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South Regional Report
Edited by Mike Jones - lovetoy2@geocities.com

• Widespread Panic - 11/25/98, Memorial Auditorium, Chattanooga, TN
• The $100,000 question: What is the sound that is Big Ass Truck?

Widepsread Panic 11-25-98 Memorial Auditorium Chattanooga, Tn.
review by John Lapelle

   I

She Caught the Katy>
Ride me High>
Hatfield>
Greta>
Sleeping man
You'll be Fine
Machine>
Barstools
Let it Rock>
Radiochild

    II

Papa Legba>
C Brown>
Blight>
Airplane>
Takeoff>
Pusherman>
Big Jam>
Drumz>
Entering a Black Hole BAckwards>
jack>
Chilly H20

%Heaven>
coconuts

The night before Thanksgiving found us in chattanooga, Tennesse for a wonderful evening with close friends and the panic. The Memorial Auditorium is a nice, old, historic theater that seats around 3, 600 folks. Everyone was in thanksgiving vacation mode as the line for will call literally took forever and made me many people miss the first song. Luckily i was already comfortably inside, and the opening notes of Katy brought a smile to my face. Only a handful of katy's were played in 98 and this one did not disappoint. And it was my friends Kate's birthday so things were feeling good. The security presence became overwhelming a this point on the first twenty rows. I got to sit next to a cop for like three songs, how awesome is that.

The security couldn't slow anyone down though as the crowd retaliated to an second song Ride me high with a roar. Everyone had apparently made it inside and was psyched to seehow small the theater was and how hard the panic was shredding this ride me high. Jojo had the place spinning. The jam out of it was very long as well until it eventually dwindled down into a mellow Hatfield. Nice JB rap at the end, with some images of fall intertwined that i picked up on. Greta came next with the piano intro and not the clavinet. Greta topped out like three or four times and dropped into a dark sleeping man. the lights wer very red and they really rocked this one, with jojo getting dirty in the middle jam.

After a dreamy little tune up, Mr. Nance dropped the "You'll be fine" on us. It was well recieved and everyone was pumped to get a present from Todd. I love the lyrics to this song, they are so relaxing and I also feel this from the music as well. Then Schools woke everyone up with a powerful machine intro that exploded through the venue. machine was muscular the whole way through and dropped perfectly into a funky Barstools. The place was submerged in funk as everyone gave a good holler. Kind of ironic since the venue doesn't serve alcohol (:-( Barstools delivered and JB gave a little slide action at the end that sent sparks flying off his fingers. The rap was nice too, he was having a really good time tonight. Then we got the Let it Rock. Most of the crowd was really excited, while others were confused. The third time played this fall after being resurreced in Macon after Halloween with David Blackman. JB delivered the lyrics perfectly and made me so excited to go put on Jerry Garcia's Compliments that i did just that. although it was a week later. Let it Rock dumped into Radiochild and this closed the set.

Second set found us in the pit right in front of JB when they opened with a Legba. Alright, this was awesome. Standing right under JB for this song was what I needed. The crowd was eating it and Jb kept playing with the words and rolling them out of his mouth. This legba seemed slower than most until the jam in the end took over. C Brown came rolling out of the feedback with Schools giving away free smiles from that warm bass intro that we have come to love so much. JB once again was putting out the words with grace and spirit. He even gave us a "you just go jump in a pile of leaves if it feels good", going along with the feeling of fall I felt earlier. Blight came right out of the end of C brown like a door being shut in the dark. it was nice and blue, just like i like it. Blight gave way to a long jam withHouser setting the tone with some spooky guitar solos. Blight got real loud at the end and thent eh sound faded and airplane was warming up. I was hoping for the vacation tonight from Mr. Houser, but oh well. Ariplane delivered the fix instead with a really long jam at the end. This dropped into Pusherman and Pusherman headed into a spacy jam before drumz. I defintiely heard some swamp teases in there and at one point they seemed to be playing it but they were just playing with it. Drumz has gotten better every night with Todd and Sonny slowing down and easing into this new xylophone/vibraphone phase before getting everyone on their feet with some real pounding.

