Perfect Sound Forever

EUGENE CHADBOURNE ON COUNTRY


Interview, Part III by J. Vognsen
(December 2021)

Continued from Part II of our Eugene Chadbourne interview
Also see Part I and Part IV of the interview


PSF: Now let's turn to your own music. I'd first like to go back to your initial idea of mixing country songs with free improvisation. I'm curious to hear more about how that came about. You mentioned seeing similarities between solos played by members of Johnny Paycheck and Merle Haggard's bands and what you yourself had been doing in experimental settings. More broadly, did you feel that you were mixing two very distinct, contrasting things, or was it an obvious combination to you?

EC: It never seemed obvious, in fact, there were so few examples of anything remotely like it that it seemed the opposite--completely unusual. Which made sense in the mindset of the music I was involved in at the time.

[Toshinori] Kondo and I called one LP side "How to Kill the Mind" but this was also a philosophy in terms of the interactions being tossed out onstage. There was an evolution between using little bits of different types of recognizable music and doing entire songs.

With Zorn, the little quotes were acceptable providing they were really short. He really liked going into little bits of bop, swing. There was a challenge to see who could create an identifiable tiny section like that in the shortest time--was it possible with just one note?

Since one of the goals was confusing the audience, it occurred to me however that sticking to only short quotes was the opposite. After a while, the audience would expect that to happen anytime somebody quoted a style of music that was recognizable in midst of the improv.

But on the other hand, if sometimes the excerpts were longer, sometimes whole songs, then the audience would have no idea what was going to happen- it would keep them on their toes. It also kept the players on their toes, and a natural outgrowth was somebody would just carry on with the quote or song while another member of the group went off in another direction. I witnessed this in ensembles who I liked such as Alterations with Steve Beresford, David Toop, Terry Day, Nigel Coombes.

With Kondo, the full songs were acceptable. In fact, he liked the idea that Zorn didn't approve of doing longer genre sections at that time. This gets into another important factor in the decision- the contrary nature, which I will get back to.

But Kondo and I were not specifically quoting from country, in fact not at all at first. We played a Paul Revere and the Raiders song from my youth on the radio in Knoxville and began quoting from "Diamonds are a Girls' Best Friend" during almost every set. Kondo liked singing the first line "A kiss on the hand, can be quite continental, but diamonds are a girl's best friend." He is not the only Japanese friend of mine to have an obsession with that film. Aki Takase also told me it was one of her favorites.

I remember we started doing "I Walk the Line" during our first European tour. Once, we went from Holland to Paris and got kind of stranded there, doing little shows. I remember sending a reel to reel recording home from a gig in Brugge, Belgium, where Kondo and I did "I Walk the Line" and "San Quentin" by Johnny Cash in one set. So by that time, I was obsessing about country and western.

I peeled off from Kondo for a few weeks on that tour to meet and perform with Austrian musicians I had gotten to know through correspondence. It started when I gave a rave review to their album in Coda magazine. Trumpeter Franz Koglmann and soprano saxophonist Walter Malli were still collaborating at that time, later they would split off over philosophical differences. I had sheet music to "The Last Word in Lonesome Is Me" and "Stand By Your Man," which I brought to the rehearsal and... Well, Franz was horrified, Walter thought it was the best thing since Charlie Parker. But Franz got comfortable with the idea and we had crazy times packed into a tiny car with some huge drives and playing shows combining their compositions, country and western... I was making tons of noise. We did a gig for the workers in shoe factory outside Graz and they rolled in a Marshall amp. This actually went down really well.

Anyway, from there on in, songs became an important part of my concerts and so the country and western really started coming to the front. Kondo and I got back from Europe and wanted to keep touring during the summer, so arranged a few things. Driving around with cellist Tom Cora, he jumped right into what we were doing and most notably was thumbing through my notebook that I practiced out of in Richmond before the gig and asked about some Hank Williams songs I had written down in there. I actually can't remember where I copied these charts from but I had copied the piano parts and used to practice them- four or five of his most famous songs. He was like, 'let's play these tonight,' so we did, and of course, the reaction was in some ways the same as if I was playing with a balloon---shock, surprise. Well, this what everything we were doing was all about.

In New York City though, I was a young man. I was learning that, as the saying goes "everything is like high school." There is an in crowd, maybe a few of them, the social interactions and sussing people out with young romance and sex and what Doug Sahm described so vividly in his song title "Cowboy Peyton Place." It was all annoying and one thing I remembered about the in crowd in high school was if someone had a really great idea, they would think it was stupid.

