The Tremors
Demon Boogie Fever (Brain Drain)

North Carolina’s Tremors have lurched into their own.

Previous discs “Scourge of the South” and Invasion of the Saucermen” distinguished the slapped-up/stripped-down trio from bop contemporaries: the former reveling in hectic and gruesomely-technicolored fracture, the latter venturing into B-monster macabre.

It may be difficult to make ‘old’ sound new. But the Tremors did it, with stark and freakish hillbilly terror.

“Demon Boogie Fever” passes predecessors, careening into a tilted romp ‘n’ stitch dimension not found on healthy maps. Sure, the sound is more pronounced traditional hillbilly than before. But it’s what they do with that past — twisting and contorting it into a strange new creature of unspeakable visage — that accounts for its wonder.

“One of the things that really makes the Tremors different from a lot of our contemporaries is our unpolished, rural sound,” says guitarist/yelper Jimmy Tremor. “It seems to become more rural with each record.

“We listen to a lot of primitive small label rockabilly, hillbilly/country from the late 40′s and 50′s and it’s just so genuine & heart-felt that you can’t help being influenced by it and wanting to play music that resembles it. The cover shot of us in the cornfield was just kind of the icing on the cake.”

Tremors inimitable material, unsurprisingly, is the snarling/writhing issue of combined toil.

“Usually, Slim or I come in to practice with the basic idea of a song,” Jimmy says. “In some cases the songs are fully written, sometimes they need to be fleshed out. but every song is different in it’s creation, and that of course, adds to it’s personality.

“‘Sweet Lovin’ Man’ originated from a loose jam while we were rehearsing. With ‘Devil’s Eyes’ and ‘Late Night Drive-In Monster Show’ from ‘Invasion.’ Slim wrote the words and I wrote the music. Sometimes we’ll add phrases to the other’s song. but by the time that everyone’s worked out their part and the arrangement is set, it really a band collaboration and reflects our unique stance as a band. That’s why we always credit our tunes as group collaborations.”

As represented by “Sweet Lovin’ Man,” spare and jitter-bopped abandon is their rough trade. Slap and snare rhythms thud, each punch landing satisfyingly. And each hoarse moment, a jangly and back hills-picked rockabilly six-string threatens grinning overturn.

“Screamin’ Mimi” is a reeling ode to an eruptive kitten who makes the Bad Life worthwhile. And “Fuss and Fight” and “Blue Moon Woman” kidnap listeners aboard a ripsaw rocket, a howling and bloody-eyed, red-clay commander at the full-on throttle.

Jimmy credits recording engineer/co-producer Steve Graham (of Steve’s House of Funk) for putting it all together.

“He worked with us on the ‘Uranium Rock’ EP and ‘Invasion of the Saucermen,’ previously. He really knows how to get the sound we’re looking for. He’s like a fourth band member in the studio. He’s changed buildings since ‘Invasion,’ and I think the smaller room in the new studio really works better for the rockabilly sound. The whole band feels that this is our best sounding record to date.”

The disc doesn’t really end, so much as promise further thrills. Manic closer “I Got It” is just too happily skewed to qualify as a goodbye. (One eagerly anticipates the next screaming chapter.)

The Tremors’ frontman shares an illustrative anecdote, pointing up the link between rockabilly’s generations.

“When i was calling around to get the mechanical rights for the [3] cover songs,” he says, “I called Knox Publishing concerning ‘Rock Boppin Baby.’ The man who answered the phone said they didn’t handle it there, but was curious about which song I was interested in. When I told him, he said, ‘That’s an old song. I played on that.’

“It turns out that I was talking to with Roland Janes. I couldn’t believe it. He seemed like a very nice, humble guy who had no idea of how extremely important his music really is.”

thetremorsrockabilly.com

BY DAVID LARSON

“Oh, it’s over, and it’s not coming back,” John Mellencamp recently told USA Today, of rock’n'roll. “The music is now fifth or sixth generation, and the farther you get away from the original, the worse it gets.”

The pop notable hailed early Beatles, Stones, and Dylan, asserting that just as once-famous big band leaders are today largely forgotten, so eventually would be most rock’n'rollers.

