With songs such as “Shakey Shirley,” “One Bad Shoe” and “Clap Your Hands” and a live approach that has the intensity of a dragster going from zero to 300 mph in seconds and unites punk rockers, country fans and blues enthusiasts, the serious side of the Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band’s material and attention to artistry may not be recognized. But, it’s there.
Frontman and main songwriter Reverend (Josh) Peyton derived major inspiration from blues icons such as Muddy Waters, Son House, Charley Patton and Bukka White among others and even made pilgrimages to Clarksdale, Mississippi to be introduced firsthand to the playing of T-Model Ford and Honeyboy Edwards. He may sing about favorite meals — “Mama’s Fried Potatoes,” “Pot Roast and Kisses” — but it’s one aspect of him chronicling the lives of his Brown County, Indiana hometown. The locale also provides content for social commentary of lives just getting by – “One More Thing,” “Walmart Killed the Country Store,” “We Deserve a Happy Ending” and “We’ll Get Through.”
Talking on the telephone as he sits on his back porch, we discuss his intentions with the Big Damn Band and protecting his music from losing its soul due to any music industry meddling. It’s an (almost) perfect setting since his 10th release with the Big Damn Band, The Front Porch Sessions, came out earlier this year.
JPG: I’ve been listening to you for years and The Front Porch Sessions could be viewed as a stripped-down affair.
RP: You know what’s funny, so many people…there was a review recently that said, “This felt like a Reverend Peyton solo record not a Big Damn Band record.” I don’t think that’s necessarily fair. There’s a lot of background vocals and things on this record that I think really helped fill it. The vocals that Breezy [Peyton] lends to it on the songs, which is a good handful, that really makes ‘em. Llike “Shakey Shirley,” if Breezy wasn’t singing on that, I think that song would be half the song that it is. There are certain things like that. Also, if the person had really paid attention and followed our records, there’s at least one song on every record is just me and a guitar. I’ve always done it.
JPG: “Pickin Pawpaws” off the So Delicious album is that way.
RP: Yeah. There’s a handful on a lot of them. Then, Peyton on Patton. It’s a one microphone recording. It’s real stripped-down. I think the Big Damn Band is only on about two songs. It’s one of those things where if you were to take a lot of our records and turn down the percussion, you wouldn’t be that far off from this record in a lot of ways.
This record was sort of the way we went into the studio; what I envisioned anyway. I go into the studio and every single song, I want to start with me and a guitar and we’re going to build it up from there and decide what it absolutely needs. And then, only bring in the minimal amount of what the song needs. You have to be very careful. Pull back as much as we can. I wanted it to have like a real stripped-down, organic front porch kind of feel.
JPG: I read that you were a little concerned about this album and you sent off some of the recordings to friends to see what they thought of them, if you were going in the right direction. That’s why I thought, it’s still a Reverend Peyton album, minus the full loud band the whole time.
RP: Yeah, exactly. When I first did this, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be an EP or if we were going to pull a song or two off of it, at least a single. I didn’t know. I didn’t have a plan at the time. There was no label that was gonna be putting it out. We didn’t know what was going to happen. I just had these songs. I wanted to go into the studio and I wanna do it this way. Sometimes, as an artist, you have this itch that you gotta scratch. You know what I mean? And nothing will do ya until you get it. That’s the way it was for this record for me.
Breezy always gets mad at me for saying this ‘cause she says it sounds like we didn’t care but I didn’t have a definitive plan when I booked the studio time other than I wanted to finish up some of these songs I’d been messing with and I wanted to go in real organic and stripped-down. And a beautiful thing happened. I listened to it and was like, “Man, I think we’ve got a record here.” I sent it out to some people, see what they thought. I had some buddies go, “Man, don’t mess this up. Don’t put anything else on it. Don’t do anything. Actually leave it like it is.”
Some people, I think, wanted So Delicious again maybe it bums ‘em out maybe it doesn’t, I don’t know. It’s not So Delicious. So Delicious is probably our most finished sounding record. And if you only got wise to what we are and what we’re all about through that record, this might seem like a shock. But if you are a fan of ours, you’ve been with us since our first record, Big Damn Nation I don’t think this record is a surprise at all.
