Ode to Southern Heavy Metal

by Bret Anthony Johnston, the director of creative writing at Harvard University.

From The Oxford American

If you grew up in Texas and didn't wear a black Pantera concert jersey, you likely got your ass kicked by someone who did. (Or in the case of your humble odeman, you both wore a shirt and got your ass kicked, but whatever.) In Louisiana, the requisite jersey was from the band Crowbar. North Carolina? Corrosion of Conformity.

These bands comprise the holy trinity of Southern Heavy Metal, but you've maybe never heard of them. Or you've maybe heard of them, but haven't heard them because you prefer blues jams to moshpits and those black jerseys kind of terrify you, and generally lead you to believe the songs are about the devil and drugs and murder and other existential mayhem, and you've decided not to waste your time listening. Which decision should possibly be reconsidered, because after all what was Robert Johnson singing about?

Here's the thing: Southern Heavy Metal is the blues. These musicians are our new bluesmen, and their patently subversive songs, with their essential themes of religion, sex, violence, and—headbangers, forgive me—hope, are the contemporary gut-bucket blues. If blues music originally evolved from call-and-response field hollers, then Southern Heavy Metal is simply a louder call, a more deliberate and authoritative response, a holler that's impossible to ignore.

(Note to prospective Southern Heavy Metalheads: Gut-bucket would make a killer band name, and would look very cool on a black tee.)

No surprise then that some of the hardest, most important metal hails from the South. Unlike the west coast's overproduced fashion rock and the punky, vampire-obsessed theatrics that comes from the East—both schools seem calibrated more for music videos than music—Southern metal has consistently offered a raw barrage of heavily distorted musical fury. Poison was pretty; Twister Sister pantomimed menace with rouge and lipstick; Pantera was ugly and plain old pissed. Go to a Crowbar or C.O.C. show—don't call them Corrosion of Conformity, else people think you're a poser—and you'll find no dry-ice smoke, no drumkits rigged to pink strobe lights, no singers with teased, shellacked bangs, no guitarists in Jackson-Pollacked spandex. You'll find gnarly men who look like they'd just been released from (or are being delivered to) Angola. In addition to sleeves of tattoos, Phil Anselmo, Pantera's vocalist, has the word “Unscarred” inked in gothic letters across his abdomen. (Whether this is meant to be ironic remains unclear. Either way, it's vicious.)

Which viciousness returns us to why many have never heard of or heard these bands: this isn't your soccer mom's metal. Albums like Pantera's Vulgar Display of Power, Crowbar's Obedience Through Suffering, and C.O.C.'s Animosity are not, thematically or musically, exactly what one would call listener friendly. The vocals are often abrasive and/or indecipherable, and the music so fast and complex and loud that the listener (black jersey notwithstanding) feels assaulted. But this is precisely the point. Whereas more marketable bands so conspicuously court your fanship (read: money) with sanitized pyrotechnics and saccharine power ballads and catchy, hummable melodies, the gods of Southern Heavy Metal dare you not to listen; they urge you, as Anselmo sings in “Walk”, to “Walk on home boy.” This is music of initiation, and most listeners don't have the stones for it. There's a reason more people drink wine coolers than Kentucky moonshine.

But once you've tasted the hard stuff, the bubbly goes down a little too smoothly and that vapid sweetness turns your stomach. Because for all of their bravado and overt aggression, there's a refreshing ballast to these bands, an unvarnished formidability that strikes the ear as distinctly Southern. This is hard to explain, but easy to recognize. Your odeman thinks, though, that it comes down to an anomalous and wholly unexpected intimacy being forged between musicians and listeners, a deep and surprising kinship born from a sort of collective struggle. Try listening to songs like Pantera's “I'm Broken”, C.O.C's “Albatross”, even Crowbar's cover of Zeppelin's “No Quarter” without identifying with them, without recalling your own shortcomings and trespasses. Try listening to the brutally prescient “Stone the Crow” by Down (the group amounts to a Southern Heavy Metal dream team, a side project born from the aforementioned bands), and not relating it to post-Katrina New Orleans. Although the song was recorded a decade before the storm hit, the lyrics and music are as mournful and livid and inspiring as anything written since the levees collapsed: “Flip through endless stories/a life of hand-written pain/no one can share this hurt that is mine, mine, mine/I never died before/Can't be what happened yesterday… Same old city, same old pain.”

