Gimme That Twang Interview

Last Updated : 17-Feb-99

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Chicago, Summer 1990. It's about 235 degrees inside Lounge Ax and I'm completely engulfed by the enormous crowd that has somehow wedged itself into the small club for a Robyn Hitchcock solo acoustic show. I'm cautiously nursing my longneck because it would be physically impossible for me to get to the bar for another one. Several fire codes and maximum occupancy ordinances were probably being smashed like beer bottles in a dumpster. My hair and glasses are soaked in a quart of sweat, and the music hasn't even started. When opening act The Jody Grind walks on-stage, I sigh, wondering whether I will live to see Robyn or whether I'll expire from dehydration and be trampled by pale, bespectacled men screaming "My Wife and My Dead Wife!!" Then The Jody Grind starts playing and the lead singer's voice floors me. I'm transported out of the nightclub/inferno and into a land where the air is clean, heartaches are forgotten, guitars are in tune, and all the swimming pools are filled with champagne. I turn to my friend and throw her a glance that says, "Can you believe this woman's voice?" That voice belongs to Kelly Hogan.

Chicago, December 1997. Despite the frigid temperatures outside, it's very cozy inside The Bluebird on a Sunday afternoon. The bar is empty except for Kelly Hogan, Michael Ninichuk, Augusta Coretta Hogan, and me. (Ninichuk is the bartender and Hogan's beau; Augusta, aka Augie, is Hogan's poodle/Boston terrier mix.) There's plenty of good beer and Ninichuk is playing CDs by The Mekons, Alejandro Escovedo, and, per Hogan's request, Tom Jones. Hogan and I are seated in a booth, swapping stories. Augie occasionally jumps up beside Hogan and then walks across the table to me. If there's one thing that Hogan likes almost as much as singing, it's telling stories. Or, as she put it, "I like to talk out the side of my neck."

Hogan's latest recording is "The Great Titanic," a cut on the new collection Rudy's Rockin' Kiddie Caravan. Writing in Art Forum, Greil Marcus listed Hogan's interpretation as the #1 song of the year, followed by William and Versey Smith's version on the recently reissued Anthology of Folk Music (Smithsonian/Folkways). Hogan cites Oscar Brown, Jr., Blossom Dearie, Sheila Jordan, and Dave Wakeling as a few of her vocal influences. In her spare time, Hogan "collects weird dog food." Like Elvis, Jesus, Richard Nixon, Naomi Judd, and myself, she's a Capricorn. For more information on Hogan, go to her record label's website at http://monsterbit.com/longplay/hogan.html or her fan club at http://www.KellyHogan.com/.

Gimme That Twang!: You were based in Atlanta for several years. Why did you move to Chicago?

Kelly Hogan: Ants in the pants. I'd been wanting to move for a while. I almost moved to San Francisco in '93. I had Sunday newspapers, you know, I had a job possibility, a place to stay, all that stuff. I may yet end up in San Francisco, I don't know. I like that city a lot. I just did what I could do in Atlanta, musically speaking. My favorite thing is touring and I just wanted to get in a band where I could tour, and in Atlanta I had sorta tapped out everything-unless I put on a mini-skirt and lost 40 pounds. My aim wasn't to play arenas or necessarily bigger venues; I just wanted to up the ante, scare the shit out of myself. It worked, moving here, scaring the shit out of myself. And I like Chicago a lot. The Rock*A*Teens and my solo record were out the same year, so we played here a lot. I just liked it. . . I could relate to the Northern rednecks. They won't admit that they're rednecks, but there's a buttload of rednecks here. And I mean that in the nicest way-not any racial connotations or anything. I could just relate. I'm a house painter, for God's sake. In Atlanta, that's what I do. Also, it's better than New York.

GTT!: Wait, you're a house painter? So you and [Bloodshot Records co-founder] Rob Miller are totally . . .

KH: It was some kismet. [Miller is also a house painter, and he & Nan Warshaw recently hired Hogan to work for Bloodshot.] We've done some jobs together since I've been here, so that was very fortuitous. . . . That's been good.

GTT!:I wanna talk about the very first time I saw you, at that Lounge Ax show with Robyn Hitchcock. Tell me that story again about the hotel. Where did you guys stay that night?

