Kudzu Krazy: The Life and Times of the Kudzu Kings
South Region Groove of the Month

by Chip Schramm

Nobody ever said being a professional musician was easy. Take the Kudzu Kings for example. This Oxford, Mississippi roots band has been around for seven years, released two albums, paid their dues, and yet they have still been otherwise undiscovered by the pre-fabricated Nashville music machine. George McConnell and Tate Moore are guitar slingers and songwriters worthy of national praise, but they dwell in marginal obscurity mostly because of their refusal to sell out. They have always done things on their own terms, no more, no less. Along with Robert Chaffe on keys, Dave Woolworth on bass, and a platoon of rotating drummers, the Kudzu Kings share the same sense of humor with guys like John Prine and Vic Chesnutt, but with a few more shots of bourbon thrown into the mix. Their songs cast forth visions of late night beer runs, long-suffering heartache, backwoods blues tent revivals, and even some Rastafarian ritual thrown into the mix. Is there any specific name for their style of music? Try thinkin' man's country. How about drinkin' man's bluegrass? Hell, for some reason that one I seem to keep coming back to is psychedelic honky-tonk, but labels don't do anyone justice.

The Kings have amassed a loyal following, mostly along the I-55 pipeline connecting Memphis, Oxford, Jackson, and New Orleans. Robert Chaffe jokes, "Yeah, we get asked to play the weddings of our older fans all the time. We'd probably make more money doing that, but we have to stay on the road if we want to be successful with what we've got going." They do have quite a bit up their sleeves, having toured all across the country already and planning a big spring and summer tour for 2000, as well. But they have played weddings before. A wedding guest and longtime Kudzu Kings fan who we'll call "Susan" testifies:

"Yeah, I saw the Kudzu Kings play a wedding reception out in east Memphis a couple of years back. It was a really pretty service. I mean the bride had the most beautiful dress on and you could tell that she and her husband were really in love. Well, we traveled from the church to some country club for the reception and it was basically like any other wedding party except for the great music. Oh, and the preacher who married them was also an Elvis impersonator."

Say WHAT?

"Well, he was a part-time Elvis impersonator and he showed up at the reception all dressed up. He was singing and dancing with the bride and groom and everybody was just having a ball. The guys in the band looked like they were having just as much fun as everybody else there and everything was going great until the fight broke out."

Oh yeah, the fight.

"There was a big commotion outside and everybody went out to see what had happened. Supposedly the father of the bride got into an argument with another guest and worked him over good. There was blood everywhere."

That wedding circuit can definitely be a rough tour of duty. It's hard to blame them for sticking to the road. McConnell has certainly logged plenty of time on the stage and on the road from his days playing in Beanland as well. What really carries the Kudzu Kings is their attitude about the life. They are having a good time making music first and foremost, and that is what it's all about. I was fortunate to be able and sit down and talk with Robert Chaffe shortly before the last Beanland Reunion down in Oxford. Excerpts from that interview follow.

C: Y'all have been in Oxford for a while. Oxford has really embraced your sound and North Mississippi in general has always been a hotbed for original roots music. What's the environment like here in town? Does it have more to do with the school or just the area?

R: That's a good question. It's probably a little bit of both, actually. The way we got together, obviously we all went to school here at some point. We weren't driven here for any musical reasons, necessarily. Of course when Jojo came down here, he came for purely musical reasons. You've got music all the way around. You know the North Mississippi All-Stars. They reflect the music of the Delta. Oxford's kind of different. Unless you were gonna go outside of town a little bit, you wouldn't know you were in Mississippi. There's nothing really cultural except William Faulkner and that whole literary scene. Oxford in and of itself is not a very musically oriented town. There have been bands, though, starting back to the Tangents and Beanland that helped develop the music scene.

C: When did the Mosquito Brothers first come about? I know Chuck Sigler [who did some drumming on Y2Kow, their most recent release] and Max [Williams] were also in that with you.

R: When we first got together, I came here to school and just joined a band right off the bat. We did a lot of Meters covers, basically the same thing that Galactic Prophylactic [now just Galactic] was doing at that time. I was doing stuff more in that vein and hooked up with guys up here who were doing stuff in that vein. Then Tate and Dave, who are basically that nucleus of the Kudzu Kings, came into town and once they hooked up, they met our guitarist in the Mosquito Brothers, our Funk Band. Chuck's also drumming in Beanland tonight.

