The Mother Truckers Interview: SXSW 2010

Posted on Feb 20th 2010 12:56PM by David A. Cobb
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Austin rockers the Mother Truckers infuse their music with a heavy blues and country influence, so it's no surprise the band, which formed in San Francisco in 2002, found itself right at home in the Lone Star State. Guitarist/vocalist Josh Zee and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Teal Collins head up the band, whose releases have earned critical praise and a devoted fan base. The band plans a 2010 release for its new album, with both a US and a European tour to follow. Spinner recently asked Collins some questions about the music business, SXSW, and the band's plans for the future.

Describe your sound in your own words.

AC/DC, Hank Williams, Sr., and the Rolling Stones had a baby.

How did your band form?

Josh and I, the other principal songwriter, met at a blues jam, and we just hit if off right away, started writing and playing together. We had this idea that we wanted do a kind of an edgy country band.

How did you come up with your band name?

Well, we had a lot of names we were kicking around, and that was one that Josh came up with. We had some more that were even more racy than that -- if you consider that racy - -but we felt it was kind of like the gimme. It's funny, because pretty much before we even started playing we'd tell people what the name of our band was and they'd say, "Oh, I've heard of that."

What do you think about the current state of the music industry -- the fact that bands can now get a good bit of success by doing it themselves?

The way that we thought of the music industry is over, and I think that it is in some ways good and some ways bad. You would never have someone say, like Simon & Garfunkel, signed to a major deal anymore because they don't look cute like Britney Spears or somebody. But hopefully it allows the cream to rise to the top, because it doesn't matter much what people look like because we're not competing to be on video channels today. Musicians just want people to get into their songs.

Now, the other problem in having it be a mostly digital world musically is that bands don't often -- because people don't buy CDs -- get experienced as a thing, like we used to with vinyl albums, and looking at the album and listening to the whole album as a piece of art. When I get into somebody, I want to know more about the artist. I don't want them to exist in kind of a vacuum.

Similarly, how has digital technology changed the way you create your music as a band? Or has it?

Well, I think it's great as a pre-production tool. It helps me. But you know what I don't like is the idea that any big band on any show has themselves tuned within an inch of their lives. And I don't like that because part of the whole energy of seeing live bands is hearing that energy. And I think that if it's all tuned, and all the drum hits are lined up, it's just bull.

Being from Austin, what's your take on SXSW and the invasion of bands and media each year?

We're too busy to have too much time to sit around thinking about it, because it's a super-busy time. A lot of bands we know play two and three shows a day, where you're running around setting up to play 20 minutes here three times a day. I will say that I think the general feeling in Austin is that 10 years ago, or however long when it started, you could actually get noticed even if you were an independent band. Now it's become a celebrity thing and that's where most of the press is drawn to, the bigger things, and that's no surprise.

Yeah, I see Hole is playing.

Right, but hopefully there are people in the industry that aren't the big guys, that are coming to see bands and are really wanting to find bands to get with to help them do all kinds of things. Maybe it's international distribution, maybe it's, "Oh, I need a song for my documentary." It's not necessarily that all the connections you make are going to [get you] signed to a multi-record deal, but you could make a lot of connections at SX for doing things that are going to help you out as a band.

What are you looking forward to most at this year's SXSW?

Pretty much what's cool for us right now is that there's a couple of bands out here that are friends of ours that we get to play with a few shows. It's kind of like a family, so I look forward to everybody that we already come see here in Austin raising the level of playing here so we melt people's faces.

If you could play with any musician from the '60s, '70s or '80s, who would it be and why?

I love me some Robert Plant. I know Josh would be, hands down, Angus Young. Bring him on. That's his biggest hero ever. I love Robert Plant, Ann Wilson of Heart, Bonnie Raitt. Paul McCartney, that would be great.

Beatles or Stones?

[Without hesitation] Beatles.

What's your musical guilty pleasure?

I have so many. It only would be guilty if you consider it embarrassing. Do you consider XTC embarrassing? Level 42? Steely Dan?

Level 42 maybe. But he was a good bass player.

(laughs)