K is KING KOFFEE (drums), T is THERESA (drums), P is PAUL (guitars), and J is JiM B. (tape machine and rotten questions)

J - How's the tour? Are you having fun?
K - I really hate it, but we end up doing it all the time.
J - to make money-
K - Precsely, but I dunno, I'd rather travel than stay at home, you see weird shit like we saw like a charred like Micro VW bus like on the way up to Vancouver yesterday, alot of like death all over the place, like we saw the ghost of like Henny Youngman like hanging over the Microbus. Yeah, touring's a drag though, cuz we always like get into big fights and then we break up, then we get back together like ten minutes later. It's really intense.
J - What would you do if you didn't tour? Could you make a living off record sales?
K - We'd all do dishes, like we used to. You can really get some good food that way though, so it's cool. Once in Wisconsin we saw this plastic manufacturing place that made all the giant like cows, that you see at like steak houses and stuff. They all come from Wisconsin. You're driving down like a major interstate in Wisconsin and you see these huge like three story cattles like all over the place, to kinda show you their wares, they put them on display. I guess they're too big to put in the building, so they're like, just outside the factory. like, model 1, model 2,....
J - Did you think about heisting one for the top of the van?
K - It'd be a great thing, but it's not like something you could, ....like pickpocket.
J - Do you still live in Texas?
K - Austin, Texas: Hollywood.
J - What do you mean?
K - I'm just paraphrasing ZZ TOP.
J - Did you guys really run into the drummer?
K - Yeah, Gibby and I met him at a Burger King in Beaumont, Texas. We were like driving from Georgia and like pulled in and I had a burger at Burger King. Danny Beard, the drummer from ZZ TOP came in, and he was looking at like Gibby's Harley Davidson jacket. He came over and said, "wow, like do you have a Harley?" Gibby was like "No, I just sorta like this jacket" and this guy was going off about his own Harley and stuff, talking about his ranch and stuff. He was saying "so are you guys in a band?" so fuck, it was like obviously we were, we had a huge like equipment truck with us. He says "Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, I like to play around with like rock too, like I've been on like some tours you know". He was sorta just out to like freak us out, we knew exactly he was Danny Beard.
J - ...minglin' with the common folk...
K - Yeah, yeah, and we're like just totally amazed, totally befuddled that Danny Beard is talking to us, and like making fun of us. Then he split and took off and we were like just totally amazed.
J - Do you listen to alot of ZZ TOP?
K - ZZ TOP are my favorite band. I've never listened to them but they're my favorite band. I mean they're great, I mean like their videos, I dunno I think it's really cool - I think really in alot of ways we're like the ZZ TOP of the underground scene, just because like we come from Texas and stuff, and we both have like the same sorta bluesy sorta background.
J - Plus the foot-long beards-
K - Hey I only shave like twice a year or something.
J - It doesn't grow?
K - Yeah it grows, but I don't have to use like lather or anything, just sorta take it and drag it across...
J - what are-
K - But yeah ZZ TOP man, fuckin' like, I mean like "Velcro Fly", I think it's really cool how they're heavily into like high technology, like how they have the computer controlled drums and stuff, and the keyboards. They've got to play with technology I think. That's one thing that we do, generally I'm really pleased we do that. We really like to play with like computers and all the new technology.
J - What do you think of all these underground bands that try and keep everything really 'purist' or minimal? You know, with just guitars, bass, and drums-
K - Well that's cool, I respect that but I think alot of ways like they're being facistic about like, you know like, "our mantra is so... in a way closed, that we only will do this". I think we can afford to be, we should exploit like, any like material we can use, and that includes like high technology. We always try and invest our money back into better and better equipment, recording equipment. We have like a computer, we have, like sampling machines.
J - Do you have your own studio?
K - Yeah.
J - Is it fairly elaborate?
K - It's gets better like all the time, like we recorded "Cream Corn", "Rembrandt", and all of "Locust" at our studio. And on each new record, the sound gets a little better and that's because we get more and more effects boxes.
