following it around, it was time that I learned to play the fucking stuff (and clarinet in junior high and high school just didn't count -- although the theory I learned from clarinet sure made it easier to learn to play guitar!). So I asked my good friend Dan Mullen to teach me how to play the guitar. After I learned my three chords, I set about the task of putting together a joke band called Fistfull of Bimbos. The problem, however, was that my vision of the band was something more like what L7 turned out to be, but since I didn't have enough self-esteem, I let the Bimbos become a joke band, and the other women in the band were perfectly content to let it be that. Besides, I'd only been playing for about 3 months before we hit the stage, and, quite frankly, we sucked! But people loved us anyway! (I must admit I was sort of a marketing whiz. For our first show we took pictures of us in skin tight dresses, and plastered those all over town. The night we played, some heavy metal dude who was probably expecting Girlschool called out "You bitches suck!" to which I replied "Yeah, but we got your money!" People said it was a great show, based on total chutzpah.) I got recruited to play guitar for a psychobilly band called the Psycho Bunnies, which was a total mistake. I was a chick who played guitar-- a la Greg Brady -- I fit the suit. As great and as fun as the Psycho Bunnies were, I was totally wrong for the band. I was more into psychedelia and experimental music, and this band was totally traditional rockabilly, except that they played it rilly rilly FAST. Plus, I had a terrific ego clash the lead singer, the stuff that rumors are based on and horror stories are told with. It's not like it was her fault or my fault. Its just that there's no stage big enough for the both of us. And I wanted to sing and write songs, and I was just a hired hand in the Psycho Bunnies. So, after I quit, I called Dan and asked him if a) he wanted to jam a little bit and see what happened, and b) uh..do you know a drummer who's not doing anything? We played together, and songs like "Prowl" is what came out of those basic and beginning jams.
We'd wrestled for MONTHS trying to come up with a name. We'd gone through "Glass of Brick" "Spungnarl" and god knows what else. We finally got booked for a show, opening for a friend's band, True Heart Susie. We had to come up with a name. So, (brace yourself, shameless name dropping coming up) one fine night me and my friend Brian Wensing of F/i got fucked up and were hanging out at his bandmate Grant Richter's house. Grant's got a lot of interesting, weird local art hanging in his place. After drinking plenty of Milwaukee local microbrewery product, I naturally had to take a serious piss. Right across from Grant's toilet was a framed cartoon-like poster of a character called "Loblolly- Eccentric Son of the Heap-Thing." I grabbed some toilet paper, wiped myself off, pulled up my pants, and walked out the john, convinced that this was going to be the band's name. So much so that I called Dan (at two in the morning) to tell him this. It turns out that Loblolly isn't just a made-up character name. Dan found out that it's an old Celtic/British isles term meaning "sludge pit" or "mud hole", a general miasma of all sorts of mixed up stuff. We though this described us fairly well.
DA: Who's in the band and who's been in what bands prior to Loblolly?
VR: Well, you have my story in the question above. Dan Mullen, of course is pretty well known around here as the lead guitarist for Plasticland, who's got about five records out on labels like Pink Dust, Midnight, etc. Readers of 'zines like Bucketfull of Brains and the Bob are probably familiar with them. Dan and I also did some time in a mastubatory noise project called Ground Effect, round about the time Plasticland was parting. He also now and then plays with a Irish rock group called McTavish (long story about their formation as well!). Earlier than Plasticland he played with an outfit called Buck Byron and the Next Big Thing (which also had an incarnation as the Rhythm Method). This was back in the early 80's -- "November Man" was actually written by him during this period, and was originally performed with Buck Byron. (I think Buck up and left for your neck of the woods, somewhere in Texas.) I wasn't living in Milwaukee at that time, but the crew was this mix of Milwaukee legends, people like Brian Ritchie of the Violent Femmes drifted in and out of this. In fact, Ritchie was in a band called the Trance and Dance Band before the 'Femmes, which still exists through numerous personnel changes -- Dan plays with them now as a matter of fact. For money, he plays in a Buddy Holly tribute band. So, you're asking, where did Mike Hughes, our drummer come in. Weeeeeeeelllllllll, one of the billions of guys that played bass with McTavish, a certain Johnny on Washday (formerly of the Crusties) was good friends with Mike. Mike and Dan played in a wonderful garage band called the Silverbeats, but Mike wasn't necessarily enamored with playing garage band music all day long, and the Silverbeats' leader, (this guy Tess) wasn't exactly the best band-holder-togetherer. It's amazing that Tess still speaks to me -- for all practical purposes I stole his rhythm section. Loblolly formed from the ashes of the Silverbeats, the Bimbos, and a whole lot of other bands where the three of us individually never got fulfilled musically.
