Catch My Grift

An Interview with Scott Taylor of The Grifters

By Don Harrison

Take a pinch of indie-rock dissonance, add a pepper-shaker full of rock 'n' roll riffmaking, throw in a healthy dose of Delta blues, add a cup of swamp water, mix in a little Tennessee Tourist Board and you've got a unique brew that is The Grifters' very own.

The critically-acclaimed Memphis band's second LP (4th overall) for SubPop Records, Full Blown Possession, runs the gamut of post-modern rock moves; by turns muscular, self-assured, dreamy, funky, sloppy, and even (believe it or not) musically reverent, this new 10-song set manages to capture the slightly-schizo, vaguely decadent feel of their historical hometown, despite a polished sound far removed from the band's early lo-fi days.

You have to wonder how many more times these guys going to sneak up on people? Full Blown Possession is, like the band's 1996 CD, Ain't My Lookout, a rollocking and bittersweet ride. From the raspy lullabye, "Spaced Out" to the sexy "Happy" to the gorgeous "Sweetest Thing," the Grifters' show still more evidence of the band's low-keyed brilliance. Little wonder that some critics have been saying, for awhile now, that they are among the best rock bands currently touring their butts off in Indie Rock USA.

At least they are a band not afraid to make statement. In the new disc's tongue-in-cheek liner notes, the group delivers three promises to its fans

1. We promise not to incorporate hip-hop beats in an attempt to reach a younger audience (This shouldn't be a problem because there are still so many genres to pilfer.)

2. We promise to keep touring until we have a freakish yet devoted following of drug-addled suburbanites hanging out in the parking lots at all our shows.

3. We promise not to clear up our act any more than on this record. Whey, even now we're working onways of screwing up our personal lives even more just to assure you, the listener, that the future holds even mroe songs about confusion, heartbreak and dependancy.

Yay!

On the eve of their big national tour,Grip's Don Harrison talked with guitarist / vocalist Scott Taylor about the band's early days, the recording of Full Blown Possession, what it's like to live under the constant shadow of Elvis, and the keeping of promises. . .

Grip Monthly I was just listening to (Full-Blown Possession).I think it has a lot of very accessible tunes.

Scott Taylor (Taken aback) Wow! Whoa. . . accessible. Wow, that's not really a word too associated with us. . .

Grip "The Sweetest Thing" is very sweet-sounding, and that last song. . .

Taylor "Contact Me Now"

Grip . . . has a very cool guitar riff. But these promises you make in the liner notes. . .

Taylor Well, I personally like hip-hop beats. (Laughs)

Grip Being from Memphis, are you sick of talking about Elvis Presley and Sun Studios?

Taylor Hell, no. I worked at Sun Studios. And I helped out during this whole Elvis Week debacle we had up here. . .

Grip Really? What did you do?

Taylor Just a little bit of everything. A real good friend of mine is the manager there and I did a little of the old karoke thing

Grip Where people sing to the backing of Elvis songs?

Taylor Yeah, and I did some tours, waited some tables, ran the cash register, whatever occurred.

Grip And what is Sun Studios like now? Is it all tourist-ed up?

Taylor Well, it's a million dollar T-shirt shop, if you look at it one way. . . there's a cafe next door. The studio is pretty much the way it was in the '50's. Big room. They've got all the vintage equipment in there, as well as the

Grip And you recorded some of the Full Blown Possession at Sun.

Taylor Well, we actually recorded at the annex studio on Beale Street. It's run by Sun but not actually in Sun (laughs).

Grip Oh, okay. I kept waiting for the 'Sun sound.'

Taylor And for the first time ever, we used an 'outside mixer guy'. We went to a big old ritzy studio here in town and used all that automated stuff.

Grip Automated mixing, you mean?

Taylor Yeah we went in with Nick Sansano, who has worked with Sonic Youth. We were all there the whole time mixing it with 'em but. . . whoo! Talk about burning out, man. Twelve hours of songs.

Grip You can tell listening to Grifters songs that the band is from Memphis. There's a kind of a bluesy, rockabilly, rumble kind of a thing going on. Which is a lot like the best Memphis music.