So in New York, I am trying to get into these different in crowds, but although there were little crowds of noisemakers and improvisers and composers. There wasn't anyone combining that with country and western. At the time, I am talking about, second half of the 70s, there was barely any country and western in New York City. Right before I left, the venues were all about mechanical bulls and in Dreamory, you can read about my miserable attempts to get my band booked at the Lone Star, etc.. After a year of schmoozing off and on and I get Arto Lindsey to put me solo on a bill with DNA and a few other bands- it was at CBGBs so there must have 12 bands. This was where I was going to blow minds with my Hank Williams and Johnny Paycheck material, played on a 12 string with light preparations and sung through a ham radio microphone I was partially swallowing.

Since I was unsure about my singing this was my approach until the There'll Be No Tears Tonight session. The gizmo abruptly stopped working and the engineer, Les Paul Jr., said "I guess you will just have to really sing it." There was no way we were going to run around Times Square looking for one those cheap microphones while the clock ticked away in the studio. Things like that have always seemed stupid to me.

Back to the CBGBs thing. That was considered a debacle- people hated it, they programmed me so I wouldn't have the real dynamic part of the evening. I heard the crowd behind it wanted nothing more to do with me, ever, they had really hated the country and western... I hung around and the really popular part of the evening was a guy, and I can't remember who it was, who got up and played one or two chords, really loud, for about an hour. Oh the people there just thought that was wonderful. But for me, I would have thought that was really lame back in high school, and gone home to my Coltrane records. So here I was back in high school again, and it confirmed the idea that the country direction was a great idea!

I like saying the rest is history. The LP Tears circulated enough so that it was possible to get around with a band in a few different areas. Out of these bands evolved Shockabilly, which got around even more. By the time Shockabilly started, I had established a following in my (former) home of New York City as well as around North Carolina--Greensboro, Chapel Hill, Durham, Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Asheville... With all this activity it became clear, as one fan said to me one night in Rhode Island: "I always loved country, and I always loved avant garde improvisation! I never knew one person was going to do both on stage."

So although musicians hadn't done much about this combination, out there in the public were people waiting for it to happen.

[Chadbourne takes some time off from the interview to spend with his grandchild. Two days later he adds the following.]

I did want to mention something important I think I overlooked in the general discussion of the band's development.

While playing extended improvisations within sets of country songs or based on them was a pretty new idea for that time. When Shockabilly began playing more of its sets based on '60's and '70's classic rock, then it became a more normal thing, since all of us grew up on rock bands jamming on extended versions of songs. My version of the Van Halen "brown M&M" trick was to include in contracts the option to play a 60 minute version of "Spoonful," just to see if anyone reads the contract. This type of guy with no sense of humor would take me aside and say "we don't want the hour-long 'Spoonful.'"

Anyway, the turning point with that was when we put together a set up of Beatles songs ala country, not so radical since the Beatles always had a country tinge and some tracks were basically C&W but that brought the band into the "rock" fold.




PSF: You paint a mixed picture of how your first explorations of country were received in the experimental music circles with Toshinori Kondo, Walter Malli and Tom Cora sharing the excitement, while the crew around CBGB didn't really get it. But what about the reactions from country audiences and musicians? When did you begin getting in contact with those?

I guess you didn't have many country musicians among your peers at the time you recorded There'll Be No Tears Tonight (1980) but as you alluded to earlier, you later recorded with Kenny Malone, Walter Daniels, Don Helms, Earl Poole Ball, Redd Volkaert, Michael Rhodes and other veteran session players (as can be heard, for example, on the 2013 collection Texasock). What has been your experience working with such well-established country musicians?

EC: I wish I had more experiences with which to flesh out responses to this question. I have only really nibbled and mostly get the impression that these sorts of musicians are very difficult to arrange collaborations outside of a paid session. And what I learned from these experiences is that... There is a lot to learn...

Shockabilly brought me in personal contact for the first time; we were downplaying country and only had a few of those sorts of numbers in the set. It was a geographical thing because the band started touring all over the USA, so... naturally, my first gig in Nashville was at Cantrell's, the legendary spot where all the punk bands played. I remember going out for food after the show with Bela Fleck, Sam Bush and a bassist they were working with who said he also played with Dolly Parton. He told me that country and western musicians were into my stuff. "You are helping to keep us from going insane," he said in a comment that has obviously stuck with me.

