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The Power of Music with Kevin Russell
15 Plays1 year ago
The Power of Music with Kevin Russell.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Laughing Otter where we are making the world a happier place, one person at
Meet Kevin Russell
00:00:13
Speaker
a time. I'm your host, Jeff Bogginsburger, and I am super, super excited today. Cause my guest is from that hotbed of music, Austin, Texas. And I get to talk music with Kevin Russell and from shiny ribs and the gourds. Welcome to the show, Kevin. Hi, good to be here, Jeff. Good to be here.
The Story Behind 'Gin and Juice' Cover
00:00:32
Speaker
Now we were talking a little bit offline here.
00:00:35
Speaker
and I have been saying for about 20 years that the gourds cover of gin and juice is in the top five best covers of all time right up there with all along the watchtower. So yeah, how did that come about? How'd you guys pick that song? Oh my gosh. Well, I have to give credit to my baby sister.
00:01:02
Speaker
Erin Phoenix Russell, Erin Phoenix Russell. Yeah, she actually passed away in February of 2020, right before everything went to hell. But she was my kid sister and me and her shared so much music. She was just
00:01:23
Speaker
We were really close and she was always turning me on to music. We'd argue about music. That was a big part of our connection as siblings. So I went home one Christmas. It was early 90s. It was, I guess, around the time the song had come out maybe.
00:01:43
Speaker
I don't know, 92, 93, somewhere around there. I went home for Christmas and hung out with her, you know, one night while I was there, just tooling around. Denton, Texas is where she lived, north of Dallas. Hanging out, she said, you got to hear this song. She played me gin and juice by Snoop Dogg. And I was like,
00:02:06
Speaker
blown away. That hook by itself is just such a great hook. It's immediately likable. Great pop song. I just had to figure out how to do this song. The chorus was so good, I just knew it could be done. I thought, well, maybe I'll just put the chorus in a medley or something.
00:02:29
Speaker
And I didn't have a computer at the time. I mean, I know the internet existed, but to me it didn't exist. I was a bit of a Luddite in that regard. It took me a while to get onto the internet bandwagon. So I didn't have lyrics for that. And I didn't know, I was just your average square white dude from Texas at the point. I didn't know any of the language they were using.
00:02:57
Speaker
a lot of the slang in there. I was totally just whitey on that whole trip. And so I did the best I could and I had to ask my sister a lot what the lyrics were. What was it like? What is Mackin? I had no idea at the time.
00:03:15
Speaker
And so I wrote all the lyrics down and I could play the chorus and it sounded exactly like I do it. I can just play it and I do it pretty close to melodically what they do. And it was just two chords, just A and D on the mandolin, simple as can be. It's two chords is all we ever play in that song.
00:03:37
Speaker
And I was like, but I can't, I can't, I can't rap. I just can't, I'm not going to do it. I'm not, I don't feel comfortable rapping. I don't think I didn't feel honest to me or authentic to my musical being. So.
00:03:51
Speaker
Um, I was like, I just got to find a melody for all these words. It was like a damn Bob Dylan song, you know, so many words. And, uh, I don't know if I'll ever be able to memorize all this. Um, anyway, I had that sitting out on the kitchen table at my house for months. I had some other months just scribbled on notebook and every now and then I'd sit with it and
Impact and Mislabeling of the Cover
00:04:17
Speaker
play. And then one day that melody.
00:04:20
Speaker
as it is now just came out. It's based on the chorus. It's like if you play that chorus enough, that melody was suggested to my brain after playing that over and over. And then I said about learning the lyrics and memorizing the lyrics. And the first time I played it was at Waterloo Ice House, which is gone now. It was right next to Waterloo Records at 6th Lamar here in Austin, Texas.
00:04:50
Speaker
are the Gords sound engineer, front of house engineer at the time, this guy named Jim Archuleta, also known as Archie. He was having his birthday and he asked me and he asked Jimmy Smith from the Gords to play, each of us to play a solo set. And so we did, and me and Jimmy were competitive, so we both brought our A game.