We played in Oxford, and we played in Memphis some. We didn't take it too seriously because we were all still in school. We played a lot of covers and got a lot of respect here around town. We had a cult following. When Tate hooked up with Dave, our bass player from New Jersey who was going to grad school, they started doing country songs and need a backing band. They found out about Max, who was our guitar player at the time, because he was a prodigy. He was incredible, everybody knew about Max. When they got together and started writing songs, they brought Chuck and myself into the fold. That's how the Kudzu Kings started.

It was just a side project for us at the time because the Mosquito Brothers was still going on. It started as a Tuesday night thing at Ireland's where Tate and Dave had a residency playing acoustic. We just turned it into a jam night every Tuesday night. It became a phenomenon and it was packed every Tuesday. Then we started writing songs and they were about Oxford, but we were just joking around. People would start to pick up on the songs. "Bar-B-Que Blues" is a song Tate wrote about working at the Rebel Barn. Dave wrote "Mississippi Mud."

C: How have the lineup changed to the Kudzu Kings affected your sound?

R: You can listen to the first CD. George didn't play electric with us originally. He played acoustic. When Beanland broke up he went overseas for a while, with the intention of possibly moving out there. Then he got a phone call from his roommate saying he was about to get sued by the landlord, so he had to come back into town. It was right around the time we were doing the Tuesday night thing, so of course George started jamming with us, and basically accepted an invitation to join.

Going back to the instrumentation on the first record, Max played all the leads. Once Max got engaged, after the record was released and said he was gonna leave, George started playing electric at that point, because he knew somebody was going to have to take up the slack. Playing those songs on the first album without an electric would've made it sound empty. For about 2 months, we had 2 dueling Les Pauls, so that was pretty crazy. That brought the jam element out and brought George back to the Beanland stuff that he was used to playing. It changed the way we were doing things: playing songs, constructing solos, everything. We brought Bryan in because he played banjo and he's been full time since Max left, for the last two and a half years.

C: Do you think being a country-rock fusion band make it harder on you as a professional, especially trying to market your music?

R: It's very hard to describe to people what it is that we do. If I say country, it would be misleading. If I say rock it would be misleading. Even if I say country-rock that would be misleading. We have fairly good distribution. It costs $10,000 to make a record and we're selling 3,000 or 4,000 of each record, so we're making it back. Radio is so pigeonholed these days. The music is so homogenized. It's just studio-trickery [or as Bryan's Song goes] crap. The fact that we're still playing Tipitina's is even still odd to me. We got in on a fluke the first time and we just drew well because people liked our music. A band like us wouldn't normally be able to send in a disc and have the music be representative of the band and get a gig out of it. It's taken opening up for a lot of people and seeing the audience's reaction to see if they'll give us a try. Going by just the music itself, I can see how it would be a challenge for people to take us seriously or see what to do with us.

C: Do you think that the "jamband" music scene is a little more open-minded or eager to try out new things?

R: That's true, and we are a live band and a jamband in a different sense. We jam on certain songs. We didn't set up to make CDs and present our music that way. We made the CDs as a result of people coming out to our shows and liking the songs that we wrote. But the catch to that is we have to send stuff out to bars and magazine and radio stations. They don't get the whole package that way. They're missing what the band is really about which is our interaction on stage and our live sound. You can't capture that on a CD.

C: On your most recent album, Y2Kow, you did record that live with just a few overdubs. Do you think that helped with the transition from the stage to the studio?

R: When Max left, our sound changed radically. We never had a mandolin or banjo in the band. We had George playing lead guitar, which was a big departure from what Max was doing. We spent about 6 months trying to figure out how all the pieces were gonna fit together. We were still sending out the old record to people and they liked it, but it really wasn't representative of us anymore. That's when we decided it was time to do #2. We decided to go in and do it as live as possible. The hidden track at the end, "Down in Mississippi," that was completely live.

C: You guys have always had a reputation as a good time party band that likes to raise a little hell. How important is it to keep a good sense of humor about what you're doing?

R: That's what we do. You are supposed to be professional when you go onto stage, so a lot of people don't take a band seriously when they have 2 cases of beer up on stage. Some musicians have their Evian spring water and maybe 1 Heineken on their amp. Our whole thing ever since day 1 has been interacting with the audience and having a good time ourselves. The audience responds to the way we are, so we're a party band in that sense. If it's our night and you're coming to see us, you have to endure everything. It's something different from the norm. We want to be entertaining and at the same time entertain ourselves. (laughs)

C: What are your upcoming tour plans?

