INTERVIEWS - 1

The following is an interview with Howe Gelb by Nigel Cross from the magazine Bucketfull Of Brains and was published in 1986 in issues 18 & 19.

SONORAN DESERT SPRING

THE AMAZING GIANT SAND STORY

Howe Gelb interview - Part One

It’s an electric June evening in Hollywood, the warm air is throbbing with a hundred neons. I’m being ferried to the Cathay de Grande to see a late Saturday night set by Tucson’s Giant Sand. For collectors of trivia, a month or so later the Cathay is raised to the ground and in it’s basement foundations are located a collection of tins containing long lost reels of rare Charlie Chaplin film. Howe Gelb, group figure-head and head Worm expertly manoeuvres the truck around narrow city streets. In the back are a group of the most unlikely travelling companions (refugees from Tucson, would be pop-stars and a journalist from London). The Sand van is a fascinating vehicle, it’s insides festooned with a collection of photographs; Sophia Loren, Leadbelly, Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Tex and the Horseheads, Woody Guthrie and half a dozen more. Pride of place is given to the skull of a young longhorn ram; explains Gelb, “found off a cliff in the Tucson  foothills. An Indian said it was OK as long as the rest of the bones remain back where it died.”

The general objective of the night, set up my mine host Bob Lambert (of Whistling Shrimp Productions) is to get acquainted with arguably the best group to emerge from Tucson this decade and carry back the word to the UK via an interview (projected for “Sounds”) but which is destined to never take place. The show is good- Howe laconically quips “We’re the Giant Sand, we used to be the Sandworm but we got de-wormed and the trio, Gelb, Scott Garber and sticksman for the night, Winston rumble off into some edgy, hungry songs characterised by Garber’s dextrous, oft wickedly libidinous bass lines and Gelb’s unorthodox guitar phrases that mewl like a prowling Sonoran wildcat (particularly on “All Along The Watchtower”)- there’s plenty of fire in the belly of
these boys. For once, word of mouth recommendations (from producer (Jeffrey Wood) rang true- this bunch were good.

It would take a further twelve months before I got down to the business of an interview. In the meantime word spread like wildfire and a rash of vinyl both from the Giant Sand(worms) and the countrified Blacky backed up the constant hyperbole tossed their way; they also came over in the Spring to infect Europe with their euphonious wail- their UK date in April was well documented a couple of issues ago- it was a shame that more people didn’t make the effort to catch Howe, Scott and drummer Ian Shedden (from the Snakes of Shake) but maybe the Reagan/Gaddafi war paranoia was the reason for that as the Yanks had just zapped Tripoli the night they arrived. The guys returned in July at the tailend of a second Euro tour and stopped off in London to complete the just released “Ballad Of A Thin Line Man” album by recording a glorious cover of Johnny Thunders’ “You Can’t Put Your Arms Round A Memory” ( single, Andy, I think!) at West 3 Studios in Acton.

I arrived just in time for the track’s final mixdown with a bag of beers and managed to lure Howe away from the flaccid air of the control room long enough to start the much-postponed interview. We sat on a wall outside, cans in hand, with swifts eerily arcing across a pre-storm sky and chatted. It was a million miles away from the High Sonoran Desert and John Van Dyke, though one look at the Fordian black and white still on the front cover of the new Sand LP is enough to bring tears to the eyes of any self-respecting desert freak.

Part One of the interview is printed below. It charts Howe’s move from Pennsylvania to the land of the cholla and the giant saguaro and incorporates the history of the Giant Sandworms and the roots of the Band of Blacky Ranchette. At least, you’ll need a copy of the Worms wonderful waxing “Don’t Turn Away”, available from that good man and true, Pete Flannagan’s One Big Guitar record label. Part Two bringing it all up to date will appear next time together with a full discography:

