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| We've been in the studio in New Orleans finishing our 14th album - It's called "Fear of a Cajun Planet" and will be released this fall. Tom Drummond of Better Than Ezra is producing. We're at Fudge Studios in the Lower Garden District. Watch this space for further news! | |
| We made the High Times top 25 |
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REAX MAGAZINE (www.reaxmusic.com) ARTICLE 11/20/2007
Dash Rip Rock
Interview with Bill Davis
Words: Shawn Kyle
Appearing:
November 20, 2007
Skippers Smokehouse, Tampa
Dash Rip Rock has seen it all. They have been called the "Greatest Bar Band" in the world for years, having begun their cow-punk odyssey in New Orleans in 1984. Since their humble beginnings, they have been underground heroes, and seen brief top 40 successes in the 90's over a song making fun of hippies they did as a joke. They have since become one of the longest running groups in country punk, renowned the world over with peers like Mojo Nixon, and the Reverend Horton Heat. Longtime fan Jello Biafra has welcomed them to his notorious Alternative Tentacles record label to release a best of record (Recyclone) and this year's Hee Haw Hell.
REAX: “Hee Haw Hell” is being called Dash Rip Rock's first "concept album," a serious description that may be surprising to longtime fans of the group. What's the concept?
Bill Davis: My friend, Lou Brutus is the DJ on XM Radio who runs the punk rock channel and he has a show called Hee Haw Hell where he plays country punk or punk with a roots rock flavor. I did the theme song for it, and he wrote the lyrics. He came to me and said that we should do a whole rock opera based on the idea of Hee Haw Hell. A lot of our songs are about the south and drunken idiots in the south, so originally we were going to base it on a journey or and odyssey, but he came up with Dante's Inferno. So, instead of Dante going to hell, he goes to the south.
We have cantos of "poetry" in between the songs. Originally we were going to have guys like Steven Tyler, and Gene Simmons to read these, but it was a sort of hot potato, they said "What? No way am I gonna read these crazy things about hell and the south!" So we got our punk rock buddies to do it; Mojo Nixon, Jello Biafra, and Supagroup.
REAX: Jello Biafra is well known for his work with the Dead Kennedys, and also as the founder of the Alternative Tentacles record label, known for it's variety of fringe music with a punk attitude. How did you wind up on the label?
BD: Originally we met through Mojo Nixon and became friends. We're both record lovers and we have the same political views. We really don't fit on his label and he likes that, getting people to wonder what the fuck is he doing now? A lot of his punk listeners were surprised that we wound up on the label.
REAX: Post natural disaster, what is the status of the New Orleans punk and rockabilly rock scene?
BD: The punk scene in New Orleans is stronger than ever. Most of the people in bands lived in the French Quarter, and it wasn’t really damaged. A lot of people were from out of town anyway. It seems like all the musicians seem to have come back, it didn't affect the scene that we were a part of.
REAX: Dash Rip rock has been heralded by the press as the "Greatest Bar Rock Band Ever..." and you are still going strong now over two decades later.
BD: We really did start as a three-piece rockabilly band and we morphed into a punk group. But, now it's full circle, we have gone to playing southern rock rockabilly and with playing live it's been a strange metamorphosis. After twenty years we are sort of entering in to the classic rock and roll hero thing, people say, "Those guys are still around? Oh my god!"
REAX: After so many years on the road, what still drives you to get in the van?
BD: It's fun and you have to get out of town, it's why other people go on vacation. I like to get out of Louisiana and see friends that we have around the USA and around the world. We have made so many friends all over and it's good to see everyone.
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FROM THE DAILY TEXAN - Austin, TX
If you were a rebellious teenager in the mid-'90s, odds are you remember a song about pot smoking that used to piss off your parents every time it came on the radio. And it came on the radio a lot. "Let's Go Smoke Some Pot" first started getting airplay here in Austin, and soon after, it was a Top 10 hit nationwide. "Pot" was the No. 1 requested song for six weeks straight on San Francisco's Rock 101. Even rock's definitive station, KROQ in Los Angeles, picked it up. The band was Dash Rip Rock, from Louisiana, and they've been blowing crowds away and wowing critics for more than a decade.