Schools was the last to leave for drumz and the first to return afterwards. he treated us to a very dark and spooky "entering a black hole backwards". This got everyone hoping for a big ole chilly to come steaming out of drumz but instead Schools just kept hitting it harder and harder.. Then everyone came back and the jam started to meander giving signal that it was time for JB ballad. And they eased into a Jack that made me so happy. Jack was super slow and beautiful with some Jb lyrical improvisations that I cannot wait to hear on tape. jack rolled into the powerhouse chilly that everyone thought they heard coming just ten minutes ago. Chilly was perfect and sent everyone back to their own city with a full drink from nooga.

the encore was pure bliss as Jb greeted the house full of lighters with a beautiful heaven. Absolute bliss, everyone smiling silently and just so happy on the holiday witha ll their pals. Then Jb woke everyone up with the strumming chords of Coconut. yeehaw, everyone threw down for the last couple minutes loving it to the max. The band looked real excited and a good time was had by all.

Can't wait til the new years run. See everybody when I have the home court advantage at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, Ga.

---

The $100,000 question: What is the sound that is Big Ass Truck?
An interview with Steve Selvidge
By Chip Schramm

It seems like any time one person tries to describe a band or particular piece of music to a friend, they always want to start with a comparison. Well… They start out kind of like Band A, but they write songs like Singer B, but their new release reminds me of the music of Album C. Throughout the annals of modern music the bands which seem to have enjoyed the most long-run success and entertained the widest group of music lovers have been those bands which constantly choose to define themselves and escape from conventional labels. Big Ass Truck is such a band. I met up with Steve Selvidge who plays guitar and wrote many of the songs on their new album “Who Let You In Here? We met at the P&H Café in mid-town Memphis and Steve shared the story of B.A.T. and it’s evolution. Big Ass Truck’s lineup consists of Selvidge on guitar, Colin Butler on turntables, percussion, and other assorted effects, Robert Barnett on drums and percussive effects, Robby Grant on Vocals and Guitar and Andres “Dros” Liposcak on bass. In what seemed like a remarkably short amount of time, the origins of the band, the direction of the band’s material, and the legacy of Memphis music were discussed. Although many live music fans around the country may have only recently heard of them opening for Widespread Panic, there is no doubt that B.A.T. is a group of musicians who have truly contributed a lot to the music scene, both in Memphis and across the nation on tour. Their sound encompasses many different genres and attracts so many different kinds of music lovers that a bright future looms large on the horizon. The following are excerpts from my conversation with Steve.

C: When did Big Ass Truck begin playing with its original line-up?
S: It was in December of 1992.

C: How has the line-up changed over the years?
S: Originally we were a seven-piece with a keyboard player and a percussionist. The percussionist went fairly quickly and we had a number of different keyboard players, then none at all for a while. I play keyboards now. We’ve had a few bass players too, but now we’re just a five piece setup on stage.

C: Has Colin Butler always been with you on the turntables?
S: Yeah, playing with Colin is something we’ve always wanted to do, right from the beginning.

C: I’ve noticed more over time that Colin has become quite a rythmic source for the sound of the band by the way he scratches, not just the samples and outside sounds he brings in.
S: The turntable by nature is a melodic and percussive instrument. If we had just used it as a novelty thing, it would have gotten really old, really fast. We’ve never looked at it like, Oh, this will give us that “edge.” From day 1 is has always been part of the songwriting process. It has always been an integral part.

C: Your album seems to me to be very refined. It seems like you knew what you wanted to do and you cut out all of the filler and just did your thing.
S: Yeah, we’d been waiting a long time to record because of member flux and we lost a little momentum and treaded water for a little while. Finally, we solidified after we picked up Dros (Andrew Liposcak) our bass player who’s on the album. That was a very good thing. It was almost a two year buildup before we got into the studio. Once we were there, we were finished in two weeks. We actually had two days left when we were done. We nailed down the first half of the material right off the cuff. The rest was a good mix of newer songs that we just kind of let loose and did our thing to and songs we wrote while we were actually in the studio. We might use the extra studio time to record an EP.