DA: How was the process of recording the demo? Good/bad? Any weird studio stories?
VR: Good and Bad. It illustrates lot of the tension that I think provides the band with energy. See, both Dan and I never had any sense of control in our previous bands. We often took that out on each other, especially during recording. The guy who recorded us, Rick Hake (who has a terrific band of his own called Apeman -- I'll send you their tape), seemed to understand, and was good at ironing out our differences. We learned a lot -- I think next time I for one will be insisting on an outside person to call the shots.
At the same time, it was a great time. I think both Dan and I were happy that we were finally recording songs that came out sounding closer to what we personally wanted to sound like than we had in any other band we had been in. I think a lot of the tension came because it was just so close-- we could just taste it --- that if it wasn't exactly how it was in our heads, it was WRONG! I came to realize that this blend (and unfortunately the tension that created it) was where our strength lied.
I'm glad that you caught in our review of us all the crazy differences. There were times when we would be making suggestions to each other cloaked in references to just about anything: "Dan, don't use the Steven Tyler voice on Face. Use the 'I'm not even going to swat that fly' voice" ... "Veronica, that sounds more like bad Robert Fripp than Adrian Belew" ... "OK, Mike, we're going for the tribal beat by some tribe that's heard too many Cream records" I guess we survived a tense time, because we had quite a few laughs putting this together.
DA: You all write... how do you decide whose songs to use?
VR: Either our songs are all put together by the band at once, or Dan or I will write a song, and it will be so personal to us that we will just force the band make it work. For me, "She Just Wants To Sleep" is a good example of that. It's about a friend of mine whose life sucked so bad, but she had too strong a will to live to kill herself, or to descend into the hell of drug addition. So she just slept all the time to avoid dealing with the crappy stuff in her life, and it had really freaked me out that somebody could do that. It was hard to get the song right with the band, but it meant so much to me that I just MADE it work. I'll usually write a melody or chord progression with a basic idea of where I want the lyrics to go, and then write the lyrics once the whole band has the structure ecked out. I try to explain the general story or feel that I'm going to have lyrics take when the band works on it, so that the words make sense with the music when I finally write them. One of my favorite songwriters, Robyn Hitchcock, does that beautifully -- he manages to make the lyrics and music go together, and seem like no other melody would have done justice to the words, and vice versa. That's the goal I shoot for.
Dan's style is to concentrate on the music, getting a clear picture of where the music is before he even starts to think about what the lyrics say. He'll let the music dictate where he's going lyrically. It's two different schools of thought, but practically any song we do turns out to be the end product of the whole band, but for different reasons with each song.
DA: Your influences seem to be coming from so many different directions that it's hard to pin them down.... (a good thing!) How much of that is intentional and how much just the byproduct of different backgrounds?
VR: Oh boy. That goes back to my original story. I listened to so much different music and loved it all. The common denominator was that it had to be powerful. Even my preferences for classical music fall into the power orchestral symphonies: Wagner, Stravinsky, etc -- when I was a little kid I remember cranking the 1812 overture and playing air conductor, just because it was so fun to flail my arms in the air in time to the music. I also have a leaning toward the twisted. The place where Dan and I meet is probably the Residents, and, believe it or not, Roxy Music -- especially early Roxy -- with the gorgeous melodies of Bryan Ferry frosted with Eno's weirdness. We both have an appreciation for music played well, by craftspeople, but we both also understand the power that simple rock and roll by bands like the Ramones have. Dan is clearly the experienced musician in the band -- and I'm more of the creative end and the stage persona. But that's not to say that Dan isn't creative in his own right, and that I don't know my theory. One time, the singer of the Psycho Bunnies said about me "She doesn't know ten thousand chords, but she has a great heart." I guess she thought that was a nice thing to say, but I'm sorry, I was insulted. I hate it when people say about somebody "Oh, they can play so well, but they don't have any passion." Right. Somebody practices for five hours a day, seven days a week, to sound as good as they do, you don't think that's passion? It takes intense passion, love of music, to play it well.
I'll tell you a story that I think illustrates my point. You know, so many people will say that David Sanborn is a better sax player than some like Kenny G, but they can't put their finger on why. It's not like technically Kenny G sucks -- they're both technically excellent. But Sanborn had polio as a child, and was advised to play a woodwind instrument to strengthen his lungs. He plays like his life depends on it BECAUSE IT DOES. At the same time, I'm sure that Kenny G is just as passionate about his music -- but he's not plying like his life depended on it, and it therefore doesn't speak to me. Not like the way Mick Jagger spoke to me when I was ten, or how local garage bands like the Vertebrats (out of Champaign-Urbana) spoke to me at 19. Mine and Dan's and Mike's mental health (and thus our) lives depend on our ability to listen to, and hopefully make, good music. The kind that make people want to flail their arms in the air in time to it, no matter how fucked up the time signature is or how twisted the melody and words are.