B.O.B.: The name Giant Sandworms, did it come from the Frank Herbert novel “Dune”?
H.G.: There was an illustration in Omni of giant sandworms from the book “Dune” but I didn’t realise how popular the book was. We wanted something indicative of the area around Tucson and I was obsessed with people seeming really worm-like except for their bones. So that was the whole thing- it was a perfect giant sandworms desert- yeah, I can live with all that (smiles). The we got all the Dune-heads hitting us with “oh, Dune, Dune!” reciting Dune to us, then the movie came out years later and that was worse.
B.O.B.: Was that the reason for shortening the name to Giant Sand?
H.G.: Yep plus right before that, we broke up the band essentially. Dave (Seger) left because things were working out with Naked Prey and things were too weird inside the band, it was too unfocussed and Billy (Sed) the drummer had some problems, it was getting a little too ugly and old. It’d been four or five years and I’d been making headway with Blacky so we said “Let’s forget it!” Scott (Garber) and I decided to work together but not with Billy.
B.O.B.: Didn’t you and Scott just go out as a duo backed by a drum machine for a while?
H.G.: No, we were going to do that (only) if it came down to it!
B.O.B.: What made you go down to Tucson in the first place?
H.G.: My dad was out there, he remarried there when I was fifteen so I’d spend the summers with him and finally moved to Tucson when I was 19.
B.O.B.: You liked it a lot better than Pennsylvania?
H.G.: Yeah, Pennsylvania is a depressed cold region- cold, dark, not enough information about anything. I mean if you go to New York or Jersey it’s a whole different trip. If you go another state further, you’re up in the backwoods, so I’m just a hick! (laughs).
B.O.B.: So what was it about Tucson that made you like it so much?
H.G.: Everything was different for one and people’s attitudes were pretty good. It was just real healthy for getting things done- things seemed to happen a lot easier down there. Up until that point I wasn’t really in a working band. I’d been recording at this 4-track public broadcasting station in Pennsylvania- they’d give me some free time every few months and I’d go down with some country songs, some rock songs, try to get some friends to help me. We never rehearsed and things always turned out bad but I was always writing. I started from writing instead of starting from playing which is strange- I tried to get in a band to make things work and sound lively. The first band was the Stains but I was just their keyboard player and that was in Pennsylvania- it only lasted a short while. So I finally had enough material and I called Rainer (Ptacek) up in Tucson to get a band together.
B.O.B.: How’d you know Rainer?
H.G.: From going there in the summers, and living there, hanging out.....so I called Rainer and he’s the guy who found the drummer, Billy and Billy brought along Dave- we got together and tried to play “Louie Louie” and we couldn’t but there was a certain chemistry between us.
B.O.B.: It’s been mentioned in pieces on the band and I’ve latched onto it myself, this thing about the desert, is it important? Or is it overemphasised?
H.G.: Let’s see- well there’s no place like it for one and there’s no place like that particular part of the desert, not even Phoenix has as nice a desert region as Tucson has. The vegetation is almost like being underwater because it’s really thick around Tucson- and it’s got these saguaros which are ridiculous. Everything you know is wrong out in the desert, it’s like being on Mars, it’s somewhere else. But it’s not as prohibiting as the Mojave Desert, there’s a lot more vegetation and especially in winter, it just feels a lot more welcoming.
B.O.B.: Do you spend a lot of your time out there?
H.G.: Usually when you’re in Tucson, you get so much into all the pavement and hating the traffic that you never get far enough out into the desert and when you do manage to, you never want to go back into town, there’s like this invisible barrier.....Any place you live has an effect on you.
B.O.B.: I’d agree. The first record you made, I don’t think anybody in this country knew about it but it’s a remarkable debut.....it bears very little resemblance to the music of Giant Sand but it’s a fascinating record. One thing that struck me was the resemblance of the early band to early Talking Heads, would you agree?
H.G.: Well I think only in a way that a lot of bands now sound like R.E.M. The Talking Heads broke a lot of ground and people who are involved in Giant Sand, like Scott’s from a jazz funk background- we were trying to find common ground and Talking Heads is a good midway point. Plus I couldn’t sing very well and neither could David Byrne so there’s that similarity. Again, the problem with Giant Sandworms was, everyone had their own idea. I was coming from blues and country, Scott was coming from funk and jazz, Billy was coming from this pop and soul thing, Dave had a lot of pop songs and he was getting a bit of metal in there!