We went to Texas for the first time, I had gone through on a huge bus ride years ago, but this was my first time doing gigs. Austin was really exciting, still the show was not well attended. Our motel right on the southside of the bridge was a classic rock and roll place- the Continental Club was across the street and Roky Eriksen was finishing a set just as I walked in! I noticed a place next door, the Austin Music Museum, with murals of Willie Nelson, Doug Sahm... I thought, this was the place, and walked in the moment the doors opened in the morning, sipping at my shitty motel coffee. When I told the proprietor I was in a band and played last night, he couldn't care less. I made things worse by asking him if he was in touch with Mr. Nelson, as in Willie- he gave me this really stupid look and said "Oh sure, man, we are going to have breakfast tomorrow," and then just stared at me.

This was the beginning of many trips to Austin. I am going to pick off some of the names you mentioned as they come up. Dealings with my comings and goings in and out of Austin went through generations and Walter Daniels had become involved I would say at early in the new millennium. I would describe him as well as drummers Mike Buck and Ernie Durawa, pianist Earle Poole Ball and guitarist Redd Volkaert not so much as country session musicians but as Austin session musicians. While the recording scene there is certainly not as active as Nashville, Los Angeles or New York City, the diverse styles that come together in Austin music make for a decidedly different blend, much more multi-cultural, than the white bread of Nashville.

Poole Ball and Volkaert have definite hard core country and western credits, the latter on some fine Merle Haggard cuts and Ball all over the place in discographies of Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins... Does he play on Sweetheart of the Rodeo? [ED NOTE: yes]

The first session I did with Daniels and Poole Ball was a resourceful gambit of Walter, he wanted the two of us to record something for a South Filthy CD. That is one of his main projects but he has played with a long list of bands. Actually, they all have such outrageous names which is a real Austin thing, just reading the list out loud would have made my mother physically ill.

I decided to try three things. The day before I had found a handwritten note left behind on the outside table of a taco place. It was this truly pathetic found poetry. I put a few chords to it and used what was called a "eviction guitar." Somebody had been tossed out and left a bunch of stuff behind and Walter, odd job moving man, always kept the guitars. This was a low rent classical but it worked on the song, plus it had bad vibes on its own from being left behind in a situation like that.

We did "Listening to the Wind," which has come up before and was pretty straight country, then we did a cover of DMX's "One More Road to Cross"- first time I recorded it I believe and Poole Ball came up with sparse, echoey block chords.

What I watched him do here and later in the studio during the Texas Sessions Chapter Three sessions, he takes out pen and paper and makes his own piano chart for each song. He writes those babies out and then he is ready to go. He had me sit there sometimes and make sure he had the bars right. On a song like "Mountain Men," where the chords change more casually, he just had to know that and was ready to go.

It brings up the subject of what you prepare for players at these sessions. For the sessions in Nashville, I was under the influence of what I had been reading for years: Nashville session men use a system of numbers for chords. Stories came up about fuck ups related to not having these numbers ready.

I had charts then with the numbers but also all the original charts and notes, the list included some of my own material and covers of Nick Drake and Phil Ochs. It wasn't all just straight country.

We had Don Helms and Kenny Malone, this was being in a room with legends and they were both so nice. Malone also plays jazz and liked having lots of freedom during the day. He would change cymbals based on things in the lyrics. I remember him going back out to his truck once he found out "Too Damn Bad" included someone's throat getting slit. "I have a cymbal for that!"

Karl Straub from Washington, D.C., of the Graverobbers Band, had proposed and footed the bill for these sessions. We drove to Nashville together. His friend Jason Stelluto was working in studios there. We went right into Nightingale Studios which was a place all kinds of country people worked.

Karl told me while [steel guitarist] Don Helms was a legend, his sort of playing was out of style and he rarely got called for sessions.

The bassist Michael Rhodes was younger and was described in the opposing disposition of busy all the time. He had a rate for corporate big label sessions and a rate for indie sessions but Karl said once he found out it was with me, he said he didn't care. They could pay him whatever. Hearing that gave me confidence. Obviously, when the guy shows up and is setting up, I already know he is really into my music.

