Dax Riggs Might Be a Vampire

What is it about New Orleans natives and their obsessions with preternatural creatures? Louisiana-bred Dax Riggs seems to be no exception, and in fact, may be a vampire himself.

Exhibit A: The guy doesn't age. Watching him onstage last night at Mercury Lounge in his trademark white T-shirt and jeans, it was hard to imagine that the baby-faced singer/songwriter is in his late 30s—and that Acid Bath first hit the scene in 1991.

Exhibit B: Virtually all of Riggs's songs touch upon grand themes of redemption, sin, life and death, usually pointing out the slight subtleties between the latter two. [See: last night's throwback track, Deadboy & the Elephantmen's "Stop, I'm Already Dead."]

Exhibit C: Like any other charismatic undead character, Dax Riggs controls a cult-like stable of minions. An eclectic bunch to be sure (and not a void of beardos, as predicted), the audience reacted to even the slightest gesture from their leader—including a round of hollers for a simple mic check. Unfortunately, the devoted were also a bit misguided, like the dick in the High on Fire jersey who insisted on spending the entire night with his hand in the air recording the show on his Nano. Really buddy, I'm sure it's not the view everyone behind you was paying for.

Riggs didn't disappoint his followers in any way on Saturday night. Kicking things off with "I Hear Satan" from his brand-new album, Say Goodnight to the World, he stuck to a set rooted in new songs, plus those off of 2007's hypnotic We Sing of Only Blood or Love. Favorites like "Night is the Notion," "Demon Tied to a Chair in My Brain," and "Living is Suicide" were followed by renditions of newbies "Let Me Be Your Cigarette," "Gravedirt on My Blue Suede Shoes" and the sexiest cover of Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" ever made. Elvis may have had the pelvis, but Riggs is set with those pillowy lips and often sings like he's delivering a sloppy kiss.

New tracks sounded fuller with his tight backup band; older tracks were sped up with kicked-up urgency. And though Dax Riggs's songs don't tend to break the three-minute mark, the hour-long set went by so quickly that some were undoubtedly left disappointed by certain exclusions.

Me? I would've killed to hear "Radiation Blues." Maybe I'll find out if he plays it tonight during his second gig at Mercury Lounge.

I think I've been glamored.

More amateur live show pics can be found here. 

Five Songs I Never Want to Hear Again

Make no mistake, this is not a list of terrible songs—shit, that would take ages to write up. Instead, this list chronicles those songs I never want to hear again (especially in public) because they're utter fucking buzzkills capable of halting good times within a few feeble notes.

1. "Mad World" by Gary Jules - No disrespect to Adam Lambert, but every time I hear this song, all that comes to mind is a greasy-haired dude in a bunny suit who was stabbed in the eye through a cosmic mirror. If you didn't get that last reference, consider yourself lucky for never getting sucked into the endless pondering that comes with seeing the extended director's cut of Donnie Darko. [The very first cut was really enough, Richard Kelly.] Gary Jules's stripped, melancholy rendition for the soundtrack only made Donnie's fate seem that much more hopeless.



2. "Good Woman" by Cat Power - One of the things that endlessly endears me to Cat Power is that whenever a barfly in her hometown of Atlanta related a story about her, it was generally followed by the coda "...that crazy bitch." Yet crazy drunk bitches don't always manage to write selfless, heart-wrenching songs about longing and the guilty feelings that come with being their true selves. That's what makes this ballad that much more powerful—and one hell of a bum-out.



3. "Changes" by Black Sabbath - Need I say more, #srsly? I would rather hear "Sweet Caroline" over this at a bar any day.



4. "Jolene" by Dolly Parton - Is this song really a testament to how women dealt with infidelity in the '70s? What did chicks ever do before Maury started airing to straighten our man-folk out? Everything about this song reeks of desperation and pleading, making it incredibly difficult to listen to once you get sucked into the lyrics and much like the aural equivalent of Larry David—utterly uncomfortable to be around.



5. "Hotel California" by the Eagles - I was technically never abused as a child, but my older brother's incessant playing of this record just might count. In fact, when he got married and moved out of the house leaving his old stereo and records behind, my first act of independence was taking Hotel California to Seth Low Park for an extended game of frisbee. Maybe it's because the six-plus-minute title track epitomizes the cocaine languidness of the times in such an absolute—and overplayed—way that I equate it with pure torture.

Karma to Burn: The Long Version, Pt 3

Check out Parts 1 and 2, then get 'er done here.

