From The Gospel Of Thomas :
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
Daniel Hutchens and Eric Carter have spent their lives bringing forth what is within them – and still nearly destroyed themselves in the process.
Though the friendship between Hutchens and Carter goes back even further, their Athens, GA-based band Bloodkin has been in existence for 25 years. Anyone who knows the story will tell you it hasn’t been an easy 25 years – Hutchens and Carter have lost too many friends along the way; they’ve used themselves pretty hard at times; and though peers such as Drive-By Trucker Patterson Hood refer to them as a favorite band, Bloodkin has never received the mainstream attention that they should. (Making Spin Magazine ’s list of “The 100 Greatest Bands You’ve (Probably) Never Heard” pretty well sums it up.)
It matters not: though the lineups have changed over the years, Hutchens and Carter have remained at the nucleus of Bloodkin, churning out well-written tunes, playing sweat-soaked rock ‘n’ roll, and keeping it real – through good times and bad.
The new box set One Long Hustle is a collection of previously unreleased Bloodkin songs recorded between 1987 and 2012. The settings for these recordings range from late-night living room sessions with a cassette recorder to Bloodkin’s modern-day “home court” studio, Athens’ Chase Park Transduction – with long-time friend and producer David Barbe behind the board. Some cuts are simply Hutchens and Carter with acoustic guitars; much of the collection features the revolving Bloodkin lineups; and there are cameos by friends – including the Widespread Panic family. For years, these recordings were nothing more than a pile of tapes in cardboard boxes – one of the few things that Daniel Hutchens kept a grip on … in a number of ways.
We had the opportunity to talk with Daniel recently about some of the chapters in Bloodkin’s history – from amazing people who have crossed his path over the years to the recent one-take session that produced the epic “God’s Bar” that takes One Long Hustle home. Along the way, Daniel openly shared his thoughts about a number of subjects; the man speaks with the same kind of honesty and openness that he writes with.
Before we begin, let me share this note from producer David Barbe that he wrote to me regarding Daniel Hutchens and Eric Carter:
Danny and Eric are the two great lost souls of rock ‘n’ roll. Even at their most decadent depths, they were always great to work with – good humored, open-minded, generous to a fault, and above all creative as hell, always channeling themselves into their music. Working with them on the box was essentially like working with someone on their autobiography with nothing held back. Only true believers travel a path like theirs and stay on it for this long.
BR: Daniel, your essay “The Bloodkin Story” in the booklet that comes with One Long Hustle is worth the price of admission all by itself. That’s one honest and powerful piece of writing.
DH: I appreciate that, man. From when we started assembling this thing in the studio to when it was spit out was about seven years – off and on, you know. And a lot happened in those seven years (laughs) … so I updated this thing a lot, too. I worked as hard on writing that piece as anything, so I appreciate you saying that – it means a lot.
In that essay, you get the point across that no matter what else was going on in your life – even during some of the really hard years – you managed to keep the tapes of this music that’s on One Long Hustle safe, carrying them with you from place to place. To me, it’s a statement of how secure you are in your life these days to feel all right about doling this music out … it’s a tribute to your family, for one thing, that you’ve taken the music out of those boxes and put it into this box.
That’s a really good point.
I mean, for a while the band and the music was what my whole life was about. It was just really important to me and I kind of let everything else fall to pieces (laughs) … but the music was the thing I had to keep together, for my own peace of mind.
Once we started this box set project, then I had to see it through to completion … and to finish it and actually release it is kind of like a load off my mind. It was feeling incomplete up to that point – I had to see it through to its completion. In a way it was kind of bittersweet, you know? It was such a big chunk of my life … but I was really just glad to finish it.
So, yeah, that was my priority for a number of years. These days I have a family … hopefully, my horizons have expanded a little bit. (laughter)
I loved the line about when you finish writing a song these days – even if you hole up for a bit to do it – you said, “When I finish the song and walk out of that room, I’m actually walking back into a life.” That’s a great thing to hear, man – good for you.
That’s the truth. That was a little bit of my problem for a while. Just recently Eric Carter and I got in this conversation about obsessive-compulsive disorder – I don’t remember how we got into it – and how everybody has some degree of that. I mean, I’ve heard people that have known what they’re talking about say that … it’s just a matter of how much it affects your life, you know?
