Where are you ringing in from?
I'm ringing in from Milwaukee, Wisconsin - hometown of the band. I moved back to Milwaukee about a year ago after living in New York for about ten years.

How did you find that?
I just did it for a change of pace. I don't think I'll be here forever. Next move will be to Tasmania. I like it down there.

Did you feel like a New York hipster returning to a sleepy home town?
Somewhat like that. Milwaukee has culture but it doesn't have the overwhelming amount of culture that New York City has - been then no place does. I mean even Tokyo doesn't have as much culture as New York does. New York is the cultural capital of the entire world as far as I'm concerned.

And Milwaukee is the home of the Violent Femmes and Happy Days…
The difference between the two is Violent Femmes are real (laughs). Happy Days is fictional…

Really?
Yeah, it was not a documentary (laughs).

You're doing a Tsunami benefit show soon and I was wondering if you had any connection with the disaster?
My wife is from Sri Lanka and her sister and her family were in the Tsunami but they survived. However, they only survived by climbing up into a tree and waiting for the water to subside. They came very close to getting washed off to sea and, although we don't know anyone who died in the Tsunami, it's obvious they need help with the re-building - you've seen the pictures. The money goes very far in Sri Lanka because of the economy there. Their per capita income is about maybe $1000 Australian dollars per year. Any money that gets sent can really be of a lot of help.

Who else is playing?
Sammy Llanas, the lead singer from the Bo-Deans. Do you know him? They've been down in Australia a couple of times.

Australian fans have always held the Violent Femmes to their hearts. Is that how it's felt to you?
Oh yeah. We've been going down there for close to twenty years now. We're committed to it. Australia was the first market where we really got treated like stars. You know what I mean? It was a special thing. People were following us around and would come to the hotel with flowers for us. We achieved a level of success in Australia and New Zealand earlier than we achieved the same kind of success even in the States - although the rest of the world eventually caught up. But Australia was first and we've always appreciated that and we've been loyal and we feel like people down there have been loyal too.

You're in a special category along with Abba, Blondie, Jeff Buckley, and Ben Harper…international artists that have been embraced by Australians before the world
That's right.

You played didgeridoo on a few of your solo records. Was it a hard instrument to learn?
I thought the breathing was going to be hard but it wasn't that hard. The first couple of times I went I was intimidated because it just looks like it's impossible. But the third time we went there, maybe '89 or '91, I was like, 'ok I'm gonna do this - I'm not going to be intimidated anymore.'

Have you applied it to your free jazz career?
No, actually I'm playing a lot of Japanese flute (shakuhachi) right now so I don't play the didgeridoo that much anymore because I don't want to mess up my ...

Isn't shakuhachi Japanese slang for oral sex?
That's one of the slang terminology so when I'm talking to some innocent Japanese women I have to explain I really do play flute before I say the word 'shakuhachi' because they might think I've got something else in mind. But they say that punning is the highest form of comedy so I like it. It's fun. You have these double meanings and when people are confused that's always funny.

You're the sounds man of the Violent Femmes and contribute to the songs in that way.
Generally Gordon has the basic idea for the song like the lyrics and melody and he brings it to me and Victor (DeLorenzo, drummer) and we work on it a little bit, figure out what kind of rhythm we could use for it, change the arrangement around, and give it some sort of structure. Then we just play it. Basically everyone plays what they want to play and it just usually works.

So why does the song credit usually go to Gordon when it's more of a band thing?
He's writing the songs, basically, but they'd be folk songs instead of rock songs if he was doing them by himself. Sometimes we contribute quite a bit to it and sometimes it's more in line with what he's already written.

Your solo career is quite a different beast to what's happening in the Violent Femmes…
Victor and I both have solo albums out and some of them are instrumental, some of them are vocal. We just kinda figure why should we make it sound like the Violent Femmes. There's no point in making solo records unless you're going to go off in different directions. We're interested in other kinds of music. I don't think people are ready for a Violent Femmes instrumental album but with a solo album it's a legitimate way to go.

What kind of fan has started with the Violent Femmes back in the early 80s and has bought ever record?
We have some fans like that but I'd say most of the fans have one or two of the albums and are casual fans like every band that's been around that long. But then we have people who have everything - all the guest appearances we've done and the compilations and all that. We accept any kind of fan. There are a lot of people who come to our shows that know nothing more than 'Blister in the Sun' but that's ok too because we just figure anything that gets them to the show is fine and then it's our job to entertain them.

