THE BAD ROADS
As much as I enjoy rappin' with a lotta these ex-band members of great sixties groups, the simple fact of the matter is that most of 'em are just total schmucks. Invariably, the only reason they played in a band was they couldn't have scored with chicks any other way, and when it became unfashionable to be in a garage band (or when it became apparent they weren't gonna score anyway), they quit playing music altogether and discovered their true calling in life as an attorney, CPA, or tax collector. Ergo, they cringe from embarrassment when you have the audacity to call them and waste their time asking about their moronic teenage indulgences, usually ending the call with a recommendation that you learn to appreciate good music like they have -- y'know, Neil Diamond, Kenny G, Sinatra, and the like. The moral? Once a schmuck, always a schmuck.
I preface this article with that blather' cause when you talk to some ex-band members who AREN'T schmucks, who are, in fact, the total opposite of those geezers, well ... it makes all this here "research" worthwhile. The Bad Roads are truly legends. They deserve to be remembered as nothing less. Now, I don't qualify too many bands as "legends", 'cause the term has become so commonplace it's virtually meaningless. Most of the groups bestowed "legendary" status these days were probably laughed at and beaten up back in '66. But if any of the countless bands I've spoke with or heard rumors about deserve that lofty title, it is the Bad Roads. When you hear that name, remember that we're talkin' on a whole 'nother level than most sixties bands. We're talkin' totally crazed, wild rockin' pandemonium, intense devotion to nothing but reducing music down to it's most savage basics. "Raspy and raunchy" is how they themselves describe their style, and I can think of no better description. Their first single, "Blue Girl" b/w "Too Bad", released on Floyd Soileau's JIN label in August 1966, is an acknowledged classic, as good or better than anything their idols, the Stones, ever did. Although I'm thoroughly convinced that I've played this record more times than any other human being (living or dead), it still knocks me out every time I hear it. By the time they got around to cutting their second single, however (a cover of the Kinks' "Til the End of the Day" b/w a cover of Them's "Don't Look Back" on their own suavely-named RAIN TYRE label) in March of '67, it was obvious that their best days were already behind 'em. They broke up a few months later. It took an awful lot of wrong phone numbers and wasted leads before dumb luck finally veered me toward the Bad Roads. The actual tip-off of who they were and where I could find them came in the form of a letter written by a Pentecostal preacher -- which was, it turned out, only the first of many surprises to come. After a few telephone conversations, it became obvious to me that I would have to drive to the Roads' old stompin' grounds, Lake Charles, Louisiana (where most of them still live), in order to get at least a semblance of a "story", though one of the guys warned me that it was impossible to convey the "full" story. What follows then is my attempt at interviewing three of the Bad Roads -- Buz Clark (vocals), Danny Kimball (drums), and Bryan Smith (guitar & comedy).
ANDY. What got you all into playing music?
BRYAN SMITH: Well, my dad had no interest in music. I never even remember him listening to the radio. He had no time for it, no use for it. My mother, on the other hand, was (and is) a little more cultured; she encouraged my brother and I. She wanted her two boys to be more than Skoal-chewers. She convinced my dad to buy me a little Alamo electric guitar and amp at Zypian's music store here. I think they might've paid $90 for the whole thing. I learned some chords, started playing, and it was just one of those things...
ANDY. And the first band was called the Shadows?
DANNY KIMBALL: Yeah. The Shadows started in 1964 at Perry Gaspard's house. Perry played piano, a kid named Pat Prudhomme played a Silvertone guitar, and I had a drum set. I'd bought an old set of drums -- German Roxy's -- that they'd had in the back of Zypian's for $110. My old man spotted me the money -- the worst mistake he ever made! Anyway, the Shadows started jammin' around Perry's house, and guys just started showing up. Mike Hicks showed up, Gary Reynolds -- we were impressed by Gary 'cause he could play all the Ventures' stuff. And all the guys had these big Airline guitars that Montgomery Ward's used to sell in those days. We'd play at the 5th Avenue Recreation Center -- that was the only place we could play.