I don’t know if it’s our best record. That’s for other people to decide but I know it’s our most beautiful sounding record. I wanted it to be that. I wanted the guitar and everything to be very beautiful whereas So Delicious, there were times that I wanted the guitar to sting, to kind of hurt. I don’t want the guitar in this to ever hurt. I want it to always sound beautiful.
JPG: Speaking of recording methods, I know that you used a minimum amount of microphones with distinct placements to record this album. Have you considered doing a session at Jack White’s Third Man Records where you record directly to vinyl?
RP: Man, they had us down there and we did. They invited us down there a few years back and we recorded something in their vinyl booth. One part of it ended up on a Record Store Day release. Half of it was that and half of it was a studio version of “Can’t Judge a Book By Its Cover,” the Willie Dixon song. One side was a Charlie Patton song recorded at Third Man. The other song was that. Only a thousand or something like that were made and they sold out that day, Record Store Day, and that was it. I thought about maybe trying to do something else with it because you can’t get it on iTunes or anything. So, if you don’t have that little 45, it doesn’t exist.
Actually, there’s a couple more songs floating around that were done at that same Third Man session that might be released at some point. I think I did a version of “Pickin Pawpaws” I’m not sure exactly what we did. They actually reached out to us. It’s pretty cool.
JPG: Yes, it is. Now, I was going through your latest and earlier releases and noticed titles such as “Cornbread and Butterbeans,” “Pot Roast and Kisses,” “Born Bred Corn Fed” “Mama’s Fried Potatoes” “Pork Chop Biscuit.” I was thinking how you could put out a food themed compilation album some day.
RP: (laughs) It could be like a greatest hits food album. We did The Gospel Album, which was an EP. Originally, my plan was to do a bunch of those. I wanted to do a Gospel album, train songs…maybe murder ballads but we only did the one. (laughs)
Max (Senteney, drums), he thinks we should do a train record. He’s pushing me. “Man, let’s do that train record. It’ll be awesome!” There’s so many good songs about trains and I’ve written a few myself.
JPG: Now, how did you discover these older blues artists like Charlie Patton and Bukka White and Furry Lewis?
RP: What it was, my dad listens to a lot of Rolling Stones, blues-influenced rock and blues like Johnny Winter, and I wanted to know who influenced them. Get Muddy Waters. Well, who did Muddy Waters listen to? You get to Charlie Patton pretty quick. That is how I did it. “This Rolling Stones song is a cover of an old blues song. What’s the original like?” I was always chasing that stuff. I was always real fired up by the originals and the history of it. Even Robert Johnson, you go to him, and this song’s a cover of Charley Patton. This song covers Skip James. This song is him doing his best Son House impression. I was always into that; how these people got their influences.
JPG: How did you go about finding this history? I’m guessing this took place during the early days of the internet, no high speed Wi-Fi to assist you.
RP: Man, for me at the time it was always saving up and chasing CDs down. I’m a child of the ‘80s. So, by the time I got into music, it was CDs. I got into vinyl later. I didn’t have a nostalgia thing when I was a kid for vinyl. Vinyl was in boxes in people’s attics. But, I love vinyl. I love that experience now but I came to it later, just through analog recording techniques that I’m into.
So, for me it was CDs, researching it. Now, all that stuff is up on the internet. It’s real easy. Later, it started to be. We didn’t have a computer with the internet on it when I was in school. It wasn’t until I graduated high school that I really had real good access to the internet. At that point, everybody did.
JPG: The late ‘80s, that was probably a good time for you because record companies were pumping out anything they could on CD including lots of blues compilations and re-issues.
RP: Yeah. Compilations, that was my favorite stuff when I was a kid. You can go and get like. I remember one called The Slide Guitar: Bottle, Knives & Steel and it was all slide guitar and country blues stuff and that blew my mind. That had Charley Patton on and a bunch of stuff. I was like, “Oh, my goodness. This is unbelievable.” I was definitely into those comp CDs, man.
Most of that stuff, they’re not records anyway. They’re singles. They’re two sides of a 78. So, it doesn’t really matter necessarily to get the album experience. There is no album experience with pre-war blues. So, those comp CDs are a great way to get familiar.