00:05:16
Speaker
I mean, Jimmy did, I think he might've done Ziggy Stardust that night, which was the other great cover off of that record that Jim and Juice is on. Cool version of Ziggy Stardust that we did. Yeah, I like it too. Oh yeah, really cool. So Jimmy did the same thing. He was always mashing up stuff just like I was. And so that's all we were doing, mashing up styles and ideas and having fun as an artist. So yeah, I played it that night, brought the house down.
00:05:47
Speaker
At the birthday party, people just couldn't believe it. They never, you know, at that time, no one had done that. No one had in the Americana country folk, whatever genre, had not done any rap. There was no one had done that. And I knew that.
00:06:03
Speaker
And that's why I did it. I was like, well, this is, it was just sitting there. It was like, this is low hanging fruit to me. It's just to make a song out of it. And, uh, so, yeah, I think that's what people, the novelty of it at the time. And I, I was pretty proud of that. So, uh, and then the first time the gorge ever played it was at the electric lounge where Archie also ran sound, um,
00:06:26
Speaker
And it was just a gourd's gig not long after that. I think it was 94, maybe 95. I don't remember 96. It was somewhere in mid nineties and we played in the electric lounge and we had an encore situation. And I was like, Hey guys, you remember that song? I played at Archie's birthday and they were like, Oh boy. What? And we'd never played it. And they're like, yeah, I was like, it's just A and D over and over A and D just didn't, and I'll do the rest. Just follow me.
00:06:56
Speaker
And they're all great players. And so they, they felt it. And I mean, we've pretty much played it as we record it. It pretty much came out the first time, like it is on that record. It's fantastic. And as a closet drummer myself, um, I've, I've played along to it with, uh, within, in my headphones and that it is such a rocking tune, um, that by the end of it, I'm just, I'm just.
00:07:24
Speaker
pour and sweat because it's so much. It is so much fun to play. And I was mentioned to you before that we started here that it was the go to song for a lot of my university mates and stuff back in the day of the last song we would play before we went out because it just got everybody in. It's such a good mood. And then much much to the chagrin of our neighbors, it was also the song we'd play.
00:07:54
Speaker
at two in the morning when we rolled back into the house when you got back. And you were aware it was the gourds. You know what? I was going to ask you about that because what isn't there some story? Cause I'm, I, I remember that. Wasn't it that Spotify or somebody listed it as blues traveler or fish or something like that?
00:08:19
Speaker
Napster was Napster. All the peer-to-peer stuff in the late 90s, that's how that happened. Everything was mislabeled on Napster. Nothing was right because people did it themselves on their computers. Whatever you called your file, it would show up on Napster as whatever you called it. I think for a long time, my mates and I thought it was either
00:08:48
Speaker
I think we thought it was Fish. And then there was a little bit of Blue's Traveler. But I'm glad you guys finally get credit for it because it is. I don't know that we ever really did. I mean, we did with a lot of people, but I think a lot of people still don't know who the hell did it. And Fish was the original one. That was the big one. I remember when I had just gotten my first computer at that time.
00:09:18
Speaker
And, uh, people were like, uh, emailing me and say, Hey man, we heard your song on Napster, but it's like under fish and everybody thinks it's fish. And there's all these, uh, listservs and chat chat groups that think it's fishing. So, and I, so I was like, well, what the hell was a Napster? So I looked up, I looked up the Napsters and I, I, I, the only way I could get, I found a phone number. So I actually called the people at Napster on the phone.
00:09:48
Speaker
And they answered. And it was just like three guys sitting in an office somewhere. And they explained to me, they were like, no, we're not a content provider. See, that's not content we're creating. We're just providing an indexing service for other people's computers. And I began to understand, oh, okay. So I said, so I could put the entire catalog of Leonard Skinner under my name. And they're like, yeah. I said, don't you think that's stupid?
00:10:16
Speaker
And they're like, I don't know. I was like, yeah, it's fucking stupid, dude. So much music was mislabeling. I always hate that because I like the artists to get credit. I didn't care it was free. I downloaded a lot of free music from Kazaa and a lot of those things. But it's like, at least make it right. But they couldn't, of course, because then they become liable.