J - Do you spend alot of time thinking about the aesthetics of it, or just go for it or what?
K - Well you know how it goes, you just play and practice and whatever sounds cool, sounds appealing; same thing with like visuals, like whatever is like visually appealing, which for us is like cheap horror movies.
J - Why do you include the video and film stuff?
K - It's cool as shit.
J - Go for the multi-sensory experience-
K - I guess, it's just whatever's cool, it is kind of like overwhelming when you have like five people playing music and you have like strobe lights, smoke, films, sometimes we have dancers, we have fire, I dunno, I like all that.
J - Who's your favorite Christ figure?
K - Oh Theresa! Join me on this one-
J - (to T) Who's the best Christ figure?
T - Oh Madonna, no question about it.
K - Mine is Saint Lazarus. I kinda came from a Neo-Catholic tradition, and like St. Lazarus in the Catholic tradition, is like portrayed as like hobbling down the street with like running sores, and a cane, and being attacked by dogs, right. In other words, St. Lazarus is like the Patron Saint of the Dying, but he's also represented with like sores and being attacked by dogs. He a wicked saint
J - Does that make him a Christ Figure though?
T - (butting' in) I really like it when Christ drove the possessive demon spirits out of the pigs on the hillside, and one of the pigs spoke to Christ, and said "We are Hadean, for there are many with us", it was like, a possessed pig kind of thing.
J - Oh my god.
T - Of course that was the first true exorcism.
K - Really? wow.
T - Yeah, oh yeah, Except for maybe the more tribalistic exorcisms.
J - So have you read the Bible extensively?
T - Totally into it. I really groove on the Bible.
J - Why?
T - It's a good book man, it's one of the best books ever written. I like a good book.
J - Were you ever forced to read it as a kid?
T - Well, you remember hippy like Jesus people? I met some of those people and you know they witness to you. I didn't come out of a religious background or anything, but the Bible is a great book and I finally sat down and read it without thinking about all the depressing things that are connected with it. When I sat down and just read it like a book it was great. I haven't read the whole thing from cover to cover though.
J - Do you have faith in Jesus Christ?
T - Oh absolutely not. The Bible in just great historical fiction...based on fact.
J - How about mythology?
T - It's the same thing, mythology's great, the Gods...
K - Yeah but the Bible's so intriguing, it's not just the whole mythology aspect, but also like because it's like such an important part of our dynamic sense of life, as far as like you know like on TV, you see Jim and Tammy like being top of the news,...
J - Still that's pretty removed from the Bible-
K - It's  the whole essence of the Bible I think.
T - Well, modern-day Christianity is a soap opera, and a really good one, one of the best.
K - I dunno, I guess the Bible is like religion, and Jim and Tammy are like complete religion, in a totally American way. God - American style, you know.
J - You guys watch alot of cheesy religious networks and stuff?
T - Every chance we get. It's prime viewing.
J - Who are some of your favorite TV preachers?
T - Eugene Scott, I don't know if you get him up here, but he has his own cable network, and it's just him, sitting around talking all the time.
J - Does he have a beard?
T - Yeah, smokes a cigar, occasionally he'll get up and draw diagrams on a chalkboard.
J - He'll say a word every three or four seconds -
T - Yeah, he'll take a long toke off his stoggie, and think about it for a while.
J - Yeah they don't get him up here.
T - But he's not really a preacher, he's just in that vein.
K - Robert Tilton from Dallas is really cool too. His program is "Success In Life", and like the whole thing is like use Christ to earn more and money, He's like raging Christ as like..the ultimate businessman. Who is that really good guy? Earnest Angeley from Oklahoma -
J - Baaoooooow!
K - Heeeeeeaaaal! He's really great, we used to watch him all the time.
J - What's some more favorite TV shows?
K - Well Theresa and I really like "All My Children" alot, "People's court", "Quincy", "Magnum P.I.", "Jeopardy", have to watch Jeopardy every day... I really like news programs. If like there's nothing on TV, I'll watch the news. We watch the news like a whole lot. Also like movie programs. Lets see, TV shows... there's really no new comedies I like, I really like documentaries about like, wild African tribes, or about the life of the raccoon...