Such substance and timelessness is absent in most heavy metal, so when you hear it—the sound is unmistakable as a friend calling your name across the field—you want to scream and dance and sing and throw yourself into a tempest of people who feel the same, who carry the same flag. Look, not to sound like a hippie—or a yankee—but there's an oft overlooked soulfulness to this kind of music, and a rare and undeniable and empathetic urgency, a sense that what you're hearing has come from years of regret and labor and pain and doubt and pride and loss. And what, in the past or present, is more deserving of song—or more Southern—than loss?

FOR THE BRILLIANT MIRACULOUS KEVIN BROCK

by John Custer

It is a vulgar thing to have to say goodbye to someone so early. You can't help but feel a sense of betrayal. This loss is stunning because it is unexpected but more stunning still because of the hole it leaves.

People always asked me, "Who's the best drummer you ever recorded?" expecting me to mention Stanton Moore or Roger Hawkins. I usually sidestepped the question.

The few times I did answer, I would say, "Kevin Brock was the best. He more than anyone had a complete set of attributes, a full armament. His intelligence didn't cripple his groove or deny him his glorious bombast. His humor fueled his ability to play into chaotic pieces and show stopping reality-defying fills, meanwhile every head in the audience kept nodding and every foot kept tapping. His knowledge and rank as a master musician never got to his ego. He was accessible, sympathetic and a marvelously constructive collaborator.

Beyond all of that, there was just something that happened when he hit the drums that didn't happen for others. He had an innate touch that he informed and perfected. He didn't settle with his natural gifts… he worked on his playing with grounded and realistic self-criticism. And he drove creative grooves that were atypical and innovative and he succeeded when he did.

A lot of people come to record. You work with them, achieve your goals and part ways. When the Hipbone project began, that's what we did…in the beginning. By the end of recording some months later, we were filming fake Bigfoot documentaries, recording comedy pieces that never made the record (one that leaps to mind is an audio only piece we recorded that depicted a man calling a 1-900 chatline hoping to have phone sex with a clown) We would laugh until we were crying.

When you recorded Kevin you could picture him on the back of an old 1960s HI-FI Jazz Album-the black & white picture, the long typed liner notes-he made you feel that way. He had the class and panache of the great 40s and fifties jazz drummers but he could slam out Norse God drum beats from the '70s, cop the machine perfection of the eighties and combine all of it into a supremely effective hybrid. One had the very clear impression that he was capable of anything on the drums. Anything you'd heard and anything you could imagine.

Everything with Kevin was a victory lap. The live shows, the recordings, the jokes. He was someone who you never doubted on so many levels. You knew he got the joke. You knew he knew how to change the beat for the middle section. You knew he had thirty amazing options. You knew he appreciated the subtle things. He knew people appreciated him for thinking these things. Unspoken humor is like perfect simplification in music: all it needs is a glance from someone else who gets it.

Getting Kevin to play not only guaranteed great drum tracks, it guaranteed a great time. I feel sorry and have felt sorry for the world… that they never got to be sufficiently inundated with Hipbone music. I've only felt that way about a handful of bands. I tell people Hipbone was one of the most concentrated and potent injections of talent and musicianship I'd ever recorded. Amazing songs, vocals, amazing playing… but the drummer… man, that Hipbone drummer. I won't see the likes of him again.

And I won't see the likes of him again, but I have the recordings and the stories and the laughs… and more importantly I know that someone who was that good was also that great of a person.