00:10:42
Speaker
It was a stupid situation but it was a perfect storm too because our master recording was stuck in bankruptcy court because the label that put that out went bankrupt right after and it got stuck in court. We couldn't release it. We couldn't do anything with it because it was
00:11:02
Speaker
in a court case. So, and it, it was, it was the question of who, who it belonged to, who was going to get the money and blah, blah, blah. So we, we maybe should have rerecorded it, but then, then that dynamite hack came out with their song just right after that. Yeah. That was huge. It just completely coincidental. I haven't thought of that dynamite hack song in 25 years and
00:11:30
Speaker
the the the
00:11:53
Speaker
Uh, that's what I do. And, and, and we'll get it out there and, and give you proper credit and, and make a few dollars for you. Yeah. That's crazy. That's a cool idea. Well, yeah, we should, because it's, I always like, when I found out it was you guys, I felt sick to my stomach because I'd known that there were like, well, not like hundreds of thousands of people who were loving that song, thinking it was fish. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
00:12:22
Speaker
It was the most downloaded song on the internet for a couple of years and there was nothing to touch it. But it was a perfect song because Fish too at the time was sort of well known, but only well known among a certain group. You know, the genre, it was the Grateful Dead jam crowd. But people outside of that, they'd heard of Fish, but they'd never heard the music because you couldn't hear on the radio. It was hard.
00:12:47
Speaker
It was hard to get music back then. And so that's why Napster was so appealing to so many people and peer to peer because suddenly they had access to all these things. So you had a lot of people searching for fish who didn't who had never heard fish. So that's right. Of course, believe that was fish because they had never heard them. So if you'd ever heard fish, you know, that is not fish. Yeah, I know you're exactly right. And
00:13:16
Speaker
Because that would have been me. It was like, yeah, it kind of sounds like fish, but not really. You're like, well, it could be. Yeah, they never had a mandolin. They never played a mandolin. So not alone. And they never played drums like that. I mean, they can jam, but they never played like Keith Langford. So I'm with you. And just between you and I,
00:13:44
Speaker
I don't think they're anywhere near Jerry and the boys. Like, Oh, well, no, of course not. They're their own thing. And I love fish is great. I love them. They're great. They're all respectful. Yeah. I'm not talking shit about fish at all. They were cool. Actually, we played the higher ground. The gourds did in Burlington, Vermont. That was their clubs, vicious club. Okay. And we played there one night and.
00:14:09
Speaker
I'm slipping on the he's a bass player, I think with fish. I can't remember his name right now, but he came to the gig and he came backstage and he actually apologized and we're like, dude, you had nothing to do with it. I mean, it was sweet of him, but he said, yeah, they, he said they would get that at shows all the time. And I acknowledge they never played it. They might've learned it at some point just because they could, you know, and why not? But, um,
00:14:36
Speaker
You know, I wonder how much their their fame improved because of it. Yeah. Oh, no, I think it did. I think it did. It definitely helped. Well, let's let's talk about. Well, after the show, we'll we'll talk about it. Do it in NFT for you and OK. Yeah. We'll produce it. We'll get it out on the on the on the market and and see see where it goes. That'd be great fun. All right. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Holy shit. I've never been this excited in a podcast in my life.
00:15:06
Speaker
I'm serious. That's one of my favorite songs of all time. Yeah, that's awesome. It was amazing. Great recording. We purposely also didn't do a censored version of it because we didn't want it to be too popular. You know what I mean? We knew the potential there. It could totally go viral for lack of a better word. I don't know what we call it back then.
00:15:31
Speaker
And we didn't want it. We said, no, it's dangerous because then we'll become known just for that song. And so we kind of didn't want to be known for it. We made a conscious decision to avoid it being played on the radio. Yeah. And there's a certain. There's a certain level of humor in it, too. Right. Because it, you know, with.
00:15:57
Speaker
some of the some of the some of the lines with a southern twang to it. Yeah. Like it just works. Oh, yeah. The language is about the language. So, I mean, why you can't take any of that. No, no. That was our our our opinion. No. But you guys nailed it. And so now you've moved on to shiny ribs, which I like this. Is it a true story that it was a lady that you gave some food on the street or something and
00:16:26
Speaker
And that's where the name came from. Is that true?
