Teen Idols
(Honest Don’s)
An interview with guitarist Phillip Hill
by Scott Hefflon
You have a tour coming up with NOFX, right?
Yeah, we just got off a tour we’ve been on since November 6th (interview conducted in mid-January), so we’re home for three weeks doing weekend shows, then we leave February 6th for California. We’ll be out with NOFX ’til March 8th. We’re starting in Vancouver, Canada, then coming down through Seattle, Portland, then through Arizona, Texas, Florida, then a few dates in the South. Back home for us.
It makes a lot of sense for you to be playing with NOFX.
Yeah, being signed to Honest Don’s, Fat Mike’s new label. They’ve been really good to us. When we were out in California the last time, we met with Mike, though we haven’t met the rest of the band yet. But Mike was super cool, he played golf with our singer, Keith, and they hit it off really well. Just to mention another punk rock heavy hitter, I believe it was Ben Weasel who brought you to the attention of Honest Don’s in the first place. Right. We wrote back and forth with Ben and sent him a few of our older records. When he came through Tennessee with the Riverdales, we opened up for him. We met up face to face and swapped records. Several months later, I came home from work one day and there was a message on my answering machine from Ben saying he was interested in producing a few new acts, and he wanted us to be first. He was actually shooting for a 7″ on Fat, because Honest Don’s was still really new at the time. But when Fat Mike heard an old 7″, he wanted to hear a demo of what the material would sound like since we’d had all the line up changes. We went into Sonic Iguana with Mass Giorgini, and Fat Mike liked it enough to sign us to an album deal on Honest Don’s. It’s a two album deal.
While you’re obviously more on the inside, Honest Don’s has a really great roster, and I hear they really take care of their bands.
Oh yeah, I think they’re going to be a really big contender in the near future. All the bands they’re signing are really great, and all the products they’re putting out are super. They’re such cool people, too. They’re the kind of label that’s really hands-on with their bands. They like their bands to be friends with each other, they like to hang out and get to know the bands personally. It’s not a business atmosphere, but they know what they’re doing. It’s not at all stuffy, everyone’s totally laid-back and cool.
You’re at a bit of a disadvantage because you’re so far away from the label and the other bands geographically.
Very true. We’re one of the only bands that’s not from the West Coast. But everyone was really nice when we were out there. We’re bigger on the East Coast and we’ve only been out to California twice, but that’s going to change. The tours that they’re setting up for us are going to help us a whole lot.
Speaking of locale, how did you form a punk band in Nashville?
People have a lot misconceptions about Nashville and the South in general; they don’t think we know what punk is. I got into the scene when I was 12, in ’86, when I was a skater in junior high. All the skaters used to go to punk shows on the weekends, so I kinda fell into it that way. Once I discovered the music, I knew that’s all I ever wanted to do. I got a guitar for my 13th birthday, and I’ve been in tons of bands ever since. Lots of people [band members] just aren’t serious about it, but I never gave up, and it’s finally starting to pay off.
When were the Teen Idols born?
We’ve been around since ’92, so we’re not really a new band, we’re just finally being discovered by everybody else.
You’ve had quite a few line-up changes, right?
Oh yeah. We’ve had 11 different members. You’ve just got to weed out the bad ones ’til you find the right situation. I think everyone we have now is really solid. We’ve been together for a year and a half, and we’re all good friends. We love touring and being on the road together. This, musically, is the strongest line-up we’ve ever had. Keith, our singer, has been in the band for two, two and a half years; our bass player, Heather, has been in about a year and a half, and our new drummer, Matt, has been in for about a year and a half. He was in a band called the Half-Links, who people on the West Coast might know ’cause they toured with the Parasites and they lived in Berkeley for a short time. I was impressed that he moved to Nashville from Philly or Jersey to play in a punk band. We toured together once, and as we were having trouble with our drummer, he was having trouble with his band. So he said he’d move down, and I was like, “Yeah, right. Whatever.” But he did it, and he’s been with us ever since. But with the exception of Matt, everyone else is homegrown Nashville.
You’ve got a lot of home pride. How much of your sound is due to where you live?
The rhythms to our songs are not always 1-2-3-4, we have a bit of a shuffle in there. That may come from being raised surrounded by country music. My mom works for TNN, The Nashville Network, and has worked in the country music business for 30 years. I grew up listening to the Grand Ol’ Oprey and old rockabilly-type stuff. That probably rubs off on the style of punk that I write.
That combined with the obvious Ramones’ style, both musical and visual…
And ’80s California punk bands like the Descendents and Bad Religion.
I also picked up hints of Lookout!-era Green Day. A rather specific style of melodic hook and harmonies. Unlike numerous early-to-mid ’90s pop/punk, while you use a lot of harmonies, they work with the song instead of as a tacked-on bonus feature.
I know what you mean. We come at music from more of a rock angle. It’s not a contest to see how fast the drums can be, or how many lyrics and harmonies we can cram into a song, it’s more of a sound we’re going for. While being very melodic, it has a lot of aggression to it. Also, a lot of the three-part harmonies we work up have an sort of bluegrass background. Our first bass player was a singer for a bluegrass band when she was in high school. She used to play stand-up bass and sing bluegrass harmonies. They toured Europe with that little group. That’s got to have some kind effect because she wrote a lot of the harmonies of the early songs. It’s kind of carried over and evolved into what we’re doing now.
Heather’s vocal tone, the clarity mostly, is similar to The Dance Hall Crashers, but the harmonies are stylistically much different.
That’s quite a compliment because those girls can really sing. We just’ve got a Southern mix to it.
Do you run into misunderstandings about being punk, having a “chick” in the band, or are things pretty accepted?