How do you feel about playing 'Blister in the Sun' these days?
It's not my favourite song but it certainly could be worse than that. Can you imagine, oh my God, some of these other songs that people have to play every night? What if you were in Abba for example and doing something like 'Dancing Machine' or whatever that song was. 'Dancing Queen'. I couldn't do it.

Does 'Blister in the Sun' almost play itself?
We still have to play but once we get started the energy is so high from the crowd it would be very hard for us to stop it.

Did that song get instant recognition or has it grown into the beast it is over time?
Basically the song is kinda like a fanfare - as in the music. It's just rousing as soon as you hit the opening riff. It's always been popular with the fans but when we put out that first album most of the songs on that album were popular and it was only over the course of time that 'Blister in the Sun' became the trademark song.

What about 'Add it Up' and 'Kiss Off'?
With those songs you just mentioned it's a different story because they have sections for improvisation where we can stretch out and that keeps it alive for us. And the arrangements of those songs have changed a little bit more over the years than 'Blister in the Sun' for example. So those songs are a lot of fun to play because we can take them in different directions.

What do you think is the best use of your music in a film?
I haven't seen all of them - I've only heard about some films. I saw 'Grosse Point Blank' and at the end of the movie they used 'Blister in the Sun' to roll the credits over and I thought that was pretty effective. When a song is in a movie soundtrack sometimes it's just, like, someone turns on a radio in a car and you hear it for three seconds. That what it was like in 'The Crow'. Although that soundtrack sold a lot of copies and was good for us but in the movie you could barely pick out the song. Oh yeah we had a song called 'No More Heroes' which was a Stranglers song that we did for 'Mystery Men' and that was one of the high points of the movie and I thought that was a good use of one of our songs.

You've been credited as one of the Godfathers of Emo Rock. Do you feel like one of the Godfathers of Emo Rock?
I don't really know what emo is - I've heard about it before but what does it mean? Some kind of alternative rock music? What? People are complaining a lot?

What does it mean?
It's short for emotional but how can you describe just one genre of music as emotional? I would say it's all emotional.
Yeah, it's pretty hard to find that's not emotional.

A new genre has been created and you've been branded with it.
It's like retro fitting our concept to something that happened after. But what is an emo band? Which bands are emo bands?

Anything from Fugazi and Minor Threat to Pedro the Lion, Dashboard Confessional to Jack Johnson…
Oh, you know I met him (Jack Johnson) when we played in Australia last time. He was at the Byron Bay Blues & Roots Festival and he came up to me and he was, like, really happy to met us and talking about how much we had influenced him and how much he loved the Femmes. So, I guess maybe we've been an influence on some of those people. I haven't Dashboard Confessional very much but I think the drummer might've been influenced from what I've heard.

How many record labels have you notched up over the years?
How many record labels have we been with over the years? Just in Australia probably five or six plus the ones in America for another seven or eight. In Europe? I wouldn't know how many over there. It's been pretty chaotic - we haven't been able to keep all our eggs in one basket so to speak. We haven't been schmoozed by record companies enough. Usually we've been exploited by record companies. Once in a while we have a good relationship with somebody.

Tell us about the mp3 only album 'Something's Wrong' that you did a couple of years back?
It was about five years ago now. It was a big hit. It was interesting because I think different people are getting into that format. Personally I think everything should be available on the internet. You shouldn't even have to go through a record store.

Does that fit in with you making a living?
Ever since there's been downloading and file sharing our record sales have plummeted. I mean we were always very consistent for the first fifteen years of the band. The last five or six years things have really gone down and I contribute that to file sharing and people burning cds and that kind of stuff.

And you're ok with that?
I'd rather be making more money obviously but on the other hand I think it's inevitable and healthy for music to be more accessible. The more accessible it is the better it is. My allegiances are, well, I was a fan before I was a musician so as a fan I would like to be able to get any music I want, anytime I want. And you can't do that the way the conventional music industry is structured. The only way they're going to do that is if they continue developing this technology. My allegiances are as a fan first and even though it's against my own interests as a musician, in terms of making money and being commercial, I still have to think it's healthier.

When was the last time you were proud to be an American?
It's getting to be harder and harder. It's obvious that politically we're way off on the wrong track at this point but even more than that culturally America is losing a lot of its personality. What I would call the American personality is, like, rugged individualism, non-conformity, people who are brave - whether it's brave physically or brave artistically. A renegade mentality. America is getting to be more and more wimpy, more and more complacent. Subjecting themselves to a authoritarian mentality. I'm still proud to be an American and I still think it's a great place and it's certainly contributed to a lot to the world in the short time that it's been around. But I definitely think we're heading in the wrong direction.

¡Tarantula!
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©2005 Christopher Hollow