B.O.B.: The opening track of that first EP is pretty strange: “Electro-Gospel”- can I ask you about that?
H.G.: You heard that ? I pity you then! (laughter)- that record was done shortly after the original band got together- Dave’s songs were written in another band, the White Pages with Lee Joseph who went on to Yard Trauma. I brought some songs from Pennsylvania- on the new Blacky record (“Heartland”) we do “Steadfast” and finally did it the way it was supposed to be, because it’s more of a country than cajun feel to it- nothing like the white record (NB: the first EP was pressed on white vinyl).
B.O.B: Why did Rainer leave the group?
H.G.: He ended up leaving because he thought it sounded like “mashed potatoes”!- it was all too much (makes grating sound) all the time! The best thing about the band was the live shows and we never got it on tape as cool as the live shows were. Everybody just went their own way and met back at the endings somehow. There were times when we didn’t even know what key the song was in but everyone had their own road and it all kind of worked out.
B.O.B.: So what made you quit Tucson and go back to New York then?
H.G.: Tucson is basically a small town, a population of half a million and the music scene there is even smaller. It was just so small time and playing Monday nights at the only club, this sleaze club, Tumbleweeds- it was a lot of fun really. On Monday nights they had this thing called Nighttrain and you had to put up with a lot of shit from bouncers. We got as much out of the town as we could and it was like “let’s do something else, let’s go someplace else and see if this is for real”! The Serfers went to L.A. and became Green On Red and we went to New York and Billy got more into junk- Dave was still really young.
B.O.B.: What made you decide to head for New York?
H.G.: Just because I’d been there once or twice passing through and it seemed like a real city. And passing through L.A. it seemed so scattered and I didn’t really understand it at all- I didn’t know any of the cities at that time, since Rainer quit, I was the oldest one in the band so I thought “let’s give it a shot in New York”, little did I know how gruesome it was! But after the first four months, it was cool but we never had any money.
B.O.B.: I read in Newsreel (defunct Tucson rock paper) that you rehearsed in the ex-lion house of some circus.
H.G.: Yeah, when we first got there, it was in Jersey. It was the old Ringling Bros’ animal house and this guy who was completely mad whom Billy had met through some under the table deal, he said “If you ever come out there...” - so Billy said “Yeah I gotta place for us to live out there so let’s go to New York!” All of a sudden Billy was into it- it turned out to be this dude. Billy said “We’ll record there, he’ll put up the money”. The guy was just nuts, he started shooting at werewolves one night with this gun, just shooting into the wall, he would just flip out. Then we moved from there into the city to Avenue B and Third Street and 81- real borderline gnarley shit but it was cool. I wouldn’t have traded that for anything because after a year of living there, everything else was cake.
B.O.B.: It was a fairly heavy Puerto Rican neighbourhood, wasn’t it? That whole sojourn in the city brought out the ethnic influences in your music didn’t it?
H.G.: There was a couple of James Brown covers that we were doing when we were still back in Tucson, that was from Billy, and Rainer was coming from the blues standpoint, as far as black influences go. I was mostly coming from country and heavier shit- when we got out there, we started getting into rhythms, using echo and stuff. Billy had the best voice in the band, a real good soul voice- you always pick up from what’s around, you have to. You don’t just reject the area and say “Where I come from is best”- you start taking in what’s around and it starts coming out in things you do.
B.O.B.: What made you return to Arizona then?
H.G.: It got to a point which almost destroyed us, the band was on the point of breaking up it was ugly. Actually what we did was, we said “Let’s put it on the back burner for four months”, everybody went their separate ways, I hitched a job with a band going up to the Black Hills of South Dakota and played for three months as a country piano player and got to chill out - it was like a vacation. Then we got back together and those two guys had found Scott in Tucson, he had moved there.
B.O.B.: I saw Scott described as a landscape photographer, is that his vocation?
H.G.: Yeah, I think that’s what he used to do- I think that was what he specifically tried.