There were a few others on the session that were friends of the engineer. They told me they were just trying to establish themselves in Nashville: Ken Card, real job printing cards (really!), told me he had lots of get togethers with other songwriters.

We tried to get Roy Huskey to play bass- he usually is pictured smoking a cigar, on upright. He was free on the Sunday but said he wife wouldn't let him work on Sunday- they always went to church.

None of these guys wanted the numbered charts. For the Nick Drake and Phil Ochs, the pianist wanted to look over the chords, they would be crazy not to. The only guy I know that doesn't need to do it and plays brilliantly is Pat Thomas. Helms played by ear, so did Rhodes.

A funny thing I remembered that I wondered if it was typical of what happens at these sessions. I was done with all my material and/or at a short stopping point, there was a break of sorts and the musicians had not packed up. Karl came out into the room and asked the session guys if they wouldn't mind quickly backing him up on a number. The way Volkaert works, this would cost extra money, but in Nashville these guys had been hired for a session, 90 minutes basically and these were still minutes on the clock. So they whipped out this number with Karl singing. "Good song," Rhodes said. They did not seem perturbed.

[A few days later, Chadbourne returns to this topic.]

I have been sorting out the various encounters and what they add up to. You have seen me in action, taking part in collaborations as I move around that can be gratifying at times but at other times are not... Remember Luther Thomas?

Now how would I describe dealing with someone like that... a personal implosion... maybe he was losing his mind from oncoming cancer. Anyway suddenly he was indulging in racist rants and playing like a fool onstage.

More commonly, I get involved in situations where some sort of local ensemble is trying to come to grips with what I want and there is a problem comprehending or getting comfortable with basic aspects of how the music is to be created.

I will describe a few different situations I encountered. Looking at the situation overall, what I desire is careful advance planning to make my time in whatever city I am going to as relaxing as possible. Communicating with the different musicians, usually a list of songs is arranged in advance- everyone likes this. They have the option to study the music and become comfortable with it.

Ideally, I would like to run through whatever is most problematic for someone at a sound check but have plenty of material that everyone is comfortable enough with to be able to blast through a lot of the set with no rehearsal.

Does this plan work? Rarely. I will return to the logistics and timing of these procedures but a common problem with players that join in from any traditional genre (so of course, that includes country and western) is that they cannot embrace concepts from outside the genre. This would include the bluegrass mandolinist who took umbrage with a turnaround I had created on a standard by stealing something out of a Webern string quartet, resulting in a series of chords that he simply refused to play. He had to change it back to what would normally happen in that kind of chord sequence. I am always jolting myself out of common chord sequences by using serial music techniques, aleatoric systems (chance principles) and one would think a trained musician could follow a chord chart or score, just like someone driving a car could follow a map or GPS. No.

The ultimate difficulty to many seems to be the way I will change from country (or another style) to noise or something free form, however it is described. Something different, not based on a score but more like you were acting, or a character in a cartoon. You just change. One second it is this, the next second that.

"But can't we figure out the exact number of bar lines before we change?"

In these cases, I have to defy these musicians' desire to simplify my music, change it into something else... perhaps even ruin it a little... just for the sake of their comfort on a given night.

A pedal steel player that at first held great promise had this problem and never got comfortable with it, then combined it with a few other irritating personality traits. Doing some Roger Miller covers had come up and I had told the players I had a nice songbook published around the time of his second album with good chord charts, piano sheet, vocal lead or melody written out. Everything they would need.

So we start working on what would be the easiest of the Miller covers in the list, "The Last Word in Lonesome is Me," and the guy says "This is a different key than I learned it in."

"I told you I was bringing the book, and I told you the keys. Why would you learn it in a different key?"

"I heard it on the radio and this was the key they were playing it in."

This is the point in a rehearsal where you decide NOT to stop everything to listen to a record of a song I already know, and could play in any key. Do we have to make out a chart for the bass player in the new key?

Worse problems developed on [Roger Miller's] "Dang Me," of course, because in my arrangement there is an uncountable number of bars of free form jazz swing (free bop some call it, or Ornette style), before the song returns.

"Can we do an exact number of bars?"

This was also requested by trained jazz musicians doing this arrangement. In yet another situation, the rhythm guitarist and mastermind of a pick-up ensemble for a Colorado gig told the bassist HE would take over on "Dang Me," he is familiar with Ornette Coleman and knew what I wanted. This went great at the rehearsal but come the gig they forgot about making this change and so the bassist stayed on bass and stared at me in horror through the whole thing.