BRYAN: I remember going over to Danny's to check out this band. There was Danny on drums, four guitarists -- all of them playing acoustic guitars -- and a trumpet player. Really weird band. (Laughter) Well, this was the Shadows. I really wanted to join 'em because they were the only band I really knew.
DANNY: Bryan would come around to see us, but our parents wouldn't let him join our band. See, all of our parents hated Bryan 'cause they considered him to be a bad influence on us. He'd gotten into trouble for stealing motorcycles at age 13 -- stole a lot of' em, too! The cops were having to drag the bayou to find those bikes. Bryan was taking the parts off and selling 'em. (Laughter)
BRYAN: That was actually an ill-fated attempt to run away from home. I needed transportation... and 1 kept getting these dead bikes! It took six of 'em before I found one that'd run for more than two days. But my motive for appropriating these bikes was not to, like, sell hot motorcycle parts. Danny's wrong about that. I wasn't selling... well, okay, I may have sold a part or two (laughter) ... but it was strictly 'cause I needed money to get out of town!
ANDY. How did you meet Terry Green?
DANNY: Well, we'd all hang out at the local CYO dances that they had every Friday night and see bands play. And that's where we first saw Terry. He was playing guitar for Walter Allen's band at one of these dances, and we were blown away by him. He was the hottest guitarist around. As it turned out, he went to our high school, but was a year older.
BRYAN: Yeah, he was shaving and everything. (Laughter)
ANDY. And you recruited him into your band?
DANNY: Yeah. Bryan started buddyin' up to Terry, and Terry was gettin' real hip; he wanted to play all-Ventures stuff. The Ventures and Lonnie Mack. Lonnie Mack was Terry's church. So from there we decided to form an all instrumental group called the Avengers. Terry played lead, Bryan played rhythm, Mike Hicks was on bass, and I played drums. We all had these matching tiki-head necklaces that we'd wear on stage...
ANDY. What time period is this?
DANNY: Spring of'65, summer of'65, in there.
ANDY. And it was strictly instrumental -- no vocals?
BRYAN: Well, eventually we got smart and started doing some limited vocal work. 'Cause when we'd back up these local singers at shows they'd take home all the money and we wouldn't get nothing. We finally said, 'Hey, these pigs are makin' all the dough, and we can scream as loud as they can'!
DANNY: We were real attracted to the Stones. We were driving around in Terry's dad's truck--Terry, Bryan, and I -- and Satisfaction came on for the first time ...and we had to pull over to the side of the road. We stopped. And we went, 'That's what we're gonna do!' But we really couldn't pull it off without a front man. That's where Buz Clark comes in. Buz was a local celebrity; his name was a household word around Lake Charles. He was the fastest running back in the state. They couldn't catch the guy. Highly recruited. Buz went to Lake Charles High School which was the real upper-crust school. The rest of us went to LaGrange High which was considered the real coon-ass school. So there we were, playing at some frat party for some of Buz's old jock buddies over the Thanksgiving holidays ('65)...and who shows up and asks to sit in with us but Buz Clark. It was like magic.
BRYAN: The rest is local infamy!
BUZ CLARK: Bryan didn't want me to sit in with the band at first. I had thrown him out of another party we'd both been at before and he didn't like me at all! But we sang a Rolling Stones song together (I'm Free) and that was it. I was still going to Louisiana Tech on a football scholarship at the time. I'd come in every weekend and we'd play the local joints. I even had to hitchhike half the time. This went on for about the first six months we were together...
BRYAN: We finally told him, 'No more of this hitch hiking shit, you either get down here and sing for us or you're outta the band!' (Laughter) He wasn't real reliable 'cause we'd start at eight and Buz would still be in Shreveport with his thumb out. And since he had shoulder-length hair in 1966, it wasn't the easiest thing to get a ride.
BUZ: And 1 was the only one in the band over 17! I was 19 when the band started...