B.O.B.: Tell me about that EP “An Evening At The Wildcat”? That’s so obscure! How did you come to record it?
H.G.: There was this dude in town and I’d step back and say “What is this guy all about?” He’d get involved in working with various political parties and when that would fall through, he would come back to Tucson and try and be an entrepreneur of the music scene- he knew absolutely nothing about it. He was into it for the organisation of it, the power or the glory- I don’t know, there was none of those things in Tucson. Anyway he somehow put together a couple of events, one of them was this night at the Wildcat which was a bar in Tucson- he would pay for it all and record us; we were pretty popular in the area so that’s why he chose us.
B.O.B.: Was “Cross Of Wood” a Seger song?
H.G.: Yeah, and Billy sang on it....
B.O.B.: It’s a beautiful song....
H.G.: And that came from New York, right after we left he wrote it- probably about the drugs and the whole breakdown. Billy, probably more than most of us was getting into it pretty bad. David and I didn’t really get involved but we had to deal with the problems that went with it. We had all the junkies coming up to our apartment to count their money from selling it on the street- it was intense. The police ended up raiding the place across the street, it was the second largest heroin market on the street in New York aside from Harlem- there were two places across the street and one got raided, they ended up bringing it into our building, we had to deal with that every day. It was good in the long run though.
B.O.B.: Tell me about the other song on that EP, “Coalworker”?
H.G.: Everybody wrote the music and I did whatever little lyric there was. It was combining the future with the past. In Pennsylvania there are these old coal banks- all this used coal. So I was imagining that, after the big one and everything was singed, what would it be like? Basically just charred coal and how everyone would have to walk on hot cinders- I’d just read this article about natives in South America that walk on hot coals. The music was a really good representation of where the band was going, just getting more and more chaotic, playing their own riff and making it work despite everything else that was going on.
B.O.B.: Scott told me that Dave is a pretty lazy guy- it seems he’s got all these great songs and that he should lead his own band, but he seems to be in the same situation in Naked Prey that he was in the Worms.
H.G.: Dave was always the puppy, the youngest and when we went to New York, I was 24 and he was 20, just turned- he’s grown a lot since then. If Dave Seger had a manager for Dave Seger, he could come up with some great things. Not that he doesn’t now, but I think he could do more if he wanted to. It’s good because Van (Christian) can’t really play guitar- he’s learned a lot since, he can do more than he used to. But Dave can really play well and has a good ear, he can learn any song and has a good background- it’s a great combination.
B.O.B.: The Jeffrey Wood produced demo (“Mad City”/”Don’t Turn Away”/Longsleeves”/”Not Romantic”) wasn’t done in Tucson, was it?
H.G.: It was done in Denver, Colorado. A guy in Tucson named Bob Lambert got this idea that he wanted to take us up (he moved to Denver) to a studio there - he was going to hire a producer which we’d never used before - we’d record all these projects and never put them out. Zippo has all those tapes right now and is mulling over the possibility of putting out a Sandworms record.
B.O.B.: Did this project come up pretty fast after the group had reformed?
H.G.: It was almost a year later. “Mad City” was written back when we first got to New York and we had about four or five different versions.
B.O.B.: There’s a real street funk feel to it.
H.G.: That was Latin, real Puerto Rican.
B.O.B.: You were fairly prolific then, always going into the studio?
H.G.: I was always writing, there was always plenty of stuff. When we’d get enough money for recording, there’d never be enough extra cash to press it and we never knew how to go about finding somebody to put it out for us. We didn’t know enough people outside of Tucson who could do anything for us. Finally when we got to LA we saw how it could be done. Bob came to town and there was only one other guy offering us a deal, a guy from Cleveland who was offering us a bizarre deal, he wanted 25 per cent of everything from that point on until we were deal, real sleazy! Bob just wanted to try this production company and since he worked in the studio, he wanted to start with us and see what he could do. It sounded like a much healthier set-up, we liked Jeffrey, he’d brought him down from Colorado. We got along immediately. We went up there and he went over budget- his intentions were good but he spent too much money. So nothing came out, no papers were signed and the band ended up breaking up a year later. Somehow Jeffrey came over to the UK and the tapes resurfaced (“Turn Away/”Longsleeves” released as a One Big Guitar 45, November ‘85-NC). Since then Bob has moved to LA and is working for Bug Music, the company I signed to. So now he’s shopping my songs. so that’s cool.
