“We’re The Bastard Children Of Country”

The Sex Pistols. ‘Fucked-up shit’. Blokes in Kraftwerk tees... Lambchop are the country combo it’s OK to like. Jim Butler pulls up a chair in their local bar and finds in the shape of the band’s linchpin Kurt Wagner a self-proclaimed goofy champion of the everyday...

Tucked just behind the entrance to Nashville’s Springwater bar lies the following greeting/‌proclamation/disclaimer/warning: ‘Springwater Bar. A real neighbourhood bar. Where everybody knows your name and sometimes you wish they didn’t.’ An identikit ‘Cheers’ theme bar this most certainly isn’t. No, this is the bar where irony was still-born.

Perched somewhat incongruously along a road adjacent to the city’s Centennial Park (which houses its own Parthenon in an effort to further bolster Nashville’s endearing attempts to position itself as the ‘Athens of the South’), from the outside the Springwater resembles nothing more than an old run-down shack. The kind of drinking hole that doesn’t so much suggest ‘the end of the road’ as scream it by virtue of a ten foot high neon sign, with a resounding chorus thrown in by the grumpy barmaid’s union. Just to make sure you get the message, like. Nothing that awaits you inside comes close to dispelling this blurry view either.

Propping up the bar is the obligatory cap-carrying, plaid shirt-donning, demi-mullet-sporting, truck-driving loner. Probably called Murph. Behind the bar is the further ‘mood-enhancing’ barmaid, although there is nothing maiden-like about her. The complete polar opposite of the usual obsequious American bartender, she grunts and gruffs her way through her orders, just, it seems, because she can.

With two other patrons transfixed by the CBS Fox sports channel, the jukebox blaring out a curious Deep South combo of Johnny Cash, The Pixies, The Rolling Stones and Merle Haggard and it tipping down Rhinestone cowboys and honky tank women outside, there’s the distinct feeling that even at 2pm things could get messy.

Kurt Wagner just takes it all in and lets out a wry smile – a smile that suggests that nothing he witnesses in this bar could ever faze him. That’s because for ten years, from 1986, Kurt and his ever-expanding band of musical renegades, Lambchop, called the Springwater home.

“This place would be packed,” the perma-cap wearing one reminisces, a glint in his eye. “Because it was the one place where anyone who was thoroughly ignored by the rest of Nashville could come on the third Saturday of the month and just play. Back then of course it was called the Springwater Supper Club and Lounge, ‘cause they had to serve this scary food in order to sell beer. I tell you, it was a wild scene, with all kinds of fucked-up shit, but it was great.”

Wow. Back up a minute. Country music? Nashville? Jockey Slut? Surely someone took a wrong turn at Philadelphia? What business has a magazine that proclaims itself to be about ‘disco pogo for punks in pumps’ have in Nashville, Tennessee? Nashvegas? Tacksville? Dollywood? And well you might ask.

Then again, reverse the question. Why shouldn’t we be here? Why shouldn’t music be about inclusivity rather than the insidious fascistic rhetoric of exclusivity? Why is it so hard for people to accept that the gently affecting, simply effective, soulful legacy bequeathed by such luminaries as Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder should have been picked up by a bunch of Deep South twisted country layabouts? It’s all about perspective perhaps. Or better still, spirit. An indefinable spirit that makes all music, regardless of its beats per minute or frenzied feedback, soul music. If you don’t believe it, check your record collections.

To paraphrase Bill Hicks, all the music that has changed your lives is soul music, because it’s played from the heart. It provokes thought (of course so do S Club 7, but then that’s another matter). That’s why Lambchop deserve to be in Jockey Slut, because they exemplify the spirit of great music. That, and the fact that they sound wicked coming down at six in the morning.

 “I think we’re all ... I don’t know what it is... astonished, I guess. A little set aback, I guess, because we just get together and do what we do. We don’t really think about it, other than us getting together and playing music.”

Sat to the left of the gauche purple stage where Lambchop made their debut 15 years ago, Kurt Wagner is trying to explain why he feels the UK’s dance scene has picked up on his band’s idiosyncratic slant on leftfield country soul. He’s not doing very well.

“Maybe it’s the soul thing, maybe it’s the country thing. Maybe it’s this uniquely southern US thing. I’ve often scratched my head and tried to figure out why we do so well in Europe at all,” he laughs, seemingly not coming any closer to an answer.

What can be said though, without fear of contradiction, is that was Lambchop’s sixth album, last year’s astounding ‘Nixon’, that prompted the current wave of interest in King Kurt and his Wagnerian chants. Drenched in a welcoming blend of country, soul, gospel, blues, hillbilly and bluegrass, it quickly became a panacea to all those repetitive beats, a soothing balm to a hard night’s partying. Urging us to ‘come on undone’ on ‘Up With People’ and ‘get closer to the ground/closer to that thing you found’ on ‘The Old Gold Shoe’, the rural idyll of America’s Southern states never sounded so alluring. A fact confirmed when Zero 7 transformed the spiritual strains of the aforementioned ‘Up With People’ into something fast approaching a glorious hymn of redemption.

“Yeah, I liked that,” Kurt coos. “The more radical the deconstruction the better really. I find that to be the most interesting.”

