CROWNS:
American Rock N' Roll
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Interview with
Jason "King" Kendall
by Daisy Milford
Jason: Sure. I am Jason "King" Kendall and I sing and shake the maracas. We have J.D. Burgess on the guitar, Jack "The Swinger" Hanlon the upright bass & Judd Williams on the drums.
Daisy: What in your opinion are the stupidest things goin on with the whole rockabilly scene right now are?
Jason: What's up with measuring the cuff size? That pisses me off! In that "trad" rockabilly thing, ya know? I'm not into that at all. I guess it's like any scene though. What's stupid in any scene is when people fall way too closely to form. Where you have the traditional, Where it's too 57' sounding, not 54' enough...whatever. I can stand that shit at all. It's all american rock n' roll. I think The Blaster's said it best when they said it was "American Music", it encompasses everything.
Daisy: What attracts you to that whole realm of music though?
Jason: When I was a kid, it's funny cause I did grow up at a truckstop, my parents owned a truckstop from the time I was a little kid. And from then, when I was a kid, I really got into punk rock music. And what does every kid do? Whatever their fathers or their parents are into, they're like "oh forget it, that's crap." My father's really into Johnny Cash & Hank Williams, and me being around a truckstop all the time, I was kinda repressed. I was like "ahh..I don't want to listen to this shit!" To me it was all Circle Jerks and Angry Samoans, GBH, whatever, Crass...And I still love that stuff! But then when I got older, it's a natural progression as an American punk rocker to go to roots, ya know like rockabilly and R&B, swing, rock n' roll, whatever...doesn't matter, it's a natural progression. And all of a sudden, all those images of my father listening to Johnny Cash, smokin' a cigarette... My father's an old greaser, ya know...he was in prison till I was 6...Anyways, all of a sudden I was like, "Oh this is great, I belong here!" This is the kind of music I am and I like.
Daisy: With all of the genre splicing, and sub-genres, what do you think new ones to come out will be? What about gansta-billy, or psycho-doo-wop?
Jason: Well, for a while there I remember seeing some bands that were mixing ska and rockabilly, which was reprehensible, just disgusting. I was thinkin like "Come On - those two styles do not belong together at all!!" But I don't know...Gansta-billy, that would be pretty funny! There was that dance guy, I don't remember his name, but he looked like a rockabilly and I think he hit the charts with some dance song...Maybe dance-a-billy, hehe...I don't know. We won't be a part of it that's for sure!
Daisy: At this point what do you think rockabilly's doing? Kinda like goin' uphill, leveling out, gaining some mainstream appeal, or what?
Jason: Well what with swing, I don't know where it's gone now. It went downhill for a while, then leveled off...I don't know, I think rock music as a whole is suffering. People are way too concerned with what is being forced down their throats, via radio or whatever. Plus they are way too concerned with what is "hip". It seems like every fuckin magazine now days deals with electronica and techno and crap - which has no soul to it, it's background music. I don't deal with background music. I travel the country and play to all sorts of crowds, and I see that, and I think that's why music is lacking as a whole. What rockabilly does... I know it'll survive, it's survived this long. As far as it being the next big thing, I hope it isn't because it wouldn't be good for us if it was. I remember Johnny Cash once said "Is your love a brush fire or a wild fire" - I'd rather be a wild fire, it burns for a long time, instead of being a brush fire that burns real fast.
Daisy: Just out of curiosity, what's Rhode Island like?
Jason: Small. It's great though! We have a good scene there actually. We have this thing called the Providence Payback, that we put on (we're from Providence) where we have bands from everywhere. Last Year we had like The Three Knights, the Flattops, Belmont Playboys, The Raging Teens, L.A.Sitches...you name it...Ska, Punk, Rockabilly, Oi! bands... it's a total festival. We get like all these people in the city, it's cool.
Daisy: I was just wondering, cause I never hear a whole lot about it...
Jason: It's wonderful, the college is there, it's beautiful. I went to culinary arts school...
Daisy: Really? So you're a cook?
Jason: I'm a chef!
Daisy: What's you're favorite thing to cook?
Jason: I dabbled in a lot of vegetarian stuff..
Daisy: Is that because it's easy cause it's vegetables?
Jason: No, no! It's harder actually...Gotta come up with different menu items ya know, that people aren't used to...Anybody can make a grilled cheese sandwich, vegetable lasagna...You have to make different things to keep people satisfied. Another good thing about Providence is that it's 3 hours from New York City, 40 minutes from Boston, right in the middle so we get all the big acts that come through, and that's cool.
Daisy: That's cool - do you ever see The Racketeers?
Jason: Did you know that Dana from The Racketeers used to be our drummer actually?
Daisy: Dana used to be your drummer? That's cool! I am friends with Micah, the newer guy in that band.
Jason: I love him. He's in The Shods now...
Daisy: What are The Shods like?
Jason: They're great man! They're just like pure rock n' roll! They have a little Elvis Costello in there, bits of The Clash they're really good. Boston's cool right now, Boston and Providence...You got The Itchies out of Providence, which are like Link Wray, they're great and all this crazy shit...Like The Kings of Nuthin out of Boston, The Bourbonaires, The Raging Teens - so many good bands right now.
