The Butthole Surfers
 Homebase: Austin, TX
 Lineup: King Coffey, drums; Gibby Haynes, vocals; Paul Leary, guitar
 Label: Capitol Records
 Album: Electriclarryland, Various producers
 Website: http://www.buttholesurfers.com/, and http://www.sdog.com/

 Q&A with King Coffey

 Sheila Rene': Hello, how's it going?

 King Coffey: Cool.

 SR: This is one of the most delightfully demented albums I've heard in quite a while.

 KC: You haven't heard many albums have you?

 SR: I've heard all of yours. Let's go back to '94 and working with John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin fame. I got the impression that you guys weren't too happy with his production.

 KC: He was okay. He really didn't do anything. All he did was bombard us with stories about Bonzo and stuff which was entertaining the first few times you heard them. After a while it got boring. We were so stupid at the time, let's go hop on the rock and roll train. We'll get the bass player from Led Zeppelin to produce our first major label debut and spend way too much money recording in a really expensive studio. We didn't really care, we were so fucking stupid. As a producer he didn't really do much which is both good and bad. At least he didn't turn us into ELO.

 SR: I couldn't help but notice that Capitol's bio department mispelled Zeppelin.

 KC: (laughing) That's cool.

 SR: Now you've had experience with Steve Thompson who's produced some of the super bands. At what point did you decide to give up working with him?

 KC: We were into him because he had some ideas that he wanted to bounce off the band and experiment with us. It was a cool thing but I think as producers are want to do, not that much experimentation went down. Producers eventually like to try to get very clean sounds and very polished performances. Nothing really radical got done and the few things that he was spinning at us included wanting us to sound like Filter. He'd name off the worst bands, at least for us, to sound like. We thought he was totally missing the point as to what we were about. He backed off and just dealt with the plain rock songs. When we came back to Austin there was a lameness there so we kept the songs we liked, the ones that were done as well as they could be done, and regrouped.

 SR: "Thermador" is the only song that made it from Thompson. Did you rework it or leave it his way.

 KC: That song was kept because we felt it was as good as we were going to get.

 SR: Is Chris Shaw (who produced other cuts) an Austinite?

 KC: Actually he's a New York boy. He worked with Paul on some projects so that's how we know him.

 SR: Did you totally dump the rest of the album? Are these new songs or reworked from the Thompson session.

 KC: Once we decided to rework the album, about a third of the songs were kept from what we did in New York. On a third of the songs we remixed what Steve did and even remixed some demos of the same songs. About a third are new songs altogether that we recorded at Aryln Studios. Just because we're on a major label doesn't mean we have to scrap all we've learned in the past which is how to record ourselves. There is some pressure when you go on to a major, to do things the major way. We were prepared to accept that because we never worked with a producer on our other records much less had money to go into any studio of any note. We wanted to work with a producer but now I think we realize that the best people to record the band is ourselves and specifically Paul Leary.

 SR: How many bassists have applied for the job?

 KC: Actually zero. We weren't taking applications. We had a very short list of people we wanted and we got the main guy, Owen McMahon. He's a friend of mine for several years now and has played around town. I played with him in my side band, Drain as well. He's a great bass player and he wanted to do it. I got to know him when he was in the Cherubs.

 SR: You've got some talented folks on your new label. Sixteen Deluxe and Roky Erickson. I still have vivid memories of intervewing Roky in Berkeley at the IHOP.

 KC: You got to interview him? Wow. That must have been a rare interview.

 SR: I've really put in a lot of laughs on this album. My roommate's stock has gone up since his name is Larry and he wants to thank you for naming the album after him. He loves "TV Star." "Pepper" is getting all the early airplay, was that a planned single?

 KC: (laughing) "Pepper" itself was an aftermath kind of song. We went in with a list of songs we wanted to record and then we had some spare time and were still working up in New York. We were fucking around with the drum machine and samples and Larry stuff on top of that. We just built it from there and as soon as the vocals were put down I had a feeling that Capitol would pull it for a single. It just seemed so obvious. Everything else on the record is either weird or too odd to work on commercial radio. Those friendly little hip-hop beats work on radio.

 SR: I'm inclined to call what Gibby does on "Pepper" is simply speak as opposed to rap.

 KC: Definitely, but it's still mainstream.

 SR: You all have different personalities but yet you come together on a lot of subjects. How do you settle conflicts within the band?

 KC: It's interesting. If someone is getting extremely purple in the face, the others back off. It might go into default to the purple-faced judgement, but that doesn't happen so often. Generally, we all can tell when something is working and when it's not working. I think we all have a commonality as far as what the music should be and what sounds cool or what works for us. A lot of what we do is persuing an idea and listening to it, keeping or trashing it and then moving on to something else. Producers hate that. They hate throwing away recorded material. That's what we had to do with this album since we scrapped some of the weaker songs. We spent a lot of time with Steve Thompson recording and in essense they were poor concepts to begin with. I think we did four songs during the period we worked with him in a short amount of time, we all agreed on what we liked and how we should go about it.

 SR: Anything new coming out on Trance Syndicate that we should listen for?

 KC: There's a new Bedhead album coming out from this Dallas band in June. There there's a band from Ft. Worth who just moved to Austin called American Analog who's album is coming out in about a month. There's another band called Windsor For The Derby who unfortunately moved to New York. They're from Austin via Florida. These are the new things on the burner.

 SR: On the video for "Pepper" you called in Eric Estrada.