That was my example of that, I think – the music was my obsession.
What physical form were all these recordings in? I have this picture in my head of cardboard boxes of cassettes and reel-to-reels … this big pile that you lugged from place-to-place.
Just what you said: it was in every format that you could name … from 2” reel-to-reels to a lot of DATs [digital audio tapes] from back in the days when we used them … cassette tapes … just about anything you could think of. All told, it was quite a load to carry around and took up a lot of space (laughs). Especially all the reel-to-reels.
These days David Barbe is keeping lot of that stuff in his studio for me so I (laughs) don’t have to stumble over it anymore.
Did you ever come close to losing these recordings?
You know, for a couple years of my life, what I literally owned was just a van, my music equipment – some guitars and amps – some clothes, a few books, and these tapes. I had them in the van and took them wherever I went. If I was, like, staying with a friend somewhere for a while, the tapes were with me. That was my peace of mind – the one thing I kept watch over and took care of – including myself. (laughs)
I was at loose ends everywhere else, but for some reason, that was the thing that … I don’t know … I kept hold of.
It’s amazing – considering that some of the music dates back to the 80s and covers some pretty rough territory – that you were able to document and credit so many of the various players involved. There’s everything from stuff done in folks’ home studios to recordings made on a cassette sitting on the couch somewhere.
That’s another thing – and I’m not trying to be too light-hearted about the obsessive-compulsive disorder … I don’t have any reason to think I’m technically in that category, but who knows? – I was always meticulous about that kind of stuff. I had the masters; I had all the notes about who played on what; that was kind of my thing.
As you dug into the recordings to compile the box set, were there any surprises?
There were a whole lot of surprises. Not so much a song that we’d forgotten about, but just to hear some of the stuff that I hadn’t listened to for a long, long time. There are songs that I love very much – more than I remembered – and there were also some stinkers (laughter): “Man, that’s terrible!” So it was a matter of hearing it all again and my reaction to it – positive or negative.
Were there any tunes that were tough to revisit as far as the emotions surrounding a particular period?
Yeah, there most definitely were. I kind of compare it to going back through an old family album, looking at snapshots and seeing pictures of people that are gone now, or remembering some tough times. That can be pretty heavy, especially where there were stretches in the studio over the years when I was really submerged in this stuff.
A lot of these songs – not all, but a good many of them – had, like, several takes, so it was a matter of listening to each of those and picking which take you wanted. But yeah – there were definitely some songs from rough patches of my life … but at the same time, the music was always how I dealt with stuff … it’s like the concept of blues. When I hear a great blues song, it’s tough, but also uplifting because there’s somebody out there who also felt that way. To me, the music was kind of my way of healing.
What was probably more straight-on tough for me was writing some of the liner notes, as that’s just a little more concrete rather than turning it into music. That was probably the very hardest task for me in a way.
Oh, I believe that – a song can twist and shift: is this autobiographical? Is this a reference to something else? Is this the character talking or is this the songwriter himself? It can be whatever the listener wants or needs it to be. But yeah, in the case of the liner notes – that’s you.
That’s right. Although it’s not like some sort of big confessional, as anyone who knew us at all already knew a lot of this stuff … I just felt like I didn’t want to bullshit about it. That’s what happened; and for whatever reason, it was important to get all of that off my chest.
*There have been so many great players that have crossed your paths musically over the years, but you and Eric have been the constant through some pretty tough shit. Again, it’s a measure of how close the two of you are and how secure you are in your friendship that you could write about some of the things that have gone on between the two of you. *
Right, right.
You make it clear that it was the music that you two bonded over right from the start – back in elementary school.
We both were always attracted to music that had a little more depth to it. We were always big Bob Dylan fans; old blues stuff. The Kinks were a great band for really catchy pop songs but you listen to the lyrics and (laughs) – they’re really sad, you know? I always kind of loved that stuff; not just always really sunshiny and phony, but talking about things both good and bad.
Eric has an effect on any tune he’s involved in with his playing, but is there a basic difference to you between a Hutchens/Carter tune as opposed to a Hutchens song?
A lot of the stuff that I have written with Eric have been my favorite songs, actually. Apart from the quality of the songs, it was just fun for us to hang out and write. It’s always been a really off-and-on thing; it’s not like we get together every day and do it; it just happens when it happens.
