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OLD CROW ADAMS
As you may know, Whiskey and Apples prides itself on discovering and helping to promote the new and strange, the lost children, the late-night weirdos, and the hungry risk-takers who are the only ones close enough to the edge to know what to say about it. This issue's SUPER-UNDER-THE-RADAR discovery is Austin's own Zeke "Old Crow" Adams, who looks like Jesus and sings like a Siren. Old Crow's first record, just a few months old, is called You My Painkiller, and it's a beautiful 4-track experience that in moments seems as though it could have been performed on a front porch in Mississippi in 1920. Other moments are decidedly psychedelic, and his voice is that of an old prospector, though he says, "A lot of times the voice I hear in my head when I'm singing is my Ma's. When she was washing dishes or hanging up the laundry she sang like an angel in church. It had this golden echo to it because it was resonating in her big old body, it was Heaven." We got together at The Continental Club to play pool and drink beers. Before I asked him questions, I had him to describe himself to my tape recorder. Here's what he had to say: "Well, I am the son of big fat trailer trash people. I love em but that's what they are. I myself shoulda been a big fat trailer trash people but I got out. It's gonna sound crazy but drugs totally saved my life! I remember the most amazing experience I had when I was 16. I was high on black pyramids with my friend Jed and we were watchin this movie on a tiny little piece of shit TV called The Man Who Broke 1000 Chains. I don't remember if it's well-made or anything, but the story was awesome and it came from an old book called I Am a Fugitive From a Georgia Chain Gang. This guy is wrongly convicted and sentenced to work on the chain gang, and that's exactly what my life was, man. It was so bad ass, it was about escape, the truth prevailing in the end, and all the things a 16 year-old trailer kid needs to know about.
"If it weren't for smokin grass, running around on mescaline, and going to the library on shrooms, I never woulda woken up to the world outside of my town. I haven't done any of that stuff in awhile (except drinkin and smokin, of course) but it was the only education I got and I'm glad I got it. Now I'm 25 and I'm happy just to meditate and sing." BG: Cool. It was a real trip to hear those songs on your CD. You sing like you're possessed… OCA: Yeah, a lot of it was about some crazy shit I saw out in Thailand last April. Yeah, you mentioned onstage the time I saw you that you went out there and just wandered around for a few months. Yup. I saved up about 3 grand in cash touring the East Coast last year. I can't believe I was carrying all this cash around in my socks, man. I heard you can live for a year out there on just a few grand. Truth is you can't make it last that long if you go on a drinking spree every night, so I had to find a way to make money pretty quick. So what did you do? Nothing like serve cocktails at a resort, I hope. Not quite, man. The thing about that place is there's a big runaway youth culture out there, and I was able to play bars and get in with the rich vacationers. My song "Lost Children" is about those kids I met out there, so bewildered, running away from their credit card debts or from the strip malls their parents are building everywhere. I love those kids and I wish I could buy a big field for them all to live in with lots of trees to climb. What are your influences? I'm assuming the Delta Blues people. Yeah, of course I love Skip James and Robert Johnson and all those guys. But the stuff I'm really into is Middle Eastern music, Indian music, any kind of music based on meditation. In Thailand there's a lot of that, too, but what I'd really like do is get involved with a serious tabla student. I'd like to not play guitar at all and just put melodies over different Middle Eastern rhythms, Pashtun stuff, Balinese music, that kind of thing. And three girl backup singers who sound like Ma. Where do you see your music taking you in the next year or so? People around here are pretty stoked about it, so will you be back on the road soon? Well, I got in a fight with the person who booked all my East coast gigs because I sort of started getting it on with her, and that's never good. She threw a blender at me full of margarita mix. Damn, it was the last of the margarita mix, too. I turn around and it's in midair like a foot from my nose and I had to pull some Bruce Lee shit to get out of the way. I guess I'll just be staying put for awhile, keeping my ears open for people going on tour. That's how you do it around here. So you live in Austin? Yeah, I got a place. I live month to month off tips, basically, on the East side. Sometimes I feel like, "Man, I should get an upstanding job, face reality, and date a respectable Southern lady," but I work pretty hard at my songwriting and Taco Bell would freaking ruin me. That's life, though. I'm sure I could shave and stuff but at this point in my life, I'd rather die. There's a hidden track on your record called "A thousand chains." Now that you talked about it, I know what it's about, but it also sounds like a tribute to the working class American. [Baxter tries to sing] "You work all day 'til the sun goes down on the same old street in the same old town…" Well, yeah, I guess that's how it is. Most of us are poor, or at least scraping by. But the country is really set up so that if you use your brain, and especially if you're not lazy, you can do whatever you want. That's the opposite of what all the kids are saying, throwing curses around at the politicians and stuff. If they read more and shot off at the mouth less, they'd understand the way it all really works. More important, they'd understand that lazy people will always complain about the ones who have stayed alert and become powerful, but which side are they on? Right now I'm doing what I want, I'm gonna sell a few records, talk to a lady or two, and play my songs all night long. But if I wanted to go bet on stocks or start a company, they'd let me! That's what's great about this place, man. Check out Russia a couple years back before you start whining about capitalism."
you can purchase old crow's record on red hunter's (they're cousins) site: www.redhunter.tv/painkiller |
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