B.O.B.: Why didn’t the Sandworms record more?
H.G.: The drum machine plague- that’s why no record were put out! Soft Cell came out with “Tainted Love” and outside of Tucson, nobody wanted to hear a couple of guitars- they wanted to hear the Casios and the crack! crack!
B.O.B.: Billy used to get up and sing behind the pans didn’t he?
H.G.: Scott had a great day job as a photographer in Tucson, made a lot of money and would buy these gadgets- he brought a drum machine so Billy who had the best vocals in the band, the most soulful, would get up and sing- and we would do “Cross Of Wood”- I think you can hear it on that record, the drum machine and we would have these big drums at the front of the stage so Billy could do some filler. We’d only do it for two songs. That was the problem, that was after Scott joined the band. When, we first went to New York, we were a guitaristy band and people would say “Where’s the crack! crack!? You guys have a Western sound” and they were unimpressed. They didn’t know what to make of us. The whole late 70’s Talking Heads thing had been and gone, we should have been in LA somewhere near the Serfers. So we’d play CBGB’s on off nights and shit like that, just depressing. When we came back- like when Rainer was in the band, he gave us a corner of the band with the blues, we used to do a Richard Thompson song, a Four Tops song, a James Brown song- Scott joined the band with the jazz and funk but it was confusing , not that Scott didn’t add a lot to it- it was unfocussed. Everyone did a song- that’s why when we did a tape, we’d only be able to do three or four songs and there’d be different vocalist on each tune. We’d send it to somebody and it’d sound like four different bands, there’d be the Western thing, the funk thing, all the dissonance. So finally when the demise occurred after four years, I described it as a four-headed beast which took two steps backwards with every three forward. So we stripped it down- bass, guitar, drums, vocals. Let’s start again real simple, that’s what the Giant Sand record “Valley Of Rain”) was supposed to be all about, starting over again. Instead of everybody jumping into it and being all scattered from the beginning, we’re starting with “Valley Of Rain” and building it up!
B.O.B.: The Blacky Ranchette project: that was first described to me as Howe’s “Nashville Project”. Now was it Nashville just in terms of the Country and Western genre or was it that you were heading down to Tennessee to record it?
H.G.: Uhuh, no! I got to know somebody who lived in Nashville and I would talk to her on the phone and she’s now working for MCA- she would me out a little bit. I’ve always written country stuff but never put it out. It gave me the opportunity on the slow times with the Worms to start playing with some people I really wanted to play with. It would be fun instead of being too confusing, too nuts. That was Rainer, Tommy Larkins and Jack Martinez. Danny Stuart’s girlfriend, Suzie Wrenn was the one who first got the ball going. Originally we’d just do it locally in town as The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Van Christian would play drums, Jack’d play bass and I’d play guitar. I produced Van’s first demo tape which was “How I Felt That Day”, different to how it came out on the record (Naked Prey’s 2nd album, “Under The Blue Marlin”). At the same time I made up a little cassette of some of my own stuff- we’d make these tapes up in Tucson and just sell them in the local shops. Suzie heard that tape from Van and said “I’m putting together a country record, not a country punk record and “Spinning Room Waltz” sound just like the kind of thing I’m doing.” She brought me out to LA and all these other people like John Doe were supposed to be on this project- she introduced me to this great studio, Control Center and we went out there with Alex, Green On Red’s (former) drummer because Van had to work on the Monday and couldn’t make it. We learned the song at a rest-stop in Courtside on the way out there in the middle of nowhere. That’s what prompted me to get Tommy Larkins to play with the band and go back there and record a full album. We did that and a couple of months later, for 400 bucks, I ended up giving the cassette to Joe Nick Patoski, who was Joe “King” Carrasco’s manager who happened to be coming through Tucson- I was all drunk and gave him the tape. He ended up shopping it to New Rose Records.