I think our diversity just comes naturally. Ray Davies once said you could tell a lot about a person form their record collection, and as I write this I'm sitting in the room where mine is kept. I'm looking at the B's: Jeff Beck, the Beatles, Blue Oyster Cult, Kate Bush, the Buzzcocks, the B-52's, Tommy Bolin, Bloodrock, Bowie, Adrian Belew, Blondie, Bad Brains, and Dave Brubeck. Can you find a common denominator? I still have not been successful at describing my taste in music, which may explain why I can't describe the music I make.
DA: What do you think of the growing proliferation of bands on the internet?
VR: I think it's terrific! It's an easier way, I think, to connect than the 'zines of the early 80's were. It's also a wonderfully subversive tool to keep musicians and fans in touch with each other. Someone once described the net as a big party, that you drift in and out of conversations with. If other cities are like Milwaukee, there's only a small community of musicians in each city doing the kind of stuff that (gee, what are we calling it this week? alternative? indy? how about -- here I really show my age -- progressive?) gets played in the underground. But there's a huge underground nation lurking, and we can find each other more easily than ever before. I mean, unless you live in New York or LA or even Seattle, there isn't a large enough music community to build the buzz you need to ever really get going. The commercial boom in alterna-rock notwithstanding, there's only about out 1% of the music- listening population who are hungry for new stuff by people they've never heard of. Now, that's all good in, say, San Francisco, where 1% accounts for thousands of people, but if you're in State College, PA, which is right in the middle of the mountains (I spent some time there, actually...the kids are dying for a scene!) 1% of the music-listening population amounts to maybe 50 people. That can't support a band. On the other hand, the internet put me in touch with a guy who runs a fanzine there -- I sent him our tape, he liked it, he's running a nice review of us. That's 50 people I never would have reached. And he's getting in touch with a whole bunch of bands that he and his readership would have never heard of.
Of course, there's assholes everywhere, even (sic!) on the net, but welcome to the real world, kids. I'm seeing flames for the stupidest reasons, people getting all bent out of shape for plain ol' human behavior, but I see people get pissed at each other for the stupidest things in person, too. Overall, I think it's a wonderful phenononom. It's bringing a lot of people together and making connections a lot faster. Without it, would you be any further from Austin than the Psychedelic Boneyard got from Champaign?
DA: Where do you think the music business is headed in the brave new hi-tech world?
VR: I think it will be the same, in a different sort of way. How's that? We're being brought together faster, but there's creeps and bloodsuckers in cyberspace, too. What you have to remember is that there will always people who use technology as crutches, and those who use it as tools. Remember when all those pseudo-techno bands came out in the late 70's, early 80's? They sucked! Why? Because if you took those midi-sequencers away from them, they didn't know shit about playing their instruments, as opposed to a Peter Gabriel or a Trent Reznor, people who were already musicians who used(s) the new technology as a tool to help them say what they want to say musically. Yes, there's the net to increase the communication through contacts and 'zines. But you still have to know how to write, (if you're publishing a 'zine) you still have to know when it's time to call an attorney, you still have to have your bullshit meter on (perhaps even more so), and when it all boils down to it, you still have to have a good band. Maybe even more so, because if you're a turkey, word will spread, literally, like the speed of light.
That was an original fear of mine. What if we sucked? THE WHOLE WORLD WILL KNOW IN A MATTER OF MINUTES!! Before I gathered up my self-esteem and said to myself "Well, let's find out if we're any good, or if it's just our friends saying we're good only because they're our friends" I had these visions. I'd see those two birds in Warner Brothers cartoons -- you know, the ones who sit on the telephone line, and when the big gossip ladies would hit the party line, the two birds would get electroshocked by the overload of the telephone lines. And in my case, the message would be "Loblolly Sucks!" Well, much to my delight, that's not happening.
There are also many newsgroups where people are really helpful and encouraging, the guitar players' one is such a group. Again, there's assholes everywhere, but like I said, welcome to the real world.
DA: Planning on touring outside of your own region anytime soon?
VS: We don't have any plans, but we haven't planned a lot of stuff that's happened to us. See question below.
DA: How difficult has it been to keep the band rolling and make progress while still having to work day jobs, etc.?