[Chadbourne heads off to make coffee. Upon completion, he continues.]

As described previously, this pedal steel player created a lot of problems and confusion, yet you have to bear in mind, each player has the possibility of adding something beautiful of their own. In this case, we were doing a cover of [The Rascals'] "Groovin'" in the program and he worked out the organ part on the pedal steel with a harmony- it was really fantastic, and he played it properly at the show itself which is a premonition of another subject we get into here with these interactions...

When asked if I will do a related situation, a workshop of several days involving local musicians with a performance at the end, I will negotiate for the best conditions which will involve payment covering several rehearsal days as well as the gig itself. This prevents the tiring ordeal of having to run through an entire program with nervous musicians during a soundcheck or even worse rehearsal requiring carrying everything to another location and setting it up, all on the day of the gig!

Does this help, yes and no and NO... because unfortunately too many players that I would describe as "green" have substance abuse problems, particularly alcohol.

I had lots of rehearsal days and a fairly good outcome with a workshop held in Belgium very close to a French border. We had gathered as diverse a group of players as possible and I had managed to get an associate involved as a kind of co-conductor but most importantly translator because people who don't understand the instructions at a rehearsal because it is not their native tongue tend to nod their head and pretend to understand.

I was expecting great things then from this particular gig until we concluded the setup, when I overheard comments about when will they start serving beer and this gives us this much time to drink before the show. Most of the musicians became over confident, got happy drunk and then fucked up almost every cue, forgot every arrangement, started in space when they were supposed to solo, etc. Derek Bailey told me one night: "I like alcohol, and I like music, but I am not so sure they go together that well."

And though I am a big fan of the ganja, I can report a parallel situation with jazz musicians hired to back me in a western American town. These were young, well studied players that could handle a complicated Thelonious Monk chart. Still, there are loads of details involving ad hoc arrangements of jazz pieces in a set. People hope they can rely on their memories. And then at the set break, I overhear "Let's go out in back and sample some of this fine medical marijuana." Upon return, two players could not remember the order several keys thing were supposed to happen in a funny arrangement we had put together of a Parliament/Funkadelic number, done kind of bluegrass style with banjo... The bassist had a memory dump on the bass line I remember...

It is not all glory being a bandleader. You are up there in front and for example in this case, it was a real old school jazz club with the audience all packed around small tables, sitting close to each other, eyes glued to the stage... And I just assume that whatever happens onstage, I am getting the blame for it.

A funny thing I learned from Brian Ritchie, we were playing a theatre in Phoenix with the Violent Femmes, and during one of the loud jams something got kind of echoey sounding to me with the basic beat, like it was doubling over. It got pulled back together with some feedback and string bending and it reminded me of moments you would hear at a loud, out of control rock jam, sometimes this is the part you decide you really like. Anyway, I had enjoyed it because it seemed so wild for such a nice venue and also way out there even by the pretty liberal standards of the Femmes. So I looked over at Brian and he is standing motionless, his eyes staring straight ahead, his hands folded over the fretboard of his bass. He didn't start playing again until Gordon Gano and the others had gotten the beat back together. I asked him what was going on later and said "They turned the fucking beat around, so I have to do that so nobody listening thinks I'm responsible."

One night in Antwerp the band was so horrible, every time a song ended, and they were getting through the songs okay, one of them would start up a really crap funk jam. And they would all just keep going with that. The audience was looking at me, like, "hey we don't expect this sort of shit from you, what's going on?" What are you going to do, if you start screaming and waving your arms, it creates a bad vibe, like the audience is watching a psychodrama. Then it doesn't matter how artistic the music might become, not that anyone ever improved anything after being shouted at. So I decided to catch up on some of my editing- I was working on my book as always. I sat there and paid no attention until they kind of wound down and then turned to me to start the next song in the set. After I did that a few times, they got the message. It reminded me of Jim O'Rourke, after a set in Nickelsdorff- I told him I liked it but wasn't sure who was making what sound. "It wasn't me," he said, "I was doing my email."

That's all part of that forced lack of pride, like Gibby Hayes [Butthole Surfers] asking me "Can you believe these people pay good money for this shit?" after one of their sets. I guess if you can pretend not to really care about the outcome, and achieve success while pretending not to care, then maybe it doesn't bother you so much when things go wrong.