I read a lot of whatever I could read and find out. I would travel and I would go talk to old guys. I would travel up to Indianapolis and sit outside of venues and watch Yank Rachell play. I would watch anybody I could whenever someone was coming through. The nice thing about Brown County is it’s a very musical place. We have the Bill Monroe Music Park. Bill Monroe made his music campground and home here. It’s like his theme park for bluegrass. There’s a lot of music coming through here. It’s an incredibly musical place for how rural it is. There’s 850 people that live in the county seat of Brown County. It’s the most rural county in Indiana, Appalachian foothills. It’s one of those places that’s sort of secluded. It gets a lot of tourist business because it’s so beautiful. As far as the music goes, I was always lucky to be in a very musical place and my dad, he was always into music. My parents, I think they thought it was weird, like pretty much everyone else did, that I was so in to what I was into but they always backed it.
JPG: I read the article you wrote in No Depression about music industry people giving you advice and how you stubbornly stayed on your own path. In that sense did another Indiana musician, John Mellencamp, inspire you as far as not moving anywhere and sticking to your creative beliefs?
RP: Absolutely. Absolutely, he was. I’ve been lucky enough to do some recording with John and spent some time with him, too. Mellencamp was my first concert. When everyone else was doing hair metal stuff, he was singing songs like “Small Town,” “Scarecrow.” Those songs resonated with me, man. It made me feel okay to be from a rural place. I’ve heard John say — I can’t remember exactly how he worded it – how he thinks staying in Indiana has hurt him. There’s probably some truth to that for me, too.
You go in there and start rubbing elbows with all the East Nashville hipsters…I just refuse to do it ‘cause that ain’t me. It would be like faking it. I love coming back here and if it means some of those people are going to look the other way, then I guess, I have to say “Piss on ‘em.” I’m just going to continue to do things my way.
The music industry has never really come for us anyway. We built this all up – grassroots — one fan at a time. That’s what we’ll continue to do. I believe in our music and I believe in our heart and our soul. I’m going to continue to do it this way ‘cause it’s worked for us. When it comes down to it, at the end of the day, I have to look myself in the mirror and be happy with what we did. And, that’s real important, too. If I felt like we sold anything out or made something that I wasn’t proud of…I would never release a record that I wasn’t proud of. It just wouldn’t happen. I’d go back into the studio until I was. I’d never sign any deal with anybody where they had any say over the art, try to mess things up.
It doesn’t mean I don’t want to try new things and grow and be better. We definitely have done that, too. It just means that I’m not going to do anything I think is going to mess with the integrity of what we’ve been about.
To be honest with you, there’s is a lot happening here, man. In the middle of the country right now – from the Bible belt to the Rust Belt — we’re right in the center of that. This is where the culture of America is right now. On the coast and on twitter, they’d like to think that it’s somewhere else but it’s not. It’s right here and we’re right dead center in it. It’s what I’ve been writing about since I started.
These people, they’re trying to make ends meet. They’re my family and my friends. They’re good people. They’re just trying to navigate it and they have their own unique voice and culture that is distinct. Sometimes, when you’re from a place, you have to get far away in order to look back and see it. Luckily, I’ve been able to travel. We’ve played in 32 countries. When you go to Bulgaria, it’s very easy to see just how much culture there is in southern Indiana and how unique it is and how interesting it is. When you are in it and looking up close, it’s tough to see. Your culture is just your day-to-day. It’s what you know. It doesn’t seem interesting at first because you’re in it. You’re living it. Then, when you step back and look at it, you go, “Oh my goodness! Look at all this! We didn’t realize what we had.” The further away you get, the more in focus actually it becomes, interestingly enough.
JPG: I understand what you mean. I brought up Brown County online and see it’s just south of Indianapolis.
RP: In between Indianapolis and Louisville [Kentucky], so it’s far enough from all of those cities where it’s like the farthest point. It’s the least populated county in Indiana. If you look at pictures of it, it’s real hilly. There’s rolling hills. They’re rugged. A lot of times, those features isolate a place, and they hold culture in. That’s one of the cool things about this area.
JPG: You mentioned “from the Bible belt to the rust belt.” It connects with “One More Thing” from the new album. I know the idea was about those in the rural areas — how something economically or even medically can happen and it figuratively tears a house down – but that’s the same thing in many areas.