J - Spider shows...
K - Sure.
J - Is Mark Farner still around (Mark Farner is the name of the official Butthole Surfers' doggy)
K - Yeah she's with us, she's out protecting the truck.
J - Has you life ever been in danger on stage?
K - Well yeah, I mean like Gibby got stabbed before, the last time we played Vancouver. Somebody came on stage and stabbed him and he had to go the hospital and stuff.
J - Where'd he stab him?
K - In the arm, right next to like a major vein where he could have bled to death if he didn't get immediate medical treatment.
J - Anything else? Poked with pens? Projectiles?
K - Well sure, alot of times I can't breathe on stage, because like the smoke is so thick.
J - You guys get into sports at all?
K - Yeah, not me though, other people in the band are into it. One again I reference back to Gibby, Gibby was like captain of his basketball team, on his university team at Trinity University. As far as actively participating, we're not really doing much, we are really into track-ball tho'-
J - Who are some artist, like painters, that you like?
K - Well, like you know Paul's favorite artist in Joan Miro, he's like, really into him. It's weird, I like Dali a whole lot, but Paul really hates Dali. I mean Paul used to be like, a wicked like art master - he like sold his car, his cool car, and got five thousand dollars of art supplies on year, and like painted away, he also like made this sculpture, it took him like half a year to make this sculpture, and like finally he sold it  - then he like equated for like, each hour he spent on it he only got like 15¢ an hour to make his sculpture. so that's why he's like taking up guitar as opposed to sculpting.
J - Any other band members do sculpting or painting?
K - Not these days, I mean we're like far too busy with the band to do that much. The closest we truly get is like making albums work, and like Paul does most of that.
J - That last album cover, who did that?
K - The clowns? We were like at a supermarket in Austin, and they were like selling these like paintings for like the bedroom and stuff, and we like came across these clowns. We had it up in the living room for a while, and like we had to like think of like an album cover for like Locust, cuz it was coming out real soon, so we're like "fuck, let's just use this", and they just cut out like a square out of it.
J - Did you get permission?
K - Yeah, we had to like track the guy down and like buy the rights to it, so like now that painting is like officially ours.
J - How much was it?
K - I'm not sure, I think maybe fifteen hundred maybe, I think so. I have no idea, it could've been alot less.
J - Does he have a copy?
K - I think we just paid him his money and like he leaves us alone.
J - What about that Texas Trip record, did you record that in one afternoon while ya'll were on acid or what?
K - You know almost, pretty much. It was like, one night, some of us were on acid - The Stickmen stuff was done in Dallas - all the like Daniel Johnston stuff was like done in our living room, sorta like a "roll the tape and let's play" sorta thing.
J - Who's Daniel Johnston?
K - This really cool singer/songwriter, originally from West Virginia, he used to live in Texas. He like put out these really cool tapes. Now I think he's back in West Virginia.
J - Is he a Neil Young fan?
K - Yeah maybe. Daniel's really not conscious that much of the music scene, I think he's sorta more influenced by his childhood. I think whats really special about Daniel is he's got his own little "Daniel World", which he can like relate to, with the music. He's really gifted.
J - Any plans for moe stuff like that, compilation records with friends?
K - Yeah, there's talk about doing another one - but we sorta don't have the time for that right now.
J - What about Stickmen WIth Rayguns, are you good friends with them?
K - Oh fuck, they're a great band. Yeah we're really good friends with them. They broke up unfortunately, but uh-
J - I dunno, I saw 'em one in Dallas and I thought they totally sucked.
K - I don't know, they've been like great friends of ours since like - man they're a great band I think, like I've been friends with them since like '80, and like they've been doing their sound for like, longer than Flipper has or anything, you know. They're just an incredible band.  They were like there when like the Pistols played and like they like had bands too. They're like the original Texas punks. They were there.
J - How long do you think you guys can continue, or is that something you wanna think about?
