Interview by Sam Velde and Aaron North. Photography by Travis Keller.
Hot, sweaty, and slippery talk with John and Rick of Hot Snakes.
The musical combination of John Reis and Rick Farr have produced some of the most influential and potent music of the late 20th century. From the infectious melodies of Pitchfork, to the intense roller coaster ride of Drive Like Jehu to the bombast blasts of their newly formed Hot Snakes. These two gentleman have changed many a lives. Probably not the task or the tag they would want to bear, but an inevitable birth mark none the less. If you’ve ever heard the battle cry of Pitchfork’s “burn pigs, burn” or lost your shit to the sounds of Drive Like Jehu’s “oh pencil sharp” you know exactly what I’m talking about. Some of the most creative lyrics and rhythms to grace the turntables or CD players of musical culture and beyond in some time. Many of us were saddened, downright suicidal when Jehu faded into the night, never to return. Well things are back on track. John and Rick have returned…in a blaze of fiery fury with Hot Snakes “Automatic Midnight.” Everything you loved about the aforementioned bands and a whole lot more. We jumped at the chance to talk to these two fellows after hearing their record.
This is what went down. Please do yourself an overdue favor…treat yourself to their record and remember what living is all about!
Buddyhead: What happens on an average John Reis morning?
John: I wake up and poop. I take a shower. I pretty much get on the horn immediately and stay on the phone for 3 or 4 hours. I eat rice and and have some tea. Always white rice… sometimes I’ll plop an egg on top or fish or chicken.
Buddyhead: Are you a music guy in the morning?
John: Yeah, not really cranking though. I hafta get warmed up. When I was in high school waking up at 6 I’d be totally cranking black flag or die kruezen, but I don’t do that too much anymore because I just kinda like warming up.
Buddyhead: The hot snakes record is really great… the artwork is amazing.
John: Thanks. Yeah, Rick just blows me away with pretty much everything he does with his art.
Buddyhead: You probably have a lot of people ask you about it all the time, but drive like jehu put out 2 really great records and a single and then disappeared. what’s the story?
John: Um… it’s kind of a confusing story to most of the people in the band as well as myself just because the band drive like jehu never really broke up, it just kinda went away. The most important reason was that I was doing rocket pretty much full time and I decided that I wanted to dedicate myself to rocket after the last jehu record. The working enviroment on the last jehu record was just sooo difficult. We were writing the record at such a snail like pace. It seemed like everything was just soaked in tedium. The songs were getting longer and the memorization was becoming an issue which had never been an issue before. Different parts were changing from practice to practice and everything just seemed so interchangeable. Just parts and parts and parts. It seemed like there was a movement away from the songwriting, which was different from the first record which seemed to be more songwriting oriented. The second record had some really cool songs, but it just seemed like pulling teeth to get them to come together. It wasn’t like one force in the band playing tug of war with the rest of the band, it wasn’t anything like that. Jehu was just such a democracy that by the time an idea had been filtered through the 4 people in the band, you had people putting their 2 cents in just for the sake of putting their 2 cents in. Instead of just stepping back and saying, “oh it’s fine how it is” everything was just fucked with always. It was just not fun anymore. The last tour was really hard and a couple people were really miserable. I was just like, “I’m in this other band that tours and has a blast, but when this band tours everybody is moping.” The guys in jehu also had other things going on like school and whatever. Plus there was confusion with not knowing whether or not the guys could do jehu without having to get jobs or whatever. In the end I was just like, “fuck it. I’m gonna do rocket cos it’s way easier.” It wasn’t completely fulfilling though, cos a lot of the jehu music was also my music, so in some ways I realized part of my life would die without jehu, but it was worth it to me cos I had 5 other people counting on me and looking forward to whatever plans I had in store.
Buddyhead: What have you been up to since jehu Rick?
Rick: I’ve done a lot of artwork. I’ve always done that though. It’s something I’ve actually been doing longer than music.
Buddyhead: Do you feel like jehu had any kind of impact on other bands?
Rick: I don’t know. I’ve heard that, but the bands that supposedly sound like us, I’ve never heard. It’s not because I don’t care, I just don’t buy that many records really. Usually the only records I buy are ones that I’ve wanted for a real long time anyway.
Buddyhead: As far as the song writing goes, the hot snakes stuff seems a lot more traditional in song structures as opposed to jehu, where the songs had a lot more parts and were much longer in length.
John: Yeah, it’s a lot more straight forward and rockin. More rocknroll structured, and a song does what it does and when it’s over it just stops. There was nothing like, “yeah it’s gonna be like this, and we’re gonna have this sinister dark sound, and I’m gonna go for a different guitar sound here.” All the songs are pretty short and I was in a mindset where I was writing this one type of material and it was like, “wow, this definitely isn’t rocket stuff.”
Rick: The stuff is definitely direct. I think that’s the idea everybody has and is into. It’s more like, “1-2-3-4 go” now.
Buddyhead: Were you really burnt on the more mathematical stuff?
Rick: I’ve never liked mathematical anything. I was not the mathematical part of any of the bands I was in.
Buddyhead: Did you immediately think of Rick after you wrote the material John?
John: Not immediately. I think the initial inspiration came from when rocket was on tour in Europe and I was having a discussion with some people about punk rock and the current state of punk rock music and how it is now “commercially viable” yet there is nothing artistically going on that has any kind of importance. There just aren’t any bands like the wipers, black flag, suicide, or even the stooges for that matter. There’s tons of bands that emulate things sonically and stylistically of any of those bands, but really there’s a lack of the heart. A band like dead moon to me is important because it is so honest and they completely mean what they say. That’s kind of what this project meant to me. I really wanted to do that. A lot of times with rocket, there’s a lot of confusion involved because rocket can do it, but then again we’ll not do it by doing something tongue in cheek as well.