BRYAN: Which made it nice to have Buz in the band 'cause not only could he, like, sing from time to time -- he could also buy us beer! But we had to put up with a lotta shit from Buz 'cause he was a total redneck when he joined...
BUZ: I wasn't a "redneck", I...
BRYAN: You were an asshole redneck motherfucker! (Laughter)
ANDY. So did you change the band's name when Buz joined?
DANNY: No, actually we'd already started calling ourselves that about three or four months before then. It just fit better when Buz joined.
ANDY. Well, what inspired you to change your name to the Bad Roads?
BRYAN: Probably because we were all so ugly!! (Laughter)
BUZ: That's not true...
BRYAN: You're right, you're right -- I was cute. (Laughter) We were looked at as being lower than pond scum because of our hair and attitude –
DANNY: Yeah, not only did we have long hair which was bad enough, we had this horrible attitude...
BRYAN: There were constant troubles, constant hassles. You'd go into restaurants and they wouldn't serve you. People wouldn't sell you gasoline. Having long hair in that era was about as bad as it was being black in about 1940. And some of us were experimenting with drugs...'course I'd graduated from the experimental phase and was more into full-scale research ... (Laughter)
BUZ: That's not true. In 1966, there were matchboxes of pot goin' around in the black part of town, but that was about it.
BRYAN: Yeah, but you've gotta remember in 1967, still, selling marijuana to a minor in Louisiana carried the death penalty!
DANNY: We were really the only white kids in Lake Charles turnin' on. We got to know this guy named Tiny Pittman -- Tiny owned every cigarette machine and jukebox in town, and a lot of pinball machines as well. Tiny knew all the blacks, and he was turnin' on -- and he was turnin' us on. But it was just fun for us -- it wasn't anything "psychedelic". It was just better than pills.
BRYAN: Have we told you the story about the turtle in a top hat yet?
DANNY: Oh, God...
BRYAN: (Laughter) We were coming back from a gig in Texas one time -Danny was driving, everyone else was asleep and I was about to nod off. And at a certain point I hear Danny go, 'Whooooooooaaa!' So I crawl up there to the front and I go, 'What is it, Danny?' And he says, 'Bryan, you're not gonna believe this, but I just passed a six-foot tall turtle in a top hat!' (Laughter) I said, 'I'M DRIVING!!' (Laughter)ANDY. Y'know, that still doesn't explain how you came up with the name.
BRYAN: Well, you'd just have to drive in Louisiana awhile. (Laughter) (Just to set the damn record straight, the name was probably inspired by Duane Eddy's big instrumental hit, Forty Miles of Bad Road.)
ANDY. Where did most of your shows take place?
BRYAN: We would play from Natchez to Houston, and north to Shreveport was kind of our territory. We'd play at the Golden Slipper in Baton Rouge, the York Club in Lafayette, LeFluer's Roller Rink in Sulphur, the Catacombs in Houston ... here in Lake Charles a guy named Eddie Arceneaux had a club called the Puppy Pen. It was an abandoned officers' club on the Air Force base here that he'd made into a teen club. The whole club was painted flat black, two stages, kinda like the Catacombs. That was the spot, man. A lot of panties got pulled down in the backseats of cars right behind that club. (Laughter)
DANNY: We were booked at McNeese (University) here one time and literally caused a riot. People were just goin' crazy, throwing chairs...we were permanately banned from McNeese after that.
ANDY. Did you have a lotta trouble at live shows?
BUZ: On yeah. We got a couple of our friends, Kenny Cooley and Duane Carter, to be our bodyguards. We had to have bodyguards...
BRYAN: We used to carry an old Fender guitar case on stage with us wherever we played. In it we kept broken mic stands, ax handles, knives, things like that and that guitar case stayed on stage the whole time we played! We had to get a police escort out of New Iberia when we played there. The kids in the club loved us -- but the local redneck crowd was outside waitin' to kill us!