Rest in peace Kevin

"I wouldn't believe in the devil if I hadn't dated her"

-John Custer

"I went on and on to my friends over the years, compelling them to believe as I did that my enemies were villains. Now that I have convinced them all, it is quite clear to me that none of them can stand me any longer."  -John Custer

"She was hell bent on networking, this girl who went through life continuously dropping her handkerchief. She would never so much earn her position as much as she would gain status because of the raised hopes of men or asses filled with smoke."

-John Custer

"When they get into power, American politicians make sure to throw the people a bone. The bone the Republicans throw the public always ends up in the wrong orifice."  -John Custer

"Denial is a thin membrane and you're jumping on it like it is a trampoline." –John Custer

"After years of observing lives lived inside the box, I've determined that outside of the box is the place to be." –John Custer

"They say sluts like Britney Spears are a dime a dozen. I'll take five dollars worth." –John Custer

"Italians never die, they just finally settle down." –John Custer

"Life isn't about money. Even Americans manage to figure that out. It's just that most of them figure it out on their deathbeds." –John Custer

"There is a saying: 'Tell a smart girl that she is pretty and tell a pretty girl that she is smart'. So what the hell do I do now?" –John Custer

"Some people say I'm the devil which is ridiculous. The devil was a very short man as were most of the people of his time." –John Custer

"One day you may find yourself to be involved with a woman who is only after you for your money. When you see her, tell her I'd like my couch back." –John Custer

"All of those important things I wanted in my life… I finally got them all. Only to realize there were far better things I hadn't imagined yet." –John Custer

"The 'Grizzly Man' and the 'Crocodile Hunter' have met their fates. Now if Star Jones would simply return to the set of The View with an AK-47, destiny's appetite would be sated." –John Custer

"When social butterflies die, they preserve the carcasses in alcohol. This would have made them so happy." –John Custer

"Once an old girlfriend asked me what I would do if she ever left me. I told her I would fondly remember her as a 'training vagina'." –John Custer

"Being a devout Christian, George W. Bush respected the maxim, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. This explains why he put up no resistance when a grizzly personification of the English Language came to butcher him." –John Custer

The Black Years of the Karaoke Show and the Return of King Richard

There is a wonderful subtext throughout "The Tale of Robin Hood" that speaks perfectly to the plight of you true musicians over these last ten years. The moral: to stay loyal to good King Richard, no matter how corrupt and despicable the pretenders to the throne become in their temporary reign. Richard will return and the villains will be exposed and done away with. Hold fast. Weather the storm.

So it goes, and has gone in the music business over the last decade.

Real musicians who write and sacrifice and tour and have mastered instruments have been replaced by a laughable karaoke show that showcases humiliation more than music. It focuses on the hosts more than the singers (singers that one could find at ANY karaoke bar ANYWHERE on ANY night in the US) And it presents an illusion that three unremarkable people; an egomaniac bully who would gladly inject his children with AIDS if the price was right, an ex-pop starlet who was once sued because in an effort to conceal the fact that she was tone deaf she mixed her back-up singer's tracks louder than her own on her records (the back-up singer settles out of court), and a "safe-bro" who declares his Richie Cunninghamness by using outmoded hip-hop lingo, that these three people have pedigrees that warrant our attention when it comes to music is laughable at best. These "televison personalities" who presume to feed music to the world end up knowing nothing of music itself. But, little surprise, it always ends up that they are well versed in self-promotion and snake oil salesmanship.

It is bad. I knew it was coming in 1998 when the bands I was working with had finally gotten a good snout-full of life on a corporate record label. All of our illusions were gone. Sadly, there is no shocker of an ending to any of those stories. As trite as it sounds, yes… the "suits" are what killed the music biz. Surprise. The significant aspect is the manner in which corporate label heads became the music tastemakers for the world and screwed up the whole industry so badly and so quickly, it practically fell into non-existence.

As inept and idiotic as this present US administration has been and even taking into account the nightmarish economic consequences that they have bestowed upon us, even their ineptitude is nothing compared to botching label heads that ran the music industry into the ground. It goes against common sense thinking: that on the whole, corporates should never be granted influence in the art world. Let them stick to golf and alcoholism; their true mediums.