England’s Steve Hooker has been at rock’n'roll for decades — he’s gigged and recorded with pegged personages like Robert Gordon, Wilko Johnson, Boz Boorer, Johnny Thunders, and Levi Dexter. I emailed him for his thoughts on Mellencamp’s bleak prediction.

“You caught me at a good and bad time,” Steve responded. “I was just about to go to the studio to record with Levi Dexter, feeling unprepared and crazy!”

All such aside, though, he had at hand a ready idea-arsenal:

“[Mellencamp is] wrong in the first instance,” he began. “Because of the Internet and other modern recourses people today are far more aware of the origins of roots music than they were in the 50′s and 60′s – I doubt if many teenagers over here knew the Beatles and the Stones were covering Arthur Alexander or that Dylan dug Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps any more than some American kids realized Pat Boone had pissed Little Richard off big time!

“Conversely – the problem I have with this authenticity obsession is that just like the song says ‘you gotta move’ – Buddy Holly and Gene Vincent didn’t want to play beaten up old blues men’s boxes – they wanted space rocket Fender fucking Stratocasters – even Bruce Sprinsteen didn’t want to be the next Bob Dylan – he wanted to mix it up and be Mitch Ryder and Gary U.S. Bonds as well and he was!

“John wouldn’t get that in the same way as I do – I can go out of an afternoon, sit in a bar and talk to ordinary people about this stuff and I can tell you their taste and knowledge is in advance of newspaper writers and media personalities.”

His latest is what we’d expect from the RockabillyBlues/SoulMan. From the gut, thoroughly genuine. A corrupting beat-trove of slide-guitared dirty fun. The way taboo rock’n'roll (in its varied and thorny/horny countenances) sounded in its early years. And the way that, Mellencamp’s dismalness to one side, it can still come over.

“I can’t play in any other way than what’s true to me,” Steve wrote. “I guess this type of rhythm ‘n’ blues hybrid music became ‘Mid Atlantic’ when I was a kid – I can’t and don’t want to play or sing anything except what is deep inside of me – for instance I don’t often refer to cars, automobiles or motorcycles except in passing because I don’t have a drivers licence. I wouldn’t sing that I was born Mississippi – but I might write about a girl in Tennessee or Las Vegas because I just spoke to her by email. It’s all around us.”

Sterling recommendations are “40 Dollar Picture (In a Priceless Golden Frame),” “Jeannie With the Dark Blue Eyes,” and “Sugar Devil.” (The video for this last, on Youtube, features Bernie Dexter.) The songs bounce and drive, crazily cool, sliding and swaying wonderfully in straight-on and rough-grained rock’n'roll rudeness. Bluesy harmonica swipes pack out the rollicking blast.

Special guests on some tracks include longtime Hooker pals Boz Boorer, Wilko Johnson, and Levi Dexter. Other familiar names joining Steve on “Before the Rooster Crows” are bassist Terry and drummer Eddie, who also helped out with Steve’s earlier “Stagger Lee Is Back” and “Boptown.”

Too, previous line-up the S.T.s are featured on “Motorcycle Ditch,” and Rizlaz men Tetsuji and Hiroshi also pop in.

Think of basic, guitar-led romps of the sort the Rolling Stones gave up, back in the day. Or early Faces.

Steve agrees with that assessment. “I think we all drink from the same well. Obviously the Stones draw on the whole history of American music and growing up in the fifties with the development of television. I was influenced by the same things.”

Steve digs that it isn’t only the raucous sound but the brash attitude, the way our music makes you live and love and yell and dance and feel — inside and out — that won’t ever go away. Can’t ever go away.

Hell, he won’t let it.

stevehooker.co.uk

BY DAVID LARSON

“I was afraid that I’d probably fall or trip and break my neck or something disastrous, but I prayed right before I went on, and I said, ‘Dear Lord, I’m so nervous I can’t do this, so you are just going to have to do this for me,’” says Jackson. “By the time I got up there, I was in laughter; it was just fun for me. I remembered everything I was going to say, and said it the way I wanted to, everything was just super, it couldn’t have been nicer.”

