Nashville Pussy

Nashville Pussy performed during the annual SWXW music festival in Austin, Texas this past March. Every glossy magazine report on the festival spotlighted Nashville Pussy’s performance at Emo’s. The show was a certi­fied SXSW critical highlight. I was unable to view the performance because I was ejected from Emo’s.

Now Nashville Pussy is coming to Salt Lake City. Since the band is visiting I thought a chat with one of the Pussys might be enjoyable. Luckily the Mercury publicity dude hooked me up with Corey Parks, the six-foot-three, fire-breathing, female bassist sport­ing an “eat me” tattoo near the pudding. Blaine Cartwright is the singerIguitarist, his wife Ruyter Suys is the lead guitarist and Jeremy Thompson is the drummer.

When I informed Parks that Emo’s had ejected me before the Pussy played she had a comment. “You’re lucky one of our people didn’t catch you. You know what we do to unruly rubes such as yourself? We take the Peter Grant approach to handling the misbe­haviors in the crowd. We take them backstage and beat the shit out of them.”’ 

Now that the “ice” is broken, how about getting to the con­versation?

SLUG: Blaine Cartwright used to play with Nine Pound Hammer. What happened to them?

CP: They’d done it for about ten years and I think he was ready to maybe make a little bit of money and play with some other people who were as interest­ed in making the band happen. All the fuckers in Hammer are real lazy. He loves playing with those guys, he’s known them all his whole life, but I think he was ready to do something else. He had met all of us out on the road and he had an idea in the back of his head for a group. Thus the inbred child Nashville Pussy was born.

SLUG: Who were you playing with before?

CP: I was just playing with a bunch of differ­ent bands. I was playing with the only punk rock band in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and visiting my family. I met Blaine at the Sleazefest and Ruyter, his wife, he met while Hammer was touring in Canada and it was kind of a one night stand gone really wrong. She had been booking Hammer and she’s this phenomenal guitar player who couldn’t find anyone to jam with in Nashville. I’d actually met him and I was telling him I had an idea for doing an all chick cock rock, like the Runaways, but actually fucking rock and kick ass. He was like, ‘you gotta meet my wife Ruyter, she’s this phenomenal guitar player.’ I hooked up with her and we talked and talked and with the distance, we lived about 500 miles apart, and we couldn’t get anything going. When Hammer got back from Japan it was kind of a nightmare and they weren’t get­ting along very well. I think Scott Luallen is quite an asshole. They got back and Blaine called me back and said we’re doing a super group, would you be interested in coming up and trying out for bass? I said, ‘Oh, by the way, did I tell you I breathe fire?’ He was like, ‘You’re in the band before you’ve played a note.’

SLUG: How did you learn to breathe fire?

CP: I just kind of winged it. Sort of like the way I learned to play bass. I just picked it up. I’ve always been fascinated with fire. I had an ex-boyfriend that did it and I watched him do it enough times I figured I could try it on my own and I did. I’m clocking in at around 700 actual fireballs so far with Pussy. When this band ends I won’t ever do it again.

SLUG: How about Jeremy Thompson, the drummer?

CP: He was a fan, he was our third drum­mer actually. Me and Blaine and Ruyter start­ed the band and we went through a couple of drummers and finally found Jeremy and found somebody that was as into it as we were. We met him, it was in Austin, Texas, and he was a fan down in the front row. He was playing in a band called the Phantom Creeps and we played their last show with them. Shit, man, we called him up and said, ‘Do you wanna try out for drums?’ He showed up on our doorstep on Friday the 13th with his drums in a suitcase and said, ‘I’m in.’ He sort of weaseled his way into our hearts.

SLUG: Who played with the Cynics?

CP: Max Teresaro was our second drum­mer from the Cynics. He played with them for about six years. We hired him on. Like I said, we had to go through two. Our first drummer, Adam, sings for the Hookers. He was always real into the Hookers and he was Hammer’s last drummer. We jammed at his house. If it wasn’t for him the band wouldn’t have started. That’s for damn sure. We’d be tagging Nashville Pussy and he’d be tagging Hookers all over everything. That was his first priority. We needed to find a fourth that was into Nashville Pussy as much as we were.