...Which can be the simplest thing. The song "Key to My Heart" by Doug Sahm, that was one chosen for a workshop at the music center in Pau because it has two chords but the feel changes- it builds, and in my arrangement there could be a long jam at the end on...as usual, not the expected chord.

These were some young rockers and they were struggling to pin down the beat of the song, where the 1 was, it was gobbling up the workshop time and finally I decided it was close enough and that with all luck it would come together perfectly at the gig. But no, it was worse, the drummer was groping for each beat like someone trying to keep a car trunk from popping open, before I could get the lyrics going I had to get the background stable. I stood with my back to the crowd staring at the drummer, strumming the chords as simply as I could... Typically with Doug, it is simple but something odd that pulls you in about the feel. I just could not get them to pick it up. Familiarity with the music in question, The Sunwatchers in Brooklyn played the hell out of that song with me, first time out. And then again you are dealing with a higher quality of musician in terms of experience and the scene they are in... Brooklyn as opposed to Pau.

Many more bands and ongoing projects... So hard to compare, I felt sorry for the French rockers (and learned that in that country, a rocker describes more the type of weather or time of day an individual is willing to go out in). And finally, I need to mention that Ernie Durawa of the Sir Douglas Quintet and Texas Tornados rhythm section told me about a little "trick" they had to start "She's About a Mover" up accurately onstage because of the offbeat... and that is after 50 years of playing it.

Working with those jokers introduced me to a phenomenon many don't realize exists, a musician will have played on a record, but when you ask them to play a song off that record, they will say "I don't know how to play it."

In this case Speedy Sparks the bassist, discussing some choices I had for Sahm covers-- they were songs he had recorded, once, for an album, and never played live. He couldn't remember how to play it, had no chart. I had to teach it to him.

I have no right to complain, I forget many of my own pieces and when asked to play them with bands have to relearn them, ask them for a chart. Some people think that is weird, I wish I wasn't so stupid in that way and could just remember everything.

That's all I can think of this subject.




PSF: In addition to guitars electric and acoustic, and amplified rakes and plungers, you also play the banjo. I'm hoping you could say a bit about your history and relationship with that instrument.

Earlier you described the banjo as something that - at least in certain periods - establishes "a country and western vibe no matter what the hell else is going on." Was this one of the things that initially drew you to the instrument or were there other reasons entirely?

EC: I circled around the banjo for a very long time, beginning in high school years when I experimented with raga-style playing on one.

In Dreamory, I have a detailed account of relationships with various banjos. An important development during my playing career was that a company finally developed a budget-priced banjo that stayed in tune and played well, that being the Deering "Goodtime." Before that, the banjos that were 300 dollars or less were almost like toy instruments, but unfortunately that is what I sort of started out on.

My generation was introduced to the banjo as an evocative background to television comedy--the Beverly Hillbillies--and bloody mayhem, Bonnie and Clyde. The instrument itself made a provocative appearance so Paul Newman could back up the anti-social ballad "Plastic Jesus" in a hit film of my adolescent rebellion years, Cool Hand Luke, but nothing involving the banjo had the impact of the "Dueling Banjos" music used in the film Deliverance, and thanks to this the sound of the banjo may evoke less country music and more compound fractures, sodomy and revenge murder.

Initially, my abilities on the banjo were so limited that it added a bit of variety to the sets that mostly focused on guitar and a rave up on electric rake or something similar. Of course in Denmark my savage attack on an electric umbrella onstage made the national newspapers!

Finally, I wrote two songs on banjo that really came off well- "It Can Make it Rain Bombs" and "The Old Piano." Also several covers I developed took the instrument into a much more progressive direction-"Everyone's Been Burned" from the Byrds, for example, and then the "Coltrane Medley" on banjo that was the Intakt solo CD.

None of this was strictly focused on country and western. In fact, I would say key elements in my style of accompaniment on country and western relate to the guitar and are technically not reproduceable on banjo--the Willie Nelson style heavy bass lines for example. My style of country also uses elements of rockabilly and classic rock, such as the Eddie Cochran style riffs I added to a Tammy Wynette song or Chuck Berry's attraction to the old "jazz" or "horn keys"--Bb, Eb, Ab, Gb, even Db. And this is certainly not a given with rockers such as the psychedelic player that told me, "The E-flat key is as welcome as a fart in a sleeping bag."


See Part IV of our Eugene Chadbourne interview


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