KH: Lounge Ax had sent us some hotel information, but the first hotel we went to was too expensive. We had all our stuff in the lobby, but when we found out the price, we had to slink back to the van with all our crap. . . So we ended up at the Mark Twain, which is a transient hotel downtown with 5-inch bulltetproof glass in front of the check-in guy. It was in our price range, so we checked in. I mean, I slept with my rings in my mouth that night. There were already all kinds of hairs in the bed. I turned back the bed and found all kinds of hair. Hairs in the bathtub, a dead roach in the sink, no lampshades on any of the lamps. And every bulb was a party bulb. There were no white bulbs-just red bulbs, green bulbs, blue bulbs. I think we were probably the only people to ever stay there more than 20 minutes. We were the only ones who "rented overnight."

GTT!: But wait, wasn't there a famous hotel where you wanted to stay, or wound up staying?

KH: Yeah, The Spa. I'm getting there. See, it was a two-night stand, so the second night we asked [Lounge Ax co-owner] Sue Miller, "God, where else can we go?" She said, "Well, there is a cheap place called The Spa, where Jimmy Page set the carpet on fire in 1971. It used to be a fancy rock hotel." Our bass player got all enthused about that: "Yeah, Jimmy Page set the carpet on fire!" So, we drove way up there, and The Spa was a front for some kinda pre-teen Filipino prostitution ring. I had gone to make a call at a pay phone near the front desk. I was leaving a message for Ted from Poi Dog Pondering, and I was just joking, saying stuff like, "We'll rendezvous in Columbia, South Carolina. Meet me out back by the dumpsters," or something like that, just joking around. But I noticed the desk clerk guy was really eavesdropping really hard, his ear was stretching. . . So I went back up to the room, and we heard weird noises all the time. I swear someone was watching me through the vent while I showered. There were weird rustling noises.

So I got back to the room and the phone rang. I picked it up and said, "Hello?" The guy on the other end was like, "Would you like a date?" "Excuse me?!?" "Would you like a date?" "What? Who are you trying to call? What room are you trying to call?" "Would you like a date?" That's all he ever said. And so I said, "I don't know who you're trying to call. You've got the wrong number." "Would you like a date?" "No, I don't want a date. I don't know what you're talking about. You've got the wrong number. What are you talking about? I do not want a date." Blah blah blah, I was screaming. Finally there was a pause and then he said, "Maybe tomorrow?"

It was the front desk. They thought I was freelancing or something. It was crazy. We got the hell outta that place, too. Yeah, we had interesting Chicago hotel experiences.

GTT!: That was during a tour with Robyn Hitchcock. Did you see him much during the tour?

KH: Yeah, he was always very civil to us. He always called us The Jodies. He'd always say, "Hello, Jodies," and, "Please refrain from eating all the cashews out of my mixed nuts." His rider was incredible: three kinds of chocolates, mixed nuts-but no peanuts-postcards from local points of interest, preferably boring, but with sufficient postage to send to England. We used to wait until he went on-stage and then we'd start eating all his food. . . . He was very nice to us, though. He was cool. I was the only person who knew who he was when we started the tour. Nobody else in the band had ever heard of him. They were like, "Robyn Hitchcock? Who's she?". . . Robyn's audiences were really open-minded. I mean, they listen to him sing about toothpaste and frogs, and they were pretty nice to us. It was just a bunch of kinda older white guys with vast record collections.

GTT!: That fits your shtick.

KH: I know. That's my mailing list.

GTT!: How did the Rudy's Rockin' Kiddie Caravan thing happen?

KH: Jack Pendarvis [who, with Barry Mills, was responsible for the now-defunct kids' program The Rudy & GoGo Show and the accompanying various artists CD] is an old friend of mine. I've known him since about 1989 or 1990. . . He knew about this "Titanic" song that my grandpaw had taught me when I was a kid. He really wanted the "Titanic" to be on there, so he asked me to do it.

GTT!: He had heard you sing it on-stage before?