Musician Magazine once called them the best bar band in America. Elvis Costello said they were "brilliant." Cream gave them a three-page spread. Billboard loved them, and MTV ran features, but most people today only remember that one song. Ironically, "Pot" was really an anti-marijuana jab at the jam band craze of the time. Many who do remember the song attribute it to the more famous bands that later covered it, such as Reel Big Fish, Pennywise and 311.
In the early '80s, bands expanded on the Southern rock craze of the '70s, and started, quite accidentally, to blend punk rock and country. While the trend may have started in California, it thrived in Austin, shaping the live music scene here for years to come. Whether you call it psychobilly, punkabilly or cowpunk, Dash Rip Rock was one of the first bands to introduce it to the world.
Dash Rip Rock's legacy lies primarily in the long list of bands that have been directly influenced by their performances. Better than Ezra's lead singer, Kevin Griffin, once fronted for a Dash cover band. Cowboy Mouth's Fred Leblanc established himself as a force to be reckoned with while drumming for Dash Rip Rock. Reverend Horton Heat, Dean Seltzer and the Redneck Mothers, Southern Culture on the Skids, Supagroup, the Gin Blossoms and even Hootie and the Blowfish are just a few more examples of bands that cite Dash Rip Rock as major influences.
Bill Davis, singer/songwriter for Dash, was in Austin last week, and The Daily Texan had the opportunity to sit down and talk shop with him.
DT: You're releasing your 12th album this week, tell us about it.
Davis: It's called Hee Haw Hell, and its funny, seriously, it's a rock opera. It's a play on Dante's "Inferno" - instead of the levels of hell, it's a bunch of songs about the South, as hell, in a sort of "Deliverance" kind of way.
DT: One of the biggest criticisms of South by Southwest is that it's lost its way and has become too corporate to really help struggling bands make it big. You've been a part of SXSW since the start - What's your take?
Davis: People talk about how South by has changed so much over the years, and that's true, but it's still one of the best opportunities for a no-name band to find some measure of success. SXSW opened up a bunch of avenues for us - we played the very first one, opening up for the LeRoi brothers at the Continental Club. We were signed to our first record deal because of that show. For a couple years, the local access music channel would give us a camera and have us film our adventures during the week for an inside look of the conference. That was a lot of fun. We met a European booking agency here at SXSW that brought us to Europe every year for ten years. So yeah, SXSW has been great to us.
DT: Share some of your more memorable SXSW experiences with us. Who did you meet, who do you look forward to seeing, that sort of thing.
Davis: Well, in 1990, I met Jello Biafra (singer/songwriter for the Dead Kennedy's) at Liberty Lunch. He told me how he found a collectors single of ours in a record shop in San Francisco. I didn't even know we had a collector's single. We're now signed to Jello's record label.
The thing for me is, SXSW isn't just about business; it's the one chance that bands who are on the road all the time have to reconnect with their friends - a lot of it is like that scene from "Almost Famous," where all the tour managers and band members from the different bands are sitting around playing poker. For instance, every year Mojo Nixon's manager throws this big party at this hotel right on Town Lake. There's 300 people crammed into a suite, and one year I'm there talking to the singer from the band, The Presidents of the United States of America, and he's going on and on about these cowboy boots I was wearing. At some point I had spray painted them gold, I thought it was funny. Our manager comes running in and rounds the band up, telling us we've gotta go, the cops were on their way. As we're riding down the elevator, one of those glass ones, we saw the cops on the other side, riding up; seriously they sent the SWAT team. That was a rock 'n' roll escape if there ever was one. What's funny is, a few months later, I saw that guy from the Presidents, he was on TV meeting Bill Clinton, and he was wearing cowboy boots he had spray painted gold. He totally stole that from me.
DT: You guys have always had an Austin connection, tell us about it.
Davis: Austin has been good to us. At one point, our manager, booking agent and record label were all out of Austin. We'd show up at a club in Kansas, and the venue would have us billed as 'Dash Rip Rock, from Austin, Texas.' Since then we've collaborated with Austinites, we worked with Cory Morrow for a few years recently, releasing an album on his label. It's always been great to see how cowpunk has maintained its presence here. All those bands there on Red River, the Flametrick Subs, the Hotrod Hillbillies, all of those, it's awesome.