In my time with these label industry movers and shakers, I watched brilliant band after brilliant band thrown away and abandoned. Why? Let's put it this way, the priority acts that got "love from the top" at the label I knew best were not new, daring, innovative bands. The guy who ran that label had three consistent priorities that define his time at the helm: Celine Dion, Michael Bolton and Mariah Carey. Not exactly renaissance man thinking.

And so a void was left were a thriving music world used to be. That's how we find ourselves face to face with a karaoke show passing itself off as a genuine musician's showcase. It's not. The Ed Sullivan Show was a genuine musician's showcase and Mr. Sullivan didn't humiliate people for ratings.

We all know. All of us who actually write, form bands, tour, practice endlessly. We all know what it takes to get up and sing along with canned tracks. We've all seen drunk uncles at weddings doing it. Drunk girls in bars. It's equivilant to a board game. And it needs to be regarded as such. Karaoke singers are not idols. They are folks with nice voices, like your Aunt or that guy in church or the girl that sang in the talent show. John Lennon is an idol. David Bowie is an idol. Stevie Ray Vaughn is an idol. The pussy with the spikey hair gel and the calculated three day beard is not an idol. He's just a guy with a nice voice. Jimmy Page is an idol. Bob Dylan is an idol. The karaoke show people wouldn't have liked Bob much.

Writing, getting a band together, breaking into the clubs, getting a following, making your own recordings …that is the way one earns the right to be considered a musician. In truth, taking that long, hard path and succeeding is equivalent to getting into the Olympics. Which makes the karaoke show the Special Olympics.

There have been those who didn't cave in to this ridiculous chapter's fad-trappings. And of course King Richard, real music, is returning. If you look, the talented faithful are re-emerging from Sherwood Forest.

John Custer

The Moment I Became A Freak Forever

When I was a little tike, skipping through the Mayberry-like landscape of my small Southern hometown, I had no cares. No worries. I was six and content to be a normal boy. It didn't last long.

There was a storm coming; a thunderous raging din from on high that would sweep me away from normality forever. Like Dorothy, I would be enveloped in a dark torrent and land in a strange unknown kingdom. I came to know this kingdom as the last ten minutes of the Glen Campbell show.

I loved basketball enough I guess. Sports were fun. But at the end of the Glen Campbell Show, Glen would bring out hot guitarists like Jim Stafford and banjo pickers like Jerry Reid for a jam session. They'd sit down; call out a number and BURN. Foggy Mountain Breakdown, Rollin' In My Sweet Baby's Arms, standard stuff mostly, but it was the place these guys would get to. The playing would become lethal, flat-picking, blinding staccato licks, accelerating solos over bitch slapped big-body acoustics…. Three master instrumentalists leaving no prisoners. I was a goner.

I would watch them as they would go into warp speed. Jerry Reid yelling and laughing, Stafford pulling off miraculous lightning licks and Glen with his involuntary facial expressions, trying to keep it all together until the last chord explosion… they were gods.

After that, my mom knew to call me for the last ten minutes of the show. I didn't care about the skits and the canned performances. I wanted to see the throw down at the end. I was never disappointed.

One week, Jim Stafford played Classical Gas. At the end, he did a death-defying acrobatic guitar run. It seemed impossible. Midway through, I feared he would lose it, but he didn't. With the camera shooting below him you could see the expression on his face as he pulled off what I still consider to be the greatest guitar moment of my youth. He didn't look panicked. He didn't look challenged even. He looked like he was thrusting a sword into the heart of a dragon.

When the song ended, I decided to let the rest of the boys in my little hometown make the touchdowns. And why not? Most of their dream careers would be over on graduation day. If I could learn to play well enough, hang with the likes of these guys… I could destroy planets. I could conjure pillars of fire. I wanted to do what they could do. I wanted to get to that place where the notes were flying and the groove was relentless.

God bless Glen Campbell.

Me 1971

Hello Mr. Custer

I love the album Righteous, I bought it even twice for a relative. There's one thing.. Is it possible to send me the lyrics for Lovely Jane. I love the song and would like to know what the lyrics are. The second album there's no problem. If you would be so kind.

