SWINGIN’ UTTERS

STILL BARELY SCRAPING BY IN TOUGH TIMES
Words by Mickie Rat

I first heard of Swingin’ Utters in 1992 during my time as a DJ for KSSU, a fledgling college radio station at Sacramento State. They sent us a 10-inch record entitled Scared, which listed the name of the band as Johnny Peebucks and the Swingin’ Utters. The whole staff laughed at the name, but no one had any desire to listen to it but me, the station’s token punk rocker. I instantly loved it. I still do. I wish I knew where that 10-inch was now. I could go look in the station’s music library but I’m sure some college poseur-punk has stolen it and sold it for clove money on eBay in the 17 years since I used to play it on my show.

I really can’t blame them. Times are tough. Seventeen years of being in my own DIY punk band with limited success has taken most of my time and almost all of my money. Hell, I would probably sell that album on eBay if I still had it just to pay my dental bills. One would think that the with Swingin’ Utters being on the Fat Wreck Chords label now, with a fair amount of success, that they wouldn’t have to worry about finances. My recent telephone conversation with frontman Johnny Peebucks has shown that they are still struggling just like the rest of us in this 9-to-5 petty wage economy.

Hi Johnny, thanks for talking to me today.
Yeah, sorry I didn’t pick up right away, I was cooking some fish for the kiddos. I’m ready to go, though; I can keep an eye on the fish.

What kind of fish are you cooking?
Salmon.

Salmon sounds delicious. OK, first question: I imagine after 20 years or so the Swingin’ Utters must have a massive amount of material recorded. How did you decide what tracks to put on Hatest Grits: B-Sides and Bullshit?
Darius [Koski] our guitar player did most of the decision making. He’s sort of a packrat so he has kept everything we’ve recorded, even some of our first practices on cassette. He’s the main guy that went searching through all of it to figure out what should go on the CD.

Who wrote most of the new songs on the CD?
I think it’s sort of a split between me, Max [Huber] and Darius.

Darius is the main songwriter for Swingin’ Utters. Since you’ve been in Druglords of the Avenues and Filthy Thieving Bastards have you been writing more songs?
Yeah I think I have a little bit more freedom with those other bands because the Swingin’ Utters got sort of pigeonholed. I like having the freedom of writing whatever I want in Druglords of the Avenues and Filthy Thieving Bastards, any style of music I want. I think with the Swingin’ Utters’ records I kinda just lean toward punk automatically because it’s been around the longest of all my bands. We sort of stick to the punk formula. Darius is the best at writing songs out of every band member, so he writes the majority of that stuff, but I’m gonna try to pitch in on this new one and we’ll see how it goes.

So Swingin’ Utters are recording another full-length soon?
Yeah we have something in the works for maybe early December, it should be a “low-budge” type album just because the way things have been going lately with Fat Wreck Chords and with us not touring that often. We just wanna get in there and get it recorded and get out so it doesn’t cost that much.

Do Swingin’ Utters have plans to tour more after the next new CD comes out?
Yeah as soon as that record comes out I’m sure we’re gonna have to go out in support of it. I think I overheard Darius mentioning something about Europe; we kinda wanna go over there because we haven’t been in a while so we’ll probably do something like that. Then maybe we’ll do some two week chunks here and there that cover the States, you know we gotta keep our jobs so we can’t be taking off for months on end.

What’s the trick to getting a job that you know will still be there for you when you come back from tour?
Yeah that was the main reason why we didn’t tour for a while. I got laid off a while back, and this job just kinda fell in my lap. This guy owns a business and he’s been in punk bands in the Bay Area. so he knows that every once in a while I’m gonna need a couple days off to go on tour, so it worked out well since I started working there. It’s tough; we’re barely scraping by. I think everyone is right now, so I’m just thankful that I’m able to do stuff like that, and I’ll never take it for granted because times are tough, everyone knows that.

After 20 years of “barely scraping by,” as most punk bands do, do you think it’s become easier or more difficult to be an independent band?
It hasn’t gotten harder, because we haven’t been touring that often. But if we tried to make a go at it now, it would be insanity. There’s no way I could do it. I couldn’t bail on work that long, and the kids and my wife. I like my home life and I don’t wanna bail on it that often, so it would be really hard to actually try to make a living at it. You gotta tour to make a living off of music, obviously. Right now we have a good balance.

Swingin’ Utters are now in the “elder statesmen” position of influence over new fans that are starting bands of their own. Is it odd to you to be looked up to as an influence by newer bands?
Yeah that’s insanity. That’s the reason why you get in a band, and if that’s happening, that gives me the chills. I mean it blows me away that people would even want to make a tribute record or are influenced by us; even older bands would tell me that. It’s always gonna blow my mind, and it’s very flattering and I never thought it would get this far so it’s not strange; it’s kind of awesome you know?

Do you have any idea when that Swingin’ Utters tribute might be coming out on Red Scare?
I just sent out the artwork that I did for the cover not too long ago. I think they’re waiting on maybe one or two bands but they’re getting down to laying it all out. They needed the artwork just a couple days ago so that means that they’re probably on the finishing stages.

For people who might be unfamiliar with some of your other bands, what would you say are the main differences between the Swingin’ Utters, Druglords of the Avenues and Filthy Thieving Bastards?
Filthy Thieving Bastards is more leaning toward folk, and it has some psychedelic leanings as well, but I think that’s the most experimental out of all three bands. Druglords of the Avenues is sort of a bizarro Swingin’ Utters, played by a bunch of young kids with me writing nutty lyrics to it, so it’s not really that different from Swingin’ Utters, but you can tell that it’s not played by the same kinda guys. But they’re great kids. They’re really talented. But we’ll be hitting the Pixies, the Breeders, rockabilly and so far a lot of different styles of music. I let them write all that music, and then I just plug in some weird lyrics.

Is there a song that all three bands could do and make it their own?
Druglords of the Avenues do the actual song “Druglords of the Avenues” by Filthy Thieving Bastards, Swingin Utters does another Filthy Thieving Bastards song, one of Darius’, I can’t remember which one. It’s on the Dead Flowers, Bottles, Bluegrass and Bones album.

So the different bands like to cover the other bands’ songs every once in a while just to mix it up?
Covers are fun to play; I mean we started off as a cover band, so we sort of got that out of the way early on. But I’d like to do like a weird Elliott Smith cover or something like that, sort of bring up the pace a little bit and make it our own. I’ve been listening to him lately and have been really into it. That’s what I really wanna do but I’m sure there’s other band members that will wanna do other shit, but we’ll see.

Every once in a while, the Swingin’ Utters will play at a tiny bar called the Distillery in Sacramento, and it gets so insanely packed that there is barely room to move. Are those shows fun or do they drive you crazy?
That’s fun. I love shows that don’t have stages and you’re in everyone’s face, and they’re in your face and yeah, it’s a little dangerous, and as I get older I’m a little worried about my kneecaps being shattered and stuff like that.

Or your teeth being smashed in by the mic?
Yeah exactly. But it’s exciting and fun. I mean when there’s danger involved your adrenaline just goes crazy. I enjoy that more than stages. I enjoy being on the ground. In the Druglords of the Avenues, if there’s a small stage, me and the guitar player will drop down to ground level and just play from there because it’s a lot more entertaining; it’s fun. People seem to be smiling a lot more when you’re down there.

Those are all the questions I have for you today. Thanks for the interview, and I hope you didn’t burn your salmon.
No, but thanks for asking!

Swingin’ Utters will be played in Sacramento at the Blue Lamp on Friday, Oct. 30 at 9 p.m.