Quintaine Americana – Decade of the Brain – Interview

Quintaine Americana

Decade of the Brain (CherryDisc)
An interview with vocalist/guitarist Rob Dixon and drummer Jason King
by Scott Hefflon

Conducted at the Sligo in lovely Davis Square, Somerville. Called “The Paris of the ’90s” by some. Those who’ve obviously spent very little time here.

So how come Marc (bass) couldn’t make it?
Jason: I’m not sure if it’s a disease or a syndrome, but it’s called Jerpeenus. It flares up about every three months or so, and, while I’m not sure if they’re fully functional penises or not, they certainly look like it. They sprout out of different parts of his body. He’s got a small one sticking out of his neck right now.

Does he have them removed? Is there an over the counter cream for this?
Jason: They usually just recede after a while.

Rob: He knows lots of girls.

I take it you mean in the biblical sense. I thought you said he was working tonight?
Rob: He is. At his other job.

Out of curiosity, what is that on the cover?
Rob: Some kind of engine. We don’t really know. But it’s good to look at when you’re stoned, ’cause then you can see these two dudes here on the left. Little apparitions that only appear out of nowhere. It looks like some kind of record player, but it’s really huge.

And the title, Decade of the Brain, is written on the inside but not on the out. How arty of you.
Rob: That was intentional.

Have you guys ever hearda Warrior Soul? They had an album called Last Decade, Dead Century that was written kinda like that.
Rob: I saw Warrior Soul with Cobalt 60 years ago at the Paradise. The guy came out with all this David Coverdale hair and the jacket with all those frills hangin’ off it… Anyway, we also realized if we put the title on the inside, we could make the band name even bigger on the front cover.

What’s the name mean, anyway?
Rob: Not much, really. Marc’s really into horror and sci-fi, and there was this character in a Tales from the Crypt movie named Billy Quintaine. He was dead, only he didn’t realize it, and he wouldn’t leave people alone, and they couldn’t tell what he was saying…

What’s that say about the band?
Rob: I dunno. Marc just liked the sound of it. He invented these characters, Billy Quintaine and Johnny Americana, and they had all these tales…

Jason: They were not very nice.

Rob: They would throw lit matches into baby carriages

Jason: Stuff as many garden vegetables in their asses as they could.

And I noticed the artwork that accompanies each of the songs.
Rob: Not every one, but most of ’em. They were done by Ian Adams from 8-Ball Shifter.

Jason: He’s helped us out immensely over the last few years.

Rob: I told him what the songs were about, and told him roughly what I wanted him to draw, and he did the rest.

Jason: He did a damn good job too, and quick. Especially the guy in jail. He is not happy.

Rob: Each of the songs is a story, so I guess I wanted to give little visual hints. We didn’t necessarily put the illustrations in the exact order of the songs, either.

Are the lyrics handwritten?
Rob: I wrote it. Last time, I just brought notebooks in and we scanned them. This time, I had to rewrite a few of them ’cause there were so many cross-outs. We still left a few fuck-ups in, just to look authentic.

Jason: I like how the front is all nice an’ pretty an’ shit, but then when you open it up, it’s all hand-written white trash with grungy pictures an’ stuff.

Rob: Kinda like the Nick Cave book of lyrics and poems Henry Rollins put out (on 2-13-61). It’s got copies of the first time he wrote the shit down, with all these cross-outs and lines drawn between stuff. What the fuck was that?

Jason: I think some dude wanted to come back here, but then he saw us and took off.

Rob: He had tits.

We’re in Somerville, that was a local. This is my new ill-lit, back-asswards watering hole. I used to do interviews at The Rat, The Liberty Cafe, or The Middle East, but two outta three of them have gone under…
Jason: I think we’re going to do all the rest of our interviews at The Castle Bar in Brighton. They’ve got $2.50 Guinness drafts, and it’s the best Guinness in town. They’ve got this jukebox with old Patsy Cline and Sinatra shit, and they get all these old Irish motherfuckers in there ’til five o’clock. There’s not a female in the place ‘less you take one in with ya. All these guys, playing fuckin’ Sinatra on the jukebox, hammered, drinkin’ Budweiser outta glasses this fuckin’ big, fallin’ down, singin’…

There were two songs on Decade of the Brain about drinking, “Shakes” and…
Rob: “…And They Were Drinkin'”?

Jason: Which is actually not the real name of the song. And “Shakes” we don’t play live.

Rob: The original title was “You Can’t Say Pigfucker in Front of Jesus,” but they wouldn’t let us list it like that. I was going to subtitle it in the lyric sheets, but I forgot.

Why don’t you play “Shakes” live?
Rob: We weren’t even going to put it on the record.

Jason: We didn’t really even have any lyrics for it, but we recorded it and liked the way it came out.

Rob: The vocals have all these effects on them, so it’d be really hard to do live.

One live show I’ll always remember, even though I don’t remember very much of it, was The Redneck Fest at the Middle East. All sorts of free booze and drinks, great bands, and a lot of bands just jammin’ and havin’ fun, and every photo-op bloodsucker in town dressed their best, smilin’ and shakin’ hands, tellin’ each other how cool they are…
Jason: We played. Oh yeah, we played.

Rob: How much free booze did you drink?

Jason: You must’ve been there early. Everyone comes to our shows early ’cause we almost always have free beer, then everyone’s hammered by the time we go on. We have to headline the motherfucker ’cause no one else wants to do it. We played that night, at about one, one-thirty.

Rob: We didn’t play very well, but we did play.

Jason: Marc was so drunk that night, he fell down on stage. He only remembered one bar of a song, then he fell down and fell off stage.

Rob: We actually have it on film, and he looked good doing it.

That show worked pretty well with your image…
Jason: It’s pretty true. We’re not real fuckin’ rednecks or anything, but we’re pretty goddamn close. It’s hard to get away from that shit once you’re born and raised in it.

You have a record release party coming up sometime, right?
Rob: Yeah, we’re having four or five out-of-town bands play: Porter from Pennsylvania, Duvalvy Brothers from Cleveland. They have a CD out on Rocky from Craw’s label, Cambodia, and I think they have another one due out real soon. Another band that’s playing is Beef from Albany. They sound kinda like Mule, that country, nasty, drunken rock, but they’re smart. And we wanted to get Like Hell from Minneapolis, but they’re going to be in Canada or something.

It’s always surprised me that Boston has such a tight knit cluster of bands, you, Scissorfight, Honkeyball, and Otis (R.I.P), probably more than most other cities this size, yet none of you have really cracked the national market. We have a gold mine of heavy, country-fried, shit-kickin’ and hard-drinking rock, and it’s just sittin’ here unmined. Scissorfight is a little more slash-and-burn deathneck, and you guys have more space, kinda like the second Clutch album, but the A&R ears seem to be deaf to some scorching, angry-ass, dirty-sounding, bottom-heavy rock’n’fuckin’roll…
Jason: There aren’t many people working ’em, from the management end, so it’s really hard to get outta here. But if any of us do, who knows what’ll happen?

At least you got Shellac’s Bob Weston to finally get your live sound on tape. It’s especially noticeable in the bass sound that just fuckin rips…
Jason: We’ve had that bass sound the whole time, we just couldn’t capture it on tape.

Rob: It’s hard to translate LOUD onto tape.

Jason: I’m really surprised Weston picked up on that without ever seeing us live. When he came in, he said, “Wow, that sounds like my bass sound.” And Marc was like, “Naw, I think you’ve been coppin’ my shit.”

I also find it ironic that the album’s called Decade of the Brain, but your music sounds like pure gut.
Jason: And bowel.