Which one thing do you wish you knew back then?
RM: What we didn’t know back then is you really can’t force lyrics onto an existing piece of work. We went in and recorded a record instrumentally, then Roadrunner’s idea was to get someone to sing on top of what was already there, rather than have us sit down and rewrite all the songs and record them for vocals. We worked with a couple of producers, and no one ever suggested that as a thing to do. [Laughs.] We had no idea.

WM: We went at it as hard as we could in the ’90s, and people kicked us in the dick every fuckin’ time we had a chance to shine. We tried to do what we wanted to do, yet people always wanted to change that or manipulate us.

How do you feel about the term “stoner rock”?
WM: The first time we heard of the term, Rich and I hadn’t even smoked pot yet.

RM: I like it. I always liked it. I liked it for a different reason back in the day because people would always bring us weed, which was great. Now I enjoy it because it was its own little thing back then and it was cool to be a part of it.

The first single off Appalachian Incantation, “Waiting on the Western World,” features Year Long Disaster vocalist Daniel Davies. What made that song so special?
RM: We actually wrote it for vocals. It was our first time where we sat down and wrote a song with a singer. He also plays guitar on that song.

Karma to Burn and Year Long Disaster are touring right now, but Rob is filling in for drummer Brad Hargreaves in YLD [who had a conflicting tour with his “day” band, Third Eye Blind] and Daniel is playing guitar with KTB. What’s that like?
RM: It’s all merging into one band. [Laughs.] It was really fun to do that one song with Daniel, so we thought we’d try to do some more stuff along those lines and do it soon… like record a whole record this year. The four of us are really good together, so we want to pursue that no matter which name we use, it’s all the same guys. It’ll be fun.

What’s the oddest thing about being back on the road?
RM: The weirdest thing is we have so many kids at the shows, and I thought it would be all be older people. That’s kind of great.

What are you out to prove this time around?
RM: We just have musical goals. I just want to show that our band can do exactly what I thought we could do back in ’99, when everyone was like, “you gotta check this band out”… and take it to a higher level.

Read Parts 1 and 2 here.

Karma to Burn: The Long Version, Pt 2

Read part 1 first, then get back here.

What went through your mind during those weeks between exchanging phone numbers?
WM: It was burning a hole in me. [I kept thinking] even if we don’t get back together, I still need to talk to them. It had been seven years since I talked to either of them. But I did it on my terms.

What was that first conversation like?
WM: It went well. It was something I’d never done before. Getting back with Rich—especially Rich—I really had to sit down and face the facts: Am I gonna live with this anger all my life? And the answer is no. There’s no sense in going through life being angry at someone.

Rich started off apologizing. I said: We all know what we all did. If we want to do this, let’s just forget about it and move forward. I think the first words out of his mouth were, “Thank God.”

RM: I needed to talk to Will man to man, just about all the past stuff that I did when I quit the band. [Sighs.] Mistakes were made, bad decisions were made while high. I wanted to talk to him, but he didn’t want to talk to me and I knew it. I waited patiently.

What were those first new rehearsals like?
WM: When they got out [of rehab] and we started playing again, they reminded me of the people I played with in the first place.

Even though we hadn’t played together in seven years, getting back and writing with those guys didn’t feel like we missed a step at all. It seems like the material that we wrote recently would have happened if we could’ve kept our act together.

RM: We were so close [at one point], we had been together almost every day for about 10 years straight. There was so much history between us that it was just so easy to just go right back to the music. We pretty much grew up learning how to play together.

Now, go to Part 3!

Karma to Burn: The Long Version, Pt 1

When I first met the guys in Karma to Burn, I wasn't even old enough to drink yet. In fact, in order to attend the SxSW be bonded at, HIGH TIMES had to invest in a fake ID for me (which I was promptly busted with during my second night in town). We were introduced by their long-suffering A&R guy and a long, tempestuous friendship was born—particularly with bassist/ringleader/snake oil salesman Rich "Little Dickie" Mullins.

Little did I know then just what a dangerous meeting it was. Over the years, I beared witness to so many hustles, white powders, unsavory situations, and industry fuckfests with the instrumental trio, that I'm honestly surprised (and infinitely pleased) they're all still breathing and thriving. And it always irked me that their place in stoner rock history was regularly overshadowed by their party legacy.

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview them about their reunion for DECIBEL. It gave me the rare chance to put on my Journalist hat and really ask them all the questions I probably would never have the balls to ask as a friend. And naturally, a lot of it didn't make it to print because of word count restrictions.

