Th' Legendary Shack*Shakers are currently on tour, supporting their latest release Pandelirium, one of the best albums to come out this year. Shack*Shakers' frontman JD Wilkes took a few moments to answer some questions from an Internet Cafe on the road.
RC: How's the tour going? Has anything cool or crazy happened?
JD: Ohhhh, just an onstage fistfight with a saucy Spaniard in Bilbao, a banana-strewn food fight in Madrid, several sold-out/capacity theatres and clubs across Europe, a strange Edwardian banquet of soul food prepared on our behalf by a cross-dressing sexagenarian (in full southern belle garb), his Nathan Lane lookalike "husband", and their stable of scampering houseboys. Various moshings, blood lettings and on-bus "Dutch Ovens." The rest will come to me later.
RC: Where are you now?
JD: I'm in London at an Internet cafe...typing away like mad, trying to "beat the clock."
RC: How have the European crowds responded to your sound?
JD: There hasn't been a night yet when they haven't demanded at least two more encores. We had FOUR curtain calls the other night in Gronigen!
RC: What's it like touring with Robert Plant?
JD: Great. He's still got "the voice" and was very hospitable and attentive to whatever we needed. We even got a Christmas bonus at the end of the tour! We had great catered meals every day and played the finest theatres across Europe. I mean, what do you THINK it's like touring with Robert Plant? It was awesome.
RC: Th' Legendary Shack*Shakers have a really distinct sound. I've often read it described as "Southern Gothic". How would you describe it?
JD: Southern Gothic rock 'n' roll. It's got all that blues, country, Texas polka and Latin stuff thrown in to create a new hybrid. That's where the best stuff comes from, simple experimentation with the basics. That's what rockabilly, bluegrass and the like were...simple music forms combining to create something better.
RC: How did Th' Legendary Shack*Shakers start?
JD: It was always just my personal experiment with roots music until I met Mark Robertson in a honky tonk in Nashville. We combined forces and started making these new records from an Nashville-outsider perspective. Hank III invited us out on tour, then the Rev. Horton Heat came a-callin', then Robert Plant and now Rancid is interested. The legend is STILL unfolding before our very eyes!
RC: Where do you draw your influences from?
JD: Mostly the music of Muddy Waters, Little Walter and Howlin' Wolf. But also country guys like Louvin Bothers and Dock Boggs. I also dig newer acts like Tom Waits and James Harman, 16 Horsepower and Slim Cessna.
RC: The types of music you blend (blues, bluegrass, country, punk, polka, etc.) - are these part of your background, music you grew up with? What led you to have bring all of these styles of music together?
JD: I was born in Texas (polka, Latin) and raised in Kentucky (bluegrass), but also went to school on the Mississippi/Louisiana border for 6 years (swamp blues, Cajun) so it makes sense that I would draw from multiple southern sources, given my migratory childhood. Gospel music and hymns were also a part of my traditional, Christian upbringing and is probably the most influential genre of them all.
RC: Your music also has a really dark sound. Is the evil intentional, or did it just kind of happen?
JD: If you think it's evil, you are woefully off base. This music is just coming from the same place that inspired Robert Johnson and Dock Boggs to sing about the devil and murder. Was Johnny Cash a devil-worshipper because he wore black and sang about the Devil? Hell, the Christmas carol(!) "God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman" contains multiple references to "Satan". And this is something choir boys sing in HONOR of the Lord!
Yer WAY off base with that observation, bucko.
RC: Do you have a favorite track on the new album?
JD: "No Such Thing" is pretty catchy, though the lyrics are a bit self-pitying, come to think of it. "Nellie Bell" turned out nice... a haunting ode to an unknown soul, if you will.
RC: Where do you get the topics or ideas for the songs? It seems like some of them are based on actual events.
JD: Yes, that's the oral tradition of folk, country, minstrel and blues music that I dig. The verbal relaying of news and actual events, as is evidenced by the lyrics in old murder ballads and the like. I say why not tell NEW stories in a similar way? Why does every song on the radio have to be about what a funky, urban bad-ass you are?
RC: For example, what's "Somethin' In The Water" about?
JD: The Union Carbide nuclear facility in Paducah KY has leaked toxic waste into the water supply for years, come to find out...producing mutations in its employees. And not far from that site, is where one of the first American school-shootings occurred. Coincidence? I think not.