C: Did switching record labels and eventually going with Peabody records affect getting back into the studio?
S: Yeah, we were with Upstart and did Kent and then we did Sack Lunch just to have something to do and then we were ready to record another. We thought we were going to do one, and we were really psyched. We talked and talked about it, but then money became an issue. Then they (Upstart) weren’t happy with Rounder

C: Is Rounder who Upstart is underneath?
S: Yeah, Upstart is a subsidiary of Rounder. I don’t thing Rounder ever really understood what we were trying to do. The kind of distribution Rounder had at that time, through DNA, wasn’t set-up for the kind of music we play. That made our album really expensive to produce. That was a drag. That made everybody really unhappy with the situation. We really liked the people at Upstart, they were great, the situation was just bad. Then we began to look into other funding, and we played the waiting game for a while. There was always a nugget of something happening and we received unsolicited interest from major labels. Peabody came in not too much later. We recorded demos and released some packages. We’re not an easy sell to the mass public right now. We decided after waiting and waiting that we had to produce an album no matter what label it was on. Rather than start our own label, we took over Peabody, which was my dad’s old label. My dad started that label in the mid-1970’s. He did it to put out his own album, because he had previously recorded on Isaac Hayes’ label, Enterprise. We decided instead of starting from scratch, we decided we’d rather go with a label that had a back catalog, albeit obscure. Alex Chilton’s Flys from Sherbert is a cult favorite and one great album too. It’s a small scale, independent thing. We’re doing everything ourselves, which is cool for me because I was so used to being around the Peabody label while I was growing up.

C: What kind of music did your dad sing?
S: Sort of a folk-blues singer-songwriter sort of thing.

C: What was his first name?
S: His name is Sid. He was a professor at Southwestern. He taught anthropology.

C: (laughs) wow, that’s great, does he still teach at Rhodes?
S: No, but he also went there.

C: Getting back to what you said about the band being a hard sell, I had several friends ask me to describe the sound of Big Ass Truck shortly before they saw you play with Widespread in Chicago. I ended up telling them “you can’t really catagorize them in terms of music you’ve already heard before, you really have to come see them play for yourself.” I know you don’t like being compared to other bands and having labels put on your music. If you were asked to describe the sound of Big Ass Truck to someone who had never heard you, what would you say?
S: Well, that’s the $100,000 question. In the end of the day it’s rock music, you know. It’s rock music taking into account what’s happened in the last 20+ years. The fact is that hip-hop, from our point of view and anybody else you and I know, has been part of our conscious and culture from the beginning. I was very young when it first came around and I became aware of it, but it was part of my life. Those elements have worked their way into what is “rock and roll” music. Another thing about our music is that it is Memphis-based. Of course people think of Memphis music and they think of Elvis. We are a rock band that concentrates on a groove. We’re also very interested in rhythms and textures. We don’t really have a modus oporandae really other than we just do what we like. We like stuff that moves us and more importantly things that we can move other people with. We get called a funk band a lot and a lot of things we do are definitely funky, as are our influences. BUT, funk is a really bastardized word. What people consider “funk” and what is really funky are often two different things. If you played Maggot Brain by Funkadelic for somebody, the average person would not consider that funky. No, the average person is expecting to hear Brick House and see some guy up on stage with sequins and an afro smiling at them.

C: Right.
S: What the average person is not usually expecting to hear is a really hard groove by some really freaked out dudes like Funkadelic, but hey that’s what funk is to me. That’s a big part of where we’re coming from.

C: You also mentioned how important it is that you are a Memphis-based band. I was impressed when I first got your album to see how many Memphis musicians contributed to it. Guys like Ross Rice who played the Clavichord and keyboards on a couple of tracks, and Nathan Guinle who played percussion on a few too. You even worked Luther Dickinson in on a track.
S: Yeah, Luther and I grew up together, he’s just six months older than me.

C: Seems like there’s quite a bit of interconnection between Memphis music and other great musical influences. Luther’s dad Jim played some organ on Bob Dylan’s grammy-winning album and his brother Cody plays with JoJo Hermann of Widespread Panic occasionally as “Nickel and Cheese”. Memphis musicians seem to get together and just jam at the drop of a hat.
S: I don’t know, we don’t really think about it that much. Since we were kids we used to always see our dads play together and that’s just what they did. That’s just what we do now. We appreciate it, and talk about how much fun it is, but it’s just a natural thing, we don’t analyze it too much. We’re friends and that’s how we express our friendship. Playing together is just like breathing for us.