The highly influential, yet always gracious and humble Jackson still speaks of that night with a certain amount of awe and thankfulness in her voice.

“Just to realize that I was finally there was wonderful, and also it was a very wonderful event for me because we brought my whole family up, a lot of friends, so that made a special party for us personally.”
During the ceremony, Jackson was introduced by Johnny Cash’s daughter, Roseanne Cash, who spoke of the path that Jackson had blazed for women in rock n’ roll—and also talked about the special friendships that had been formed in the early days between Jackson and Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and of course, Elvis Presley.

“The fact that Roseanne Cash was chosen to present me—I had met her way back when she was a young girl, but I hadn’t seen her since, I knew of her success, of course—we got to sit at the table with her and her husband, and DJ Fontana, Scotty Moore, and Bill Black’s children, so it was really like a little reunion for us right there in our little circle, so that made it special.”

While she was speaking at the ceremony in front of the huge crowd, which was full of many of the biggest names in rock n’ roll, Jackson displayed the same kind of wonderful attitude and appreciation that has endeared her to fans across the globe.
“Standing here tonight I realize for sure I’m not standing he
re alone; I didn’t get here by myself. This award is special I know to anyone who receives it and stands in this spot, but to me, it’s just so extra special because in the fifties, when I had the nerve to jump out there and be the only girl recording this stuff, singing this wild stuff with my fringe flying and my guitar twangin’ and breaking strings, I didn’t ever get any recognition for that then. That was okay, but now, with a whole generation of rockabilly fans, I have a new career at this point in my life; it doesn’t get any better than that, does it?”

Into The 21st Century

After the elation and partying that went along with finally being inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Jackson got back to doing what she knows how to do best—hitting the road and entertaining the throngs of people that come out to see her when she tours not only the United States, but Europe and Australia as well.

The idea to record some new material was also brought up, and she soon found herself in the studio with none other than Jack White (The White Stripes, The Dead Weather), an experience that Jackson says was challenging, but in an invigorating and satisfying way.

“After a year like I’d had last year, I was thinking, ‘Well, where do I go from here in my career? Is this the pinnacle? What happens now?’ Before I knew it, we were talking to Jack White about him doing singles and possibly an album with him and his company. So that was exciting, and a little bit frightening for me because that was going to take me out of my comfort zone of rockabilly. But I’ve been out of my comfort zone a lot of times in my career, so I thought, ‘Here we go again, Lord you’ve got to help me again,’ and it just turned out to be a super experience.”

“He was so easy to work with, and I trusted him so much that at one point I finally told my husband, ‘I tell you what I want to do, I want to put myself totally in his hands, I want to do the songs he thinks I need to do, I want to sing them the way he wants me to the best I can.’”
“I was trying to get some songs in that were a little easier for me, but he’s very gentle, but very persuasive, and explained to me why I should do it this way, and he convinced me so I just sat back and left the driving to him.”

“He was very helpful to me, these songs were not all that different, they were kind of bluesy, and was rock n’ roll, it was just the arrangements and the things he was wanting from me, and once I got the hang of what he was wanting, he did it magnificently. He wanted to bring me into the 21st century, but still be Wanda Jackson and have my trademark things in there. So that made sense to me then.”

One of the songs that the two collaborated on was an incendiary cover of the Amy Winehouse song “You Know I’m No Good,” which was released as a single on White’s Third Man Records label this past January, both through iTunes, and on a limited edition 7 inch vinyl 45. Though the single has been a big success (at press time, all copies were sold out, and a new pressing was on back order), Jackson needed a little prodding at the time.

“Yes, he had to convince me,” she laughs, “I don’t understand a lot of the song, Amy wrote the song, and she’s English. But Jack is married to an English girl, so he understood some of these things, and we re-wrote a little bit in that second verse, kind of softened that up a little, and once I kind of understood what some of those words meant, then I understood [the song].”

At the beginning of the track, listeners can hear some studio chatter, and then Jackson saying, “I always have to push,” before the drums kick in and the song starts. As Jackson recalls, this came from the persistent White trying to get her to do just one more take.