THE HOWE GELB INTERVIEW - PART 2.

On their three visits to Europe in 1986, the Giant Sand consistently confounded expectations. This was no more apparent than on their October trip when audiences were not only treated to Sand with regular drummie Tommy Larkins and recent acquisition Paula Brown but for the first time on this side of the Atlantic Howe Gelb's country spin-off Blacky Ranchette also performed aided and abetted by the very wonderful Rainer Ptacek on demonic slide guitar. Ptacek actually has his own LP out on Making Waves and I urge you to acquire post haste. The Black Sand set at Dingwalls on 9th October was simply awesome despite the venue being miserably populated. Some of the tunes from the just released "Heartland" album (Zippo) were red hot and Rainer's piercing guitar trading off against the pedal steel player (also along for the ride) was nothing short of miraculous!

This second part of the Howe Gelb interview documents Blacky and brings the Sand story reasonably up to date. It was mainly conducted in the conducive environs of the ICA restaurant off the Mall on a blazing hot lunch time in July.

B.O.B.: Is "Spinning Room Waltz" about one barroom incident in particular?
H.G.: Usually the songs come from about three separate incidents. You just kind of weave them together.
B.O.B.: Any particular reason why you recorded Neil Young's "Revolution Blues"?
H.G.: When we went in to do the first Blacky track, which wasn't Blacky at the time, we didn't know what it was going to be, it was for Suzie Wrenn's compilation. On the way home from that we were driving through the desert and I had this old Cadillac I had borrowed to get out there with my girlfriend at the time, Peggy. We stopped at a truckstop and they had 8-track tapes that were real cheap- they had "On The Beach" so for 99c I bought it. That was my favourite Neil Young, that tied with "Tonight's The Night!" So we were playing that and as it came on, I said "That'd be a good song for Blacky to do" so we did it!
B.O.B.: The one track on the Blacky record that doesn't seem to quite fit is "Evil"- it's almost like a Giant Sandworms out-take with Rainer going ape-shit on the slide.
H.G.: We had a habit of going into that studio, we'd do songs that we were going to do and with the last song we'd try and use up the rest of the tape. We did that with "Man Of Want" and we did it with "Evil"- we tried to do it with "Who Do You Love?" as you'll hear (this track is included on the recent "Play New Rose For Me" double compilation LP) the tape was longer than us- we never ran out of tape so we went into "Jumpin' Jack Flash". On "Evil" the tape finished right at the end as we were finishing it, it flapped off. The whole thing about "Evil" - it was also our chance to go nuts. Pretty much the songs determine themselves, I don't decide in which house they want to live in!
B.O.B: Are you a serious student of country music?
H.G.: No! I'm not serious, I'm not a student, I'm a dropout!! (laughs) I love it, I found myself writing it since it first recorded back in '77/78. A couple of songs we've done on both Blocky LPs were done about 8 or 9 years ago. It was only when I was nineteen and moved to Tucson, I met a guy called Curtis John Tucker who turned out to be one of my best friends. He turned me on to real country. Up until then I thought that Neil Young and David Bromberg did country!!
B.O.B.: Who're you talking about? People like Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers?
H.G.: Rainer turned me on to Jimmie Rodgers, that changed my life. Tucker turned me on to Merle Haggard, David Allan Coe, Hank Snow, old Hank Williams, great David Allen Coe tapes, George Jones, Lefty Frizell. It took Rainer to shove Jimmie Rodgers in my ear and that was the ultimate.
B.O.B.: Did you come up with the sleeve design for the record (the first Blacky Ranchette album) or was it New Rose's idea?
H.G.: I sent them a flyer which was- I took a picture of what we'd used as a logo for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, we'd wear these long coats and Peruvian hats, this was before the Unfourgiven and Jack is on the cover playing a Steinberger bass which looks like a shotgun and it was really bright and sunny, the angle I was taking it, so we just drew in The Band Of Blacky Ranchette. I just sent them the flyer and on the stationery was what we used for the back, those horses from an old picture in the late 1800's, I lifted it from something Scott was working on. The front was just that image from the flyer and they made a stamp out of The Band Of Blacky Ranchette- it was pretty much their design.
B.O.B.: In a way all your artwork has an imagery that connects with the band. I wanted to talk about the great sleeve that was done for the One Big Guitar Giant Sandworms' 7" "Don't Turn Away".
