Was the guitar your first instrument of choice? It was. I was forced to play guitar by Jeffrey Lee Pierce of Gun Club. We'd seen each other around at shows, and we were at a Pere Ubu show at Whiskey a Go-Go. That would have been maybe 1977 or 1978, probably 1979. He said we should have a band together. You remember 1978. You just said things like that. And then you say, "Yeah of course!" We'd seen each other at every punk-related show in Los Angeles. We were record collectors. There was a big record swap meet at the Capitol Records building in Hollywood. That was a big meeting place for people. In the post-Glam rock, late '70s disco nowhere land, that was a place for underground rock fans. It was a real hang out. Every kind of weird person, I don't know why, was there. I once saw Catherine Deneuve there. That's how eclectic it was.
I had already traveled to New York and London, and Jeffrey was writing for a monthly punk newspaper, Slash. He had been to Jamaica, was interested in reggae, and he'd been to New York. We were both having these strange adventures, and he said we should have a band together. I said, "I have a friend who will loan me a guitar." He said, "OK, I'll teach you to play it." That's what happened. He said, "Blues guys play it like this," in open tunings. Slide guitar. To this day I still play in open tunings. So the choice was made for me.
You were talking about the scene, and what you were exposed to in New York. I'm not sure I've ever had a scene. I grew up in Salt Lake City. But it sounds like talking to you, you had a community, an environment. It was a community. It's funny, to this day, with Facebook, this community endures. I have a lot of friends from that time who are still my friends, the ones who are still alive. It's a community that goes on. People are writing books about it and we all remember it fondly. Everyone says how much they owe to it, whether it's writers, photographers, musicians, people who went on to do more than just hang out in punk rock clubs. It was quite a moment.
One of the things I like about your last album, Dracula Boots and your music in general, is how you channel your Chicano heritage. Are you conscious of that? That consciousness of heritage doesn't just come from me. It comes from the whole band. Kiki Solis our bass player is a Mexican American, Ron our drummer grew up in Austin and Las Cruces and El Paso. The song "La Llonera" was Ron's idea. The song "I Found a Peanut," originally by Thee Midniters, that came from me growing up in LA. I had older sisters who would go see Thee Midniters. I remember being 10 years old, and I so badly wanted to be a teenager. I remember the palpable excitement they were having of going to a dance where Thee Midniters were playing. It was a big deal to them. They were probably 16. I was just like, what is that? Whatever Thee Midniters is I want to do that!
I knew what the Rolling Stones or the Beatles were, but I didn't have any idea about local bands. But Thee Midniters were their band, a Chicano band who were getting played on the radio and making it. That always stuck with me. Years later I heard Thee Midniters and they were incredible. Their R&B and rock stuff was some of the wildest, rawest music, so much fun. They did a live version of "Land of a 1000 Dances." It sounds like it was recorded in a high school gymnasium, so when Ron proposed that we go there, I thought this will be perfect. So that sound influenced the direction of Dracula Boots. The sound was loaded with childhood memories and it became real on that record.