I have a notebook I carry around – or these days I’ll use a computer – with lyrics. How it usually works is Eric would come up with a piece of music and I would just put that in my files, so to speak. I just always loved the guitar riffs and the progressions that he came up with; it was my favorite stuff.
So like I said, it was a lot more fun when he and I would write together. But there was a lot of other stuff that I had to say, too.
Eric is a peculiar character. (laughs) He’s my favorite guitarist, but it’s almost like he can take it or leave it. He’s not one of those guys that has a 9-to-5 schedule about it. You don’t want to try to coerce him into it (laughs) – it just doesn’t work. You take it when you can get it.
I guess that makes the music he creates all the more real because it’s there when wants it to be, rather than on demand.
Right, right.
I didn’t know until I read the liner notes about you and Eric performing with Allen Ginsberg back in the 80s. You went from being in the audience at one of his readings to backing him with guitars the next day, right?
Yeah, pretty much. (laughs) Both Eric and I – in high school and immediately after – were both huge Beat Generation fans. Jack Kerouac was as much an influence on me as anything. I was way into that stuff and Eric was, too.
There was one summer when Allen Ginsberg was doing a tour of colleges and, yeah: we just went to a show and afterwards started talking to him. We just kind of hit it off. What Allen would do is – and he did this everywhere – he would have musicians do some improv while he read his poetry over it. He’d hire local musicians; that’s just part of what he did.
We did a couple shows with Allen that first summer – I think it was ’84 – and then we did it again the next summer when he came through. I think we did a total of four performances with him and did some classes with him when he was teaching modern literature or poetry or whatever it was … we’d go in with him and do a few songs and it was great.
To me at the time, it was like meeting a hero, you know? It was memorable, for sure.
Oh, yeah – for a couple of kids to not just meet the guy, but to perform with him …
Oh, man – at the time, it was like meeting Keith Richards or something … I was so consumed with all the Beat stuff. And Allen was great – just a genuine, down-to-earth nice guy. It fascinating to just sit around and listen to him – like when people would do interviews with him. It was a trip. (laughs) He was really cool.
I’ll just pull the cord and get out of the way as far as whatever you want to say about the Widespread Panic family. It seems like it’s been such a great friendship over the years, more than anything.
Yeah, that was the thing – it really didn’t start with any sort of musical connection, really. Eric and I got to Athens in ’86 and I think we met those guys in ’87. At the time, they were playing a weekly gig at the Uptown Lounge in Athens – every Monday night or Tuesday night or whatever. And there’d be, like, 10 people there every week. (laughs) Eric and I would go down there – we’d met those guys through some mutual friends and it was just a place to hang out and drink beer.
But then we started to really pay attention to them … they were really good. (laughs) I’ll never forget – and I think I wrote about this in the liner notes – we had a party one weekend at our house. It was just an all-day/all-night party with a PA set up in the back yard and the Widespread guys came and played. I remember sitting on the back porch right behind them, watching them and just kind of understanding what was going on.
For me, it really started with Todd playing drums – it was jaw-dropping. He was just so soulful … but like a drum machine with soul, you know? He never missed.
Later, when we ended up playing some with them, it was like that – you could trust your life with Todd. If you were hanging off a cliff and you wanted someone holding the rope … if you can relate that to playing drums, that’s how it felt. Security. People’s personality comes through in their playing and that’s what Todd’s like.
But all those guys were amazing in their own way. And they worked their asses off, too, man – they didn’t just walk into any kind of success; they worked hard at it.
I remember – at that same party – Mikey and Todd coming into my bedroom and just kind of digging through my notebooks of songs and stuff. It was just friendship; some kind of kindred spirits, you know? We started hanging out with them.
I think one of the first of your songs Widespread covered that I was aware of was “Can’t Get High”. There’s a home-recorded version of that on the first disc in the box set from 1988, along with “Privilege”. You were how old at that point?
Those home recordings on the first disc were from late ’87 into ’88. They were pretty new songs at that point … I would’ve been in my early twenties. 22 or 23.
Most 22- or 23-year-olds don’t write like that.
Well … (laughs) … that was after we moved to Athens from West Virginia. For years before that, I’d been interested in writing. There are a few songs that we still play that come from back in West Virginia, you know. But back in those days, if you’d gone out to see some live music, you were going to see cover bands – and that’s it, man. (laughs) Anything else just didn’t exist at that time – or not much, anyway.
