This is Debbie Seagle your roving reporter, I’m here today speaking with Eddie Spaghetti, lead vocalist / acoustic guitarist for the hard rock, country, blues infusion band The Supersuckers. We’re speaking with Eddie today because this is the eve of the release of their new album on their own record label, Mid-Fi Recordings. On March 12th we’ll see the release of “Must've Been Live”; a 19-track, 70-minute CD for pure bootleg dynamite. 

RNW: While I was doing my research, prior to speaking with you I found it kind of difficult to classify the Supersuckers. Maybe you can help me out, I work with all different genres of music and when I look at you folks, you look like good ol’ boys to me but you don’t sound like good ol’ boys. 

(laughs)

RNW: So it’s kind of different, how do you classify the Supersuckers?

Eddie: I don’t know, that’s a rough one because especially with this sort of country alter ego that we have. When we first started making music we just thought of ourselves as a hard rock band. This was the late 80’s when you either metal I guess or punk or something. When I record came out and the reviews started coming in, they were calling us a punk band and that kind of surprised us, “A punk band? We’re not a punk band!” We just wanted to be like Motorhead. We always stood by the fact that we are a rock ‘n roll band and when people would start spitting on us and acting sort of late 70’s punk, we would always make fun of them, single them out and say this is a rock ‘n roll show. Then of course we made the country record and that sort of threw everything for a loop. People started calling us “southern rock” or “southern fried” or whatever and I really don’t like southern rock you know.

RNW: I don’t classify you as Lynyrd Skynyrd kind of stuff. 

Eddie: No I don’t like 38 Special. I consider rock ‘n roll to be very urban, from the city and our country music to be from the desert, very western and not southern at all. 

RNW: But you’re not “honky tonk” either and I know, I’ve worked with Roger Klein out from your area in Arizona and he’s very roadhouse, very honky tonk. 

Eddie: Yeah, our country side is definitely more tongue in cheek. When we made our country record we wanted it to be distinctly western, we looked to artists like Marty Robbins and then like a Bakersfield sort of a sound and uh to sort of emulate that but the song writing was the same. The same sort of elements that are in our rock songs are in our country songs, there is a lot of tongue in cheek, a lot of comedy and a lot of not Weird Al Yankovich type comedy but sort of like biting sarcasm. I think lyrically it’s been the same for us no matter what kind of music we are making. It tough, primarily we are a rock n roll band but we got this kind of country alter-ego. 

RNW: I just got done listening to stuff you did live in I think it was Sweden and that was just like a rippen rock show. 

Eddie: I remember recording that. I haven’t heard it, I saw that it’s on the website. I should probably listen to it.

RNW: Yeah, it’s great. It’s a great way to introduce people who haven’t heard of you or have heard of you and not heard your music. It’s a good little selection there that I think I’m gonna hook people into because it gave me a really good feel for what you guys are all about. 

Eddie: Yeah, live rock shows are usually froght with problems just due to the recording quality because we are so loud and it’s hard to record without a concerted effort to use like a mobile truck or whatever. We actually had one at that show so it might sound pretty good. 

RNW: It does. I have a quote here and I can’t say whether it is attributable to you or not but let me read it and then I want to get some of your thoughts on it. The quote is “I truly believe that a band is defined by their limitations. What they can’t or won’t do is just as important as what they can do.” Is that you?

Eddie: Yeah, that’s me. 

RNW: What can’t or won’t you do?

Eddie: Well you know we can’t play really good. (laughs)

RNW: I wouldn’t say that.

Eddie: No, it’s the truth. There are musicians out there that are MUSICIANS that really work hard and practice a lot to be very depth and nibble, they can read music and they can do all these fancy words that I don’t even know the meanings of. Part of what our esthetic has been in the words of Johnny Ramone, you know, you never practice to remain somewhat remedial is key because when you first start making up songs and playing them in your band together there is this magical feeling like “oh my god, I can’t believe we’re doing this!” and I like to retain that as much as possible and it’s funny to people and it reads funny to say we don’t practice, we really don’t, it kind of part of the esthetic to remain somewhat remedial and caveman about making rock n roll because that’s what good rock n roll is all about. 

RNW: Yeah it is, it’s a guttural emotional type of thing. Sometimes the best music is the balls out--go for it—what ever comes out type of thing. 

Eddie: Exactly, and I tried to continue to make up quality songs, you can’t fudge that. But as far as being a musician goes, that’s overrated. A lot of times bands will get where they practice a lot and start experimenting with all sorts of new stuff and it just winds up making the band sound like ass. 

