JPT SCARE BAND
Questions asked by Jon Wilde, added to Rock Realms 8th June 2010.
JPT Scare Band - Terry Swope, Paul Grigsby and Jeff Littrell - formed in the early 1970s and have been steadily releasing records since the early 1990s. Their latest album - Acid Blues is the White Man's Burden - is a compilation of unreleased tracks.
All three guys answers questions...
Hi Guys, thanks for taking a moment to answer these questions. Hope you are well?
Paul: Doing good Jon. Thanks for the memory jog.
Jeff: We are doing extremely well, very excited about being on a label again. The moguls at Ripple Music have rescued us from painful obscurity. Our original label, Monster Records imploded and simply disappeared after heavy craziness and the suicide of one of the founding partners.
We have been doing our best to carry on with our own little indie label, Kung Bomar Records. However, we have no jack for promo or advertising and we really aren't very good at that sort of thing. We are very good at making scary music, but not so great at running an indie record label. Still... we have put out four CDs since Monster blew up and disappeared. We think they are pretty good, but we have not been able to promote them or distribute them properly.
I know you guys have been going for, ahem, a few years now, but could you give us an idea of how and when the band originally formed?
Paul: The first time we got together and kicked it out was at a rehearsal for a different band. Jeff was playing Frank’s drums and the three of us started playing stuff Terry wrote and just jammed it out in “A” or “E” until the other band members showed up for practice. It felt good.
Jeff: It's a long story and has been covered in our 2001 interview at StonerRock.com. We were the backup band for a lady named Carol Cruise and I was the keyboard player and Frank Infranca was the drummer. Carol lived in a big mansion and she had a practice room where we rehearsed. She would cook supper for Terry and Paul and I and Frank was not in the same starving mode, so he didn't show up until after supper. While we waited for Frank to show up, I would get on Frank's drums and the three of us discovered that we had a magic telepathic togetherness when we jammed. At some point, we got too heavy for Carol and we went off on our own. We moved into a big old house on the wrong side of the racial divide In Kansas City, MO and we literally lived for playing and jamming. Luckily, our recording engineer, Greg Gassman also lived at our house and he recorded a lot of the jams on a Sony TC-366 reel to reel tape recorder. The rest is history.
What was the musical climate like back when you started, and how does it compare to today?
Terry: Back then we were just a bunch of young kids with lots of energy and the desire to play music. We had other interests but they were eclipsed by our devotion to jamming in the basement. Today music has slipped down the charts so to speak. We all have other interests and commitments to tend to now.
Paul: The music climate offered stout competition in those days. There were tons of excellent bands writing lots of incredible songs. We were a minor blip on the radar playing nonstructured telepo; lots of volume and distortion.
Jeff: In KC, in 1973, there was still quite a hippie vibe going on. The scene was pretty psychedelic and we dived right into all of that. We had a lot of friends who were great musicians and our house, which we called the Electric House, was a magnet for jam minded freaks. It was a heck of a lot of fun, with lots of wild nights filled with wild music and wild women. Again, we were very fortunate that Greg Gassman was there to turn on the tape machine. We had another friend and mentor, Rocky Van Rude (pronounced "Rudy"), who owned a concert sound company. At some point, he loaned us a 24 channel Traynor mixing console and a bunch of mics and our recordings got a whole lot better. A lot of things just seemed to converge at that place at that time. Eventually, the scene at the Electric House got so chaotic that it could not be sustained. We all bailed out and landed in a couple of new places, the Boogie Barn and the Stone House on Crooked Road. A lot of the classic 1970s material released by Monster Records was recorded in the dining room of the Stone House on Crooked Road outside of Parkville, MO. On the new Acid Blues record, "Amy's Blue Day" was recorded in the basement of the Electric House in late 1973 or early 1974 and "Stone House Blues" was recorded in the dining room of the Stone House on Crooked Road in 1975.
Who were your early inspirations, both musical and otherwise?
Terry: I loved the Beatles most of all. Mainly because they transcended styles and genres to create something unique. Guitar wise Jimi Hendrix, Leslie West and Jeff Beck were big influences early on. One of my favourites was my schoolmate Joe Clyne. I learned a great deal about guitar craft from him.