But when we got to Athens, there were all these bands and musicians … and being that age, I was just ready for it. To come to Athens and see Widespread Panic or Vic Chestnutt or catch REM doing some unannounced show … there were all these people, including all the ones who never got any acclaim, but who were really great, too, you know?
There were a couple years when we first got to Athens that I couldn’t keep up with myself – I started writing a lot. It was a result of being in a really creative community and interacting with friends who did it, too … it was what I was looking for before we got here. I felt like I was home.
It sounds like it. Let’s talk about the period in the early ’90s when you played with the Velvet Underground’s Mo Tucker and Sterling Morrison. Now let me get this straight – you played bass with them, correct?
That’s right.
Yet I’m looking through 25 years of songs and credits in this box set and I don’t see you playing bass anywhere else … so I’m thinking you strapped on a bass just so you could play with those people.
Pretty much. (laughter) When I met Mo, I started out playing guitar. She was auditioning people to play in a band for one show in New York and her daughter – who was going to the University of Georgia – recommended me. And just for that show, I played guitar.
Mo and I hit it off; from the first day, I just loved her. I considered her a great teacher to me and a friend. When I met her, she’d been working at Wal-Mart for years.
Oh, man …
Yeah – she had, like, six kids and wasn’t financially set up, by any means. Later on, in ’93, they ended up doing this Velvet Underground reunion tour in Europe and they all made a lot of money. It was like they were heroes over there. So then she could buy a house and put her kids through school … I mean, she made a small fortune. But when I first met her, that wasn’t the case. She was just putting together the idea of doing music full-time again and getting a band together.
And Sterling Morrison wasn’t part of that first band, then?
That’s the thing: I was playing guitar at first, but then she called up Sterling and I was like, “Well …” (laughs) “I’ll just switch over to bass ‘cause you don’t need me on guitar with Sterling around.” That’s how it happened.
I knew it. (laughter)
The thing about playing with Mo was – especially with some one like me coming in from the outside – she was very specific about what she wanted. Like, if someone was playing bass, she wanted them to play, “Doomp-doomp … doooo … doomp-doomp.” Real basic.
And she didn’t find anyone who would do that – they all wanted to play and jam … and she hated that shit! (laughter) They’d be throwing in a lick and she’d roll her eyes … she hated it. And I wasn’t a good-enough bass player to even be able to do that – so that’s why it worked out, you know? (laughter)
If you were going to point someone towards music in the box set from that period …
I was playing with Mo right before we put out the first officially-released Bloodkin CD [1994’s Good Luck Charm ]. There’s stuff on the latter half of disc 4 in the box set that I wrote while I was on tour with Mo and Sterling over in Europe – at night in a hotel room or something. I don’t know as there’s anything on the box that’s tied directly to her and Sterling musically … I just considered them great examples of how it was.
Mo’s whole thing was playing music the way she wanted to do it – and she really had a lot of contempt for all the bullshit of the music business. Just watching how she dealt with it – if it wasn’t on her terms she wouldn’t do it – was kind of heroic to me.
And Sterling Morrison was exactly the same way. When they did the Velvet Underground reunion tour, I was Sterling’s guitar tech. Not because I really had the qualifications to be there, but because he’d said, “Come on – let’s go to Europe!” Traveling around all over, man … it was great.
I remember he and Lou Reed getting into it about certain things – they all fought like cats and dogs which is why they broke up in the first place, I guess. Lou’d say something about being in tune, and Sterling would go, “Rock ‘n’ roll doesn’t have to be in tune.”
All that stuff kind of stuck with me; I really admired them and how they dealt with the business.
There’s no way to talk about the history of Bloodkin without mentioning Zac Weil, who died in his sleep from a drug overdose in April of 2000. You can say as much or as little as you feel like, Daniel. I know he was much more than just a manager to you guys …
Oh, yeah; the manager thing was almost incidental. (laughs) It really had more to do with just how much Zac loved music.
Zac was 30 when he died … he was a young guy. And he really became our manager by default. He did a lot of great of things for us, but at the same time he was by no means an experienced music business guy. He was feeling his way around just like we were.