DANNY: The York Club used to get real crazy. We were playing there one night when these hoods -- about six of 'em -- came in and started hassling everybody. And one of 'em started giving Milton, our roadie, a lotta shit. And we're right in the middle of a song, right? So Buz got Kenny and Duane -- who were just waiting for the opportunity to kick your ass -- to shut these guys up. So Duane walks up to one of 'em and asks the guy if he wants to dance. Well, the guy hit Duane with a sucker punch, and Duane just looked at him and smiled. And he and Kenny commenced to kickin' the shit outta these greasers -- they beat 'em into pulps! The people at the York Club didn't try to stop it -- they loved it' cause those guys were always causing trouble there.
BUZ: Kenny didn't need a reason to fight. Anything'd set him off...
DANNY: Kenny was always gettin' into fights -- it was a rare night he didn't get into a fight! And he was a total motorhead -- he had a '56 Chevy and he could switch engines in an afternoon. We were driving to a gig in Baton Rouge once when Kenny's muffler fell off. So he just pulls into the nearest service station and drives the car up on the rack; nobody was around. Then this guy comes in there and says, 'Get your car out of my garage.' Kenny goes, 'Hey, I really need to fix my muffler, it's broke. I'll pay you, don't worry.' The guy says, 'Get your fuckin car outta here!' And Kenny goes, 'I need to fix my car -- I'M GONNA FIX MY FUCKIN' CAR!' And the guy squared us off like he was gonna fight Kenny and Kenny proceeded to beat this guy into the ground. Blood was everywhere -- Buz and the guys drove up a minute later, saw what'd happened, and tore outta there. I remember Buz yelling, 'C'mon Kenny! The cops are coming!'
ANDY. Did he get his muffler fixed? DANNY: Yeah!
BRYAN: The one show that really kicked things off for us was this Battle of the Bands they had here at the National Guard Armory in early 1966. There were twelve groups: the Boogie Kings (who'd been on top for a long time), Sonny and the Blue Diamonds -- all these giant ten and twelve-piece blue-eyed soul groups -- and us. And we won. When we started playing, you couldn't hear us from the screaming. During one song Buz reached out into the audience and touched a girl's cheek, and she went out like she'd been shot! Passed right the fuck out. The little girls were goin' ape screaming and all these blue-eyed soul groups were standing there in their blue iridescent sharkskin suits looking at us like we'd killed their mamas or something. (Laughter) It was great!
DANNY: We could really kill a crowd. We'd start playing something like I'm All Right (by the Stones) and Buz would be out there jumping around screamin' and we'd have a couple of girls up there in real short shorts go-go dancing -- and the place would just go nuts! The Rayne CYO was a real hot gig for us -- we killed 'em!
BRYAN: This was so new to the people around here. That's what made it so fascinating.
ANDY. Did you have a lot of problems at school?
DANNY: Yeah. W e all had this PE coach at LaGrange named Austin Cates, and this guy was a total asshole. Sadistic asshole. He got some football players together and they all jumped Bryan in the locker room one day after school was out. They chopped off all his hair -- scalped him almost. Cates thought it was real funny. Bryan went home and told his dad what'd happened, and his dad, who hated Bryan's hair so much, went down there and really kicked some ass. He grabbed hold of Cates and was gonna kill him! Bryan's mom went to the school board and complained ... and after all that, the school backed off of us big time. We got our revenge, though, 'cause we played the homecoming dance at our high school that year, and got paid $600. And the two PE coaches had to count out the money at the end of the night. Cates had to watch me and Bryan get paid $125 apiece. That was more than what that motherfucker made in a week. Probably two weeks! But that was our payback--just watching the looks on their faces.
BRYAN: There's actually a whole big story behind that incident. But that happened during my rebellious period – which just ended last week, matter of fact. (Laughter) Sorry you missed it...
ANDY. So that's why your hair's so short in that picture at St. Mary's?
BRYAN: Yeah. But hey, is that punk or what? (Laughter)
ANDY. I'm amazed that you'd be playing there in the first place -- was it really a Catholic girls school?