VS: That's precisely why we haven't hit the road. Promoting, working on songs, rehearsing, that's no problem. But hitting the road, sure I could get 2 weeks off if I had to, in fact I could probably get a month's leave of absence if I had enough advance notice. But look at a band like r.e.m. Their early years were legendary in the way they just went on the road, building up their following. I have a mortgage. Mike has a 2-year-old, and another one is coming, probably as you go to press. Dan is really the only one who has some semblance of freedom. His day job is a school photographer -- he spends his autumns driving all over the state, taking pictures of kids.
My friend Brian Wensing of F/i is in a very enviable position: his band has the cult following that enables him to set up a tour once a year, (usually Europe) and then he spends most of his time here in Milwaukee buried in his friend's basement studio putting out stuff. I enjoy playing live, it's my favorite thing, but we don't have that foundation laid, and day jobs that finance our careers are also getting in the way of it. It's a vicious circle. Some people tell us "Oh you have to drop everything." Bullshit. Do people expect us to give up the lives that shape the very music that they like so much? My day job boss is Dean of the Graduate School at Marquette University, and he's a professional magician at night. He built his career with passion for magic, he did it on his own terms, and he kept his day job. On top of that, he's still married and his kids seem like they have it together. That's inspiring. We have lives, too, and I have no intentions of giving up the things I've worked so hard for.
DA: So what favorite bands are the members of Loblolly listening to lately?
VS: Well I can speak for myself; here's my current rotation: local groups from Milwaukee including Apeman, True Heart Susie, and the Petals. Nationals include Shoenen Knife, The Muffs, old Pixies, Mazzy Star (the first album, not wild about the new one). I've been on a wild woman kick lately and been dusting off my Lene Lovich and Nina Hagen albums. Let's see, I've been also listening to an old Best of Cream album and some Yardbirds. We just got out of the studio to record "I'm the Slime" by Frank Zappa -- that put me in the mood to listen to early Zappa, and that inspired me to pull out some old Alice Cooper. Billion Dollar Babies --- Yummy.
DA: Any advice Lobolly would like to offer to those thinking of jumping into the shark-infested waters o' the music biz?
VS: Well, I could be a lot more cynical than I am. I could have easily walked into this all bright-eyed and bushy tailed, just to have my heart broken by all the scumbags in this business. Fortunately, when I was all young and naive, I though that politics was my passion. I had my heart broken instead by all the phonies and power-hungry assholes on the political left -- they very people who I though were on our side. On one hand, you'll never see me vote Republican (christ, if Bush hadn't lost the election I was seriously considering moving to Amsterdam!) and I'm still working get out the vote phone banks on election day, my heart and my belief in the system is gone. I saw guys on the supposed left that were oh so feminist turn out to be the biggest misogynists once you got to know them, and I say guys who had a basic respect for women that was real and true and from the heart -- and got dissed by the "movement" simply because they referred to women as "girls." I spent a miserable year in Washington DC in the mid-80's (the most bloated time of the whole Reaganoid mess) trying to fit in with the feminists, only to have my commitment to the "movement" constantly questioned because I smoked cigarettes, ate meat, and slept with men! I saw people who claimed they were total ACLU-card-carrying civil rights activists try to censor other activists because they weren't on the party line. Now I know I'm asking that people not be hypocrites, and you can't really expect a perfect world. But I'm sorry. The thing I needed to believe in during my 20's (which, I've come to believe is the hardest part of life, for me, adolescence was a breeze compared to this) shit on me, and I'll never really get over it.
The problem is that most musicians go through this same type of thing, only with music. They learn about all the scumbags, and the evil corporados, during a time when they really need to believe in something pure and wonderful, something that can save your life. Music can do that, but like politics did to me, it can also break your heart. I learned through politics that nothing is pure. You've got to learn to separate the good from the bad, celebrate the good, and protect yourself emotionally and financially from the bad. I'm very lucky that it wasn't music that built up my emotional calluses. My advice? I'm paraphrasing Billy West, who I just saw on a lecture tour talking about his adventures in the entertainment industry: "You have to continue to believe in yourself and what you can do." On top of that, he also warned that if you are any good, totally clueless suits are gonna want a piece of you, and are going to get a piece of you, and you have to deal with it.
The part of me that they're going to get is the leathery-old calloused part. And the part that music, and our audience is going to get of me is the soft pink fleshy stuff underneath. And that's how it should be.
DA: If a dead angel fell from the clouds and hit you on the head, what would you say? (Yes, this is a weird one.)
VR: a) Hey, is this worth anything?
b) What a great idea for a song!
c) Does this mean its gonna rain?
d) Let's go dump this at Tommy Thompson's next fundraiser, right at the part where he's sucking up to the anti-choicers.