 KC: You're confused, we got a drag queen called Erica Estrada. She's beautiful. The "Chips" star and the Spanish language soap opera star,Erica Estrada is also in the video. He was a supporting guy. He was passing out cigars and I shared a nice awkward moment with him alone. He was nervous and to break the tense silence, he said 'Soooo, Butthole Surfers, how'd you get the name?' That's a question I've been asked many times in my life but just being asked by Eric Estrada was different.

 SR: There are so many different versions on that. Which one did you give him?

 KC: (laughing) I have no idea what I told me. I just had stars in my eyes. First of all, imagining him in drag being Erica Estrada. He's a handsome man.

 SR: I'm especially interested in how "My Brother's Wife" came about. I visualize you guys coming up with the music and Gibby just adlibbing the rest.

 KC: You got it. That particular song I think was our reaction to how the album was turning out, at least when we first brought it back from New York, of it being very stiff and very preconceived. Now here's another sterile song. What we have done and what we're fond of doing is just fuckin' going out there and being spontaneous. There was one idea that Paul had. He had this chart which looked like a Monderon painting of random squares. He presented us with this chart of squares saying here's a song I want to do. It involved spurts of activity. He's say 'King just play drums. It doesn't matter what you play, just play.' So I'd play drums for a few minutes then he'd switch to another track and say 'King just play some more drums. Don't listen to what you played, just play randomly.' We did several track of drums, guitars and keyboards in a similar way. Then even vocals as well. The art came down to what to put together. It was highly conceived but we had no idea what it would sound like until we were finished it.

 SR: That sounds like an exciting way of recording.

 KC: Sure, it's a lot more fun than trying to record a perfect three minute pop song. We did that enough for this album. Screw it, it's time just to be loose and do what we're known for and have more fun doing it.

 SR: Let's talk about the "Let's Talk About Cars" tune. It takes me back to early Young Gods circa '87 when they recorded a lot in French.

 KC: We haven't seen those guys in years. That was one song that we came up with when we got back to Austin trying to save the album. It's such a beautiful song. It's one of the happiest songs we've ever done as far as I'm concerned. It's so nice. We were doing the song and thought 'This song needs some French vocals,' and Gibby called up some friends of his that work at Chayneu and brought them into the studio. Gibby would ask questions in Engligh to the guy over the studio headphones and he in turn would interrupt them and ask them to the female and she would respond. We took that conversation and chopped it up and put it where it seemed right.

 SR: Are they really talking about cars? I envision them talking about brazzare things.

 KC: Actually, one of the first questions was the guy asks the woman what is the last car wreck you've seen? She replies 'Oh, I was in the last car wreck I've seen and you were with me.' They talked about Andy Warhol and violence in American sports.

 SR: I couldn't find anyone in my immediate circle who knew French.

 KC: Nobody in ours either In fact, we didn't know exactly what was being said until a French journalist came to town. We played it for him and he translated for us. We were just cracking up as he was telling us what was being said.

 SR: Am I hearing "The Jingle Of A Dog's Collar" in the background?

 KC: You're hearing the jingle of man dog's collars. We're a dog fixated band. I have two, Gibby has two and Paul used to have the best but Mark Farner passed away, God bless her soul. Mark Farner protected our van and toured with us for so many years. She was our guru.

 SR: Have you planned out your light show for this tour yet?

 KC: We're consulting with NASA. They're hurting for money which is really a good thing. Our tax dollars have paid for it so it's going to be our own goddamn tax dollars at work for the lightshow for the Surfers just to piss off Jessie Helms. So there you go.

 SR: What's the best thing about being in this band for you?

 KC: It's just the ridulous amounts of money I make for doing next to nothing.

 SR: Are you surprised that you've lasted this long and not killed each other?

 KC: (hearty laughter) Sure. It's probably time for me to kill myself now when I think about where the band is today. We certainly had no intentions of this when we started the band, but by the same token, when we spent our years living out of a van literally, we made a blood pact with each other that we'd take this band to it's logical conclusion. Since we've been illogical from the start it probably has no end.

 SR: How do you react to a piece like Coroccarn's in the local press?

 KC: Well, that's Corcaran's style.To be honest I thought it was a decent article. He writes well and one of the reasons is that he pisses people off. He gets a reaction. These days there's all kind of rumors about the band so especially cock- coccaran would be remiss to not talk about it. That's just his writing style.

 SR: I like to leave personal lives out of it.

 KC: That's what I would feel most comfortable doing, but you know it's the people's call.

 SR: How are you going to travel this tour?

 KC: In a fleet of El Camino's. If you're in a town and you see 20 El Camino's parked outside you'll know we're there.

 SR: Are you looking forward to touring again?

 KC: Yeah, it's been a while for us. Part of me is nervous because it has been so long. Practice sessions are going great and everyone's rockin'. It'll be fun.

 SR: I haven't been this nervous for an interview in years.

 KC: Am I setting you on edge?

 SR: No, I just never know what to expect so I'm always a little bit paranoid about doing something with the Butthole Surfers. What is the meaning of the famous Keane eyes on the back cover?

 KC: It's definitely indifference, but of course, to his fine body of art, if you will. It's a dog and therefore it's a plus and it's of a style which touches the very inner core of all of us, the inner child of us all. That's why we go for it.

 SR: Congratulations on a tremendous album. I predict #1 most added on all the charts next week. Have a great time in Europe. We'll see at the Austin Music Hall on June 13.

 KC: Thank you so much. It's a groovy thing.