Buddyhead: In your bio you mentioned these bands like greg sage and the wipers or suicide. Listening to the record I didn’t hear anything sonically resembling those bands. It’s important to know you aren’t necessarily comparing your sound to them, but maybe the attitude and outlook of doing something creative and original? Something that couldn’t be classified by pop culture.
John: Yeah, they were mavericks. They were just doing their own thing. Everything wasn’t classified, and anything new that had that spirit was “punk rock” as opposed to now where it’s definitely about a drumbeat.
Buddyhead: So how did hot snakes finally take shape?
John: Well, I had been talking to Jason for many years now…
Buddyhead: He’s also the drummer for the delta 72 and used to be in mule correct?
John: Yeah, he lives in philly and we go pretty far back. I knew I wanted to play with him and he totally embraced the idea. So he came out once and we practiced for 3 days and he went back home. Then he came out again about 2 months later and we practiced for another 3 days and then went in and recorded the whole record which was 20 songs actually. More songs than even appeared on the record. We did all the songs in 2 days. Then later on I wanted to put the vocals over it and I started trying to write words. It wasn’t so much lyrically that I was having problems, but my voice… I just didn’t think it sounded good with the music. It sounded so much like what I’ve heard a million times when I try to sing for rocket. Just like, “oh man here it is, another band where I’m singing.” I don’t really enjoy singing all that much. I do to a certain degree, but I don’t like doing it every day. I just wanted to do something that was really fun, and for me that was just playing guitar. Just coming up with some music and being able to focus on that and have fun with that. The first person I thought of to sing was Rick. I thought his voice would go really great with the stuff, so I sent him a tape and he was really into it. He came up with all the lyrics and all the artwork and just really embraced it. Rick is pretty conventional for the most part as far as his guitar playing goes, but he comes up with great stuff that is based more on visual things like moving his fingers in patterns. This kind of thing suited his guitar playing style way better even though he didn’t play on the record, but I think he’s able to play this stuff even better than the jehu stuff.
Buddyhead: so Rick, when you got the tape, was the process of writing the lyrics a difficult one?
Rick: Well… it’s always a pain in the ass. I ended up writing all the lyrics really fast. Some of them are dumb and some of them are ok. It’s not a big deal, you take a shot at it and if it sucks, fuck it.
Buddyhead: So Gar from tanner is playing with you guys live?
John: Yeah. There’s no bass on the record, but the whole live thing benefits from more velocity to the music from another stringed instrument. It adds more of a driving force as opposed to a keyboard. The thing with organ is that it sounds really cool, but I don’t really know anybody that can play it well. I can’t play it myself, and the parts are really minimal, so it was just like, “might as well get bass” and make something that will work better live.
Buddyhead: So what are your plans for the other 9 songs you didn’t use on the record?
John: It’s pretty much our next record. There’s no vocals on the songs, so Rick has to sing on them and we need to add his guitar as well. It would also be natural to add Gar’s bass as well.
Buddyhead: So is hot snakes a full time band or a project?
John: Well, Rick has a job where he can’t really take too much time off. So the nature of the beast will be that we will never really be doing any long tours… probably ever.
Buddyhead: Where do you work Rick?
Rick: I work at this place where I’m learning to do animation right now. It’s kind of online animation type stuff. It’s fun.
Buddyhead: Is it like flash or something?
Rick: Yeah, flash. It’s fun. I swore on a stack of bibles I’d never touch a computer, but here I am.
Buddyhead: So it’s difficult to get time off?
Rick: Yeah. There’s definitely a window of opportunity for this band. John’s in another band, Jason’s in another band, Gar has school full time, and I have my job. There’s a lot of juggling involved. This tour for example is only 10 shows. It’s ok for me because playing a lot burns me out.
Buddyhead: You guys just recently played your first show right?
John: Yeah. We had only practiced like 3 times. It was rough. It was the first show, no excuses, but I had never been in a situation that was so impromptu. I’ve never played live with a band that was so under rehearsed. That was scary but also kinda cool. Sometimes guys in bands say, “well I’ve been in every kind of situation”, but it was cool to say, “wow, I’ve never done this before.”
Buddyhead: Where was the show?
Rick: Philly… It was ok cos the songs are really simple. John’s a good musician, Gar’s a good musician, and Jason’s an awesome drummer. I’m a mediocre musician.
Buddyhead: What kind of stuff have you been listening to lately?
Rick: I’ve been listening to the new swinging neckbreakers which is this band from jersey. I definitely like to hear new stuff always.
Buddyhead: John, you mentioned die kruezen earlier in the interview. I always thought jehu had some major die kruezen influence in it. More akin to the 1st die kruezen record, as opposed to their later stuff.
John: The first record is one of the greatest records ever. It’s the meanest sounding record of all time. Its so creepy…
Buddyhead: Yeah it’s a dark record.
John: I remember I was so into that record. I would hang out with these metal kids at school and they’d be like “fuck dude, you gotta check out slayer.” I fucking knew all about slayer. I was like “that isn’t anything, that’s pansy stuff.” I’d throw on the die kruezen tape in the ghetto blaster and just blow these people away. They couldn’t even listen to it, it was so sinister. They’d be like “this isn’t even music, this is the sound of the gates of hell opening up. They were just completely freaked out by it. That’s why I think that records so great. Cuz no matter what kind of music you’re into there’s no denying how creepy and twisted that record is.
Buddyhead: So where do you want to go with hot snakes?
Rick: Just do the same thing. Play rock n roll.