We got distracted from playing here for a couple years - I moved to Nashville, then Katrina happened, but we're playing a bunch of shows here up through South by, and plan on making regular stops here in the future.
Dash Rip Rock will be playing two free shows this weekend, Friday, March 2, at Shakespeare's Pub (314 E. Sixth St.), and Saturday, March 3, at Ink (formerly Lava Lounge, at 405 E. Seventh St.). Both shows are free and start at 10 p.m. During SXSW, they will be playing on Saturday, March 17, first at Mojo Nixon's Mojo Mayhem at the Continental Club and then later that night at the Parish for the Alternative Tentacles showcase. |
HEE HAW HELL - FEB. 27 RELEASE
NEW ORLEANS - 11/14/2006:
Our next record is nearly complete. The reading parts for the rock opera have been turned in and it is a hoot - Supe Granda (Ozark Mt. Daredevils) Bill Lloyd, Mojo NIxon, Jello Biafra, The Upper Crust, Supagroup, Steve Poltz and a host of others are "ACTING" on our record. There are 2 stanza interludes between each song (Dante called them "cantos"). Oh, wait, I forgot to tell you - this record is a country punk rock opera based on Dante's Inferno. No we haven't lost our MF minds. |
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| Vixens at the Varsity |
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BAND IN FLUX AFTER KATRINA WHUPS OUR SORRY ASS
FROM SEPT. 2005:
Unfortunately, we're in the middle of trying to sort out the remnants of our band. Leon Touzet is home now and has to run his family businesses in The French Quarter everyday because the bitch storm ran away his employees. Brian Broussard is living in Poplarville, MS at his families vacation home clearing the destuction that Katrina left there. His truck fell victim to an errant pine tree. Eddie Ecker filled in on drums in September and October. He is living in St. Louis and lost his entire house, his drums his truck and all his personal belongings. FEMA bought him a new drum kit. Kyle Melancon is back in Metairie repairing is flood damaged house. Jody Smith and Settly both live in New York City now because they lost everything in NOLA. We're gonna have Mike Ogden formerly of the New Orleans band Nut sitting in on drums for us on New Years Eve at Sluggo's. He also lost his house and everything in it on the lake front in Mandeville. We're just glad everybody is ok and we plan on touring our asses off this summer and put out a new album when everybody gets their life back together.
Last Updated 12/21/05 |
DASH RELEASES RE-CYCLONE! Bill Davis explains ReCyclone: "We’re touring with Drivin’ and Cryin’ starting on April 1. It will be some pretty big venues so we thought it’d be a good idea to release a record that’d be a decent introduction to the band (for the uninitiated). It’s DNC’s 20th birthday and it’s approximately ours (Fred joined in the summer of 1985). This record has 20 of our best hard-driving rock songs. They’ve been re-mastered using the most up-to-date computer stuff available here in Nash Vegas. Most of these songs were recorded in the 80s/90s. They suffered from the limited equipment of those decades, plus we were really drunk when we mixed ‘em. Now they are fixed up, and the thing really pumps. It leaps outta the stereo like Ned Hickel springing on that dude that stole his Jack in the front row, metaphorically speaking." The extra addition, for the Dash fan who has everything back to “Pops,” is the inclusion of remastered versions of Marsupial and Shake That Girl off our first 45 released summer of 1984 (wait, that makes us 21 yrs. old, oh well). Bill Davis pitches Recyclone again: "So, in closing, I’ll say – This is a great record for someone who has never heard of Dash Rip Rock. It’s a great party record, it’s a great dancing record, it’s a focused and intensely appropriate drinking record. For those who worship the drumming skills of F. Clarke Marrty, it’s a must-have." |
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| Click image to read latest Ear Candy interview with Bill |
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| DASH RIP ROCK SIGNS WITH ALTERNATIVE TENTACLES |
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| In Jello We Trust |
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| DRR has signed a licensing agreement with San Francisco's Alternative Tentacles Records. The label will release a 20-year retrospective of the band's career in Spring 2005, including band faves and some never-released rarities. A.T. was founded by Jello Biafra to release eclectic underground music of all forms. It is the home of Wesley Willis and Dash fave Evan Johns and the H-Bombs. Click on Jello above to visit their website! |
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| Click image and get lyrics to almost ever Dash song |
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For booking e-mail Scott at Green Frog here |
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