H.G.: Yeah but that was totally unconnected. Jeff Wood (manager) found that in Chicago. This guy's father did it when he was younger in '39 in Nebraska where they don't even have those cactus! And I guess he was familiar with the South West and did that cubist sort of rodeo which was beautiful.
B.O.B.: What about the photo on the front cover of the "Valley Of Rain" LP?
H.G.: Scott and I talked about what we wanted to use as a concept- the whole idea of water in the desert is weird and it's usually not there. It was the rainy season which lasts for a short time and we said: "Maybe if we could go get a picture of all those saguaros with some rain clouds" so he went out there by himself and took the shots.
B.O.B.: Was there any particular reason for the shot being in black and white?
H.G.: It didn't need to be colour and we figured we'd be on a budget. Scott likes black and white photos as a medium.
B.O.B.: Was the song "Valley Of Rain" inspired by anything in particular?
H.G.: Most of the material has to do with several incidents weaved together in one song and sometimes, as a matter of hearing a story and putting yourself into the character's shoes- seeing what it was like through his eyes. "Valley Of Rain" was about a relationship in general, a couple of strange things- is that ambiguous enough?
B.O.B.: (laughs) Yep! Was there any reason why you got Chris Cacavas from Green On Red to play piano on it?
H.G.: We did it out in LA and he lent me his amp for the session- he was around and we asked him if he wanted to play on it. After one or two rehearsals he had it down- unbelievable, he was brilliant!
B.O.B.: My favourite track from the record is "Death Dying & Channel 5"- is the line "Today's a good day to die" from the Western film "Little Big Man"?
H.G.: Yeah that's the one, Chief Dan George! Each incident in that song is from a separate event. The kid was killing himself- there was a family that lived near this armoury base, they were pretty poor, it was in the Mid West I think but somebody else told me it was in California so I got my facts screwed. I heard this story on the news that some kid took it upon himself to kill himself because he thought it would help the family. It was unbelievable. Basically the song has to do with several motives of suicide.
B.O.B.: Would you agree that many of your songs are about desperation and lack of hope?
H.G.: Yeah.
B.O.B.: Any particular reason?
H.G.: The mod at the time was pretty much frustration and depressing- staying up a lot late at night with nothing. The town closes up so it's just dark and quiet- you do a lot of thinking.
B.O.B.: Have you a pretty bad view of the human condition?
H.G.: At that time I was mostly reflecting on things that weren't so great. After we recorded that record we moved to LA and things on the new LP "Ballad Of A Thin Line Man" reflect how scattered things are, but I think it's more upbeat. "Valley Of Rain" was all written in Tucson, it's pretty reflective of what was going on at the time.
B.O.B.: Jeffrey Wood picked out "Barrio" as the greatest song you'd written at the time.
H.G.: I like the chance to go into the studio at some point with no songs and just write immediately- tell the story and just put yourself in somebody's shoes and throw some chords to it. And that's how "Barrio" came to be- it was the last song we recorded for the album- it was just a matter of "Here's some chords" and the guys played them. I went out for a drink, came back and put some words to it. I just thought "what would I be doing if I wasn't out in California?" Jack lived in this little section, in the barrio of Tucson which was a bit cheaper than most places in town and I was going to move down there.
B.O.B.: What about "October Anywhere"?
H.G.: It mostly referred to the break up of the band and our old drummer Billy. I even used a piece from an old Sandworms' song, that middle bridge part. We never recorded that song, it was called "Vessel" It was right about October when the band broke up and Billy and I are both born in October.....
B.O.B.: You mentioned earlier that you were trying to integrate the Giant Sand and Blacky Ranchette more?
H.G.: Mostly why there were two bands that started were a series of accidents and trying not to be confusing and more focused. What happened is each project alone is less confusing and more focused but when people realise that both come from the same source, they get confused again. You brought up "Evil" and you can see where it overlaps in the grey area- what's going to happen now is more and more grey area, especially the way things are opening up. When we go out and play as Giant Sand, I can't stay away from Blacky stuff that long and wait 'til it's Blacky's turn. I'll start a country song right in the middle of the set and Scott has learned to jump into it. At first he was just humouring me but now he's got into it and is having some fun.
B.O.B.: Do you think the new records are very different?