KH: No, I never sang it on-stage. He just knew the song from being my friend and hearing me sing it. So, he wanted that to be on there, and by the time that was done, he wanted The Rock*A*Teens to be on there. [Pendarvis and Mills] were trying to get all different kinds of Atlanta bands and national bands to be on there. So, that's how. He just asked me to be on it. . . I [recorded] some other stuff that day. I was doing a song for some Joni Mitchell tribute album in Athens, which has yet to come out, so I did "Blue Motel Room" and "The Great Titanic" all in the same day. "The Great Titanic" was one take and it was really fun. I just taught it to the guys just like my Pawpaw taught it to me. I just sang it and they all picked up on it and we did it in one take. Then I came back the next day and did some overdubs, did some ghostie singing, and banged on barstool legs for the dinging buoy noises and the boiler room noises. Me and the engineer, Rob Gal, had a good ol' time. . . It was fun, and it makes me real happy to be on that [album].

GTT!: How did you find out about the Art Forum thing?

KH: That blew my mind. . . Barry [Mills] called me about it, and my friend Steve, who's in New York for a year, called me, too. . . . When I read that Greil Marcus thing, I was just glad that somebody got exactly what we were trying to do. And he named that Folkways anthology version, and I've never even heard that. Which [makes this] even better, because it's the true folklore tradition of just having it passed down. All I know is that is the song my grandfather taught me when we were riding in the car to go get a Slurpee.

GTT!: You've sang with a whole list of fancyass people. The ones I'm aware of are The Indigo Girls, Dale Watson, and who else?

KH: I don't know. Who else is fancyass?

GTT!: John Wesley Harding.

KH: Yeah, he's fancyass, all right.

GTT!: Aren't you going to be on his next album?

KH: Yeah, I'm going to be on two songs. I don't know when it's coming out. It was just mastered, so I think early '98. I think it's going to be called A Wake. I sang on two originals, which I think are called "It's All My Fault" and "Song That I Wrote Myself in the Future."

GTT!: And how'd you meet him?

KH: When I lived in Atlanta, he was my upstairs neighbor. . . I'd hear him wake up every day and play damn crazy solo songs on guitar, and I'd be banging on the ceiling. He ate my barbecue, and he made shepherd's pie, you know, just neighbor crap. Then he moved to San Francisco and whenever he came back through town, I'd sing with him. We did a John Prine song one time, and then we started doing Conway Twitty songs.

GTT!: And you guys did a duet on that K-Tel thing.

KH: Oh yeah, that's right. That was the most fucked-up thing. "Pravda Supersmash" or whatever it's called. I don't even know what [the CD] is called. I never even got a copy. We did "I'm a Little Bit Country, I'm a Little Bit Rock'n'Roll." Pravda flew me out to San Francisco to do that, and it was so fucked- up. I had strep throat and I was sick as a dog. I kept laughing on the plane because I was drinking codeine syrup and I was flying to San Francisco to sing Donny & Marie. I thought it was the stupidest, funniest thing that ever happened.

GTT!: Whose idea was it to get you? Was that John's?

KH: Yeah. He'd always been saying, "We need to record together someday." And I was like, "OK, sure. Bring it on. Whip it out. You know, walk the walk and talk the talk." So he just called me up one day and asked me. . . When I was out in San Francisco, I played a show with him and Graham Parker, who is the sweetest, sweetest man. Wes introduced me, saying, "This is my favorite woman singer ever, and I brought her to San Francisco to sing on my new record. Here she is, Kelly Hogan." So I came out on-stage and I heard this guy in the audience say, "Damn, I thought it was going to be Joan Baez." He was all bummed out. I could hear him. "Awwww, I thought it was going to be Joan Baez," and I thought, "Sorry, pal. We're gonna do a Conway Twitty song, and you're gonna like it." We did "It's Only Make Believe," Conway & Loretta style.

GTT!: Okay, Ms. Rock Star. Gimme a list of all the bands that you've toured with or opened for. I know about Graham Parker, John Wesley Harding, They Might Be Giants, and Robyn. Who else?

KH: Oh, let's see. The Cows, Poi Dog Pondering, Television. We got to play with Vic Chesnutt, my idol, one time. Lucinda Williams and Joe Ely, who was a real sweetie.

GTT!: Have you seen all this stuff on the web about you?

KH: I punched it up one day and saw all this stuff. I figured I'd go into the office drunk one night and look at it.

GTT!: Here's the amazing thing about the web. Let's say that [Chicago Tribune music critic] Greg Kot writes a little review of you. Fine, a few people read it and the paper's gone. But because of the web, it's out there forever now. It's out there in Japan and Africa.

KH: For all my African and Japanese fans.

GTT!: When you moved to Chicago, did you have the Bloodshot job?