Origin of 'Shiny Ribs'
00:16:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Well, there's a lot of stories as to how I got that name. None of them have really ever been verified. Okay. So is Shiny Ribs you first and then the band afterwards? Yeah, that's the way I see it. My deal is my name's Kevin Russell. And there are several Kevin Russells in the music world.
00:16:55
Speaker
There was a guitar player who played with Earl Slick for a long time from the Bay Area blues guy, Kevin Russell. There's a German composer. He's huge. He's like techno kind of industrial guy named Kevin Russell from Germany. And so they were both sort of in my periphery. I was aware of both of those guys. So I was like, well, I don't want to be Kevin Russell. I got to be something else. And I figured, well,
00:17:24
Speaker
I should have one name, you know, like Madonna or Cher, you know, you know, so I need one name. It's easy to say catchy. And, uh, so the, really the way I got the name was I went to visit my parents and, uh, my nephew, uh, Nicholas is his name.
00:17:46
Speaker
He was the first child born from my same baby sister who turned me on a gin juice, Erin, her first child. And Nicholas was little and he was running around. He was really into this PBS show called Shiny Times Station. And I think for a while George Carlin was actually doing a character on this show.
00:18:09
Speaker
Anyway, the show will begin. They've always began. It's shiny time. It's shiny time. That was the big intro for the show. It's kids showing PBS. I think it's PBS. Anyway, so Nicholas was always walking around back there and going, it's shiny time. It's shiny time.
00:18:25
Speaker
And I liked that. I was like, it's shiny time. So that was in my head and I went home and I was really at the time, I go through phases where I get obsessed with a concept or an idea or a story and I research it and I sort of write about it. And so I was really into the biblical, the origin story, Adam and Eve and the rib.
00:18:47
Speaker
Adam's rib and that whole, just that whole story. It's just a freaky story. And I grew up with that. This is part of my brain, you know, that story. So I was exploring that and I had a lot of artwork, collages I had done. And I had this, a couple of songs about the darkness of ribs and how it's dark inside. The ribs are inside, it's dark. And I put it together with that shiny time.
00:19:14
Speaker
Cause that was in my head. And I was just one of those nights I was sitting there and I put it together and I was like, shiny ribs. And it was an aha moment. I was like, that is, I liked the way that sounds. I liked the way it's nothing. It's a new word that, you know, it just conjures so many images, shiny ribs. It's fun to say. So I'm worried. So that's really the way I came up with it. I'm with it. I think, I think you nailed it. I think that that is like,
00:19:44
Speaker
And especially, you know, watching some of your, uh, like, unfortunately I'm here in Australia. So when you, when you, when you decide to get on a plane, I'll absolutely be grabbing a ticket or if I make it to Austin, which I always dream of doing, uh, I'll grab a ticket, but I've watched a bunch of stuff on, on YouTube and that, and you just look like you're having so much fun on stage and, and, and the, the, the, the,
00:20:11
Speaker
The type of music that you play, shiny ribs just nails it. Like that is. It does. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the real story right there. But I have a lot of other stories if you want to hear them. Yeah. That's fantastic. And one thing like, you know, like what I'm building and what we're all building is we're called the laughing otter and we have
00:20:40
Speaker
really behind the scenes, our unofficial kind of mantra is we should all be having a lot more fun.
Humor in Music Today
00:20:47
Speaker
Or if I'm going to be crass, life doesn't have to be this fucking hard. And so I just love that like you put humor in the music because I don't know when in time it got where music had to be either
00:21:07
Speaker
super negative and violent or, you know, talking constantly about what's wrong with the world and, you know, everything that's wrong and, and depression and all like, I know it has a like, absolutely. It has its place for all that and making social change. It's super powerful and that, but every once in a while you just want to hear a song that just makes you laugh or smile or tap your toe. So I love what you're doing in that respect.
00:21:36
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with you totally, man. That's a good question where it happened. You know, it'd be an interesting thing to sort of trace back on a timetable. Like if we could pinpoint where the moment was, maybe we could go back in time.