K - Yeah, I think about it, I don't really like to. It's really hard for us, cuz like, we're a commune, sorta, like we all live together, and like the band is like, so consumptive. We have to like sleep together, we always eat together, we tour together...us five people like always together. It's like our social life and our business life is the same thing. We live in the same house, and I guess we're like each other's best friend. But like I think in a way we've like gone too far, we're stuck with each other 'til the end of time, unless like one of us dies or one of us goes crazy.
J - Are you gonna continue to try and do bigger shows, bigger crowds?
K - Well sure.
J - How do you think that'll work, like do you ever see yourselves playing in stadiums and things like that?
K - Well I don't ever see that happening, I mean honestly. We're not stadium caliber or even stadium quality. I mean like all we can hope to do is just keep doing our music, and hope over time that more and more people hear it and like, maybe like it.
J - It seems like more people come out for Buttholes' shows-
K - Well I think like right now we sorta like have the whole like, Dead Kennedys' trip, which they had three years ago. It's like, "wow man, The Dead Kennedys are in town, let's go and check them out". I think it'll like die off though; as we play more and more, we can like, lose that element. Yeah, it's kind of scary.
J - Have you ever tried to do a video for a more mainstream audience? I've seen the live video -
K - We just made a video, but it's just like a video that we find visually appealing, it's more of a work of art in a sense - it's more for like cable, like 'new music', after midnight, sorta TV show.
J - Does it show the band at all or is it just images?
K - This particular video is like alot of faces, like put on slides, and then projected on top of each other, so like you see like one face with like the combined faces of three people - like this face that keeps changing, like the eyes keep moving, and you see different faces on top of each other. It's really like trippy too, it's really like LSD, but it's not something which MTV would ever want to show.
J - What song?
K - This new song is called "I Saw an X-Ray of a Girl Passing Gas"
J - What about new stuff, are you working on a new record?
K - Yeah, we have like an EP coming out pretty soon, twelve inch, four songs. Most of this stuff is like written in the studio.
J - How's it different from the last one?
K - It's more spacey, more ethereal than the last record. the last record was sorta like really aggressive in the sense of like being more metallic', or 'punk', but this is slower and a little more ethereal maybe, space rock you know. People aren't gonna like it maybe.
J - Do you like SPACE ROCK from the 70's, like HAWKWIND?
K - Oh I love HAWKWIND, they're great - yeah we're really into HAWKWIND. HAWKWIND are really intense though, they were spacey, but I think they were mainly bass and drums - this is more... laid-back, some songs.
J - What about something like Beefheart?
K - I never really got into Beefheart. He's cool, I mean he's ultimately cool...
J - I always figured you'd be big Beefheart fans, especially some of the tribal drumming stuff reminds me of your stuff.
K - I think that comes from really not knowing how to play the drums. You sorta like do your best, and you get more and more people together playing drums, and it ends up more of a Beefheart sound.
J - How did you end up in Georgia?
K - We were like in the middle of like, the end of like a year-long tour, and like, it was like, about three years ago, I guess, and we had all of our stuff in storage in Texas. We had no homes, we had nothing to really go back to, and like here we were in San Francisco at the end of the tour, and it was like time to go home, and it was like we had no home, but actually we can go anywhere we care to, because we had nothing to return to. So like we were on acid, and somehow Athens, GA came up, and we're like cracking up saying "yeah, let's go to Athens, Georgia, we can hang out with R.E.M., we can date Let's Active!" you know, it's cool, it's cool, and like none of us had ever been to Georgia, so it's like "let's Go! Let's Go! Let's all go to Georgia!" So like we drove to Georgia and looked for a place to live, and we found a place like three miles out of Athens - the total like, really pretty part of the country, alot of like, piney woods. We had a house there - hung out for like six months, and we took off again.
J - Pretty spur of the moment then.
K - Yeah precisely that. It was cool.
J - Did you have any run-ins with the local 'janglin crowd?