“Well, that Jack White, I’m learning him now, you never know what the guy is going to do, and so that wasn’t supposed to be on the record. He had just told me the take right before that was great, and so I kind of breathed a sigh of relief, and he said, ‘But give me one more and push a little bit more,’ so I said, ‘I always have to push.’ And I guess he thought that was cute, so he left it on,” she laughs.

The B-side of the single is a cover of the classic Johnny Kidd and The Pirates’ tune “Shakin’ All Over,” which features a vibrato-drenched vocal effect during the song’s eponymous chorus line—a stylistic decision that one might not think would work on Jackson’s trademark voice—but in the structure of song and how this version was arranged, it works perfectly.

Though she hadn’t met the musicians who had recorded the tracks for her to sing over when went into do her initial vocal sessions, Jackson did eventually meet the band when they were brought back in to re-record one song, and started more work on a forthcoming album. The resulting way that White produced the sessions brought reminded Jackson of the way that she used to record at the beginning of her career.
“I didn’t know any of these particular musicians, but as it turned out, for the album, I did get to meet them, because one song that we had done earlier, he just wasn’t real happy with the outcome, and I listened, and I said, ‘I think you’re right.’ So he said, ‘Do you have another song you’d like to do, and I remembered a kind of obscure old song of Elvis Presley’s that I always loved, so he brought the band back in, and I got to record it like we did in the sixties—the band right there live with me—and of course he still records analog, so then I was right back at home then.”

Jackson hopes that her new album will be out this fall, but she and White first have to find time in their busy touring schedules to finish everything up.

“We’ve already recorded it, but Jack hasn’t had time to do any mixing, and we’ve both have a heavy summer schedule, so we’re looking at maybe September where we’ll both have time to promote it.”
“He won’t let me tell anything about it,” she adds with a mischievous chuckle.

With the single now out, and the album on the horizon, Jackson is heading back to grace stages across the world again this spring and summer, with stops at the annual Viva Las Vegas festival, and shows in Europe and Australia.

“I do a lot of festivals these days, all over the world, I see the fans have so much fun, they get to dress up in their vintage clothes and bring out their classic guitars, and they probably stay up all night listening to rock n’ roll, and they get to be like kids again, so I think it’s nice.”

“I sure am having fun, getting to sing the songs that I love to sing, and my audiences are so delighted, and they know all the songs, they sing along with me. It’s always fun to sing to these young people, because they’re excited, and they know what they want to hear, and I get to talk with them afterwards, and hear what’s on their minds, so it’s a pretty good ego trip.”

Now that she’s a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and has a new successful single, Jackson isn’t sure what’s next for her—but she’s clearly enjoying herself, and approaches her career with a simple, relaxed outlook.

“I’ve always been more for just taking it as it comes, that way it keeps me excited—I never know what’s coming up next. I couldn’t even dream up these things, so I just leave that to the professionals, and I’ll deliver when I get there.”

————–

This article originally ran in issue #48 of the print edition of Rockabilly Magazine.

Growing up in Lubbock, Texas, Allison met Holly in junior high school, and over the next couple of years they discovered a shared a love of artists such as Bill Haley and Elvis Presley, which eventually led to the two playing music together.

“He was a grade ahead of me. He and Bob Montgomery, who was his sort of original singing partner, did an assembly program at the school and sang “Too Old To Cut The Mustard,” an old country tune, and dedicated it to one of the older teachers—that was the first time I ever heard Buddy sing or perform,” says Allison.

“In high school, I used to play around at local joints in some country and western bands, and Buddy would come out and sit in, and he and I somehow through the process of Bill Haley and Elvis, and all that, liked the same kind of music, then we started hanging out and practicing and playing. His folks didn’t want him playing the joints; my folks thought it was good I could make some money playing instead of working.”

Their new group, which went on to become known as the Crickets, also included local musicians Joe B. Mauldin on bass and Niki Sullivan on guitar. Quickly earning a reputation as a standout act on area stages, the band would soon open for several of the artists that had influenced them in the first place, including Elvis.

