Christopher & the Souls Interview: SXSW 2010

In 1964, the Beatles hit America, and nothing has been the same here since. Buzz cuts turned to mop tops, marching bands were abandoned for garage bands and a million rock and roll dreams were born. In McAllen, TX, just north of the Mexican border, Jay Hausman began recruiting McAllen High classmates into a band that became known as the Souls, playing mostly cover tunes. In 1966, they cut a single with songs written by their friend Chris Voss under the name Christopher & the Souls and 'Diamonds, Rats and Gum' from that record remains a gem of the American garage rock era. When an interview turned into a SXSW gig 44 years later, the Souls couldn't pass up the chance to re-unite. Guitar player Dave Smith gave us the skinny on the Souls then and now.

How did your band form?

We were all teenagers back then, and of course when the Beatles hit and played on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' [in 1964], we were all affected by that. We essentially talked our parents into buying us electric guitars. We found each other playing early Beatles and Stones covers and that's how it got started. A couple years after we formed -- and by the time we had improved our equipment and started using fuzz tone pretty heavily and kind of got into that era -- we were approached by a friend of mine from grade school named Chris Voss who had written a couple of songs, and he asked if we would be his backing band. So we went into Pharaoh Studios in McAllen, a small studio in South Texas, and we put together a really heavy fuzz version of one of his song 'Diamonds, Rats and Gum' and a ballad version of the other ['Broken Hearted Lady'] and recorded it as a single. That was when we started getting increased recognition. We gave it all we had in terms of pure volume and primitive teenage energy, and I think it has held up pretty well.

Describe your sound in your own words.

Back then all of the bands were called combos, the word band was just starting to come around. Although it might seem a little silly now, I would have said we were a working combo, working in covers of British and West Coast and American Rock. We were very loud, a lot of feedback, a lot of fuzz tone, that was our style. Very much in the Yarbirds kind of style, I guess.

What were your other musical influences?

Rolling Stones, Kinks, the Rascals here in the U.S. In Texas, there were a bunch of good bands too. We were influenced by Zakary Thaks and another Texas band called Bumble Puppy, they had a hit called 'Hot Smoke and Sassafras.' Those kinds of loud, edgy, fuzz-tone oriented bands, that was pretty much who we listened to.

How did you come up with your band name?

I think that probably came from the Beatles' 'Rubber Soul' album. I think we tried to make a play on that title and we came up with the Souls.

Then when you booked Chris Voss you recorded as Christopher & the Souls.

Well no-one called him Christopher back then, everyone called him Chris. I think he wanted to have an English-sounding name, that was fairly common. Even with the Sir Douglas Quintet, those guys were from San Antonio but they adopted a British sounding name.

Why did you choose to not continue as a band?

I don't think we consciously chose not to, we were all so young -- I was 16 and I was probably the oldest guy in the group. We were just in high school and drifting off into whatever direction we were going. By the time the summer of '67 came around, our lead singer [Allen Kirsh] had moved. We kept losing members because they would move away or whatever, so we couldn't hold it together. We didn't decide to just quit, it just kind of happened.

An original record recently sold for $1225, does that surprise you?

Yeah, I can't even make any sense of that. I think it was such a little timepiece out of history, it captures something that is still of interest to some people and it's pretty flattering really.

Were you excited when you were asked to play SXSW?

It was a big surprise, because we weren't thinking about anything like that. We were contacted by Michael Hall of Texas Monthly Magazine for an interview and then about a month later, he told us that they would be putting on a showcase at the Continental Club and we would be in that showcase. It was a really exciting for everybody because we haven't really been doing this for quite a while.

How have you prepared for the reunion?

We have rehearsed. We didn't want to come back into it cold, having gone off in our lives and now coming back into this. Several of us have kept playing and the other guys have come back up to speed pretty quickly. So I think we'll be just as loud and raucous as we were, and there will be as much fuzz-tone as there ever was.

What's your musical guilty pleasure?

I guess my guiltiest pleasure is still listening to 60s music probably more than I should. That's probably the worst of it. There are so many good musicians in Austin that we get out and try and see as much live music as we possibly can.

Beatles or Stones?

Beatles. We played more songs by the Stones back then, probably because they were easier to play, but it was always the Beatles. I had some cousins in Blackpool, England, which is very close to Liverpool and they would send me newspaper clippings and a copy of 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' on the Parlophone label before anyone else had that stuff in south Texas, so I was hooked at a very early age.


Carl Atiya Swanson is a contributor from Seed.com. Learn how you can contribute here.