Paul: Lots of different types of music influenced me. Classical, jazz, blues and lots of musical soundtracks my folks played. I got off on the Blues Breakers and Yardbirds, Steve Winwood and others from that period like Vanilla Fudge got me very inspired. I liked the swashbuckler movies with Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn; those movies strong on populism. The Beatles, Stones, Airplane, Cream, Jimi… the list goes on and on.
Jeff: Beatles, Stones, Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Deep Purple, Traffic, Spirit, Black Sabbath, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Miller, Frank Zappa, Steely Dan, Jeff Beck, Blind Faith, Derek and the Dominoes, Bloodrock and blues guys with the last name of King, such as Albert, B.B. and Freddy. Sometimes when I listen to one of our jams from the 1970s, I will say to myself, "Hmmm... Terry borrowed that lick from Dave Mason on the Alone Together album. Dave stole it from Eric Clapton who stole it from Albert King."
Was your early sound an organic entity, or did you make very deliberate decisions about what direction you wanted to go in?
Terry: All sound is organic, otherwise you would not be able to perceive it, As far as directions and decisions we did our best to sort through the layers only to find the music chose us.
Paul: Yeah, pretty organic. I remember most of it being nonverbal most of the time. We would steal chords from neck position. We played really loud so that was the easiest way to track down the key of the moment. We did sit down and write a song from time to time. Burn in Hell was one of those. Terry and I started this one on a noisy Saturday night. We were in the living room of the Electric House, playing along with lots of gun shots, sirens and helicopters all adding lots of ambience to the writing session.
Jeff: Organic is a good word for it, though at the time, we didn't really think much about it. We did know that there was magic and we did realize that it was telepathic and we also knew that is was very very scary. It was scary because it was dark and demented and it was also scary because it was so damned tight and most of the time, we just took off and had no freaking idea where it was going to go. As Paul says, we occasionally would do a song that had verses and choruses, but a lot of it was freeform, with Terry making up the lyrics as we went along.
Have you ever actively chased commercial success, or have you always been “yourselves” and hoped people would dig what you were doing?
Terry: We've charted a rather haphazard course that can only be described as "spirit-led." More than anything else JPT was always about having fun and just letting the notes pour out.
Paul: We just played the way we know how to play. I think the three of us were starving for whatever kind of music that was coming out of us onto tape. We certainly weren’t analytical about what we played. We just had this visceral connection when the music got loud enough.
Jeff: Sometimes we don't know whether to think of it as a blessing or a curse, but we never really thought much about trying to promote the band or make money from the music. Back in the 1970s, we were mostly into activities that started with the letter, "F," Fun being one of the major ones. You can guess at another big one. We never had a manager, never had a producer, never really played much out in public. We did a few gigs at a big Sunday hippie party at Volker Park in Kansas City, MO in 1974 and 1975. But even at those gigs, we didn't use the Scare Band name and we usually had some of our jamming buddies playing with us. I think that sometimes we called ourselves the Separate Reality Boogie Band when we played at Volker Park. There is some old 8mm movie film from the Volker Park gigs in the video for "Ramona" from our Jamm Vapour CD.
Can you think of any reason why you aren’t ‘bigger’? Some of the material you’ve recorded over the years sounds amazing!
Terry: People usually don't notice something unless it is pounded very forcefully into their brains. There has been no outcry for the Scareband because no corporate entity has put its resources into promoting us.
Paul: No exposure, not marketing, no money, nowhere to play the stuff, just for a few reasons. :^)
Jeff: Again, back in the 1970s, we just didn't try to promote the band much. We were satisfied with having a lot of fun and jamming with our friend. When we got back together in the 1990s and started recording again, we wanted to promote the band, but didn't know how and basically left it up to the Monster Record dudes. When the Sleeping Sickness CD came out in 2000, we started getting significant airplay on college FM radio on the east coast of the USA, including WFMU and WNYU in New York and WFMO in Medford, Massachusetts. We got pretty amped up about that and told the guys at Monster Records that this was it, this was the turning point. The response from our record label was both amazing and amazingly frustrating. They basically told us that we really weren't all that big of a deal and that we would never sell more than a few hundred copies of any records we made. They did absolutely nothing about following up on the fact that we were being played on some big ass radio stations in New Freaking York. There are still bitter feelings about that episode amongst some of the boyz in the band. I guess most acts have a love/hate relationship with their record label, at least that's what it seems like after reading Rolling Stone magazine for many years. That's one really positive aspect of our relationship with our new label, Ripple Music. These guys really seem to want to promote the heck out of the band and our contract with them even has a paragraph in it that has some old school hippie peace and love language in it.