00:21:53
Speaker
I love humor in music. I've always been attracted to music that had humor, but also like Roger Miller, he could sing the wackiest stuff and then he could deliver a heartfelt, beautiful fricking song like Little Green Apples or something. And so that's the music I grew up on. The artist had
00:22:15
Speaker
They had depth, they had range. They did all kinds of material, all kinds of songs. Some of it was schlocky, yeah. But some of it was amazing, and some of it was just goofy. I love Ray Stevens. I love the Coasters. I love Jerry Reed. And that's all that tongue and cheek stuff. But Dylan was hilarious. Dylan has tons of hilarious shit in his music. It's humor. It's not necessarily obviously funny, but
00:22:45
Speaker
If you're, you know, you're halfway educated, you can figure it out then when he's doing a joke. But anyway, and then comedians, I always love like Carlin. I mentioned Carlin, George Carlin then. Comedy I always love. I mean, laughing is good for the soul. That's for damn sure. That tongue in cheek, if you figure it out, I always thought that,
00:23:13
Speaker
Was it pig pen from the Grateful Dead that wrote all their lyrics? I always thought as a lyricist, he doesn't get enough credit. Cause there are some, there are brilliant lines in Grateful Dead songs that, if you listen closely enough that they're, they're pretty funny too. So. Yeah. I mean, their name is a, is a joke. I think Grateful Dead that's, that's, that's humorous. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's beautiful. So, I mean, that's the kind of humor I love and, uh,
00:23:43
Speaker
Yeah. And I, I don't know, somewhere it got lost. I mean, I, there's, I can't remember the last humorous song I heard, but I mean, you still still got a lot of humor in some genres, you know, um, yeah, you get a lot of humor, hip hop and rap. There's a lot of funny shit, you know, um, sometimes not much in country country.
00:24:05
Speaker
Doesn't get, well, I guess they get tongue in cheek sometimes. It's just not that funny. I guess maybe it's the quality of the humor that we are yearning for a higher humor. Yeah. I think. Nice. Yeah. It seems that the only, the only band I can think of that consistently put some humor in and maybe it's just cause I'm Canadian, but, um, the bare naked ladies have always tried to keep it relatively light.
00:24:35
Speaker
But you're right on the rap and stuff. As far as lyricists go, that genre doesn't get enough credit too. Maybe sometimes the message is rather hard-hitting, but man, they are good with the use of language and how poetic they are. Kendrick Lamar specifically is amazing. Yeah, I agree.
00:25:03
Speaker
So, so what, what's coming up for you? Um, that's exciting.
The Shiny Ribs Podcast
00:25:09
Speaker
Oh gosh. Um, you know, I have my own podcast I should promote. It's called the shiny ribs podcast. Okay. Well, very creative. It's just, it's just nothing but me and Alice, uh, Spencer, one, um, one of the shiny soldiers. And we just, me and her just talk to members of the band. We get, they don't see, this is incredible band I have. And.
00:25:31
Speaker
I mean, all these people are amazing. They had long, amazing careers. So they have lots of stories. And that's pretty much what we do. We just sit around drinking, telling stories. And there are some amazing stories. And me and Alice were like, man, we got to start.
00:25:49
Speaker
you know, capturing these stories because they're amazing. So that's what that's why we said about just as a project to catch stories of our of our bandmates. Yeah, no, that's great. Is she the one that is your the co-singer on I Don't Give a Shit? That's correct. Yeah. Oh, and I did. I did promise you I can ask you this question because you finally told me and it was bothering me for two years in I Don't Give a Shit.
00:26:19
Speaker
after it says after you say nobody has ever suggested that we should be anyway connected in the biblical or platonically
00:26:36
Speaker
How you spit that out every night is speaking to Roger Miller. That's where I get that. I mean, that's that rapid fire, you know, and you get that rap music to rapid fire, the rhythm of the words, you know, just go together. So you're not really saying anything. You're more just making sounds. Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, the podcast sounds interesting because that's like I grew up in Northern Ontario and the art of storytelling
00:27:07
Speaker
It's so enjoyable. That's through the ages. Oh, yeah. Oh, it is. It is. I struggled with that for a long time. Like in the gourds, I didn't... I feel like I didn't write a lot of stories in the gourds. I was more into like... I was a cryptic writer. I was really into non-linear surrealism and...