Nashville Pussy’s album was released by Amphetamine Reptile in January 1998. It was reviewed in SLUG at that time. The band is now signed to Mercury and the label has sup­posedly reissued Let Them Eat Pussy. At the time this is written I still haven’t seen a copy.

SLUG: How did you go from AmRep to Mercury?

CP: I’ll tell you, sweetheart, it’s been a real natural progression. All the way up from the singles, all the way to doing the full-length with AmRep, we’ve outgrown every label we’ve gotten on. They couldn’t really handle the volume. Which is the same with AmRep. They couldn’t handle the amount of records we were selling. They couldn’t order quick enough to keep them in stock. It was a matter of taking the next step. Even all the way down to the singles. We never made a press kit, we never approached anybody, we just played live rock ‘n’ roll. Everybody sort of came to us. Of course when you get to a level where you’re making the kind of money where peo­ple like that start taking notice, it puts you in a good position because you’re also in a good position where you can dictate things. No one’s going to tell you what to do when they’re coming to you. They want you. You don’t have to try to conform or convert to any­thing. They want us to be exactly the way we are. We started getting courted by all the majors and we ended up going with Mercury because, first of all, we’re the first hard rock band signed to Mercury in ten years. It’s just us and KISS. We like Tom Zutaut. Danny Goldberg, the President of Mercury, has hired Tom Zutaut to revive the label and the guy signed Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses. He’s been around for a long time. He heard our CD and two days later flew to see us in Detroit and looked like a fucking kid on Christmas morning. He had posters sticking out of every orifice and he was genuinely excited. It’s the first person we’ve met that’s been able to bring things to the plate besides us. We’re complete­ly self-supporting. We booked ourselves until we got a booking agent. I still do all the mar­keting and merchandise and record layouts and stuff like that. Now I’ve got a team of peo­ple who are working with me on it. Nothing’s really changed, it’s just we’ve got more people working for us now. Maybe now we can afford to get the kind of fucking lights that we want to do a big rockshow and all the things that lend to playing a good live show. It takes a little capital to do that….That’s all it is, pretty much….Ain’t nothing going to change about the Pussy. We’re exactly the way we are. We don’t know how to be any different. We’re just a bunch of greasy rednecks from down south and we live and die for rock ‘n’ roll.

SLUG: Is there any silicone present?

CP: No silicone.

SLUG: It’s all real?

CP: It’s all real.

SLUG: You do all the graphic art?

CP: Well, yeah. I do the… My line of think­ing. I don’t really do the artwork or anything. My line of thinking is like, when a kid listens to your record, our record in particular, which is 28 minutes long, he wants to lay down on his bed or jump around in his fucking room or whatever and look at pictures of that band. The singles, I always tried to do a real cool something on the cover, but when it came down to the CD and the repackaging — Mercury’s CD will be completely repackaged. The one for AmRep I only had four sides to work with — two black and white on the inside and two colors on the outside. Now, the Mercury one actually has — it folds out to 12, full color front and back. It’s got a whole collage of live pictures and all the pictures that were in the original one. Then you flip the thing over and it folds out to a locker-sized poster from the same shoot we did the cover of the record from. But the picture is even twice as explicit. I think you get two nipples for the price of one. Plus the initial pressing is going to have a bonus CD shrink wrapped to the back. It’s called Eat More Pussy. It’s got six covers on it. We do… It’s all the… they bought all the origi­nal recordings we did. It’s all covers. We do AC/DC “Kicked In The Teeth,” Rose Tattoo’s “Nice Boys Don’t Play Rock ‘N’ Roll,” Mitch Ryder’s “Sock It To Me Baby,” The Saints’ “Misunderstood,” let’s see, what else is on there? Aerosmith‘s version of “Milk Cow Blues,” some old ditties. It’ll be good.

SLUG: Is your equipment vintage?