Major record labels didn’t take long to notice Buddy Holly and the Crickets’ appeal, and Decca Records offered them a contract in February of 1956—but the partnership was short-lived, after the band was sent to Nashville for a series of recording sessions in which the producers tried to soften the band’s sound, and give them a more mainstream country feel. After their first single, “Blue Days, Black Nights” failed to gain much airplay, their contract was terminated.

Regrouping, the Crickets then got together with manager and producer Norman Petty, and set about recording with him in his Clovis, New Mexico studio. By the beginning of 1957, the band had new contracts with Coral and Brunswick Records, and “That’ll Be The Day” was released, ushering in a tidal wave of commercial success and artistic growth.

The band soon found themselves on a major package tour making its way across the country, sharing the stage with the likes of The Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Eddie Cochran and more.

“It was definitely a jaw-dropping experience, we were just in awe of the whole deal; getting into the show for free every night, and then we also got to play!” exclaims Allison.

A slew of songs that are now considered classics were quickly written and recorded, many propelled by the drumming talents of Allison, especially “Oh, Boy,” “Rave On,” and of course “Peggy Sue,” driven by his vigorous rhythms that pulse in and out thanks to the innovative sound engineer at the recording session.

Though their rise to fame was indeed very fast, the facts surrounding that short time period have often been in dispute between members of the Crickets and outsiders, particularly in Hollywood, which made a film about Holly in 1978 simply called “The Buddy Holly Story.”

“There was nobody involved with that movie that knew anything about it, because in those days there were no roadies, no tour managers, none of that, we were the only people that knew anything about it,” says Allison. “They just had to sort of make up everything because nobody was there that knew, except the four of us.”

Allison had actually written a screenplay for a film himself, titled “Not Fade Away,” which was to star Gary Busey as the drummer, but for a variety of reasons, it was never completed, and Busey went on to play the role of Holly in the later film.

“Joe B and I couldn’t be involved with ‘The Buddy Holly Story’ because of the contract we had signed with 20th Century Fox,” says Allison.

He points out several errors and factual inaccuracies in the movie.

“They had mountains in Lubbock, used 1960s Stratocasters when it was supposed to be in ’57…it really bothered me, the whole thing. I don’t want to sound all sour grapes about it, because it did get a lot of younger folks interested in the music, so there’s good and bad about everything.”

Allison also says that story of how the band came up with the name The Crickets was much simpler than has been portrayed as well.

“There was a group called the Spiders [at the time], so I think we just looked under insects in the dictionary, and saw ‘Crickets,’ and there were a lot of crickets around Texas that year, for some reason.”

In addition to his outstanding drumming, which would go on to set many of the standards for how rock n’ roll was played, Allison also co-wrote several songs with Holly, including “That’ll Be The Day” and “Not Fade Away,” but producer Norman Petty added his own name to the credits when the songs were published and the records were released.

Even though many people today would say that he was robbed of some of his legacy—both historic and financial—Allison doesn’t linger on these things any more.

“It’s not like I’m complaining, because I’m not—if it weren’t for Norman Petty, we wouldn’t have had the record deal, and what a great engineer he was.”

Another important facet in the history of Buddy Holly and the Crickets that has been clouded over by time and contradicting stories concerns the split between Holly and the other band members. Allison says that there wasn’t any big falling out, such as was hinted at in “The Buddy Holly Story”—instead, he says, it was an amicable split that wasn’t meant to be permanent—in fact, he’s quite sure that had Holly lived, the band would have gotten back together and continued to make music.

“Joe B, Buddy and I had talked about it, and we all said, okay, we’ve got to move New York because of the songwriting thing and the music publishing, because by that time we’d been on the road and been around enough people, it had been a year and a half, or something like that, we felt like old professionals,” Allison laughs. “Enough people had said, ‘Hey you guys write the songs, you ought to get some publishing of them.”

“When Buddy started moving to New York, Norman Petty started talking me and Joe B out of it—he said, ‘You don’t know what you might get into up there,’ and we were still kids, and just the idea of moving to New York didn’t appeal to Joe B or me, because we had motorcycles to ride, and boats to play with, and we just decided not to. Buddy had married Marie Elena who was from New York, and I had married Peggy Sue, who wasn’t from New York. “

“Buddy actually said, ‘If it doesn’t work out, we’ll get back together, but I want to try New York and I wish you guys would go with me.’ I think we would have gotten back together—Buddy actually told Waylon, who was on the last tour, that he was planning on calling us after that tour and going to England.”