K - We had occasional R.E.M. spottings, like, in fact the first night there, I was like speaking to this guy, and he was like, "King, don't look now, but the bass player from R.E.M., Mike Mills, is right behind you", and I'm like "What?! Where?!", and I turn around and I'm like "Whaaaooo! You're Mike Mills!!! I think you guys are just great man!! I play in this band called the Butthole Surfers, and like, tomorrow we're having like this barbecue man, you should really come out, bring all your friends, come on!" He didn't seem too impressed though, he never like came out to the barbeque. And supposedly, I dunno, I saw like a Talking Head member, I saw Tina Weymouth, the bass player. Somebody said one of the B52's got married there, and like they had some people from New York coming down, so though, I didn't get to see any real stars. It was kinda disapointing.
J - Is the Athens music scene really anything?
K - It was like really small, really boring, and like really small, really boring, and like everybody like really hated us, we were like foreigners, you know. They didn't want to deal with us.
J - Hmmm. That oughta be enough. Any cryptic messages to part with?
K - No.
J - King says you used to do visual stuff as well as guitar.
P - Oh I've done alot of work on the record covers and stuff.
J - Like which ones?
P - Let's see, I drew the clowns on the PCPP, and I took the picture of the wrestlers off the TV for the first EP, and now I do alot of layout stuff.
J - What about that Texas Trip record?
P - That, Gibby did all the drawings and artwork for that, I did the layout work and lettering, but Gibby did the weave picture on the back, and took the picture of the ants on the front. the ants are still alive when they made it to the plant to get it shot.
J - Did you show it to them?
P - Yeah they were cracking up about it, cuz they were still alive on this big, wide piece of clear adhesive tape in their ant bed. they were still wiggling when they were photographed.
J - Who are some of your guitar heroes?
P - Well I really like that guy from Gang Of Four alot, I used to jam to GRAND FUNK RAILROAD alot back in Junior high, back in like '71.
J - What were some bands you were in before the Buttholes?
P - I played in a b and in elementary school, it was the only one that played publicly. It was called the Crowd Pleasers, and we played - that was the one I played in the fifth grade, the one I played in the second grade didn't have a name, we just played Rolling Stones' covers.
J - Was this at like assemblies and pep rallies?
P - Yeah, we got to play in front of the whole elementary school, and I went into a lead at the end that didn't stop, and like the other guys came up and like waved their hands in front of my and stuff, and everybody laughed and I was real embarrassed. But then I got into a different band in the fifth grade, we had a "Battle of the Bands" in front of the school, and we ruled over all those guys. Bands got the chicks...
J - Was that the motivation?
P - Uh, I dunno. The chicks? Yeah, I guess it was.
J - How did you come to start The Butthole Surfers? How did that originate?
P - Gibby and I got out of college, it was Gibby's last year of college actually, and he was trying to talk me into playing the guitar again, cuz I'd stopped for about 24 years. So we started playing around with some friends - I dunno how it got, like, plying regular, but we just did it. It was really stupid.
J - What were you going to school for?
P - Well see I ended up going to graduate school in business. I was specializing in finance.
J - What did you foresee yourself doing with that?
P - I wanted to be a stockbroker.
J - Why did you want to be a stockbroker?!??
P - Some kind of desire for money I guess. I figured out I probably wouldn't make it.
J - What caused such a drastic change?
P - It really wasn't a change, I was in the Butthole Surfers before I decided I wanted to be a stockbroker, I kinda wanted to do both at the same time.
J - Do you ever think about doing that sorta thing now?
P - I'd like to develop a portfolio.
J - Do you ever see yourself doing that sorta thing down the road, like when you're fifty?
P - We're set up for the long haul, we're a going concert at this moment - we've totally invested in the future so that we all have something to look forward to in the next few years. We've been around for seven years and we're all getting older. We've been building a recording studio for the past few years, and it keeps getting better and better.
J - The last record sounded really nice.
P - Part of it was recorded in our kitchen in Georgia, and part of it was recorded in my bedroom in Austin. We're getting ready to move to Dripping Springs and make a much nicer studio.
J - I saw Sandra Bernhardt on David Letterman and she said she hung out with you g- (Tape Ends)