BRYAN: Yeah. We played there several times. It was kind of the meat market of Lake Charles. (Laughter)
ANDY. How did the first record come about? Did Floyd Soileau approach y'all, or...
DANNY: No; Floyd had this deal where you could rent his studio and have X amount of records pressed up with the Jin logo on it for so many bucks. Our manager was this guy named Ray McCullough, who went by the name Tony Taylor for deejayin' over KLOU in Lake Charles. He co-managed us with another guy named Gerald Streater. They set up the deal for us. After we arrived at the studio, it took us awhile to get set up 'cause Floyd and them moved kind of slow. It wasn't a real sophisticated session -- we just kind of went in there, set up, and banged 'em out, those songs. We did three, maybe four takes of each song.
ANDY. How did Floyd and them react to you guys?
DANNY: Boy, when Terry turned that fuzz tone on ...it blew their fuckin' minds! They didn't know what the fuck to do! I remember doin' that fade out on Blue Girl just hoping we hadn't fucked it up 'cause Terry tore the shit out of that lead! Terry just burned it and we knew that was it; the motherfucker had done it. We cut it live -- I think they left a track open for the vocals, maybe. It was very crude. But for us, after goin' to Goldband, this place was state of the art!
ANDY. Oh, y'all recorded at Goldband?!!
BUZ: Yeah. Talk about a dump, man!
BRYAN: We also recorded a little at Sam Montel's Studios in Baton Rouge with Cyril Vetter from the Greek Fountains sittin' in.
ANDY. Wow, sounds like y'all really got around...
BRYAN: Hey, you can't keep a good thing down, dude! (Laughter)
ANDY. What songs do you remember cuttin' at those sessions?
DANNY: I think we might've recorded the first version of Too Bad at Montel's, along with another song we were working on called Nothing -- it was another original that Buz had written that we never really finished. I think we cut the same songs and maybe tried Blue Girl at Goldband -- that was a disaster! We also recorded a version of Nothing at Floyd's studio the day we cut the other two.
ANDY. Now, let me get this straight -- Buz wrote and sang on Blue Girl while Terry wrote and sang Too Bad?
BRYAN: Yeah. 'You're on the outside lookin' in' -- that was Terry all the way.
BUZ: At a certain point there -- this was before the record came out -- we were approached by Huey Meaux. He wanted to sign us, but we said 'Nah.' We all had this attitude -- everybody was between the age of 16 and 19, and we all had attitudes! We felt like we didn't need those guys...
BRYAN: You have to remember, we were pullin' in so much money -- I was making like three or four times what my dad made each week, in cash.
ANDY. Well, what kinda reaction did the record get when it was released? I assume Tony was playing it as soon as it came out...
DANNY: Yeah! Tony started playin' it over KLOU and it took off! We got a lot of airplay in Lafayette, Baton Rouge -- wherever people knew us. Floyd even started pushing it! He'd take it around to the local Cajun deejays and they'd say, 'What kinda music is that, Floyd?' And he'd say, 'That's English music, man!' He'd tell people that we were his "English" band. Floyd was pushing' it, Tony was playing it, Tiny Pittman had it on every jukebox in town…we had an autograph signing party at a place called Caldwell's Record Shop one Saturday morning after the record came out. We didn't expect anybody to show up, but hundreds of people showed up! We really felt like "stars".
ANDY. How did the record end up on the MSL label?
BRYAN: Is that the thing out of France?
ANDY. No, the MSL thing came out in 1966. It was a label Floyd had with Huey Meaux and a guy from Jamie Records in Philadelphia, it was mainly Louisiana groups and singers but they'd distribute them on the East Coast rather than down here. And one of 'em is the Bad Roads record. I assumed you knew about this. . BRYAN: Well fuck me runnin'. (Laughter) No, we had no idea...although we were told that the record had been a "pick hit" on some East Coast radio stations, and I know we sold some up there, in New York and places.
ANDY. And it got a lotta airplay in Houston, right? That's unbelievable.
