Railroad Jerk
interview (May 1995) from Geek Weekly
tour illustrations by Marcellus Hall
Geek Weekly Coorespondants: S: Susan Shepard
M: Margaret Shepard
Railroad Jerk:
Marcellus Hall
Tony Lee
Dave Varenka
Alec Stephen
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| On the Oregon Trail 4/10/94 |
S: The production on the new record received a few barbs from one friend of mine, but it doesn't sound that different to me. What was different?
Marcellus: We put the vocals up a little bit louder than usual, no reverb on the drums.
Tony: We spent a month on it this time. We recorded the drums in a small room. We recorded the whole thing in a smaller atmosphere. We used tube equalizers and tube microphones.
Marcellus: What were those "barbs," anyway?
S: He (Craig) was saying that it didn't have the tension present on previous recordings, that it didn't have the tightly wound atmosphere.
Marcellus: We get along better now.
Tony: The last two albums we had members we didn't get along with. But for the last three years we've had the same members. That's one reason. That's funny, just today I was informed that we were lo-fi.
S: By whom?
Tony: By the newspaper. Austin's local Village Voice.
S: Oh, The Chronicle (the writer was Raoul Hernandez).
M: How did you guys all end up in New York? I want to go to school there.
Marcellus: That's why I went there. I wanted to be where there was a lot of exciting things going on.
M: How old were you when you moved there?
Marcellus: 19
Tony: Me too.
Alec: I lived all over. My father was a musician so I had to live with him after I lived with my mother for a while -- his turn to take care of me -- so I ended up in New York, I don't know, early Eighties, right at the end of the big punk scene.
S: Jennifer wanted me to ask if you ever got called the Marcellus Hall Blues Explosion.
Marcellus: Why would anyone say that?
S: You've gotten a lot of comparisons, or at least I've read a lot. I don't think they're valid, but they're there.
Tony: We are from the same town, on the same label, we're good friends, and we play in the same practice space. We've been around longer, but Pussy Galore was a big influence... not really an influence, just something that is great. But as far as sound, the only thing that is similar is the fact that somebody could say we're both blues-based. We have totally different styles of songs.
S: You get grouped with them geographically.
Tony: The New York sound, yeah.
S: I was wondering if there are any other contemporary bands that you'd consider your peers, because instead of thinking of you in the same breath with the Blues Explosion or Royal Trux... those are bands that I think pay tribute to a certain sound, whereas there's bands around that are blues-based or blues-influenced that are more of a continuation, something that comes organically...
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| Yreka, CA 11/27/95 |
S: The only bands I would think of in the same breath with y'all -- and it's not even a similarity of sound, it's not even close to that -- are the Grifters and Doo Rag.
Dave: We get the Grifters, actually.
Marcellus: Here, read them out loud.
S: Beck, P.J. Harvey, Jon Spencer's Blues Explosion -- the Blues explosion are a funk band -- Palace Brothers, Grifters, Railroad Jerk, Royal Trux, Gibson Brothers, Workdogs, and Doo Rag. Royal Trux are an arena band now.
Marcellus: I'm not saying they're my favorites, they're just the ones that I've notices that are sort of blues.
S: Is there anyone out there that you consider to be contemporaries or peers of yours?
Marcellus: I do like P.J. Harvey, what she's doing. I wouldn't say we're doing the same thing.
Tony: I like Doo Rag, I think they're amazing, I think they're kind of a tribute more than a continuation.
Dave: They're much more straightforward bluesy than we are.
Tony: I really like them. I really like to listen to them in my head-phones sitting in the van driving. I don't think of any of these in the same breath as us. It's not like we're doing anything original, but we've got so may influences other than just blues stuff.
M: Do you like the people that listen to your music?
Tony: We love the people that listen to our music.
Marcellus: We haven't met them all yet.
Tony: But we're dying to meet them all.
Alec: There's a lot of people that don't even.... or maybe I just take it for granted that I think people know as much about music as I would. I mean, I don't know a lot about music, but I don't have people saying, "Oh, you play this, and it sounds like that, and it's blues!" A lot of people hear it for what it is and sometimes I'm thinking, "God, I know what this is!" and I'm surprised they don't don't know. You think you're going to get a response and you don't, and that's what's interesting. I take stuff for granted sometimes, but some people just don't see it like that, cause I think it's generational. I'm 29, I grew up with the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, and nobody's said to me "I know what you're playing!"
Tony: In "Riverboat," the song I sing, the part in the middle, the breakdown part, is totally stolen from "Dr. Robert" by the Beatles -- it's exactly the same thing.