R: We have dates in Denver, Boulder and Breckenridge right now. We're playing in Colorado during Ole Miss' Spring break. We're going to hit the Carolinas in April, too. We usually play Friday-Saturday-Sunday and come back in town the other four days of the week. It allows us to enjoy some semblance of a normal life and we don't have to worry about getting burned out on the road. George owns the guitar shop up in town, of course, so he doesn't have to be around when Oxford is deserted during Spring Break. We'll definitely have more dates out west and announce them closer to time.

You can check for Kudzu Kings tour updates at www.kudzukings.com.

Beanland's Second Annual Reunion Weekend or
Last Year Couldn't Have Been That Damn Special,
'Cause They Did It Again!

by Frank Kossen

Call me old fashioned, but I love rock n' roll. I really do. More than anything else I can think of. Don't get me wrong; I really like it when Medeski, Martin, and Wood launch into a spaced-out jam that explores the outer perimeters of jazz, or when Galactic lays down that thick, nasty New Orleans swamp funk. But for my nickel, I'm happiest when I'm hearing some of that devil's music. If you love rock n' roll like I do, you realize that real rock n' roll, good rock n' roll, was never intended to be played in amphitheaters, or coliseums, and certainly not stadiums. Rock n' roll was meant to be played in bars. Hot, sweaty, smoky bars. I'm explaining all this so you will understand that when I tell you Beanland was the greatest bar band ever, you will know with what kind of reverence I hold that title. Got it? Good.

Beanland was the greatest bar band ever. That's why everybody down Mississippi way was as excited as we could get when we found out that the good ol' boys from Beanland had seen fit to grace us with yet another set of reunion shows this year. Seems they had almost as much fun as we did last year. The first night this year, again, was the public performance at The Library, in Oxford, MS, the sight of the final Beanland performance all those years ago (it wasn't that long, was it?) Back then it was called Lafayette's. The Saturday night show at Proud Larry's was the friends and family show; it was where the reunion was happening as much in the crowd as on the stage. Like last year, many people used the shows as an excuse to return to the stomping grounds of years gone by. Many of the original Beanland fans like the idea that this might become a regular occurrence. Kind of like a second Homecoming, in the spring (er....winter).

Anyway, by the time Saturday night's show rolled around, you could feel the anticipation bubbling in Proud Larry's. Larry's has an extra room, with tables (it's also a restaurant), and this year someone was kind enough to put some speakers up there, just to make sure no one missed any of the music. But by the time the boys got up on stage, nobody wanted to be anywhere near the tables.

Leave it to the greatest bar band ever to open a highly anticipated show with an instrumental. But Beanland did it, and with ease, flowing through "You're Everywhere," a track from Eye to Eye, their second release. They took "Everywhere" straight into "Red Wing," another original, and a love song about a comfortable, well-worn boot. Only in Mississippi. After that was a surprise, "Cool It Down," from the Velvet Underground's album, Loaded. Never performed by Beanland, JoJo brought it to rehearsals at the beginning of the week and it fit in the repertoire perfectly. A smokin' "Deal" followed that, and then another original, Bill "Crow" McCrory's "Mind Phuck," that extended into a J-A-M. It was like the old days.

"Freddy King's Motorcycle" rocked the roof off the house, then things were slowed down a bit for "Ocean," a George McConnell original that was never recorded. Then we got a Mississippi-fried treat. Dr. Duff Dorrough, lead guitarist for Mississippi's original house band, the Tangents, got up on stage with the boys for a medley of oldies but goodies that included "Mean Woman Blues" (that's an Elvis song, son), "In The Night" ('Fess), and "Shake, Rattle, and Roll." JoJo used this classic run to showcase his love of the style of the late, great Professor Longhair. He tickled the keys 'til they just couldn't take it anymore. Closing out the first set was "1x1," another Beanland tune from the first album, affectionately known as "Lizards."

Oh, my God, they came back for more! "Doretha" probably the most popular Beanland song of them all, got us kickin' again for the second set, and that was followed by "Right or Wrong," a slow, creeping blues number that George decided to grace with an evil solo. "Dragonfly," another classic, was followed by "Fishin' Impossible," and JoJo took his organ to new dimensions. Damn, these boys sure could jam!