DANNY: Yeah, it did, on the strength of the airplay it was gettin' Tony was able to get us booked into the Catacombs for a weekend and get us on The Larry Kane Show [local TV dance show] too. The thing is, they'd told us that the other band on the show that day was gonna be the Beach Boys. We drove to Houston flipping' out --'We're gonna be playin' with the Beach Boys!!' But one of' em got sick or something and they couldn't make it. So in their place they got Jack Jones. (Laughter) Jack Jones! We were so pissed off! But we got to lip-synch both sides of the record, and Larry Kane interviewed Buz, so it was fun. As we were leaving Bryan walked up to Jack Jones and said, 'Good luck, Jack -- and don't take any wooden records!' (Laughter)
ANDY. (to Bryan) What'd he say?
BRYAN: Nothin'. He just stood there and looked stupid. But then, he always looks stupid, so ... (laughter) Before the show, we went over to Joske's and bought a bunch of "mod" clothes. "Band uniforms" we called 'em. Some really wild shit! And I bought one of those three-cornered hats like Paul Revere used to wear. I put it on as soon as we left, and we went over to Denny's to get something to eat. We walk in there, and man, people are staring at us ...we go sit down and boy, I've never had such great service at Denny's! People were all over us. I'm sitting' there trying to eat my hamburger and this waiter is standing over me, staring. He won't leave. I finally looked up at him after I'd taken a bite to eat and before I could say anything he goes, 'ANYTHING ELSE I CAN GET FOR YOU, PAUL'?!!' (Laughter) Turned out Paul Revere and the Raiders were playing in Houston the same time we were...
ANDY. Do you remember anything about the Catacombs shows?
DANNY: All I remember is we played there for two nights, and it was great! The Countdown Five were playin' there, the Moving Sidewalks, the Chessmen -- the Chessmen blew us totally away!
ANDY. Was this about the time y'all started having problems with Terry?
DANNY: Yeah. Terry started slippin' -- he started goin' out there. If he'd just played the fuckin' guitar and shut up, he would've been great. But people started puttin' a lot of crap in his head. And he was so gullible...
BUZ: We might be playin' a Byrds song or something on stage, and Terry would take off with his own version, change lyrics, change chords, the whole bit!
BRYAN: Terry was a true musician -- unlike us. (Laughter) He appreciated good vocal harmonies, and he knew a lot about music theory. But he was always on the soft edge of things: the Association, groups like that. We on the other hand really liked things raspy and raunchy. Terry would spend days with us trying to get us to learn these really complicated three-and-four-part floating harmonies. And we kept telling' him...it was like: 'Hey dude--it's hopeless!' (Laughter) So it was kind of mutually agreed that he leave the band...
ANDY. What happened to Terry?
BRYAN: He hooked up with another band that went out to the West Coast and cut a couple of records.
ANDY. So then Bryan switched to lead and you added a couple of members?
DANNY: Yeah, Bruce MacDonald -- he was another one of our friends from high school -- started playing rhythm guitar for us then. Bruce -- we called him "Weasel" -- had been roadiein' with us for awhile. In fact, Weasel's playing tambourine on Blue Girl. Weasel'd wear bowler hats and walk around with a cane...
BUZ: We'd been paying Weasel $20 a night to set up our equipment. And he'd spend ten bucks on beer and pay a couple of guys in the crowd five bucks apiece to set up the equipment. (Laughter) Sometimes they'd do it for free!
BRYAN: Yeah, and ten bucks bought a lotta beer in those days! At one of our first shows with Bruce, some guy had attached a line of piano wire to the bottom of one of our microphone stands, right before we came on stage. We came out and started playing, and Bruce is singing into the mic when the guy yanked the wire real hard -- the mic hit Bruce in the mouth, he fell back spitting blood...
ANDY. What a heart-warming introduction to show business. You added Perry Gaspard on organ at the same time Bruce joined, right?