Thanks

ps. if you got the lyrics for the whole album it would be more than welcome.

Kris from Belgium (Brussels)

LOVELY JANE
words and music John Custer
from RIGHTEOUS BY Dag
 
THERE'S A CROSS ON YOU, JANE
BUT I KNOW THAT YOU DON'T PRAY
THERE'S A KISS FOR THE ONES THAT YOU DON'T LIKE
BUT THAT'S OK
AT THE BALL YOU WERE CRUEL
BUT THAT'S JUST WHAT YOU LOVE TO DO
IF YOU'RE ON, THEY'LL CONFIDE
LET THEM THINK YOU'LL BE ON THEIR SIDE
 
LOVELY JANE
LOVELY JANE
BETCHA I'M NEVER GONNA KISS YA
LOVELY JANE
LOVELY JANE
BETCHA I'M NEVER GONNA MISS YA 
 
 
THERE'S A GIRL DOWN THE LANE
JANEY'S GOT IN HER WAY
THEN A SCHEME IS DEVISED
TO BRING HER DOWN IN OUR EYES
WHEN IT GETS TO THE GIRL
IT WILL MAKE DUST OF HER PAGEANT WORLD
THERE SHE CRIES, BUT JANE SHE SMILES
LEFT AMIDST ALL HER BOWS AND LIES

Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:50:13 -0400
 
Dear John,
 
 I'm a young Colombian student at Berklee College Of Music in Boston, majoring in Music Production & Engineering. In one of my classes, called Critical Listening, I was asked to write a paper on an engineer that I admired. Since I'm a fan of your work, I chose you. I know you're a producer as-well as an engineer and mixing engineer. There's a lot of info on you as a producer but almost nothing as an engineer, so I wanted to know if you had the time to answer some questions. I'm going to use as examples of your work the bans: Corrosion Of Conformity, DAG and Cry of Love (which, by the way, are 3 of my favorite bands, before even I knew you were behind all of them).
 
 So, here are some questions which I really appreciate if you have the time to answer:

When and where you were born?
I was born in upstate ....New York...., October 30th 1962.

Do you have any early influences in your mixing and engineering?
I was influenced by Roy Thomas Baker and Bob Ezrin on the grand end of the spectrum. But I also loved those raw, dry Black Sabbath Records and Skynyrd's Nuthin' Fancey. And I memorized Exile On Mainstreet and Tattoo You and Let It Bleed which were huge two-guitar band production influences. I stayed clear of Beatles records as production influences because there was, and still is, an all-too-huge fraternity of bands trying to advance that formula. It's been my opinion that the signature sound of that particular band could never be owned by another band. But my favorite sounding record when I was young was 'What's Goin' On' by Marvin Gaye. Magic in the tracks.

COC, DAG and Cry of Love are three completely different genres, how do you approach different music styles when you are engineering and mixing?
I don't produce anything unless I have a real, deep seeded love for the material and what it comes from. I was as much a Queen fan as I was an Earth Wind & Fire fan as I was a Riki Lee Jones fan or AC/DC or Louis Prima, Etta James and on and on. I had a huge affection for all of that work growing up. So I let the things that move me about those recordings come into play when the application is appropriate.

Did you have any early training on engineering? Where, when?
I started doing four track recordings on a TASCAM PORTA-ONE cassette four track at my band's rehearsal space. Those recordings led to more opportunities in ..New York.. where I was a session guitarist in the biggest scoring house in ..America.. at the time, Vision Sound Studios in ....Manhattan..... There I worked on a lot of recording projects and did pre-production guitar work for a project on EMI. Plus I got to see some of the biggest musicians of the day record. I was told by my mentor Michael Montez to 'sit in the corner, shut up and watch. Learn how to make REAL records.' So I did. He was brilliant and I learned a lot. That was 1987. I was 23. 
 