S: Yeah, uh, I know that. I wanted to ask a few things about the line-up changes. Oh, Marcellus, did you really pick up your first drummer in a bar?
Marcellus: Yeah.
S: And just found out she was a drummer?
Marcellus: Well, yeah. She was asking us if she could drum with us, and we were kind of reluctant, and then we gave her a try and it turned out great. But it's funny. I didn't pick her up -- it wasn't legitimate because she was so drunk that she didn't even know who I was or where she was when she woke up. She didn't know where she was, and I told her where she was, and she started calling me Richard.
S: Did you pick up Dave at a bar?
Marcellus: That didn't happen. He tried to pick me up.
S: Why did she leave?
Marcellus: Uhh...
Tony: She moved to Germany to start a T-shirt company. She quit the band at that point, and when she didn't like what she did, she came back to New York and we had already found another drummer.
M: How did the rest of you meet?
Tony: Me and Marce met at the same time that he picked up Jez in the bar, and then we went through a few miscellaneous drummers and guitar players.
Marcellus: Bill Berger recommended Alec to us.
Tony: He played on Raise the Plow. And a guy named Tom Greenwood played on that, and they both did like one live show each. At that point we were just in a flux.
Marcellus: That's when we had tension.
S: So what was all this tension stemming from?
Marcellus: Uh, the flux... You know how we met Dave? We were searching desperately for a drummer and we asked somebody at Matador, Dan (Varenka). He said, "My brother."
Tony: He does Walt Records. That was about two and a half years ago, when Dave got into the band. Alec was about three years ago. We were so incredibly lucky. When we were searching for new guitar players before the second guitar player came into the band, we put an ad out and we sifted through all these people. We put in the ad, "Influences: Robert Johnson, the Fall, must not have looks." For Dave, we just had to try out three drummers and Dave was the third, it was an easy choice. Especially for me, being a bass player, you can tell right away, and immediately me and Dave -
Dave: We fell right in love. It was unbelievable.
S: Do you have any other projects - anything else going on? I know Marcellus put out the solo record on Walt.
Tony: I used to play in Mother Head Bug, a twelve-piece -- strings and horns and stuff like that. I played on the last Lubricated Goat album. I do this blues thing, and play slide guitar, and that's to be coming.
Alec: I played bass in this band Smack Dab for three years. You probably don't know them down here. They haven't really toured that much. We were on Homestead Records.
M: Do you guys feel like rock stars yet?
Tony: Almost, but not quite yet.
Marcellus: In a few more hours maybe.
Tony: Do you feel like we're rock stars yet?
M: On your way. Well on your way.
Tony: I definitely will buy you a drink later.
Marcellus: What are your ages?
S: I'm 18 and Margaret's 16.
Tony: You guys look alike, too.
S: I think we have the same parents. How come you guys take so long to put out records?
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| Burney, CA 11/22/95 |
S: So it's Matador's fault?
Dave: Hell yeah.
Tony: Right now, Matador is totally streamlined. It took Raise the Plow over a year to come out when we handed them the final artwork and everything. Finally when it was ready to come out, the printer, the color separator, fucked up, so it took another two months. Our timing had been impeccably bad, for releases and ads and everything, for every record except for this one.
S: How big of a concern is this to you -- MTV and promotion in general?
Tony: Promotion is absolutely important for us to step up anywhere, but MTV is kind of...
Marcellus: It will bring people to shows. We despise MTV just like anybody does, but if you have videos on there, and you show what you can do, I think people will tune into it.
Tony: Half of them may be idiots and half of them may not.
S: The reason I was asking is because Marcellus's lyrics are very referential to the band and to the music business and I was wondering if that's why -- frustration at your label -- or the way you make your living in general.
Marcellus: I don't know if that's why. I don't think it's just musicians that are talking about the money you made on your advance, it's even what lay people talk about. I think it's kind of weird to talk about it, so I thought it would be even weirder to sing about it. I just think that in the sixties, people weren't talking about how much money Elvis was making. They weren't that critical of the industry itself. I don't know if they should be or shouldn't be, but it seems to be like the thing to do nowadays and it seems kind of warped compared to the past.
Tony: People are more articulate about it now, but do they need to be?
Marcellus: I think if you write about your record contract in your song - I think it's funny because I think people's ears would go "huh? record contract?"
Dave: Yeah, that's what they really want to hear about.
That night's show was a blast - indoors at Emo's, the heat and noise making us uncomfortable enough to really enjoy ourselves, we rolled about and hollered. Then at the end, the drunken drummer from Steel Pole Bathtub showed up, fresh from an opening gig with Faith No More. He tried to crawl across the stage and Tony sat on him. He didn't even stop playing.