Not wanting to waste all that editing, I decided to post my interview with Rich Mullins and Will Mecum here in three parts. Enjoy.

Did you ever expect Karma to Burn to reunite?
Will Mecum: No, definitely not. There were a lot of things that were left undone when we decided to split; a lot of anger—and a lot of late night revenge scenarios. Like, ‘if I ever see that guy again…” And that went on for years.

What was the breakup like for you?
WM: I lost my band, I lost a friend, and I lost a career—if you want to call it that. [Laughs] It all went to shit. Substances got in the way, personalities got in the way. We lost sight of the goals that we set when we first started playing.

What kind of substance issues did you have?
Rich Mullins: Everyone in our band had a little bit of a heroin problem; mine was giant and Rob’s was giant. Will was able to just stop, Will doesn’t really have that personality for it.

How did you get clean?
RM: After Speedealer, I went to Holland for a year, then I came to L.A. and that’s where I got clean. I was in a rehab, and the guy who ran the place came up to me and said, what if I say the name ‘Rob Oswald’ to you? I go, ‘Oh, I love that guy.’ He said, ‘well, he’s behind this door.’ Can you imagine?

WM: I’m proud to say that I’m the only member of the band that didn’t have to go to rehab. But my addiction wasn’t anything minuscule. I went cold turkey and it was not pleasant. I quit my job and I locked myself in my apartment for 10 days. After the eighth or ninth days, I started feeling human again. 

How did the two of you get back in contact after you’d cleaned up?
WM: I got a call really late at night, [a mutual friend] said that Rich and Rob were trying to get a hold of me. Two weeks later I said yes to giving them my number. Rich texted me—and I’m not one to really receive texts that well. The first thing I texted back was, “Fuck you, L.A. cunt.”

Then Rob called and we talked for a good two hours. He said, “You really need to talk to Rich.” After that conversation, I waited another week and got Rich’s phone number and I sat down and talked to him.


Want to read more? Check out the rest in Part 2 and Part 3.


Photo lifted from Raginpit magazine.

Greatest Hipster T-Shirt

Over the weekend, I hit up the Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn to check out the wares and see the latest in tattoo fashions. (Also, I can confirm that owls and octopi remain the favorite motifs of sardonic accessories.)

The last thing I was expecting to do was fall in love an ironic T-shirt, but something about this design from Paste just spoke to me.

And what's not to love? Let's review the bullet points.

1. It features a dude who sorta looks like an old, combed-over Lemmy.
2. His tie has cats on it.
3. He's on a Segway.
4. He is showing off his gun collection.
5. The guns are all pointing at him.

EHG BBQ

 The title of this post does not refer to the vanity plates on my Chevy Avalanche. The letters, in fact, represent a unique feature that Eyehategod are offering as part of their VIP ticket package.

Yes, you read correctly. Eyehategod are offering a VIP deluxe show experience at select venues on their forthcoming tour with Brutal Truth, Nachtmystium and Black Anvil that includes a BBQ, soundcheck access, a meet & greet and a limited-edition poster.

At only $40, this unique opportunity far surpasses what super groups like KISS, Bon Jovi, or Rush are offering (and at way higher prices)—and you just know that this one will have a lot more band/fan interaction.

While I may be a little miffed that EHG only bestowed 50 VIP tickets for gigs in South Carolina, Maryland and Kentucky, it's certainly fun to imagine what this party will be like. So on this, the eve of Eyehategod's tour commencement, I ponder the finer points of the EHG BBQ experience. Below, my list of inquiries:

1. Who exactly is doing the BBQing? (And are they wearing a hairnet?)

2. Will there be vegetarian options?

3. How many selections will there be for the white drugs course?

4.  Is this a BYOB affair?

5. Will they consider a similar package in NYC that includes a vodka tasting and perogi dinner?

Real talk, though, I'm thrilled as hell to be seeing them at Europa on June 12. And I'll be bringing Ess-a-Bagel for Sharp.


VIP package dates:
6/04/2010 Ground Zero - Spartanburg, SC  ** 50 VIP ticket packages available for $40 each; includes soundcheck access, BBQ, meet & greet with the band + a signed poster.

 6/06/2010  Headliners - Louisville, KY ** 50 VIP ticket packages available for $40 each; includes sound check access, BBQ, meet & greet with the band + a signed poster.

 6/10/2010  Krug’s - Frederick, MD ** 25 VIP ticket packages available for $40 each; includes early entry, soundcheck access, meet & greet with the band + a signed poster.