For years, The Butthole Surfers have made headlines with their crazy concert hijinx and kick ass
records. Now on their thirteenth album, Electriclarryland, they have proven to the world that it's possible to make good music, have a good time, and not give a fuck about any of it. We phoned up the legendary King Coffey to talk about years gone by and years to come.

Pitchfork: In your fifteen years of recording, "Pepper" is your first real hit single. Is the cash finally starting to come in now?

Coffey: [Sarcastically] Oh yeah. Boy. Mercedes, Mercedes, Mercedes for all my friends. The way the music business operates, it'll be like five years before we see anything at all. The album is selling okay... Fuck, ask me in five years. I'm not holding my breath or anything.

Pitchfork: You did a couple of songs with Steve Thompson [producer, also worked with Anthrax and Blues Traveller] and I hear he was a real idiot.

Coffey: He's wasn't an idiot more than he was a producer. He just did what we asked him to which was to produce the record but when it came back and we listened to what we did with a producer, we realized it wasn't really what we wanted. What producers like to do is have a band come in with a definite list of song then you play them over and over again in the most perfect possible way which wasn't the way we were used to doing it. We ended up keeping about half of it, and what we recorded we ended up doing our way.

Pitchfork: You got Erik Estrada for the "Pepper" video...

Coffey: Yeah, he's cheap. [laughs] He was enjoying himself. He brought all these cigars and stuff. He also toted his number one fan who is this German drag queen named Erika Estrada.

Pitchfork: Who's idea was it to get him?

Coffey: The director of the video. We had tried to get Don Knotts but he was too expensive. It takes four times the Erik Estrada might to get him out of bed. Erik was much more affordable.

Pitchfork: I keep hearing that Gibby's dad hosts a children's TV show.

Coffey: Well, first it was called Mr. Peppermint, and that's a show that I grew up with. It broadcasted in the Dallas/Fort Worth area in the 60s and 70s. In the 80s, they changed the name to Peppermint Place and it got picked up and syndicated.

Pitchfork: So, Paul Leary's dog died recently. What kind of dog was Mark Farner?

Coffey: She was a French Pit Bull.

Pitchfork: Didn't you used to bring her on stage?

Coffey: Not that often. The very few times we brought her on stage was if it was too hot for her in the van. She always looked at the audience as if they were about to attack us, and it was, like, her job to protect us from these fifty or a hundred people that were about to jump us and kill us. Then other times during practice, she would walk up in front of the amp and just hang her head in front of the amp as if she was being punished. You know, she knew the sounds around her were like, punishing sounds, and like a martyr dog, she just walked right up to the source of punishment and took it like a dog.

Pitchfork: How old was she?

Coffey: She must have been older than thirteen. She would be with us in the van on tour in the early years and we never had anything stolen. When she was around she was always there guarding. This January, she went out in the back to stretch out in the sun and she never woke up. She had a good life.

Pitchfork: "TV Star" on the new record bears a very disturbing similarity to Bruce Springsteen's "Hungry Heart." After all these years, what's the appeal of a fat-assed Jersey boy in a plaid shirt singing about the plight of the common man?

Coffey: I think the whole "plight of the common man" thing is pretty funny when his own crew is suing him for back wages. Somebody pointed that out to us after the song was done, but we're playing in Asbury Park next week and we're just gonna do "Hungry Heart" instead to Springsteen's hometown.

Pitchfork: What's your favorite vomit story?

Coffey: One time we played a show at a festival in Belgium and basically everything that could go wrong did. We got there late, our equipment wasn't there, and we were playing after The Pixies, who we watched and the crowd was so into. We, ourselves, were incredibly ill from both viruses and just the trip there. And sure enough, everybody on stage started vomiting. Not in any kind of theatric manner, but we were just vomiting on cue.

Pitchfork: Wilco tours around in Blind Melon's old tour bus. Whose tour bus would you like to own and why?

Coffey: The band has an endless fascination with Willie Nelson. I mean, talk about a classic tour bus. That would be it. Though, I'd want it very well aired out and scrubbed down for my body's protection.

Pitchfork: Is everything really bigger in Texas or is it just Willie Nelson's IRS debt?

Coffey: Actually, Texas is a very tiny state, we just have a really good publicist.

Pitchfork: What's the strangest piece of fan mail you've ever received?

Coffey: Somebody still, to this day, is sending us deer parts. I wish he would quit. Once we told a person that we appreciated getting the deer eyeball so we still get deer parts. It's really gross.

Pitchfork: Oddest fan encounter.

Coffey: I don't know if it's the oddest, but last night in Boston, this guy told us that God said that if he remained clean and sober for a year, he would be able to be in The Butthole Surfers. [laughs] And the guy was so serious. He was just like staring at us and we were speaking to him, but like, God was speaking to him while we were talking to him. It was a very strange thing.

Pitchfork: That guy obviously works in mysterious ways. If asked, would you join Golden Smog?

Coffey: If I could turn it into a techno band, maybe. I just set them up with drum machines and synths and keyboards, tell them all to shut up and just have them all dance around. I'd make 'em the new Depeche Mode, but a Depeche Mode with integrity. Coming from the Heartland.

Pitchfork: If you ordered a pizza, and the delivery boy asked for fellatio in lieu of a cash payment, what would you do?

Coffey: On me or on him?

Pitchfork: I think on him...

Coffey: [long pause] ...W-would he be good looking?

Pitchfork: Boy, this is getting intricate.

Coffey: It sounds to me like it might be best just to pay him. It sounds kind of mysterious.

Pitchfork: We live in a country where James Brown is in jail for three years, but Yanni got to walk around a free man. Jail your least favorite musician.

Coffey: Jail would almost be too good for a lot of musicians. Jailing a musician is like hitting a dog or something. I mean, musicians are just fundamentally stupid people. It's not really humane to put like a retarded person in jail for a crime that he or she doesn't know really what they're doing, and likewise, I would never condemn punishment over somebody stupid who's a musician. I just couldn't do it.

Pitchfork: Do you have any naked pictures of your mother?

Coffey: Thank God, no.

Pitchfork: Do you want to buy some?

Coffey: [Sarcastic Laugh:] Eh! Maybe she the pizza boy could arrange something.