Reykjavík Grapevine - 19.05.2006, Blaðsíða 27

It’s afternoon here, 9 am in New York. The man on the
other end of the line is a regarded as a hero of rock mu-
sic, as the man who found and gave RL Burnside and
Mississippi Blues to college kids throughout America,
as the leader of the independent music movement, as
the king of the European festival circuit, and, overall,
as the living embodiment of rock. He is Jon Spencer,
and since his first album as the Jon Spencer Blues
Explosion in 1994, he has been roughly ten years ahead
of the music industry. On May 26th, he’ll be in Iceland
leading the Rockabilly movement with his new band
Heavy Trash.
“I’m a busy guy, I got a lot of stuff to do. Let’s get
going with this,” he says, as soon as I introduce myself.
Mr. Spencer, I was a fan of 1994’s rough and ready
Orange, which sounds like White Stripes with two Jack
Whites, when I came upon you and a freakishly precise
Rockabilly guitarist Matt Verta-Ray at a music festival
in Norway. How do you go from sloppy and crazy, as an
aesthetic, to pool shark precision in Verta-Ray.
“Well, I do love the way Matt Verta-Ray plays. It’s
just beautiful guitar playing, and that was the reason
for heavy trash, the chance to get that sound down on
vinyl.”
And presumably play live?
“I love this music. I love rock n roll. It makes me feel
good to play this kind of music and to play a concert and
have a good time and celebrate something and at the
same time mourn something and just sort of get lost a
little bit and levitate a few feet above the earth.”
Levitate above the Earth?
“You just get lost with these shows.”
I think of Jon Spencer as the Gateway drug, the man
who just takes suburban kids, or college kids, or Euro-
peans, and shows them all the dark history of American
music.
“It’s nice to show people that, the other music, but
it’s not the reason I’m doing this. My reasons are a bit
more selfish. I just want to make records and to play
concerts.”
You’re a 20-year veteran of the Indie circuit. Actu-
ally, I guess you invented the Indie circuit—playing your
way through Europe as the Jon Spencer Blues Explo-
sion, across America with your famous blues tours.
“That’s the beauty of it. A lot of people think music
is about business and careers, and I think that you can
do it on your own. You don’t have to have money behind
you. It doesn’t have to be that way. Of course, sure it
would be nice to have some company give us lot a of
money. I wouldn’t be upset, but everything comes out
in the wash. You can tell, just when some gets up on
stage, who will stand the test of time. In concert you can
separate the wheat from the shaft.”
Well, you’ve got the chops, to say nothing of Matt
Verta-Ray.
“Yeah, we’ve got chops and we’ve got looks. Take
that out and make it a pull quote, cause we’re coming to
Iceland to blow some people’s minds.”
About the looks, you’re inf luential in everything
from the way you dress to the album covers. This new
Heavy Trash album, for example.
“The way that a recording is presented, it’s a big
part of the whole music experience, and it was always
something that I got off on as a young fan and still do
to this day. The artist for the new album is Paul Pope, a
friend of mine. He’s a great comic book artist. Among
other things, he did Batman Year 100 for DC, which I
recommend to anybody. And he spent a lot of time with
us, got a good feel for the band, and made something
that represents us.”
Are comics part of what shapes your sound?
“I like comics books novels, any type of media, for
sure. I like talking to the bus driver. The things I do
with my family. Everything, from getting older on, it all
feeds into what I’m going to write about.”
And cars? Rockabilly is traditionally driving music.
“I’m not a car person. I’m not a gear head. I think
tradition is great. But music isn’t real estate, it moves
and it’s f luid. I think one thing that’s weird is the way
Rockabilly cats take a hard line. I think that rock n roll
moves. Whether or not anyone else agrees with me, I’m
going to take the parts I like best and drop the rest.”
Your treatment of tradition is controversial. The
Reykjavík Grapevine went to the South recently, and
we found ourselves in an argument at the Delta Blues
Museum based entirely on you. They said that your
seminal album with RL Burnside, A Ass Pocket of
Whiskey, was mean. They said you just got him drunk
and recorded him, that it disrespected tradition.
“I knew RL Burnside. He was a friend. And he
drank a lot more than I ever could. I didn’t introduce RL
to alcohol. We didn’t twist his arm at all.
About the album, we’d been touring together and
messing around together on stage for a while. We were
friends and the record was a natural progression. It was
Matthew Johnson’s idea to capture what was live and
what was going on.
I can understand why some people wouldn’t like
that record. I think some of the later stuff (Fat Possum
Records) did... I think there are worse things that people
did than what we did.”
In my opinion, A Ass Pocket demonstrated not just
that RL was a great blues musician, but that he was still
alive and curious in his 70s, and that this whole differ-
ent, aggressive world of blues was out there.
“It’s something that I’m very proud of. The time we
spent with RL left such a deep mark. It was a very sad
thing to lose him. Touring with him, it was a powerful
thing to see people get turned by something that was
very alive.”
This is the tradition people see you following and
developing on.
“I hope so. I think you can look at RL or Charlie
Feathers or someone who had a real fire in their bones.
And it was a very particular thing that they did. And
they stuck to it for their entire lives. And that’s some of
my favourite stuff.”
And will you be pushing it like RL, into your 70s.
“We’ll see. I don’t think about it. It’s not like 20
years ago I thought this is going to be my job. I like
doing this; I don’t want to do anything else. I still like
to do it, and it still satisfies something, so I’m still doing
it.”

Good Morning, Mr. Spencer
by bart cameron photo by ali smith
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