Duff came back for more, and they launched into an old Sonny Boy Williamson tune, "Eyesight To The Blind." Again, maybe it's me, but I never could get enough rock n' roll, so I flipped when they whipped into "Carol", an old Chuck Berry classic that the Stones were known to cover a time or two. Looking back at my setlist, I have one thing written by "Carol"- "GOJOJO!" I think that about sums it up.

"Stag-O-Lee" was close behind, an old song that many people have done, but few as furious as this. By the way, Chuck Sigler and Ron Lewis, as always, make a helluva a rhythm section, laying down the groove and keeping it solid. George's original, "Take Me To The Show" is always a treat to hear. What can I tell you? It's a song about wanting nothing more in the world than to go to a show. I can identify. A little Bob never hurt nobody, nowhere, so the whole crowd was groovin' when the displaced Yankee laid into a wicked organ solo during "Highway 61," which was followed by another tune Beanland had never performed, Little Feat's "Spanish Moon".

Oh, yeah. It's good like that. We could tell we were getting close to the end, (the bars in Oxford close at midnight on Saturday...another story....a long story), but they wanted to give us more, and did, with "Sellin' The Rain", another classic, and one of the best songs Beanland ever made. Another Dead cover, "Fire on The Mountain", got us all in the mood to shake, and they closed, appropriately, with another Chuck Berry cover, "Round and Round". What can I say? They were right. The joint was rockin', goin' round and round. Reelin', if you will. With that, they were off again, back into the frosty Mississippi night (yes, it does get cold down here....occasionally). They left us still wanting more, like any good band. Hugs and kisses were exchanged, and everyone promised to come back next year and see each other again. It was a 350-person reunion, and we were all sad to see it end. But they'll come back next year, and we'll all go back. We're all friends and family. Or, as we say down here, we're all folks.

While Beanland is gone, they're far from forgotten. Numerous tapes were made of Saturday night's show, and I would recommend getting your hands on one if you can. There's also a website, http://www.beanland.net, run by Ron Lewis, which you should check out if you get a chance. If you like rock n' roll, it's a must.

Take Me to the Show: Beanland Reunion 2000
Round One: The Library, Oxford, Mississippi, Friday January 21st

by Chip Schramm

The third weekend in January is not traditionally a time of excessive jubilation in Oxford, Mississippi. The students are just getting used to being back in school and the locals have to endure some pretty nasty weather, even for the south. Fortunately, for the past two years, Oxfordtown residents have been privy to one of the greatest musical reunions in the land. Through the good fortune of scheduling, desire, and most importantly a drunken conversation between two old friends, the Beanland Reunion became a reality in December of 1998.

For the uninitiated, Beanland was and is one of the greatest house bands of all time, no matter which house you may be sitting in. In their all-too-short time together as a group, Beanland managed to put Oxford on the map of rock and roll America. With the help of producer Jim Dickinson, they released an album that became a cult classic and still sells well more than 7 years after their last performance. They gained notoriety as a raucous, entertaining group of musicians throughout the South and even traveled out West and up to New York to play some shows. George McConnell and Bill McRory created the core of their sound on guitar, with John "Jojo" Hermann on keyboard and Ron Lewis on bass rounding out the reunion lineup.

Beanland enjoyed their heyday in the late 80's and early 90's, so even your humble narrator didn't get to see them play live the first time around. As many music fans are well aware, Jojo Hermann left Beanland to join the Athens, GA outfit Widespread Panic in 1992, and bassist Ron Lewis skipped town as well to move to New Orleans. McConnell's attempts to keep the band together without them didn't pan out, although he did end up back in Oxford playing music after a brief hiatus in Europe (see the Kudzu Kings article in this section to read more about how that came about.) There was quite a bit of disappointment amongst fans of the band after the breakup, so when Hermann and McConnell agreed to put the reunion together during a moment of inspired inebriation, everybody was a winner. Friday night's show was at the Library, while Saturday's was a more intimate invitation-only show at Proud Larry's, the Oxford institution that is STILL Hermann's favorite venue the world over.