CP: Yeah, we all play on vintage stuff. Brian plays a ’57 Les Paul and Ruyter plays a, oh God, I don’t know what year her SG is. All old amps. I play a ’78 Jazz Bass and I have a ’62 T bass. I’m playing a ’68 amp. The thing is, equipment and cars. Things you want to buy, you want to buy old and you want to buy American. There was a lot of pride in the craft back then. Things were made differently, they sound differently. We prefer vintage equip­ment. American made.

The AmRep press kit contains a clipping where Parks’ is quoted as saying that her “vice of choice” is “fucking on speed.”

CP: Well, I’ll tell ya. That was… when I did it, it was for a paper in Boston about a year ago. I was pretty wild and crazy back then. I’m actually… let’s see. Do we play Salt Lake City before Las Vegas? I’m actually getting married in Las Vegas. I might be a married woman when I see you.

SLUG: Who are you getting married to?

CP: He’s my garbage man.

SLUG: Cool. The only reason I picked that quote out is because Salt Lake City is one of the #1, not #1, but… 

CP: Meth capitals?

SLUG: Yeah.

CP: Oh, no shit? Really? I’d like to do some good speed. I haven’t done any good speed in awhile. I’ve been such a good girl lately. He’s been making an honest woman out of me. Believe it or not. Shit. Hell yeah man. Bring it on!

SLUG: The Hookers are friends of yours and I guess the Candy Snatchers are too.

CP: Yep, both of them are really good friends of ours. They’re fucking awesome. They’re two of the best live bands. Two of the best rock ‘n’ roll bands in the fucking country and two of the only bands that can follow us and take our crowd after we’ve beaten them into submission and make ’em look like there’s a feeding frenzy going on the floor. They’re bouncing off the goddamn walls. The singer for the Hookers, Big Adam Neal, was our first drummer. The Hookers record, Satan’s Highway, in my opinion, is the Highway to Hell of the new millennium. They’re just a lot of chaos and rock ‘n’ roll and blood. The Candy Snatchers always seem to get fucking bloody. I don’t know how the hell it happens, but someone ends up fucking bleeding man. These guys are the real fucking deal… There aren’t many punk rock bands out there, punk rock ‘n’ roll bands, ’cause they can actually play, that walk the fucking walk. And both of these bands walk the fucking walk. There just ain’t no bullshit about it. It ain’t contrived, it ain’t planned, shit happens when these guys play. The three weeks we’re doing with the Snatchers and the Hookers are the most excit­ing rock ‘n’ roll shows that are gonna happen in the last five years or to happen in the next five. You got one punch after the fucking other. It’s gonna be an unbelievable night of rock ‘n’ roll. You definitely don’t want to miss it.

After asking about her brother, Cherokee Parks, who plays for the Minnesota Timberwolves, I thanked Corey Parks profusely for the conver­sation.

CP: It was good talking to you. Make sure you come up to me in Salt Lake City. Bring me some speed and we’ll go have a shot at the bar.

I probably won’t bring any speed because I don’t know where to get any. I will be more than happy to have a shot with Corey Parks at the bar. The bar is the Zephyr. The date is Tuesday, September 15. Be very prepared for a night like Salt Lake City rarely sees. Let Them Eat Pussy is indeed 28 minutes of joy. As I already divulged, the repackaged CD contains a photo collage. The photos were taken by fans and they depict Pussy on stage. As Parks describes it, there are five different shots of each Pussy and she said, “We’re all sweaty and good—sticky, sweaty and good.” Ah yes, photos of sticky, sweaty, good Pussy. Any fur­ther questions concerning Pussy are answered by the only cover song on the original album. Smokey Robinson wrote it. “First Look At the Purse” was a hit for the Contours in the mid­ ’60s. The J. Geils Band covered it in 1972. It is usually best to take a peek before eating and the purse Blaine Cartwright sings about ain’t hanging from no shoulder strap. —Carter

Read more interviews from the SLUG archives:
VAST
CIV: The Interview

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