In short it’s wide-eyed wonderful stuff. Like Chris Rock’s magical character Rufus says in Kevin Smith’s vastly underrated religious romp ‘Dogma’, it’s about an idea. Not a belief, but an idea. Beliefs cause division, beliefs lead to people missing out on so much great music because they believe, erroneously, certain musics have nothing to offer them. Lambchop’s idea is a simple one. One that finds beauty, despair, anger and revulsion in the mundane minutiae of life. One that looks to harmony instead of divisiveness.

It’s an idea that being away from the cynical and media savvy centres of life allows Kurt and co to revel in not being subjected to what is hip, or cool, or...

“Yeah, I like the fact that we’re kinda naïve. There’s something nice about that, it allows you to be more yourself,” he grins.

So this naivete is carried over into the music then?

“Yeah, but then I’ve always thought that our goofiness was part of what we are. There’s nothing wrong with being a little on the goofy side.”

The night before the Springwater, Jockey Slut gets a chance to see Kurt’s simple existence in full view. And this is what we see. Stacks of CDs taking in all styles, from John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ to The Breeders’ ‘Last Splash’; ‘The Philadelphia Story’ and the first series of ‘The Sopranos’ on DVD; a painting of Hank Williams; a Bill Clinton doll, which, so the unopened packet proclaims, ‘bobs his head when touched’, and a dead ringer Samuel L Jackson John Shaft figurine, also unopened. On the kitchen table is a book, ‘How To Raise A Puppy’ as Kurt and his wife Mary have just acquired a new dog, Sidney, to go with their two other canine friends Jack and Lucy. There in the corner is the painting that adorns the cover of ‘Nixon’, its innocence amplified in these surroundings. And finally, out there on the porch, two rocking chairs, where, Kurt wilfully admits, he does most of his writing. Just watching the world go by, a little bit of dog nannying and a little bit of strumming on the old six-string.

“It’s just what’s going on in my boring little life,” he understates. “It’s not anything more than that. You’ve only been here a short while, but you must have noticed that there’s not a whole lot going on, so you have to look in your own backyard.”

And as if to underline how simple his life is, he later excuses himself from dinner early, because – wait for it – he has to go to band practice. Genius. Priceless. Both.

Back when Kurt was at college some 20 years ago and 200 miles down the road in Memphis, he got the chance to go and check out a British punk group who were causing something of a stir at the time.

“All my friends went,” he cackles. “They came and knocked on my door, but I was working on a project for school and I was like, ‘Oh they’re gonna be back’. Can you believe that? I stayed in to finish a project rather than go to see The Sex Pistols. ‘Cause of course they never came back; it was their only US tour.”

Despite being a wonderful anecdote, there’s something uniquely Lambchop about such a tale. Something about being on the outside looking in. You get the feeling that Lambchop are more of a band for Kurt not having seen Rotten and Vicious. Keeps the innocence, the idea alive.

Whatever, moving to Memphis initiated a love affair with his adopted hometown’s (originally from Brooklyn, Kurt moved to Nashville when he was two) indigenous music.

“Discovering Elvis, Sun Studios and their relationship with Nashville meant that when I moved back I realised there was a lot of cool shit here,” he notes. “Initially I didn’t appreciate country music at all, but when I became a teenager and started hanging out in bluegrass bars it started to make more sense. This was the time when The Flying Burrito Brothers were going on. So, all of a sudden watching these dope smoking hippies playing country music was like, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool in an ironic kinda way.’  I definitely appreciated the irony being the smart-assed kid that I was. So, when Lambchop started we recognised that we were an extension of that culture.  It was us using our environment.  Even if we are the bastard children of country.”

So, what is it you get from country?

“It’s just real stuff.  The fact that it comes from people’s experiences.  It’s just roots music.  Country is kind of a hick soul music.”

Back in Springwater, attention is diverted when CNN announces that George W Bush has started bombing Iraq, making OutKast’s recent hit ‘Bombs Over Baghdad’ eerily prescient. Kurt just shakes his head in disgust.

“‘Oh, my daddy did it, so I’ve got to do it too,”’ he mocks.

Before long the long-suffering sports fans demand that the golf is turned back on, causing our barmaid to utter: “Golf over the bombing? That’s just retarded.”

Yet in a bar where Kurt is now talking to an Alexi Salas-like (mid-90s Yank footballer) tree surgeon about the merits of ‘South Park’, it makes perfectly skewed sense.

“Did you see it the other night?” the doppelganger implores. “Kenny G and Yoko Ono were both in it. I tell you there’s nothing more to do on a Wednesday night than kick back, get stoned and watch ‘South Park’.”

His mate, an old work colleague of Kurt’s, who’s wearing a Kraftwerk T­shirt yet sports the same slacker stoner veneer, just giggles away. It really is that kind of a bar. A contradiction.

Just like Lambchop. For here is a band that weld the conservative licks of country with the life-affirming joys of soul. A band that takes rock’n’roll and quietens it down by simply adding more members (17 at last count). A band that is loved by the dance community without ever conceding to four-four beats and a strictly hedonistic lifestyle. It’s the simple contradictions of music, of life. Take the blinkers off, Lambchop seem to be saying. Join us. It’s lovely over here.

“To me it’s all about interesting music,” Kurt says, slugging back on his Sam Adams. “It’s either good or bad. Simple.”

Simple it is. Because before style, before cool, before anything, there’s that idea. All it takes is that leap of faith. As the man himself angelically sings, ‘come on undone...’

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