Onto the new album... When did you start putting it together?
Terry: This new collection draws from all the different eras of our history. It only exists because the brave lads at Ripple felt compelled to seek us out.
Paul: I guess it was about a year ago. It took a while to EQ some of the tracks that lost low end and picked up hiss.
Jeff: It actually started on a tripped out night in late 1973 or early 1974 in the basement at the Electric House. We filled up one side of a 1/4 inch, quarter track reel to reel tape that night. The tape box is labeled, "JPT Scare Band" and "Cosmic Concerto" on the front of the box. On the rear, Side One is labeled, "The Acid Acetate Excursion includes Theme From The Monster’s Holiday as performed by the JPT Scare Band." That was the first time we had referred to ourselves as the Scare Band. "Amy's Blue Day" was the third jam recorded that night.
Is the material on “Acid Blues Is the White Man's Burden” newly recorded versions of older tracks, re-produced older tracks, older tracks in their original form, or a combination there-of?
Jeff: It's like gumbo, there's a little bit of everything in there. Some of it came from the Jamm Vapour sessions in 2001, some of it was recorded in the basement of the Electric House in the early 1970s, some of it was done in the dining room of the Stone House on Crooked Road in the middle 1970s and some of it was taken from the Rumdum Daddy Sessions, which began in 2004 and which have been messed with and updated until the very recent present. The version of "I've Been Waiting" on the new record is the third time we have done that one. The first is a 1975 version from one of the Monster Record vinyl LPs and reprised on the Sleeping Sickness CD, the second was recorded in 1993 at the infamous, "reunion session" at Chapman Studios in KC and the one on the Acid Blues album is from the Rum Dum Daddy sessions. It is interesting to see how it has evolved over the years. There are other jams out there with multiple versions. There are two versions of "Wino." One is from the 1993 Chapman Studio reunion session and is found on the Past is Prologue CD. The other was recorded in the basement of the Electric House in 1975 and can only be found on a very rare JPT bootleg titled, Echos Of The Everland.
Why the decision to put the album together, and who instigated it?
Terry: That is a question that can only be answered by the guardians of Ripple Music. Somehow the cosmos sent a beam of pink energy directly into their pineal crevice that instigated the entire process.
Paul: Our friends at Ripple Music, Todd and Pope John were key in that decision. Thanks guys!
Jeff: There is another fairly obscure JPT Scare Band bootleg called Acid Blues Is The White Man's Burden. The moguls at Ripple got a hold of a copy in their pre-mogul days and they decided that this was the greatest album title of all time. At least, that's what they told us. Somehow, this moment of clarity was the foundation of their insane decision to start a brand new record label in 2009. There are only a couple of tunes from the bootleg on the Ripple Music CD and vinyl. A lot of the bootleg featured tunes recorded when members of the group served as backup band for Jerry Wood, a semi-legendary white bluesman from Wichita, Kansas. Jerry Wood and Mike Finnigan put out a terrific blues rock album in 1972 on the Blue Thumb label called, Crazed Hipsters. Excellent record and the boyz in JPT learned the old Son House tune, "Death Letter" from the Crazed Hipster album.
How would you describe the style of the album, and how does it compare to your other releases?
Terry: It is a lovely Pandora's box. Once you open it up a change will come upon you. I think it compares most favourably with Past Is Prologue, another agglomeration from our sundry past.
Paul: I think this LP is in the same vein as Past is Prologue; at least from my vantage point. Like I said there’s a lot of time lapse from beginning to end, years!
Jeff: Acid Blues Rock Power Trio Jamm Band. Hard and Heavy. The new Acid Blues album is somewhat similar to Past Is Prologue, as it contains tracks from all chronological eras of JPT Scare Band.
Do you have any favourite tracks on the album?