The Friday night show was so big, it was amazing that it even happened at all. There were so many people packed into the Library that if somebody tripped over a power cord, there would've been a full-scale riot. Things were as packed as any show I've been to since a 1998 CD release party that took place in the streets of Athens, Georgia, but it was all confined to one relatively small room. The only place where anyone was comfortable had to be the stage. The four original members of Beanland were joined by Chuck Sigler of the Kudzu Kings on drums. The overcrowding was so bad that many older, original Beanland fans left the building before it was over due to exhaustion and claustrophobia.

That was the only legitimate complaint the whole weekend, but it was a big one. Not everyone was lucky enough to see the show at Larry's, so some fans left Friday night with a very bad taste in their mouths. A fair proportion of the crowd consisted of teenyboppers who were cheering loudly for the songs Jojo plays with Widespread Panic, like "Red Beans" and "1X1". They also tended to turn their backs to the stage and talk through classic, inspired Beanland originals like "Take Me To The Show," forcing one to wonder if they were suffering through the mob for no other reason than to tell their friends they were there.

To the band's credit, the show on Friday night was on fire. If the band was feeding off of the crowd's energy, they had plenty to gobble up. They opened the first set with the Jojo's classic "Selling the Rain." He played it loud and hot, singing from the heart. I can't help but think this is the best song he sings, including the others he wrote since playing with Panic. The fact that he only plays it with Beanland makes it all the more special. Many of us had been waiting in anticipation of this particular night for months, so it was great to see that opener followed by "On a String," McConnell's first song of the night. Again, the performance was tight and George's vocals were earthy and melodious. If we were playing a game of name that tune, the crowd on Friday had "One By One," nailed in about two or three notes. There was quite a bit of whoopin' and hollering for a song that was all-too-predictable, but the harmonica added such a nice touch that I couldn't help but smile and remember why I always liked the original version.

It didn't take too long before the band reached down to their roots and pulled out a long and uplifting version of "Eyes of the World." Like so many of their peers in the dawn of the modern jamband movement, Beanland derives a fair amount of influence from the Grateful Dead. McConnell's roaming guitar lines are the primary evidence of this, but the overall communication between the players on this night really made it work. "Take Me To The Show," was also one of the highlights of Friday night, with George belting out vocals like a man possessed. Every band has a song or two about experiencing live music itself, but this one is one of the greats. Hermann also unleashed a Professor Longhair-inspired ragtime anthem, "Red Beans," to close the first set.

The second set got off to an auspicious start with McConnell breaking out a lively version of "All Along The Watchtower." I've heard dozens of musicians try to cover this song, some with more success than others, but George can hang with the best of them. His trademark howl and piercing guitar really got the house back into the groove. The rare "Mind Fuck" that followed was a treat for old school fans of Beanland. "Fishin' Impossible," the only instrumental of the night, seems true to its name. George was reelin' off guitar leads while Lewis and Sigler were thumping a mighty bass beat to combat them. Jojo's slippery keyboard work just flowed in and out of the jam like a tarpon breaking through the surf.

The three-song segment that ended the show was probably the highlight of the whole weekend, musically speaking. "Hold the Wheel" was long and intense. The version played on this night alone is worth the time and effort it takes to get the tapes. Contrary to rumor, there are good tapes of this show in circulation. Look for the audience tapes recorded on mini-disc instead of the soundboard tapes recorded on DAT. Jojo followed that up with a wild and wooly rendition of the traditional western folk song "Stag-O-Lee." It seemed only appropriate that they closed the show with "Doretha." To me "Doretha" is like the house music of all the greatest shows I've ever been to. For whatever reason, "Doretha" always seems to be the song that cuts on the PA at 3am after whatever band I was dancing to stopped playing. This version was the best one I'd ever heard, and at that point I was being pushed so far back against the wall that I was practically dancing in front of the bathroom doors.

The encores were "Dear Prudence" and "Werewolves of London," both sung by George. The first sounded sweet and pretty, while the second was wild and out of control. I was almost surprised that he had enough composure left to tackle the Beatles' gem, but was equally delighted to hear him belt out a Warren Zevon tune also covered by the Dead. There had been a lunar eclipse a few nights previous, so it was poetic justice. By that point all the music fans left standing were raving mad anyway, so they hardly noticed that George butchered the lyrics to "Werewolves" beyond recognition. The first round of Beanland Reunion 2000 was a rousing if not unanimous success and set the stage well for the show the following Saturday.