DANNY: About the same time, yeah Perry was begging' to join us by then. The thing with Perry was -- he was an accomplished player, but out of his fuckin' mind! He said, 'Oh, y'all want crazy? I'll show you fuckin' crazy!' And he would play the organ while holding it on his shoulders, behind his back, he'd throw it all over the place ... we'd be playing a song and all of a sudden he'd push the organ off the stage-- everybody'd jump out of the way, but he always managed to catch it before it fell!
BRYAN: Perry really was a great showman with that Farfisa. He'd rock it back and forth, get up on top of it and ride it like a horse -- a lotta Jerry Lee Lewis type stuff. He'd lay down on his back and set the organ on top of his chest and bounce it up and down while we were playing. (Laughter) It was wild!
DANNY: That poor old Farfisa got so banged up. When you looked underneath that thing and saw what he had those keys held together with--it was incredible! I mean, band aids, paper clips ... (Laughter)
BRYAN: Tell you a little story on the kind of guy Perry was. We were driving back from a gig in Tyler, Texas one time in two cars -- I think Danny and Perry were in one, and the rest of us were in the other. And at a certain point, Danny had gotten a few miles ahead of us, so were trying to catch up to him. And as we got closer we noticed the cars in front of us were veering all over the road -- we thought, 'What's goin' on?' We pulled up closer and noticed this Groucho Marx-lookin' thing in the window of Danny's car. And when we finally got close enough, we could see what it was ... Perry had pulled down his pants, stuck electrical tape around his butt and put a cigar in his ass, and was mooning cars!! (Laughter) Cars were veering all over the place...
ANDY. And Perry's a Pentecostal preacher now. .. that's really amazing!
BUZ: Man, you ought to see him -- he's got his own television show and everything. He just built a church south of town that seats four thousand -- I'm not exaggerating -- four thousand people! Even the sound system ...they had to have a booster with a delay built in so by the time the sound got to the back of the church, it was the same. I've heard him preach on TV -- he's good, man...
ANDY. When was he converted?
BUZ: In the early seventies, or thereabouts. Matter of fact, I was with him when he saw the Lord...
BRYAN: Wait a minute –
BUZ: I swear to God!
BRYAN: How much acid did he take that night is my next question. (Laughter) Perry hasn't changed. He used to do the preacher bit with the Bad Roads! He's got 15-year-old choir girls in there...
ANDY. Feeling the earthly delights of Perry...
BRYAN: The earthly delights of Perry. Buz and I were in a local restaurant a few months ago, and who should walk in and come sit by us but the Reverend Perry Gaspard. We got to talking about music, and Perry asks Buz and I if we knew where he could find any Christian musicians. I said, 'No, Perry, we don't. But do you know where we can find any non-Christian musicians?' (Laughter) I was watching his Sunday morning sermon on TV a while back when I hear him say, 'When I was young, I used to run with scum!' I said, 'Hey -- that fucker's talking about me!' (Laughter) I'm gonna get the picture of him holding that bottle of vodka blown up to poster size and mail it to him with the caption: 'I CAN TAKE YOU DOWN.' (Laughter) Hey, I could have chains on that church gate tomorrow morning, dude.
ANDY. How did the second record (Til the End of the Day/Don't Look Back) come about?
BRYAN: Hell, I don't know. We got sick of the first one!
ANDY. Where was it recorded?
DANNY: We went over to Jay Millers Studio in Crowley to do that one. We really didn't know what to cut. Tony wanted us to do that song (Til the End of the Day) 'cause he really liked it. And we went in there and just knocked those songs out. The studio was right above Jay's wife's beauty college. You could actually smell the perms comin' up. And I remember Jay had boxes and boxes of those Rebel racist records layin' around...
BRYAN: Jay Millers studio had a ladder going out to the roof, and once you got up there you could pull the ladder up with you. We were taking a break between songs, so I climbed up there and pulled the ladder up, and I could look down into the studio from up there ... and I notice Perry walking into the studio. The other guys were somewhere else. So I whispered down there, 'Perry!' He turns around and starts looking; doesn't see anybody. So I waited a minute and said, Perry, I want to talk to you.' And Perry froze up and said, 'Who are you?' And I said, 'It's God.' (Laughter) Unfortunately he caught on a minute later...