The Crickets had in fact already toured England the previous year, making them just the second American rock n’ roll band to perform there—Bill Haley and The Comets being the first. That jaunt across the pond would go on to have a huge impact on the future of rock, as many of the fans that came to see them or heard about them at this time would go on to be legends in their own right, perhaps most obviously The Beatles, who named themselves in homage to the Crickets.

“Paul McCartney told me, ‘If it wasn’t for the Crickets, there wouldn’t be any Beatles,’” says Allison. “’That’ll Be The Day’ was the first song they recorded, and it’s a great compliment. Eric Clapton has said when he was 10 or 11 that the first record he bought was ‘The Chirping Crickets,’ so that’s a great compliment as well.”

Unfortunately, that second tour of the UK never came to pass, as Holly was killed in a plane crash, along with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper on February 3, 1959 after playing a show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa as part of the “Winter Dance Party” tour. The crash, which cut short the lives of three of the biggest names in rock n’ roll at that time, has become known as “The Day The Music Died,” and has been memorialized in song, books, film and more.

Allison still remembers that morning 50 years ago very clearly, particularly the fact that he wouldn’t believe it at first.

“We were living in Clovis at the time, but we were actually back in Lubbock, I was at my folks’ house, we had just driven in, and were sleeping on my folks’ couch. The neighbor lady came over and said, ‘Hey, they said on the radio Buddy Holly got killed,’ and I was still asleep because it was early in the morning, and I said, ‘That’s got to be a rumor.’”

Although he had lost his close friend, and the world was robbed of a musical talent still in its’ infancy—Holly was only 22, and the Crickets had only been on the national scene for about a year and a half—Allison was resolved to continue making music, and went on to contribute even more to the rock n’ roll canon, both as a member of the Crickets, a touring drummer, and a session musician.

“We moved to L.A. and I recorded with a lot of people—I played on most everything of Johnny Burnette’s stuff on Liberty, and Bobby Vee, and a lot of sessions.”

Allison also played with another hugely influential rockabilly artist whose life was tragically cut short like Holly—the legendary Eddie Cochran.

“Sonny Curtis and I did his last record, which was ‘Cut Across Shorty,’ ‘Three Steps To Heaven,’ and ‘Cherished Memories.’ We got to be good friends with Eddie Cochran on that first long tour, he was a great picker, and a great guy.”

Cochran was killed in a car crash on April 17, 1960 while on tour in England—and in an odd twist of fate, Allison was also in the UK at the same time.

“What made it even stranger to us was that we were on tour with the Everly Brothers in England when Eddie got killed; he was on tour with Gene Vincent, and we were actually in the area. We went by the hospital, because his girlfriend Sharon was in the accident, and we went by and saw Sharon, and it was really a very sad day.”

Although his early career was marred by tragedy, Allison went on to perform on a number of hit songs, including “Til I Kissed You” by The Everly Brothers, and the original version of “I Fought The Law,” written by Sonny Curtis.

The Legend Continues…

Continuing to play music more than 50 years after first helping ignite the roots of rock n’ roll, Jerry Allison is a one hundred percent authentic icon; his latest release is the 2004 compilation album “The Crickets and Their Buddies,” which features a who’s who of guest artists including Eric Clapton, Waylon Jennings, The Everly Brothers, Bobby Vee, Vince Neil, and more covering a host of Crickets classics with the original members of the band.

Despite having played on some of the most beloved songs of all time, and having been named one of the greatest rock n’ roll drummers of all time by Rolling Stone magazine, Allison remains a humble individual. When asked about what he thought of the fact that more than 50 years after he started recording, people around the world still love the songs he’s recorded and young people are still discovering them, he offered up a simple answer.

“It really is surprising because I was surprised that we were still working in 1960—it’s amazing to me.”

BY SEAN McCOURT

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This article originally ran in issue #48 of the print edition of Rockabilly Magazine.