RP: There’s a lot of people who talk about homelessness as a problem but there are a lot more people that are not homeless necessarily but they are teetering on the edge. They don’t have a big safety net outside of their community. Most of these people are too proud to really admit it. They don’t go, “I’m in trouble.” Culturally, it’s not what you do around here. You internally deal with it and suffer through it, usually alone. It’s a very real thing.
That song is a very real song. Some people are like, “I’m going to write a song like this.” I never set out to do that. Most of the time I write a melody and the melody says something to me. It sings words back to me; not always but sometimes it all happens at once. I almost can’t control it.
JPG: I like that, “can’t control it.” That’s how the music works. It takes over and you better listen or it’s going to leave you behind.
RP: And it usually happens at 4 a.m. on a Wednesday. (laughs)
JPG: Back to when you were talking about growing an audience and doing things your way, it reminds me of an interview I did with you back in 2012. We were talking about how you’ve been able to successfully play to punk audiences as well as country audiences and about Pennywise’s “Bro Hymn” played before shows. So, how are things now? Is your audience growing and widening beyond those genres?
RP: A lot of bands will say, “We have a real diverse crowd,” but they really don’t. You go to a rockabilly show and everyone’s dressed in rockabilly clothes with slicked back hair and hot rod outfits. You go to a country music show and everyone’s dressed like that. A hip-hop show, everyone’s got on their hip-hop gear. If you go to one of our shows…I don’t know if there’s another band on planet earth that has as diverse a crowd as us. A lot of it is because the music industry didn’t know how to market it, so it just happened on its own through our music.
We played music and people liked it. That was it. We still do it. We get on the road and we bring it to people and then they tell their friends and they tell their friends and they tell their friends. There’s no scene. There’s no outfit for coming to our shows. So, you have 78 record collectors that really understand the roots of what we’re all about and you got a kid that saw us on Warped Tour and he has no idea who Charley Patton is. He doesn’t care. The music, he feels it, something inside speaks, and that’s it.
I’m real proud of that. It’s something not every band can say. There’s very few bands that can go play a Canadian folkfest and then Sturgis and then a big blues festival and then Vans Warped Tour, then a jazz fest in Europe…We’ve done it all. We’ve played every kind of show there is. And if you’re a punk band, you’ve got to play punk shows. That’s it. If you’re a country band, you’re playing country fests and country venues and that’s pretty much it. That’s the beauty of what we’ve done. We’ve snuck in the back door everywhere.
The blues world, they’re finally taking notice, starting to realize that they should have been paying attention for a long time. It’s fine. A lot of blues when I was a kid, what was coming up was just all Stevie Ray Vaughan disciples. That stuff’s cool but there’s a whole lot more in blues than that. A whole lot more. We’re on the rural side of it. That’s fine with me.
JPG: I’m looking at this quote of yours where you say, “…I want the music I make to sound timeless. I don’t want it to sound like it was done 100 years ago, and I don’t want it to sound like it was done yesterday. I want people not to be able to tell when it was done.” Is that why you think the blues fans were a bit slower to discover you because you weren’t just sitting on a stool playing in a way that’s familiar to them?
RP: Yeah, I think so. There’s so much about that stuff. They want you to play a character and they want you to be a caricature of what they think a blues artist is. What’s funny is that you look at who Howlin’ Wolf was or Muddy Waters or Bo Diddley or…those guys weren’t the blues caricature that you so often see. They were very unique; their own guys. If you go back to Charley [Patton] and Son House, those guys were the same way.
I realized early on that the best music is made when it’s from the heart and when it is real. You’re just speaking the truth that you know and letting other people take what they want from it. It’s got to be real honest and true. I refuse to play any character other than what I am. Sometimes, that confuses people because so often in music, man, they want you to put it right into this nice neat little shelf and say, “Okay, I’m going to a Jimmy Buffett concert, so I want to put on my Hawaiian shirt. I’m gonna go to a punk show, so I’m gonna go get some Manic Panic from the mall and I’m going to color my hair for this show.” People want to do that. With our show, they’re like, “How am I supposed to look? What does this mean? How am I supposed to dress?” Dress however you want. Just come and enjoy the music for the sake of the music, not for the sake of any scene.
