Newspaper Page Text
Page 14
Flagpole Magazine
March. 20, 1991
A Hillbilly Frankenstein conversation
Jeff Walls: The BuLMan
Earlier last week, I got an opportunity to
interview one of the members of Hillbilly
Frankenstein, guitarist/singer, Jeff Walls. As
I am sure most of you realize, Jeff is a former
member of the now defunct group, Guadal
canal Diary. And seeing as I am a huge fan
of Guadalcanal, I cou'J not have asked for a
better assignment. So last Sunday I went
and interviewed Jeff for a good 3 hours, and
I was really happy with how it went until I got
back to the Flagpole office. As I put on the
tape, I was very surprised that for some
reason, none of my interview had made it or,
tape, due to some strange unforseen techni
cal difficulties. Jeff Walls was extremely nice
about the whole thing and agreed to meet
with me again and do another inten/iew.
Anyway, Hillbilly Frankenstein will be going
to SXSW in Austin and I wanted to find out
more about this eclectic band and more
about what Jeff's expectations are.
Flagpole: How long has Hillbilly Franken
stein been together?
Jeff: Well, with this version of the band it will
be 2 years come September.
FP: At first, wasn't it you and Murray (lead
singer of Guadalcanal) Attaway?
Jeff: Yeah, at first it was me and Murray, Nik
and Jen back in 1987 when we had the
summer off and we were supposed to be
writing for Flip Flop.. And we were just doing
it to get rockabilly out of our systems, which
was a form of Rock we liked a lot. And we
also wanted to do something away from
Guadalcanal purely for fun. We really didn’t
get to do a lot of Rockabilly in Guadalcanal
and Murray and I always liked it a lot and
John(Pc3-drummer from Guadalcanal) al
ways hated it. We did it for fun then and knew
it would culminate at the end of the summer
with a trip to New Orleans. And that was it
until Guadalcanal decided to take some time
off, which has turned into us not thinking that
seriously about getting back together. I
realized I had time on my hands. So Nikki,
Pat and Alice had talked about playing to
gether and recruited Phyllis and had prac
ticed some. They asked me at the time and
I didn’t know at the time this would be an
ongoing thing.
FP: Has Hillbilly been a good release of
more of your maniacal songwriting?
Jeff: Yeah, I’d say so. One thing I always
wanted to do was to combine all the music
that has come from the United States. Jazz,
Country and Gospel. I wanted to combine
those things musically and I’m too old to take
anything too seriously and try to inject some
parody into it.
FP: Are you happy with how things have
turned out?
Jeff: Yeah, I really like playing Hillbilly’s type
of music. I’m really fond of it. I find it very
'easy to write in that vein. It’s a lot less
strenuous of a process than Guadalcanal
ever was.
FP: Why is that?
Jeff: I don’t know, in Guadalcanal I felt
bound by certain things. Our own limitations
instrumental^, which were not that big a
limitation. It was more of when a band’s
reputation begins to overshadow you.
Whether you do it consciously or not, you
start maybe tailoring your stuff for what you
think Guadalcanal is good for and known for.
You try get outside yourself and write from an
outside perspective, but frequently I found
those were songs the record people wouldn’t
like.
FP: Do you think Hillbillywould sell if they got
signed?
Jeff: There is no telling. I have no way of
knowing. I’ve been so wrong about things I
thought that would or wouldn’t make it. I
could see the novelty catching on, not unlike
how the B-52’s were when they first came
out. To be honest, I think the rock audience
now is not particularly interested in 50’s rock
and roll.
FP: You would agree that this is a big depar
ture from Guadalcanal?
Jeff: I’ve always found my tastes to be left of
center. And Guadalcanal was considered
commercially acceptable to a point. In a lot
at was uninteresting to me. The
n of it, well, if you look at a
respective of pop music, you see
always people from left field that wind
p making it. I've always tried from an artistic
point of view not to analyze it too much, just
do it. The more self conscious you are the
more self conscious it will sound.
FP: Explain to me why you are so appealed
to the music Hillbilly does.
Jeff: Well, I’ve always liked bands that were
real wild. Like early Iggy and the Stooges
and stuff where you would think adrum might
fly and hit you in the face any second. Felt
like shit could fall apart at any time. Guadal
canal live was a lot of times like that too.
Hillbilly was an attempt to push that farther.
FP: When you were in Guadalcanal you
wrote a lot of spiritual songs. Can Hillbilly be
an outlet for that?
Jeff: Well, there are some mysterious songs
I’ve written and they’re the more pulled back
songs. I guess I still write stuff like that. Me
and Murray always wrote a lot of stuff that
never wound up on the records.
FP: Will you and Murray ever write together
again?
Jeff: Probably so. I wouldn’t rule that out.
We’re still good friends and talk about music
all the time Right now, he’s got something
he’s doing, and I’ve got something I’m doing.
FP: I remember sometimes listening to a
song from Guadalcanal and thinking, "Whoa,
that is in a rock song?"
Jeff: Yeah, me and Murray used to laugh
about "Sleepers Awake", "Crusty eyes may
open." I bet that is the only time the word
crusty has been used in a song.
FP: It also seems as if you wanted them
(audience) to think about things you were
saying.
Jeff: Well, I think that's the way I was then.
As you get older you realize everything is an
amusing joke anyway. All the stuff meant to
be serious is down right silly. I would find it
hard to sit down now and write down some of
the stuff I wrote in Guadalcanal. "Trail of
Tears" is a good example. I can barely stand
to listen to that song now.
FP: Do you listen to your own tapes at all?
Jeff: Not much anymore. I pulled some-