Taylor The sound you've got down here is a little of what you'd call the blues, but rythym and blues is in a little bit of everything funk, rock. . . Memphis music, I guess you could say there is kind of sloppy funkiness to it. We're down south and it's still basically an agricultural community and there's not much going on down here. It's hot, we drink a lot and the music kind of reflects a frustration. . . but also a rowdiness.

Grip Can you get trapped by all the history, though-- are there bars in Memphis that still have original modern music?

Taylor The bars don't feature anything around here. There's one place that's good, that's big enough for the local bands to play at. For awhile, there was a big hair rock scene here.

Grip Really? A hair rock scene in Memphis?

Taylor Sure. But there's also a bunch of bands around here that I think have done pretty well-- like Big Ass Truck. And there's always been good bands here. . . it's just that they all just pretty much stayed (in Memphis).

Grip I really enjoyed the It Came From Memphis compilation CD that came out (concurrently with Robert Gordon's Book on Memphis Music), and there's definitely, even with all the different styles of music featured, some sort of cohesive, muddy, ah, weird. . .

Taylor (Assisting the helpless writer) dark funkiness.

Grip Yeah. And I also hear that sound in Grifters songs You'll have a bluesy melody that suddenly takes off into dissonance or some other strange place.

Taylor Well, you know that Big Star was from Memphis too. Like them, I think we are basically a pop band. But one where everyone's interests and influences have kind of collided together in a different way.

Grip There's no production credit on this record. Do you guys pretty much produce yourselves.

Taylor Yeah. We haven't reached the stage where we want to pay somebody to come in and tell us it sucks. (laughs)

Grip You did a lot of your early stuff, like One Sock Missing, on four-track. Have you given up on using the four-track?

Taylor I haven't. I'm probably the last holdout. I just love four-tracks. We still use them as a writing tool. And who knows what the next record will be anyway, but our philosophy is If somebody's paying for (the studio time), let's go on in and do it.

Grip How exactly did the band originally form?

Taylor Well, I had a friend I hung around with, who later went on to drum for the Afghan Whigs, just to namedrop there, he ended up playing in a band with David Shouse. I used to make all these little tapes, one-man-band stuff, with no real intentions of being in a band. . . just little in-jokes so me and my friends would sit around and smoke pot and listen to it. Hot Monkey, that was called.

Grip Hot Monkey? And then you met Dave Shouse and formed A Band Called Bud.

Taylor The two of us got together with Tripp (Lampkins) and that was A Band Called Bud. We were, ah, experimental to say the least. That's the nicest word I can come up with.

Grip And you used to play in a flower shop in those days? Is that right?

Taylor Yeah, our drummer Stan (Gallimore) used to work in a flower shop so we'd practice there after hours.

Grip Are you going to pull a Scud Mountain Boys and release 'The Grifters Flower Shop Years'?

Taylor We do have some practice tapes that are kind of interesting. Who knows, right? (Laughs). We already made So Happy Together and One Sock Missing on four-track-- that was pretty much recorded in the flower shop.

Grip Are those early discs still available.

Taylor They should be. I know you can still get One Sock Missing, but So Happy Together was on a little label (Sonic Noise) that disappeared-- one of those fly-by-night things-- so I don't know how readily accessible that one is. Shangri-la, the local label that we were on here (in Memphis), has got most of our back catalog. In fact, we even licensed Ain't My Lookout to them to put out on vinyl.

Grip So how did you originally get SubPop interested in you

Taylor Well, gosh, we'd been touring for seven years. And you get good press and the A&R guys start wandering around. . .we were completely blessed. We've always had really good press and people who would help us out in the background. . .

Grip And judging by your current touring schedule, you aren't afraid to still go out there. . .

Taylor We start tomorrow in Birmingham and end up in Nashville, after touring Canada and the Northeast, and then we'll be home on Oct. 17 and be home for about ten days and then we'll go back out and do the West Coast for four weeks. Pretty much the whole country and Canada.

Grip And the CD comes out Sept. 9th? Any advance buzz about it?

Taylor We did a little tour in May, playing mostly new stuff, and that was well-received. I haven't read any reviews yet, but I think the local kids like it.

The Grifters will play the Tokyo Rose in Charlottesville on Sept. 13 and the Black Cat Club in Washington D.C. on Sept. 15.

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