00:27:29
Speaker
sort of da da ass writing stream of consciousness stuff. Um, waking dream stuff. That's kind of was my writing platform in the gorge, you know, and, uh, I, you know, there are some songs that have a story or at least the suggestion of a story, but some of them would don't, there's no, there's no story to it all. And I deliberately tried to write songs with no story. Um, and you know what, people didn't like them.
00:27:56
Speaker
People want stories. I mean that we need stories. We crave stories and you're exactly right. Yeah, that's great. And so are you guys going on tour or any shows coming up around the Christmas?
Upcoming Events and Closing Words
00:28:08
Speaker
We've just slowed down for the season, for the winter. We hit it really hard all year. We had some great tours. We went all over the United States and had great time, great audiences. So we're gearing down a little bit.
00:28:24
Speaker
for the winter. We'll just probably do a few Christmas shows in Texas is what we would usually do. And then we have a big show in Austin on December 30th, which at Austin City Limits at ACL Live, the Moody Theater downtown, which I'm really excited about. That's where they record Austin City Limits.
00:28:49
Speaker
And it's just a great room, great stage, great crew there. And I've never played a stage that big in Austin on a date like that. So I'm really excited about it. We'll have Tony Camel with us. And I think the bro's fresh. I haven't heard that's confirmed yet, but hopefully the bro's fresh will be with us as well. If you haven't heard them, they're cool. Yeah, no, I'll check them out. That sounds awesome.
00:29:17
Speaker
Um, maybe that's something I need to ask my wife for Christmas. Hey, we're also, we're also doing the Sandy beaches cruise, you know, Delvert McClinton's cruise in January. Okay. Yeah. You can find that up. Sandy beaches cruise. Um, that's, that's always fun. Um, doing that cruise. I don't know if any of y'all are into cruising, but, uh, those are pretty fun. Yeah. No, I've, yeah. It sounds awesome. Um,
00:29:59
Speaker
You know, it's the Spotify's iTunes and YouTube's and whatnots. Uh, so we're all out there. I think everything's out there to stream and, uh, I'm where you can download stuff too. If you w if you're into that sort of thing, and then you get vinyl from us at shiny ribs.com and just come to our website and you can find out all the vinyl there. If you want, everything's on vinyl.
00:30:08
Speaker
Where can people find your music for us who are stuck on the other side of the world?
00:30:25
Speaker
including the Christmas classic, Crangle Tingle. You don't have a copy of the Crangle Tingle by ShinyRibs. You do need that for Christmas, ladies and gentlemen. Sounds awesome, Kevin. All the listeners here, in all seriousness, the gourds and ShinyRibs is just really fun music to listen to.
00:30:53
Speaker
if they're in your neighborhood, make sure you check them out. And if not, at least start listening to their music because it's great fun. When I made the connection that Kevin was also like in the shiny ribs and the gourds, I got super excited about this conversation and it's been great fun. Kevin and I hope
00:31:17
Speaker
Well, we're definitely going to, we're definitely going to talk about, uh, the, the gin and juice NFT coming out here. So listeners be ready for that. And, um, yeah, that was great fun. And thanks for, thanks for being on the show, Kevin. Yeah. Thanks for having me, man. It's great to be on here, Jeff. Appreciate it. Yeah. And, and, and next time, um, uh, my other passion other than music is I love the barbecue. So we're going to have to talk.
00:31:46
Speaker
Anybody from Texas knows how to barbecue better than anyone. So we'll get out on Texas barbecue. Yes, sir. We'll have to talk about that next time. Oh yeah. Well, I can talk all about that. All right. Well, mate, it was great fun. Um, and to everybody listening, absolutely check out, check out the gourds and shiny ribs.
00:32:09
Speaker
Uh, and remember to visit the laughing auditor.com, find us on Twitter, discord, Facebook, Instagram, for all the latest news. And remember, we all deserve to be having a lot more fun. That's right. You oughta be laughing. Thanks, mate.