Daisy: It's crazy man, you guys really managed to do that whole cross over thing really great, how did that come about? There's a lot of bands that I thought could cross over audiences, but they don't...
Jason: We've not always been like that, think about it...Rhode Island did not have a rockabilly scene..The only one it had was a lot older and connected to the blues scene...theses older guys...when we got into it, we were the first band that was kinda young and hip, so who else are we gonna play with. Although our first show was with Dick Dale and our second was with Reverend Horton Heat. There was no other bands like us. So when Rev or Dick Dale would come through, they'd play with us, but when bands like that weren't comin through, who were we gonna play with? So we played with ska bands and punk bands.We weren't the first, but we were the first in the nineties...in our area at least. I mean back in the day, The Cramps were playin with all sorts of punk bands and so were X and The Blasters. At first we kinda did it out of necessity, then we got used to it. Touring with ska bands and then touring with The Cramps. Touring with a punk band, and then touring with The Reverend Horton Heat. Mix it up, you gotta make your audience all encompassing. So if you just stay with the same scene or the rockabilly scene, it's gonna kill it. And it doesn't do any good by the rockabilly scene either, you just play to the same people all the time, you gotta introduce new people to this style of music. We do that for kids all the time! We did a 50 date US tour with The Bosstones...And I can't tell ya how many times kids would come up to us and say "Wow that's the best sounding ska I ever heard!" And I'd be like " Naw, it's not that...Come here...This guy named Joe Clay, Johnny Burnette...go listen to this!" Come back to those same areas again, and that kid's tellin me about rockabilly bands I never heard of! But for us, it's something we've always done, but a lot of bands are afraid to do it, because you don't get paid as much. Ya know a lot of rockabilly bands play in 21 plus drinker bars. It's easier, you get paid more, and not only that it's more comfortable. It is because your playing to people who know what your about. These kids don't know what we're about, and sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes we get heckled. That's all part of it. I don't give a fuck.
Daisy: Hehe...so what's your favorite derogatory term for a greaser?
Jason: Oh god!...Kenickie...I hear Kenickie! Jack our bassist always gets called Buddy Holly...You hear Elvis, you know...all that shit. What other ones...? Oh! The Sha-na-na reference! We get that one. Lately, I've got soo much grease in my hair (I need a haircut real bad) and I just comb it back now, so now I'm really startin to get the Kenickie thing...The Sha-na-na one pisses me off more than anything though.
Daisy: Do you guys get mistaken for a swing band a lot?
Jason: Oh in the beginning, when swing was really big, Oh my god! All the time! We got mistaken for Royal Crown Revue a million times, not a million times, but by idiots! When we got sued by Royal Crown Revue, things got a little nutty.
Daisy: I never really heard the whole story on that...
Jason: I'll tell ya! Yeah, we would be booked into shows, once we got booked in Denver, into this piano bar. We went up there and went nuts! And they're all like these well-dressed yuppies, and they're all like, this isn't trendy, this isn't hip! It's rock n' roll!! They weren't into it at all! Yeah, we got sued by Royal Crown Revue basically. We used to be called The Amazing Royal Crowns, actually we used to be called The Royal Crowns, and we put on Amazing because Royal Crown Revue had said that "Hey you might want to change your name...". Yeah so we put Amazing in there, what the hell, so that it would appease them. It didn't. So we got served papers while we were out on tour and got taken to court. It cost us a lot of money. And they said that if you don't change your name in this amount of time, we're gonna take you back to court. So we took the Royal out and that was it. Whatever, they were on Warner Brothers at the time, now they're not... so whatever. They are actually nice guys, they've been nice to us now.
Daisy: Did you ever see The Blue Moon Boys? You and Nick Roulette are similar, because you both are highly active performers and you don't see that much in rockabilly...
Jason: Oh yeah! I'm a little older than Nick.. But I've heard a lot about those guys, I like The Blue Moon Boys a lot. And I've heard a lot about Nick Roulette and my stage things, I don't know how long they've been around, but we've been around for about six years, and I remember when they first started out, and we talked to them in Nashville. Yeah they're good.
Daisy: A lot of people get complacent, and when they come to town, maybe they're too tired or whatever, but they don't wanna jump around...
Jason: It's hard to get it goin when you've been on the road a lot. That goes back to what we were talkin about, about why the rockabilly bands don't break outta the mold of playin the same people, it's easy to play in front of the same people, you don't have to move around as much, you don't have to engage them. To me...I'm totally into an engaging performance. I've broken my ribs on stage, fuckin insane. The more the crowd goes for it, the more we'll go for it. Our music and lyrics lend itself real well to sing-a-longs, so we're really into that. To me, my heroes are the ones that never ever looked at their shoes on stage. People like Joe Strummer, Iggy Pop, James Brown and Lux Interior...
Daisy: Sometimes though, I think if you went any more nuts - your head would explode...
Jason: No, no..Unless I'm bleedin', I don't feel I had a great show...honestly.