C: What have been your musical influences as you have developed your own style of guitar playing?
S: Well, again, just being around my father. You know he played together with (Jim) Dickinson as Mudboy and the Neutrons. They were like the seminal underground freak-o band from Memphis. That band had a guitar player named Lee Baker who was the baddest guy around. He was just so visceral. He was the guitar hero for Luther and me both. That is originally why we wanted to play guitar.
There were always musical instruments around when I was growing up. I would be banding on my brother’s drum set and then I got a bass because I wanted to be Gene Simmons. I also wanted to be Ace Freely for a while. Of course I was influenced by Hendrix, but my brother turned me onto David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust. My brother got me into a lot of stuff. I heard Moonage Daydream and I said, “that’s it, that’s what I wanna do.” I wanted to play like that. Of course, I have always been influenced by a mesh of classic rock influences.

C: Can you speak for any other band member as far as influences go?
S: Colin’s always been really into hip-hop. He was really into pop for a while. He listened to a lot of R.E.M. Robert’s was into Rush, and more pride-rock types of bands. As we got older, we all started to get into the same things, like the Meters and Booker T (and the MGs.) Those are the things that brought us together.

C: What are your upcoming travel and tour plans?
S: We’re taking it pretty easy during December, just playing on weekends. In January we’re playing a little bit more and then in February, we will head out west. We just finished a northeast run this fall.

C: Are you going to be sharing the bill with anyone?
S: No, we’re not traveling with anyone right now. We did a bunch of dates with Ben Harper earlier this year. He’s the sweetest, nicest, kindest dude. His live show rocks, it is very intense.

C: You’ve played with Galactic before, no?
S: Yeah, we actually knew those guys from way back when they were Galactic Prophylactic. A friend of ours from Memphis played with them then. They’ve really got their shit together and now they’re kicking ass.

C: Have you guys thought about doing HORDE tour in the future?
S: Yeah, we’ve talked about it. If they ask us to do it, we would definitely like to do it. At the level we’re at it’s really hard to get onto these things because it is so much as case of major labels and managers scratching each other’s backs. From where we are right now, we just need to work the clubs. We fight for everything we can get and pursue it aggressively, but where we are right now are hands are somewhat tied. There are a lot of people doing things for a lot of other people right now.

C: How about Widespread Panic? You just opened up for them at the Aragon in Chicago over Thanksgiving weekend. How did you get hooked up with them?
S: Our booking agent and publicist are living in Athens--

C: Sara Jones S: Yeah, Sara Rocks. There’s the hardest working woman in show biz, right there. She’s good friends with Dave (Schools). We ended up hanging out in Athens quite a bit. Dave was around and he just dug the band. Everybody seemed hip to it, so we just did it. Dave’s a music lover, so we have that in common. They were nice enough to let us do it and the whole experience was very good. They certainly have a good thing going.

C: What is your favorite venue from your travels so far?
S: The Mercury club in Austin has been very good to us. It’s on 6th St. The people that run it are like family. It’s a great environment to be in. Jack Straw’s in Charlotte is really good. Asheville has been great to us. The Knitting Factory in New York City is a pretty prestigious place as far as I’m concerned. The people there really like us and make us feel welcome when we play there. There are quite a few other places that have been good to us too. It’s been kind of slow going out west, but lots of that is just timing more than anything else. Some nights we will be at a place we’ve never played before and Jesus will be playing the harp down the street and everybody will go to see that. I have to give Colin credit for that saying. You can’t let it phase you, really. At the end of the day, what you’re doing is just playing music and if you can play good music, then you’re ahead of the game right there.

C: Any final thoughts on music, philosophy, religion?
S: I guess the main thing I want when someone listens to our new album right now is for that person to feel so excited that they want to go out and create something themselves. I hope somebody goes out and picks up an instrument, writes a lyric, and does something constructive. That’s the big thing for me and always has been, really.