KH: No, I thought I was going to work at Home Depot. . . They desperately needed a publicist. I wasn't a publicist, although I'd done it informally for my own bands for 10 years. They needed somebody and I needed a job and they said, "Do you wanna try it?" [Because I've been in bands] I'm really driven to get any press I can for any band, even in East Bumblefuck on a Tuesday night. So, I'm trying. But it sucked being at CMJ [the College Music Journal convention] and not playing. . . I went to go see The Rock*A*Teens, the band I had to leave to come here. It was different. I'm not used to being on the weasel side of things. I love The Rock*A*Teens, and it breaks my heart that I'm not in [the band anymore]. . . Right after I left, they got the deal with Merge Records and went on tour with Superchunk. Now, their album is coming out on Merge in April. I'm jealous as I can be, but happy for [the band's leader] Chris Lopez.

GTT!: Now, I have to ask you about the big sad topic. Is it okay to talk about this? I read about it in Rolling Stone, which is where most people heard about it. [I'm referring to the 1992 automobile accident that killed The Jody Grind's drummer, Rob Clayton, and their bassist, Robert Hayes, along with Tim Ruttenber.]

KH: Okay, what do you want to know?

GTT!: Were you in the vehicle?

KH: No, do you want me to just tell you what happened?

GTT!: Yeah.

KH: We had played Pensacola. We were gone for a weekend, and we had played Tallahassee, Mobile, and Pensacola. We played Pensacola on the last night, and the next day was Easter. We had this new drummer, Rob Clayton. We always called him Angel Boy. We were all hard-cussin', fart-lightin' people and he was this real sweet, younger guy. . . Deacon Lunchbox was with us, too. He was this friend of ours. He was an amazing construction worker/poet that frequently traveled with us. He was mostly our dear friend. His real name was Tim Ruttenber. He was this big, giant biker lookin' guy with a big red beard and a big gut. He'd come out with this big chainsaw, wearing a bra. It's hard to explain the Deacon Lunchbox thing. He was so beloved around the Southeast. . . Angel Boy wanted to go back to [attend] sunrise Easter service with his family. He was real religious. . . [Editor's Note: Hogan, guitarist Bill Taft, and the band's manager decided to stay in a hotel in Mobile for the night. Hayes and Ruttenber headed back to Atlanta with Clayton. The three were riding in a rented cargo van in Alabama at the time of the accident.] The odds of what happened was pretty much like the odds of being struck by lightning. They were coming up a hill, so they had a blind spot. It was a divided interstate with a median. This other guy was in the only thing bigger than this cargo van, which was a truck with a camper on the back. The other guy was apparently drunk. He had fallen asleep at the wheel, started to go off the right side of the highway and hit a guard rail and that woke him up. He over- corrected and he was going about 75 miles an hour, so he flew across the median and right at the top of the hill [hit the van head-on]. They were going the speed limit, which is 65, and they were in the right lane. He didn't even hit them sideways. He hit them straight on. . .The driver of the other car, of course, survived. I don't know how. But that guy lived and even got off light. He didn't get jack shit for his jail time. That's what happened.

GTT!: Did the police call you?

KH: No, we didn't find out until the next day. We probably drove right past the spot where the accident happened. . . We got back to the practice space [in Atlanta] and we saw Rob Clayton's truck and Deacon's car still there. . . I thought they must have broken down or something. . . When I got back home, Chris Lopez was there, and when I saw his face, I knew something really bad had happened. He told me, and I just couldn't believe it. It was so horrible. . . Bill and I knew that there could never be The Jody Grind without Robert Hayes. He was our super, dear friend.

GTT!: Let's talk about the present. What's your immediate goal? Are you looking for people in Chicago to play with regularly?

KH: Yeah, I'd like to be in a band. I don't quite know where to look yet to find people who want to play.

GTT! Your office is a fine place to meet people who want to play around town.

KH: I guess, but I don't want to do insurgent country. I'm lookin' more for a Burt Bacharachy kinda feel. . . Also, I sorta moved here just to see if I could shut up.

GTT!: Whattaya mean?

KH: You know, quit playing, quit singing.

GTT!: Why?

KH: Just to see [if I could]. Because I'm so in debt and it's all I've done for so long. I don't have health insurance and I'm so in debt. I'm way in debt. I just wanted to see if I could shut up, but I can't.

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