Boogie-down sleaze rock

12 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Rock & Roll, ROCK: Country-Rock

Show all album songs: Tallapoosa Woman Songs


Details:
The following is an excerpt from an article that came out on the Raggies in the 9/06 issue of DIY magazine. We don't necessarily agree with it, but it's the only national press coverage we've gotten:

"This Band is Doomed
by Chet Smith, DIY magazine

"First of all, let me be clear in saying that this article is not an attempt at an impressionistic, new journalism take on the Raggies, a band I still do not fully understand. The honest truth is that I can't recall a lot of what went down during the day I spent with the Raggies at their rehearsal space on a pecan farm south of Las Cruces. Parts that I can recall lack what I would consider a natural narrative flow and seem to resemble what the aborigines call dreamtime. The reason for this breakdown in the chain of journalistic evidence has probably less to do with the band's mesmerizing music and more to do with the inspiration behind their music, an illegally imported Mexican energy drink known as Cabron, which comes in a black can emblazoned with the image of a demonic goat. The can's ingredients include "semillas daturas", the seeds of the hallucinogenic Datura plant, also known as Jimson Weed or Devils weed. The members of the Raggies inner circle suck this stuff down like gamers drink Mountain Dew. I spoke with my editor about this problem and he said we were desperate for copy and to check with the band. I asked Jack from the Raggies if they cared that some of my story might be inaccurate or hallucinated and he replied, "Cool man, go for it, but be sure and include the part where you pissed your pants."

Materially and artistically, the Raggies live in the wasteland between El Paso, Texas and Las Cruces, New Mexico, a place hysterically optimistic politicians call, the Borderplex. This is a cultural netherworld where Spanish is more common than English and you might find streets that look more like Juarez than Juarez does. They buy this Cabron stuff out of the back of a pawn shop in El Paso and started plying me with it as soon as I got off the plane and into guitarist Jack Kilpatrick's beat up truck. At first they told me it was an energy drink like Red Bull. I should have poured it out when harp player, Dave, added, "Its really helpful in that, after you do it, you won't be afraid to die." Not many soft drinks make that claim. We had a lunch of the best red chile enchiladas I ever tasted at a restaurant in Canutillo, Texas.

Their rehearsal space was a sheet metal shed on a pecan farm. Pecans, if you dont know, grow on trees, big trees. Pecan farms contain row after row of huge trees, all neatly and geometrically aligned. This curious alignment became important later, when I got lost in the orchard for a couple of hours before their manager, Cuco, found me. Cuco is notable for having made the papers as a suspect in the women of Juarez serial killer case. He naturally parlayed this press into band promotion. Apparently any of the bands he manages can get into the paper if he'll talk, a privilege he has not granted local police.

The Raggies gradually straggled into the dusty space: Diamond Dave Lavetts, the world's 6th greatest Jewish harmonica player; Jack Kilpatrick, who plays loud guitar, drummer and former downhill mountain bike champion J Lowe-Sanchez, and that supercute slice of Connecticut jail bait, Little Kim Foxxxe. This is where it starts to get a little hazy, the music sounded good. I was getting into it. Little Kim Foxxxe was wailing like a hellcat in heat and Dave was blowing the harp, not like a bluesman, but more like a snake charmer. Jack seemed intent on making surly facial expressions and torturing his amp to the edge of tonal Armageddon. This is where I started seeing snakes. I ran into a side room, where Cuco and some farm hands were drinking Cabron mixed with cheap Orendain tequila and playing Russian roulette. They offered me the gun. I stared at it for a moment and it morphed into a flesh-eating slug. I dropped it to the dirt floor and ran out into the orchard. Rows and rows of trees, endless, nameless...."

Okay, you get the picture. He goes on and on about his subjective experience and doesn't say a whole lot more substantive stuff about the band or the music. This guy, Chet Smith, a loser, a poseur, (with, of course, tribal tattoos) flies out here from California, and tried to party with the Raggies, and got sucked into the undertow. The guy ended up getting so scared of what we were doing musically that he urinated in his pants. We had to duct tape him to a chair in the shed overnight to chill him out. If you're in a band and DIY offers you a feature article, ask for somebody other than Chet Smith. Unless you are Duran Duran, he probably can't take what you're dishing out. He has to be spoon fed, like a baby.