It’s easy to say that someone loves music, but the thing about Zac was that he lived music … it was his whole life. He’d hear about the Stones playing a benefit show in … Las Vegas, maybe – so he’d find a way to get a ticket and get to Vegas. That’s what he did. His enthusiasm was endearing. And to this day, everywhere I go, it’s not a surprise when someone walks up to me with a Zac Weil story. Even if they’d only met him once, Zac made a great impact on people. He was a great spirit. He was like my big brother … he took care of all of us. I look back on it now and it makes me cry.
Zac really changed the direction of my life for the better. And it’s just one of those rotten tragedies that he’s not around. It was one of those nights that he did some shit that he shouldn’t have done – but man … a lot of people do that and get away with it. It’s just a shame, that’s all. And I miss him every day.
Folks like that never leave you, Daniel. They’re not here, but they never leave you.
You’re right. And I find myself, like, trying to make some kind of decision and thinking, “What would Zac have done?” I do that all the time.
I loved him very much, man – he was a good one.
David Barbe entered Bloodkin’s world as a producer when he recorded 1999’s Out of State Plates. You mention in the liner notes that most of the tracks you’ve recorded with David have ended up on the “official” Bloodkin albums – but the fifth disc of the box is the “Chase Park Sessions”, loaded with Barbe-produced tunes. David’s been more than a good man in the studio, though – it seems like he brought some light back into things after those dark times that followed Zac’s death.
He did. When Eric and I first moved to Athens in the 80s, David was playing in a band called Mercyland. We used to go see them all the time – they were great. They were this 3-piece, super-fast thrash band … but they would do, like, Beatles songs. (laughter) Or these pop songs that I just totally loved.
Years later David kind of interned with [longtime Widespread Panic collaborator] John Keane as engineer for a while. When David opened his own studio – Chase Park Transduction – you had a kindred spirit. If we were recording something you could say, “Well, you know the second solo on ‘In The Light’ by Led Zeppelin – how that sounds?” And he’d just totally get it. And he was someone who really became a friend.
To this day, it’s hard for me to think about doing a record without David. There’s this kind of shorthand that you develop with somebody – he knows which microphone to use on my voice or whatever. He’s always a lot of fun to record with; if we wanted to waste time in the studio and get drunk or whatever, he would go along – but at the same time he’s a very smart guy who knows how to get the best results from people in the studio.
If David’s working with a band on a record and I ask him how it’s going, he doesn’t ever say anything about which guitar they’re playing. It’s always a psychological profile: “Well, the bass player’s really insecure and he needs a lot of encouragement” – stuff like that. David’s great about working with people. He obviously knows all the technical details of producing a record, but his real strength is an amazing knack for getting the best out of people.
If you don’t mind, I’m going to share something that David wrote to me about you and Eric.
Cool.
[I read the Barbe quote from the introduction to this interview.]
Man … that’s one of the best things I’ve ever heard said about us. That means a lot, coming from him.
Well, you know as well as I do that David wouldn’t say it unless he meant it.
Absolutely. And like you said, he was there for us when we were in really tough times. A good example of this was Last Night Out that we started working on in the fall of 2004. That was my personal low point, okay? Really fucked up. And David just called me one day and said, “We need to make a record.” (laughs) I was too out of it to really grasp it at the time, but looking back I realize David was doing that because he saw me in trouble. He knew I needed something to do – all I was doing was laying around Athens getting wasted and it was no secret. But he put me to work. We didn’t have any money to pay for it, but it was “on the tab.”
David makes things happen. He says, “Let’s make a record,” and I’m thinking, “Our band’s just broken up,” you know? The next day he calls me back and he’s found a drummer and a bass player. (laughs) That’s how we did Last Night Out – with Kyle Spence on drums and Jon Mills, who’s our full-time bass player now. They’d never played together before, but on the basis of that record, other people hired them to do records. That was all from David just knowing … he’s a big part of the team, man. And a big part of the Athens music scene and the community in general. He’s in his prime right now and everything he does sounds like a million bucks. People are picking up on that more and more; I can’t see a reason to ever go anywhere else.
With 88 tracks spread over the 5 discs in the One Long Hustle box set, there’s no way to talk about each song individually. The one tune I did want to be sure to ask you about is “God’s Bar”. Here it is: you have this epic song – close to 13 minutes – that you’d worked on for years, according to the liner notes. But when it got ready to come out – BANG! – you guys nailed it.