H.G.: There's a natural change because the stuff is so geared to what's going on at the time. So long as the material and the recording and packaging resembles exactly what's going on at the time with the people involved and it's accurate, them it's OK. You just don't stay the same, your moods change. It sounds more like a soundtrack the texturing is a lot different. We had a lot more time, we did a couple of things live. We spent 500 bucks to go into the studio from midnight to ten in the morning, it was a huge studio, 24 track in LA- the room was big enough for all of us to set up next to each other including the cello player so we could all see each other and do it live. On "Who Do You Love?" there were two drummers too. We did six or seven songs like that then we took them up to mix in Reno, Nevada. Our producer Eric Westfall's partner had a friend with a studio up there, they gave us a special deal, I recorded a couple more acoustic sings while we were up there and put them in the project- we also included Johnny Thunders' "You Can't Put Your Arms Round A Memory" which we just recorded at West 3 in London. Falling James from the Leaving Trains was at the sessions in LA and it was six in the morning at the very end of the night. We were all beat and I was playing these chords on the piano. As the piano was set up, I figured we might as well use it; I told James to go up to the microphone and sign anything he comes up with- he sung these great lyrics and we had the song "Last Legs", Paula (Paula Brown) also sings a song "The Chill Outside" and on that we get downright melodic!
B.O.B.: Paula, how did you come to join the Giant Sand?
P.J.B.: I was the bass player with the GoGo's. When Jane Lithland quit, I auditioned and joined the band. The band broke up and I was still working with Belinda and Charlotte- they were working Belinda's solo album. There were about two or three months after the break up when nothing was going on, I was doing things around town in LA, doing back up vocals, whatever just to stay busy and I had a friend at a place called Duke's. Howe was looking for back up singers- this friend Scott told Howe about me and a girl called Rose Hart. I was really busy, they gave the Sand records they were lying in my apartment and one day Rose called and told me to listen to them. I put on Giant Sand and just flipped! I got Howe's number, we got together, he found out I could play guitar and it went from there. So far since we got to play live, we've hardly rehearsed. So with the vocal parts it's a case of "Sing when you can!!"
H.G.: She sings low- we didn't rehearse that Thunders' song at all until we went into the studio!
P.J.B.: In a lot of things, the best way to use me vocally is in droney harmonies, it goes better than with melodic stuff. I sing the lead on "The Chill Outside" on the new album, Howe and I wrote it. He wrote the music- he wrote the chords and they were haunting me so I just played around with them, wrote words and said "What about this?"
H.G.: She started playing me this song one day and I knew it sounded familiar but didn't know where I'd heard it before. They were weird chords, I don't know how she figured it out. She's twisted (laughs), she's from Albuquerque, New Mexico originally- it's part of the South West mentality!
B.O.B.: So you're definitely a permanent member of the band now?
P.J.B.: Yeah!
H.G.: They're trying to get her a solo deal. She's very visible on this Belinda record, she played bass on most of it and wrote the single they released "Mad About You" and another song; so there are interested parties trying to get her a publishing deal and her own band- that's down the road a little bit. Paula'll be playing live with us and writing a bit on the side, as well as for us......
P.J.B.: And hopefully Howe'll help me with my stuff.
B.O.B.: Might you ever come and live in Europe?
H.G.: Yeah it's possible.
B.O.B.: And what about your desert roots, do you need them?
H.G.: I think other people see it more clearly than I do especially this fascination for the desert. I started moving around- there was this flood that wiped everything out when I was fifteen- ever since that point, I wouldn't spend more than a couple of years anywhere. Tucson is where I've spent most time anywhere.
B.O.B.: How far do you think the Giant Sand can go? Megastardom?
H.G.: (laughs)
B.O.B.: Can I rephrase that question? What do you think you can achieve with Giant Sand?
H.G.: Longevity. Just to stay around for a while and be able to keep travelling. The fact that we played up in Oslo, Norway was astonishing because I would never see that part of the world were it not for this situation. On that premise, the fruits of your labours, if we can keep getting by doing what we want to do as opposed to doing what we don't want to do, then that's success right there! As far as megastardom, I think it's totally an illusion, and poisonous. You end up doing things you don't want to do and that's twisted.

NIGEL CROSS

Thanks go to Nigel Cross and B.O.B. (although they don't know it yet!) and to Sarah for typing it up