Long before Americana became an overused music-industry marketing term, Brant Slay and Ben Reynolds honed the genre with their own take on rustic blues and back-porch-style rock ‘n’ roll.
Armed with a number of traditional acoustic, electric and homemade instruments, Athens-based duo Chickasaw Mudd Puppies created an indelible image and sound that incorporated guitars, drums, slap-board, cans and even a trusty rocking chair. Musicians as diverse as Michael Stipe and Willie Dixon took notice and a small but influential catalog of compositions were released to critical if not commercial acclaim.
Credit: Jason Thrasher
Credit: Jason Thrasher
Nearly thirty years later, the pair, along with drummer Alan “Lumpy” Cowart, are set to release a new collection of tunes this Friday. “Fall Line,” issued by Athens-based Strolling Bones Records, is a concept album of sorts, extolling the myths and legends from either side of the shoreline and plains of the Georgia Fall Line.
After a recent rehearsal, the trio spoke with the AJC at the New West Records office in Athens.
“We’ve been getting ready for some shows as a three-piece again,” says guitarist and vocalist Ben Reynolds. “We’ve been having a blast seeing how much noise we can make with just a handful of people.” The self-described “noise” on their latest album seamlessly continues their raucous back-porch approach, albeit three decades later.
“Yeah, it’s been a minute,” laughs Brant Slay. “I guess you could say we’re just now gettin’ back from a rather long beer-run. I think it shows that we kinda had to go around the world and come back to it, just to make some good music again.” Busy with other projects for 20 years, the band reunited in 2011 when some of their original tunes were included in film projects. Unlike some bands who return from a lengthy hiatus, “Fall Line” contains better compositions and more assured playing than their previous canon of music.
“I think a lot of the old sound is still there with this one,” continues Slay, “and some of this stuff has been bubbling under for a while. I’m just glad we’re finally getting it out.”
Credit: Jason Thrasher
Credit: Jason Thrasher
During their extended hiatus, both Reynolds and Slay would earmark songs for a possible Mudd Puppies revival. “I was doing other projects [including Workhorses of the Entertainment/Recreational Industry, alongside fellow multi-instrumentalist William Tonks] and I’d hold back stuff that I thought would be a better fit for us. The other stuff I was doing was — and I hate both these terms — more ‘Americana’ and ‘singer-songwriter’ stuff. I don’t know quite what else to call it, but that’s sort of what it was. But when I’d write something that fit us, I just knew it immediately.”
Though Reynolds hates the term, the band does indeed embody the rootsy spirit of Americana. “I’ll leave that to people like you,” he says, when pressed for a definition. “I’m not sure it quite fits what record labels might call Americana, at least these days, but we’ve been called worse things.”
Slay adds that in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, “it was pretty hard to categorize what we did. Now, it’s just easy to put things into a folder, label it and that’s that, but back then there was no real categorization that worked for us. We sure weren’t grunge or even avant-country.”
Their early recordings, produced by wildly diverse early supporters Michael Stipe and blues legend Willie Dixon, unfortunately fell into the alt-rock bins. “That sure didn’t work,” laughs Reynolds, “but maybe that just means we were never that marketable in the first place.”
Though they were born in one of world’s most influential rock scenes, the band didn’t sound like any of their Classic City peers. “But the cool thing about Athens was people were really accepting of our unique weirdness, even among all the other bands who were doing their own thing.”
“I was in a band called the Beggar Weeds,” says drummer Cowart. The Florida-based band would occasionally open for the Mudd Puppies in the early ‘90s, and will again at Friday’s album release show. “There was nothing else going on in Athens, or anywhere really, like what they were doing — visually, their sound, everything they came up with was original. We’d come to town to open for them and to take all of that in, and it was just mesmerizing to see. These guys created such an atmosphere that was so insanely cool and different. It was artistic but not in a pretentious way. I just thought what they were doing was iconic, with the homemade instruments and the rocking chair and everything. I couldn’t wait to be a part of it.”
Though they were not part of the original ‘80s wave of new music from the college town, Slay and Reynolds were also art students at the University of Georgia. “Like a lot of the musicians before us, me and Ben were in art school, eating a burrito a day just to get by, all that kinda fun stuff,” laughs Slay. But as the ‘80s became the ‘90s, the music industry changed — and the local scene had to adapt. “The big record companies started heading off into the sunset, the indie labels came along and with the digital stuff, people started recording their own records. Everything was different than it was in the ‘80s. But now I think, ‘Well damn, maybe we were a little ahead of things.’”
Even the whole duo aspect of the early band became more accessible after the original incarnation dissolved. “Yeah, the duos became more respected and successful after we’d stopped playing that way,” says Reynolds. “Our timing has always been a little bit off, musically and from a career standpoint. We’ve finally embraced both of those things and now that we have a drummer, or timing is definitely better in every way.”
For example, he says they’d just practiced a song from their early catalog, initially recorded without drums, with Slay merely stomping the beat with his feet. “When we did that one,” recounts Reynolds, “I told Alan, ‘You’ve just gotta feel the rhythm rather than count anything, and just go for it.’ Because with us, there’s really no other way to do it.”
CONCERT PREVIEW
Chickasaw Mudd Puppies with Beggar Weeds and The Howdies
8 p.m. Friday, April 7. $10. 40 Watt Club, 285 W. Washington St., Athens. 706-549-7871, 40watt.com
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