| For a lot of people, naming your band can be the hardest part of a musical project. For Matt Verta-Ray, one half of the rockabilly outfit Heavy Trash, the trick was finding a band to live up to the moniker.
"My father came up with it in the 1970s," says Verta-Ray. "The first Tuesday of every month was heavy trash day, where you put out the big stuff – sofas and refrigerators and stuff – and he said, ‘You should name your band Heavy Trash.’ Then finally there was a band worthy of the name 30 years later."
The days of kicking your oversized garbage to the curb may be gone, but the weight and age of hulking sofas and yawning refrigerators recall a time when the world was less complicated, music was more honest and people revelled in the simpler things in life. In that respect, Heavy Trash is a perfect fit for Verta-Ray and his iconic friend and musical partner Jon Spencer, as their indulgence in vintage rockabilly does exactly the same thing.
GETTING TRASHED
According to both members of Heavy Trash, the idea of working together had been a long time coming. Spencer first made a name for himself as the frontman for the now legendary avant-noise merchants Pussy Galore. When that project dissolved in 1990, he found even greater success as the swaggering mouthpiece of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. In that band’s 15-year history, Spencer has worked with such legendary bluesmen as R.L. Burnside and Andre Williams, so clearly, despite frontman status, he’s no stranger to collaboration.
Similarly, Verta-Ray is best known for his work with rockers Speedball Baby, although in the indie-rock heyday of the early ’90s he was bass player for Madder Rose. More recently, Verta-Ray has been honing his recording skills in the studio, producing, among others, Andre Williams. With similar taste in music, a long friendship and access to a laid-back studio environment a musical union between Spencer and Verta-Ray was inevitable.
"We always had backstage jams and figured out that we were both obviously interested in roots music – the blues and James Brown aspect of it being the more obvious stuff in common," says Verta-Ray. "Then I found out that Jon dug rockabilly, which I have always been heavily involved in. For years now we have been talking about making some sort of rockabilly record together. Now finally there was a little bit of downtime and we started writing songs together and it completely gelled."
Verta-Ray describes the process as the New York City version of back-porch songwriting. Getting together a couple of times a week during the summer, the two would swap old songs, drink and hang out. It may have made for some dank basement jam sessions, but it grew into something organic all on its own.
"Intitially, the idea was a rockabilly project and I very much wanted from the start to keep it in that vein," says Spencer. "Super stripped-down – just acoustic guitar, electric guitar and bass. I really didn’t even want drums. As we went along, things kind of sneaked in."
With slap-back echo on Spencer’s vocals and guitars that are dripping with vibrato, the resulting self-titled album has many visible rockabilly signposts. But even as the leadoff track lopes along at an equine trot, it doesn’t take long for the bouncy riffs to give way to a messy fuzzed-out guitar mini-solo. The rest of the album mirrors this esthetic – the idea of classic rockabilly being filtered through two men who really like to rock.
ROCKABILLY ROUNDUP
Fleshing the two-piece sound out with lap steel, Wurlitzer piano, backing vocals and an array of percussion, Spencer and Verta-Ray approached the album on a song-by-song basis. Old demo tapes were referenced, guitar parts were laid down, Spencer would wail, Verta-Ray would man the boards and whenever a new element was needed, they would call on their friends. The result is a two-piece outfit backed by 20 guest performers that offer note-perfect accents while still maintaining a sparse feel. This is sketchy territory for any rockabilly band, since fans of the genre are often loyal to fanatical degrees. It’s not just in the hybridized realm of punkabilly that traditionalists turn up their noses at the new sound. Anytime a band employs a drummer rather than just letting the slap of the bass strings on the fretboard keep the beat, purists see it as a step away from the classic sound.
"Even though there are drums on the record they are pretty low," says Spencer. "It’s not a drum-heavy record, but it is still a terribly rhythmic record and that is, in my mind, in the spirit of rockabilly. I think not all the songs are traditional rockabilly songs, so whatever the song called for, we would add it and that is where the guests came in."
STUDIO SOUND
The special guests offer a welcome texture to the album (and that guest dynamic is set to continue on the road as Heavy Trash enlist The Sadies to back them up on several tour dates in the East), but ultimately it was the laid-back recording atmosphere that informs the album most. Verta-Ray has had his own studio on the Lower East Side of Manhattan for years, and the fact that it was at the band’s disposal made the recording of the album as relaxing as it was productive.
"In a way it was kind of nice, because we had time to think about stuff," says Verta-Ray. "It wasn’t restricted to two weeks."
"We had the luxury of being able to drop in and mess around," says Spencer. "We worked on this record a little bit spread over a long period of time. It’s not like going into the studio was a high-pressure thing. Going to the studio was going to hang out. It’s underneath a nightclub and bar so you get a drink from upstairs and then you go downstairs and play and experiment and mess around with stuff."
Spencer called it spontaneous combustion. Channelling the spirit of Charlie Feathers and the classic Sun Records catalogue, Heavy Trash dig up the roots of rock ’n’ roll, R and B and vintage country and filter it through Verta-Ray’s warm analogue control room. If Spencer was heating up through the friction of collaboration, Verta-Ray matched it with the warmth of electrical tubes and two-inch tape. Not a fan of digital recording or the Pro Tools revolution, Verta-Ray’s secret weapon is a vintage tape recorder that he used to make the final mixes for the album.
"It’s the most beautiful thing," says Verta-Ray. "It looks like there is a coal fire on the inside and it glows orange and it gets hot. It crunches up the music so great…. It just melts into this great rock ’n’ roll thing."
It’s an esthetic that both members of Heavy Trash share, which explains why Spencer and Verta-Ray relish music that is steeped in nostalgia. "I’m just a fan of the older styles, especially the older production values," says Spencer. "I don’t think I’m alone. Even when you got these modern-day records with computers and tons of money, it could even be a rap record or something, they will be sampling an old soul record."
Verta-Ray admits that the album isn’t airtight, but given that the band has been making the most of spare-time happy accidents since the beginning, there is no reason it should be. As both members of Heavy Trash learned while working with Williams, you can’t sacrifice energy for sonic perfection. In the end, Spencer and Verta-Ray are re-creating a less ambitious musical time – an era before bands were trying to blow each other off the radio with overproduced crap. You can call Heavy Trash a supergroup or a side project, but in the end it’s just two guys who are tuned into the same frequency.
"Jon will pass me a Gene Vincent movie and I will recommend a record or something. We have been doing that for years and years," says Verta-Ray. "We kind of got a way to bring it into the world in a concrete way."
CELEB TOP EIGHT
The Top Eight favourite blues guitarists of Heavy Trash’s Jon Spencer (we only asked for five):
1. RL Burnside
2. John Lee Hooker
3. Elmore James
4. Hound Dog Taylor
5. Mr. Brewer
6. Hubert Sumland
7. Jesse May Hemfield
8. Junior Kimbrough
CELEB TOP FIVE
Matt Verta Ray’s Top Five favourite rockabilly songs:
1. "Pink Peg Slacks" by Eddie Cochrane
2. "Lonely" by Sleepy LaBeef
3. "Trying to Get To You" by Elvis Presley
4. "Eager Beaver Baby" by Johnny Burnette and the Rock & Roll Trio
5. "Jungle Fever" by Charlie Feathers |
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