Newspaper Page Text
Brant Slay: sings, stomps feet, plays harp,
rocks rocking chair
Ben Reynolds: plays guitar, sings a bit.
Brant: That's one of my favorite things,
really, to create a scene or environment like
you said, that’s more inviting for a crowd. I
hate the idea of sitting up on top of a stage,
being on a pedestal. That's just really weird
and kinda scary to me. And I like to make it
at least seem like a natural or possible
unnatural scene, but playful enough so that
people can get involved with it. It kinda
draws them to the music. The bones, there's
a lot of bones, I guess that also goes along
with people getting involved with the music,
pick bones up and bang 'em around a little
bit
Ben: He's on the bone a lot.
Brant: Yeah, I'm on the bone a lot...No,
but that's the basic idea about t h e
environment, I really like doing that, I mean,
I'd like to find a job where they paid me to do
that...
Out Mud Puppying
Flagpole: TeU me about the Chick
asaw Mud Puppies, the beginning.
Ben: (putting some mud on his accent) It
was on a night like this about a year ago, in
March, riding down to New Orleans,
Louisiana....got to Mobile town...heavy
bayou fog, heavy, heavy bayou fog, couldn't
see anything, ridin' in a friend's (pause)
BMW (giant laughter)....
Brant: Headin' down to play in the streets
of New Orleans in a BMW!
Ben: And I mean I was driving and I
couldn't see anything and all of a sudden out
of nowhere comes this drive shaft in the
middle of the interstate; I had no choice but to
run over this drive shaft and so I thought
maybe we oughta stop and take a look at the
car. We had two flat tires and it's a chore
changing a BMW tire so we're trying to
figure out fuckin' German, changing the tire,
tad these two...creek critters come out of the
bayou fog. One of 'em said "we just dropped
onr drive shaft on the Chickasaw Bridge, can
C five four of us a ride to town?"
ht Aad dunkin' about we were right on
M river and murid puppies are one of my
fhwarite dungs an the whole world...
Fiaapaie: Whoa pom play, there's
Ms mm <—immmamt. .Who's thing
Flagpole: Your shows are so fun and
wild. Talk about this seeming
paradox of having fun playing the
blues.
Ben: The blues isn't just being sad, though.
I mean, the blues is what you feel and you
can feel happy sometimes. They’re happy
blues songs.
Brant: I don’t really call our music blues, I
mean we were very inspired by the blues,
Ben’s even inspired, obviously, by a lot of
rockabilly stuff. I've never been able to
describe what we do...it's not blues...we
take our influences and inspiration and turn
'em out probably a little bit more stepped up,
more rock and roll. And happy, you know,
that's the reason I'm doing it. We just have a
blast doing it. It's like taking a party into a
club and stompin' around.
Ben: Yeah, I think that if some people came
to see us and they thought we were a blues
band they might be offended. We just have
fun and if they’re coming out to have fun, but
if they're coming to see a blues band they
might be a little bit freaked out or
disappointed.
Brant: That's just the quickest word people
can come up with to lay on us.
Ben: Though Brant does look and sound like
B.B. King, but besides that..
Brant: I'll take that as a compliment, thank
you.