What is your working style? You're a producer also, so how does this affect you as an engineer?
I try to engineer as quickly as possible because I'm a big believer in 'vanishing vibe'. I try to cut tracks while the band is in a great groove and things are clicking. I think talented people always have a 'magic take' in them so I always try to be in RECORD when those moments come. I've seen a lot of producers overwork stuff and all of the blood and voodoo gets filtered out. So I try to make good, clean signal paths and make the performance the priority.
 
What are some of your significant engineering elements?
No compression or EQ going down unless it's an exception. I believe in 'going all the way down the road' sound-wise. If the record is to be raw and ugly and that's what the material calls for, then it should be all the way raw and all the way ugly, like COC's BLIND or Cry Of Love's BROTHER or COC's much-later IN THE ARMS OF GOD. If it's to be grand, go all the way. Enviroment mics, explosive ambience, emphasis on great mics and preamps.

How could you describe your sound?
I try not imprint a certain sound on a band. I don't think it's a good idea to have a band bring out a producer's identity. I think it's better for the producer to bring out the band's identity. Emphasize it's strong points. My sound is appropriate to the band's needs and emphasizes the human elements, the playing, the talent.

How do you achieve this sound?
A lot of talking to the bands ahead of time, pre-production and making sure I know what they want to achieve. Making sure I know their sonic likes and dislikes.
 
I worked with Cry Of Love for three years before that project got signed. They sounded quite different in the beginning. The songwriting wasn't there and they had a singer that wasn't working out. I recruited Kelly Holland (lead vocalist on BROTHER) from another band because I thought he was a perfect fit. But every day we developed some aspect of the band. I did the project 'on spec' because I thought there was something really there but I needed time to work with the band in the studio and hone their sound. So I talked the studio head into letting me work with them when there were no paying customers there. We recorded a lot of material and the band's sound developed. Kelly was the missing key element. When he joined, things became focused and sharp. So I'd say the main thing is to get the right people involved. With the right combination of players, you can't go wrong.

Any recommendations for a student like me who wants to become a successful engineer and producer?
Jump in and do everything. All genres, all levels. Widen your scope and you will find something that speaks to you artisticly. No matter what it is, if it resonates with you go after it and don't listen to the provincial folk.
 
All the very best of luck to you ....Santiago....!

That is all, thank you so much for your time and I really hope you have the time to answer my questions.

"I never thought that I'd see, in my lifetime, an African-American Presidential nominee"

It's something we hear so many people saying, on television, in conversation, everywhere… that which was thought impossible by so many of us has now become reality. I submit that Democrat or Republican, this is good news.

I feel that this historic event points to a wider implication. I believe that a large number of Americans have experienced an expedited evolution of consciousness. Reasons why: 9-11 and the nightmarish mishandling of everything since. We've seen our economy plummet, we've seen those like Simon Cowell, Jerry Springer, Ann Coulter and many, many others greatly rewarded for highlighting, encouraging and showcasing the most base and negative aspects of the human condition. We've seen celebrity culture crumble, melt and drip into a sewer. We've seen education ignored and ignorance glorified. We've seen people who speak out against injustice and corruption have their patriotism questioned and their reputations damaged. Most horrible of all, we've seen too many of our young brothers and sisters die in service to our country. We've seen veterans return home from obscenely extended tours of duty experiencing Post Traumatic Stress, who seek mental health care from our government and are turned away. We've seen high rates of suicide among veterans. We've crippling gas prices, foreclosures, jobs lost, plant closings.

I suspect that all of these things have forced many people to consider aspects of consciousness and a responsibility to address their own personal evolution.  

In light of the magnitude and blatancy of this multi-faceted wake-up call, it is disturbing to see only a fraction of the American public choosing to acknowledge that Rome is burning and more, that there are now apparent opportunities to extinguish the fire before it's too late.

John Custer

Singers I Suspect Simon Cowell would cut.... (please add to this list)

Neil Young

Robert Plant

Bob Dylan

Lou Reed

Mick Jagger

Keith Richards

Bruce Springsteen

Joe Strummer

Ozzy Osbourne

James Hetfield

Give me more names