We usually don’t have too many problems. Except sometimes when we have to play bars, ’cause not every town has all-age venues. We run into these older, backwoods guys, sometimes it’s worse in the North than in the South ’cause you get the biker-type guys, who think Heather is a piece of meat to grab on. It can get ugly. We defend her, and we aren’t afraid to use our fists on anybody, but Heather’s just as tough as the rest of us. She’s a chick but she fights like a man, so be careful. The aggression isn’t just in the music or in the tempo, it’s a lifestyle, that’s for sure.
That comes across in the lyrics, but so do a lot of other things. Who writes the lyrics?
I write most of ’em. Most of our songs tell a short, two-minute tale. I get so involved sometimes that I end up writing a book for a two minute song. Then we obviously have to cut them down and cut them down. Someone asked me recently if I wanted to do videos, and in the MTV sense, I don’t really care. But I’d really like to do it in a filmmaking sense, making short movies about our songs. We have a song called “Porno Shop” about a guy who wants to be a porno star, but he’s starting at the bottom of the ladder by mopping up at the peep shows.
“He’s got a job in a porno shop where he whacks off for free, whoa-whoa…”
Actually, it’s “mops up for free.” Fat Mike thought the same thing. It must be the Southern accent.
And just who is this “Peanut Butter Girl” you sing of?
That one’s about our singer’s girlfriend. When we were in Philadelphia one time, there were these two homeless people sitting at a bus stop while we were changing the oil in the van on the street. Our old bass player had purple hair, and our singer’s girlfriend who was doing merchandise on the tour had blonde hair that had grown out into roots that were about a foot long. She walked by our roadie and kinda kissed him on the head. I overheard the homeless guys talking, and one said to the other, “Sweet Daddy King’s got him a peanut butter girl.” And the other guy looked at him and said, “I wish I had me some grape jelly to go with that peanut butter.” I thought that was such a strange way of saying it, I had to make a song out of it.
One thing’s that plaguing me, what does the chorus of “I’m Not the One” sound like? I’ve asked the music encyclopedias I know and none of us can peg it. It’s not Cheap Trick or The Knack, it’s not a late ’70s sitcom theme I can think of, I can think of it… Nothing, huh?
I dunno.
I figure lots of people will make the Green Day reference just because they… well, they’re stupid. But what other musical inspirations do you have?
Early Green Day records from Lookout!. We used to wear those records out all the time. Obviously the Ramones. The Descendents, long before they did “I’m the One” which just happened to come out before “I’m Not the One.” When I was a little kid, I listened to a lot of Beatles, Everly Brothers, and early Elvis.
Do you listen to rockabilly?
Yeah, but not as much as people might think we do. Being from Nashville, you can’t help but hear that stuff all the time.
It’s always struck me as odd that even with the rockabilly resurgence, there was no real breakthrough to the mainstream, no household names. The Stray Cats are the only universal reference point, but they were more Vegas than traditional rockabilly in the first place.
It’s a regional thing, unless you’re a real enthusiast. I’d probably name bands you’ve never heard of, and you, up in Boston, would mention bands I wouldn’t know. A lot of people think we’re a rockabilly band ’cause we come out lookin’ all greaser, and I think it really throws them when we start playing. When we book shows, we usually say we sound like Screeching Weasel or The Queers, even though I don’t think it’s very accurate. But sometimes when we have to play bars around here, we say we sound like Green Day, and the guy booking is like, “Is that a rock and roll band?” Then we end up playing with a bad death metal band. That’s happened a few times. But the kids in the town know.
What’s your radio single or focus song?
We don’t really have a hard-hitting radio thing except locally. Back in ’93 we had two songs on the top five at five, and they were the only two songs we’d ever recorded. People couldn’t get enough of ’em. But when our singer quit, we dropped out of the scene for about six months, and since then, we haven’t really gotten much commercial radio play. But I guess if I had to pick a song, most people seem to be going for “Anybody Else,” the last song on the disc.
Kinda odd to put your single at the end, most people automatically put the single first.
Yeah, that screwed us up one time. There’s a local show on the big rock station around here, on Sundays at midnight ’til one or something, and we’d sent them a CD and bio but they evidently never checked it out. We requested a song and they just threw on track one which is the only song on the CD that has curse words.
“Fuck you, come dance with me,” I believe?
Exactly. It says “fuck” about 50 times. It’s a really short song, so it was done before they realized what the hell was going on. When it was over, they came back on like, “The Teen Idols, yeah, alright.” And that was the end of that.
But what about “Let’s Make Noise in the Bathroom” and “Porno Shop”? We’ve got whacking off, noisy bathrooms, and “Fuck you, come dance with me” – you guys are vulgar!
The first few songs, too.
But then you come in with “I’m not the One,” “Lovely Day,” “When I Hear Your Name,” “Breakin’ Up,” and “Peanut Butter Girl,” love songs one and all I’m sure. Does it ever go the other way where people think you’re a bunch of flower-pickin’ punk rock sissies?
Especially with “Lovely Day.” If they don’t take the time with the lyrics, they think it’s some giddy, happy-go-lucky song, when really it’s the exact opposite. But hell, if they don’t get it, we don’t want them.
Telling stories the way you do, and getting personal the way you do, and sometimes singing about girls the way you do, there is always the slight chance of writing one of those loser-pines-for-girl songs.
We were never all about that. That stuff comes up if that’s what was happening in our lives at the time, but we certainly ain’t nerdcore or whatever.
Milo poured his heart out, but he sure as shit wasn’t a whining pussy like these new soft-core pansies.
Where we come from, those guys would get a boot to the teeth.