Paul: 'New Orleans' was kind of fun. I remember that day pretty well, I think. We were quite lubricated and medicated for play and the volume was at that point where the knobs won’t go further to the right. We were having a lot of fun and were singing and screaming into dead microphones. It’s always been something we deal with since we played so loud when recording. We never had any monitors for vocals. You just sang into the mic and hope you were hitting your notes okay.
Jeff: I actually like 'em all. "Death Letter," "I've Been Waiting," Acid Blues," and "Not My Fault" are particular favourites. "Long Day" is also excellent. Heck... like I said, I really like all the tracks on this record. None of them make me cringe.
Is this a good starting point for someone looking to get into JPT Scare Band, or do you always recommend people buy your entire back catalogue just in case? ;)
Terry: I strongly encourage the enlightened listener to explore our front catalogue first. That's what your frontal lobe is for.
Paul: By all means, people should buy the entire catalog. You can’t get the total picture of our evolution without it. (Maybe buy 2 copies of each in case one wears out).
Jeff: This is a perfect starting point for the uninitiated. The entire back catalogue is, of course, mandatory, as are some of the bootlegs. Echos of The Everland features the unreleased 23 minute freeform psychedelic masterpiece, "Theme From The Monster's Holiday," recorded in the basement of the Electric House in 1973 or 1974. It also features the 1975 version of "Wino." We have had some discussions with the moguls at Ripple Music about getting Monster's Holiday out on a real record.
Can we expect to see another album full of brand new material any time soon?
Terry: Soon is such a harsh word. Let's just say JPT is always creating and archiving. At some point a new nexus will be created.
Paul: I hope so. The Rumdum album was the beginning of a long, early 70’s déjà vu of the vibe. I am working my way through that right now. I’ve got about a half dozen ideas so it’s about time to get together with Terry and Jeff to expand on them.
Jeff: The boyz seem to go dormant for a time and then suddenly burst out with a new batch of madness without warning. Paul and I were on the phone today discussing new tunes. He has some new ones and I have written one called, "Mysteries Of The Universe," that I would like to get recorded. Terry is actually the master songwriter for the band. He can always be counted on to come up with great new tunes. When we were getting ready for the Rumdum Daddy sessions, he claimed that he had nothing, but when we got set up at Max Berry's studio in KC in 2004, he brought "Don't Wanna Know," "Rat Poison For The Soul," "Bookends Jamm," and "Acid Blues Is The White Man's Burden." Not bad for a dude whose well he claimed had run dry.
Do you plan to head out on the road and play some of this music live?
Terry: All we need is the right situation. As always the problem is fiduciary.
Paul: You never know what could happen. I love to play live and loud, there’s nothing like it.
Jeff: Again, we have no manager, no booking agent and we haven't been out there in a while. We are waiting for the phone to ring with the offer to play Bonaroo or Coachella. The damn thing never rings. I have no doubt that we can definitely tear some faces off if we ever get the chance.
What is a JPT Scare Band show like?
Terry: We love playing live. We enjoy being spontaneous and letting the moment move us. If you like maniacs getting their groove on then you'll be happy at a JPT concert.
Paul: Beats me. If we do one I’ll try to get a video of it and then we will know for sure.
Jeff: Except for the Volker Park gigs, very intimate and VERY VERY LOUD.
Any question you love being asked that I’ve missed? If so, what’s the answer?
Terry: I think the seminal question is why do we let the assholes run the world? Julius Caesar, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and George Bush are but a few of the worthless jerks that have done great harm to humanity. I can't figure out why anyone would listen to them.
Jeff: Does Life imitate Art, or is Art a reflection of Life?
The answer is, "Yes, definitely."
What are you up to once you’ve finished answering these questions?
Paul: Strap on the eb3 and work on those chops man!
Jeff: I believe I will have an adult malt beverage and listen to some loud music.
Anything else you would like to mention?
Terry: Thanks for bring us into the world of Rock Realms. We wish you all the best.
Paul: You know, it’s incredibly cool that two crazy guys in LA believe in our stuff enough to do an album and not just a CD but a double vinyl album AND a CD. I’m a fan, full speed ahead!!
Jeff: Believe in yourself. Never give up. Never surrender.
Thanks again to Terry for his time. For more info about Acid Blues is the White Man's Burden, check out the Ripple Music website - http://www.ripple-music.com/.
http://www.myspace.com/jptscareband