DANNY: Talk about premonition, huh?
ANDY. Did you cut the songs live? They sound live...
DANNY: We went back and overdubbed the background vocals, I think -- but they were very minimal...
BRYAN: Right before the guitar break, Perry had to reach over and switch my fuzz box on ...I just remembered that!
DANNY: The record was kind of a last-ditch attempt at keeping something together. We really didn't have any direction, and musically it was gettin' real stale. We didn't have any kind of vision, and we never really got any original material goin'. It was all kind of falling apart at that point.
BRYAN: At that time we had six members, and three of us were really getting into psychedelic music. And the other three wanted to stay Top 40 ... it was just one of those things. I think our last gig was in Sulphur. We split the band right down the middle...
BUZ: The band, after Terry left, started getting real weird -- it started getting real strange. The band started rushing then, and all of a sudden it wasn't the band that it was before. These guys couldn't even make their own graduation! We had a gig halfway across the state -
BRYAN: Who graduated? (Laughter) Terry, Mike, and I had all gotten kicked out of school because of the hair. I think Danny was the only one, and Perry...
BUZ: And things change. We were livin' in the times, man...
BRYAN: After Danny graduated, Buz, Danny, and I moved to Lafayette, got a bass player named John Knipmeyer, and formed a band called Lemon Blue. Eddie Arceneaux named us. We decided to be underground, so basically we took a stack of 45's, turned 'em over, and learned the B-sides. And we got into the heavier music -- Hendrix, that kinda stuff. We bought a hearse; we opened for Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs and the Music Machine all over the state; we got mistaken for the Monkees coming out of our motel in Monroe one time...
ANDY. Why did you leave Lake Charles?
BRYAN: Well, the situation had gotten to where it was like--either leave Lake Charles, or go to jail! (Laughter) So we left. Turned out things weren't much better in Lafayette...we played for another year or so, til about the summer of 1968, before calling it quits. It was about time.
...Unfortunately, I wasn't able to come up with a conclusive "finale" to my interview, for at that point the conversation veered off into more arcane areas like Mosrite guitars, Louisiana politics, Bryan's not-so-pleasant confrontation with Jack Lord's "man-servant" in a Los Angeles hotel in 1969, Bryan's gig with Wilson Pickett and Slim Harpo in New York, more of Bryan's elaborate plans to blackmail Perry Gaspard, Bryan's plans ... well, you get the picture.
The Bad Roads have appeared on more compilation albums than I can remember, including Pebbles Vol. 9 and, of course, the Acid Visions thing. (Too Bad also appears on Acid Visions Vol. 2 under the title Outside Looking In, credited to the "Unknowns" -- but what else wouldja expect from Voxx Records?) Your best bet is to pick up Eva's Louisiana Punk Vol. 2 album (also on CD) which includes both sides of the Jin 45 as well as the very rare Til the End of the Day 45 with excellent sound quality. Of course, searching for the original 45's is the noblest endeavor -- though I should warn you that I'm still looking for an original copy of Blue Girl six years after I started.
And, although it's been over 30 years since they first got together, the Bad Roads refuse to quit. They've had three reunions since 1980, and, having attended their last one in '92, 1 can honestly say that the bastards have gotten better with age. My intoxication level was far too high for me to remember many details about that night at this point -- I just remember what a blast it was goin' crazy and dancin' to tunes like Route 66, Come On Up, That's How Strong My Love Is, Hey Joe, Mercy,Mercy, Hitch Hike, Blue Girl, and god knows what else, every bit as wild and rockin' as you'd expect Louisiana's finest to be. And, oh yeah, Bryan -- next time, the tab's on me. Fair enough?
For booking information send email to: booking@thebadroads.com
Please Visit The Bad Roads On MySpace
Please Visit The Bad Roads On MySpace