Here was the beautiful thing about that song – and it’s one of the highlights of making music in my life. I’d worked on the thing forever, as you said. It was a short story at first; I used to mess around with different writing styles – short stories, poetry or whatever – but I’d never done any of it enough to really be that good at it. (laughs) So I had this basic idea of a short story that I ultimately turned into a song because I figured I could do that better. But it was really long … and it was basically two songs.
We went into the studio with the idea that we were going to record the first part of “God’s Bar”; then record the second part; and then we’d splice them together. We went into the studio that day and played the whole thing through once. And that’s what you hear on the record – one take.
Wow.
Yeah. And to this day, that kind of amazes me. I think it was because there was no pressure; it was like we were testing stuff out and really didn’t think that was going to be the take. (laughter) I can’t explain it; it just happened.
Sometimes you just have to accept things and not try to analyze them too much, I think.
Exactly – and I’d been over-thinking it, getting too complicated about how we were going to split it up and splice it back together and all. We just sat down and played the song – and it worked.
It goes from the stark, haunting vibe of the first section to the crunchy, Stonesy twang of the second portion …
Right.
And the great thing about the two contrasting parts is that Lancaster – the main character in the song – gets to the other side of what he’s been through … there’s some light at the end.
Yeah, that’s right.
I’m struggling for better words to describe that second half of the song … but I can’t come up with any. You know, when it comes to your rocking moments, you guys are forever doomed to be saddled with Exile On Main Street comparisons. (laughter)
Yeah, I know. (laughter) But we always loved that album –so it’s an okay curse to have. I think even the Stones are cursed with it. (laughter)
You know, to us – to a lot of people, man – that is the record. It’s the story; the mythology around it; hanging out at Keith Richards’ house and making a record in the basement … what could be greater? (laughter) Bobby Keys has been playing with us off and on for a few years and like he says, it wasn’t always a picnic, of course. But what a great rock ‘n’ roll album, man. There’s nothing else I’d rather hear as far as a rock ‘n’ roll record … it just sounds so great.
When we made our first record – Good Luck Charm – Johnny Sandlin was the producer. Great producer, but kind of old school, you know. He asked us to bring in some records to show him what we were shooting for and we brought in Exile.
Johnny was, like, “This sounds _terrible!_” (laughter) “We can beat this _right now!_”
And we said, “But you don’t understand …” (laughter) But yeah – it’s the high-water mark.
Well, then, I’m not going to worry about saying that “God’s Bar” could’ve closed out Exile On Main Street, then – just like it takes the box set out in this big burst of light.
You’re exactly right … it’s like reaching the end of a tunnel.
Towards the end of the essay you mention spirituality and its presence in your music right from the beginning – even as rough-and-tumble as things were at times. I think you refer to it as part of the quest. For you to acknowledge that out loud is another big part of you reaching a place of feeling settled.
Yeah – you’re right on the money. I’ve never been a church-going person or really involved with a particular religion, but I’ve always had a lot of questions. I’m not telling anybody what’s right or wrong – it’s very rock ‘n’ roll, if you can put it that way. It’s not like beautiful classical music; it has a lot of conflict and it’s loud and it’s messy. (laughs)
But it’s always been important to me. Going back through these recordings and putting this box set together, I realized how much it was always there. It was always a theme, but it was never like preaching to somebody, saying, “This is it” – or, “I’ve got the answer here.”
But yeah, that’s always been important to me.
And however you apply it, whether you have to be inside the four walls of a building or standing down here on the shore looking out over the water – wherever you feel the closest to whatever it is you believe in.
Yeah, and I think it’s different for different people. I was talking to someone who was a really hardcore fundamentalist – kind of an extremist. And they told me that what they were doing was like their “spiritual boot camp” and it’s what they needed … and I got that. I couldn’t last in that and it wouldn’t work for me. But it comes to different people in different ways.
And if the world could get ahold of that way of thinking and accept it … there goes so much of your conflict and turmoil.
That’s exactly right, man. It’s a huge percentage of the problems in this world.
Maybe if everybody listened to more rock ‘n roll …
Maybe that’s it – maybe that’s the answer. (laughter)
*****
Brian Robbins keeps the faith over at www.brian-robbins.com