RNW: (laughs) ok, we’ve covered what you can’t do but what about what you won’t do? I’m a little more interested in that, I’m kind of amused by the fact that everything that I read and see about you guys kind of gives me feeling that you have kind of a special relationship there with the Devil. 

(laughs)

RNW: What won’t you do?

Eddie: Well I’d never go tour under any sort of Christian flagship. That pretty much goes without saying. For me our relationship with the Devil has been a really fun relationship. For me the whole God, Devil, Heaven, Hell thing is a bit like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus and Candyland Lane or whatever it is. I just don’t buy any of it. Of course, I’m gonna side with the Devil where all the good artwork is, he gets all the chicks and has the best drugs and it seems that he is having all the fun to me. 

RNW:.. The people that are your fans now, what are they looking for? What attracts them to you?

Eddie: I think in general the people that find the Supersuckers are, as I said before, people that have embraced rock n roll as their personal savior. The person that has heard all the rock n roll there is to hear and is looking deep down, under the surface, and have put their ear to the ground to find something that moves them. Bands like us, and there is a lot of bands kind of at our level, that I think make really great rock n roll music and whenever somebody says rock n roll is dead, I can rattle off ten bands that are active, working right now bands that kick ass, that aren’t on the radio, they’re not on MTV and they are touring in a van, down by the river in a city near you. And the kind of people that seek these bands out, they’ve heard all their favorite bands, they started at the very beginning of rock n roll and researched it all, and they found bands like us,  Rocket from the Crypt, New Bomb Turks, Hangmen, and The Gaza Strippers, you know, the list goes on and on for me. 

RNW: Yeah, you bring up a really good point about all of these bands that accept rock n roll as their personal savior, that are not in the mainstream media, that are not on, you know, total request, that are not pals with the “in-crowd” but are down home rockers and what do we do about that, what do we do about letting people know about that? You folks have started your own record label, am I right? Mid-Fi Records? 

Eddie: Correct, Yes.

RNW: Now, you’re the only talent on that label right now, am I correct? 

Eddie: Yeah.

RNW: Are you at all thinking about joining together with some of these bands that you mentioned to bring that out?

Eddie: Yeah, that is definitely a goal of ours. Of course, for us to go and promise these bands something who are often times, they’re friends of ours and we’ve toured and worked with them a lot, I’d hate to promise them things and then fail. Like any record label has done to them, probably over and over again. We’re gonna work out the bugs on ourselves, see if we can take it and then hopefully we will be able to put together what I like to call a “cavalcade of rock”, you know these bands that I think need to be heard. I don’t have any sort of avant-garde taste by any means, every time I try to make up a song, I try to make up a hit song. It’s just a hit on sort of a different level than say a, what’s on the radio I guess. I’m not trying to be tricky or better than anybody, I’m just a regular dude trying to make some kick ass rock n roll. And a lot of bands are like that and they should be heard. 

RNW: I think you’re succeeding in the kick ass rock n roll and I think if you can bring a cavalcade or rock n roll to people, dude you could start your own church. 

Eddie: Yeah, it would be dynamite. 

RNW: There is such a need for it. 

Eddie: Yeah, I agree and I think that every new band that comes along that is inspired by us or bands that are what I could consider our peers is just one step closer to blanketing the whole area. 

RNW: So what was this like, starting your own record label? 

Eddie: Well, it’s been sort of an ongoing learning process about what I call the other side of the mic. A lot of words that we heard through the years like marketing, demographic, and all these sorts of weird words that all of a sudden make sense or you understand. That’s both a blessing and a curse I guess. The good side is we have the ability now to get hopefully more music out to our fans, who are the coolest people in the world. That’s what we are hoping to be able to achieve is to release the hounds on everybody. Like we’ve got all these little things that we’ve always done and would like the people to hear, you know labels want things to fit into certain pockets and some of the stuff just doesn’t like this live country record for example, I don’t  think would ever see the light of day on any other label but our own. So that’s the good side. The bad side is it’s work! We didn’t get into this work, we got into this to not work. 

RNW: (laughs) Money for nothing and your chicks for free! 

Eddie: Exactly! So there is some work involved, hopefully it’s going to wind up being super rewarding just like playing a live show, we didn’t think that you’d walk off the stage completely soaked in sweat and have to have a plastic bag for your sweaty cloths in your van next to your head while you sleep. But that stuff happens. 

RNW: That’s the rock n roll lifestyle.

Eddie: Exactly.