Interview with Tara Key, November 11, 2016

CHIP NOLD: All right, today is October 17th, 2016. I am interviewing--

TARA KEY: No, it's not.

CN: It's not?

TK: It's November.

CN: Actually that's certainly true - it is November. All right - and you thought I was going to be giving you the facts.

TK: Technical Terrence.

CN: I am interviewing Tara Key, guitarist in No Fun, the Babylon Dance Band, in which we played together for over four years, and the Zoo Directors, Antietam, she's put out solo records, and she has, what's the term for the Rizzo Key band?

TK: Partnership.

CN: A partnership but-- the type of--ambient.

TK: Ambient - ambient collaboration.

CN: Yeah, with Rick Rizzo of Eleventh Dream Day. We are talking on this day in November in my living room at 1633 Tyler Parkway. All right, so Tara, when and 1:00where were you born?

TK: I was born in the West End, grew up at 3208 Vermont.

CN: Could you give me your birthday?

TK: Yes I could - September 4th 1957.

CN: Great okay. All right, so you were starting to say about growing up in the West End.

TK: Yeah, I grew up in the West End. We were forced to move and I was, like, seven or eight, when they put the -- actually, the lead up to the River Park Drive exit ramp on 264 runs through my beloved living room, and that was, kind of, my first act of civil disobedience. The day that we drove away in our car to move to our new home in the East End, I had some water-based paint and I went back and painted on the front of the house, "Henry Ward go home" because he was 2:00the highway commissioner at the time.

CN: Okay, all right. So what did your parents do for a living?

TK: My dad was a tilesetter for most of his life, and later a maintenance man at Oxmoor Mall. And my mom was a stay at home mom to some degree until she got very involved with the PTA. And that kind of ramped up when I was really young. She rose to leadership positions in the state and then the National PTA which sort of segued into her working in the school system and being an instrumental player in the human relations department during desegregation of the Louisville schools, which culminated with her meeting with President Ford to give her views on desegregation.

Her story is a pretty remarkable story of a woman who did not even graduate from high school who found herself in that position and in leadership roles. My dad, on the other hand, was a really beautiful artisan when he would do tile work, 3:00but he worked for a company here in town, was underpaid, didn't have health insurance. And for approximately a year and a half of his life during World War II, when he was 4F for going to the war, he got a job at the Courier-Journal as a staff photographer and he also worked for, I suppose, a precursor to Standard Gravure where he printed what was, at the time, the largest color mural in existence. And that was in a restaurant at the Brown - I'm not sure, maybe it was the Oak Grill; I don't know whether that's what it was called then - and the really cool thing is that they have on display (and I've actually gotten on eBay) a matchbook cover from that era of the Brown Hotel and it has a reproduction of part of that mural.

CN: Oh, wow, I didn't know that. That's cool.

TK: Yeah, and so I got that on eBay a few years ago. And then when Antietam came to play the Outskirts, the first Outskirts festival, we decided to go high hog and get rooms at the Brown. And I walked in and we were checking in, and they had a little case of memorabilia and that matchbook is down there. So that's really cool. But he had that job for a year and a half because all the fellows left to go to the war.

And I've got to say that I'm -- it was before I got here, but from all accounts --that was the happiest year and a half of his life. And so his love was to be a photographer, and after the war, mom and dad tried to make a go of it doing commercial photography. We had a darkroom in our basement and they couldn't really afford to keep it going and especially after I came along. So quite honestly, seeing his unhappiness in a day to day job that he kept, in a way, after I was there and my two siblings, who are a bit older than me, had left-- 5:00it was to keep our household afloat.

He taught me everything I know about photography and developing film and making prints and I always kinda viewed it as a mission to honor what I felt I wanted and needed to do creatively; almost like it would be an affront to his memory and what he gave up to make it possible for me to do that. And I just saw him work a job he hated and I know he had the heart of an artist and it's been a real seminal driving force for me. I mean, I've kept a full-time job the entire time that I've had bands after -- I worked at LFPL -- that was not a full-time job, but once I moved to New York and needed to--

CN: LFPL being Louisville Free Public Library.

TK: I started there as a page, I guess was 16. I've worked in libraries my entire life. I've held down a full-time job having a very serious band all these years and I was never going to give up one -- give up the art for the job because I think of Dad every time and how he made those sacrifices, because he really believed in me as an artist. And so I always have thought about that and just felt driven and compelled to follow that part of myself and it's all kind of about him.

CN: Okay, all right. So how did you get interested in music?

TK: It's funny, when I was about eight, nine, we were watching The Beverly Hillbillies. We had dinner so I had some silverware, and I started playing along with the Beverly Hillbillies theme song. And then my dad said, "Hey, you're 7:00kinda good." I swear it's pretty much that that, I think it was-- it might not have been that Christmas-- might have been like -- it probably was around that time. It could have been that Christmas that he went down and picked me out an acoustic guitar at Shackleton's.

And my mom has told me the story about how they really didn't have any money, and he had really saved to do that for me. And I hadn't a clue -- I wasn't planning on having a guitar. But he went down to Shackleton's and the woman was trying to steer him towards a really cheap beat up guitar. He got indignant and said, "I'm not going to have that-- I'm going to have a good instrument for my daughter." And so he got me a guitar he couldn't afford, and got a case for it.

And so it's pretty cool because I actually have a picture that somebody in my family took the moment that he gave me my guitar and he had hidden it behind the curtains in our living room and so my family had a tradition of we open all the Christmas presents and it's always like, "Oh no, there's one more." This year, 8:00he told me to go look behind the curtain, and I pulled it out and it was stunning. So that's how I got the tools to play.

I have always painted and drawn and stuff, and music had always been really important to me. I was the kid who was listening to the transistor at night, the way it seems like many of my peers who play music who are my age did. It's like I would take the transistor to bed with me and listen. I mean, I obviously love songs and stuff, but it was also about the idea of transmission and the idea that I could go other places in the world, like, and just stay in my bed at night.

I was listening to WWL in New Orleans and I was listening to KYW in Philadelphia. And I was listening to all the 50,000-watt clear channel stations. So music was always tied up, for me, in this idea of being able to shape shift and go different places and be transcendent in a way. So, yeah it was about the music, yeah it was about liking the songs and knowing what a verse and chorus was and knowing that the chorus was real important and it was about that, but it was always tied to the radio and to the idea of transcendence.

CN: Cool, all right. I mean, do you remember -- so it was really more the experience even though you say you loved the songs and I imagine you're talking about AM radio and, like, '65-'66?

TK: Yeah I'm talk about classic--even before that, I mean, and I'm talking obviously about Monkees, Raiders but also one hit wonders too -- I mean the Left 10:00Banke were not one hit wonders, but I only knew one song by them-- "Walk Away Renee." And I can even zero in on that moment in "Walk Away Renee" in the chorus where there's just this keening wail of the way that the singers and the--vocalist and the music line up.

That was just like a knife to my heart. And I would just remember moments like that in music really viscerally and so, yeah, it's definitely AM -- it's definitely AM pop radio. And it's just funny, like, I love the Monkees, I love the Raiders-- that was the first groups that I could take ownership of and 11:00really it not being -- it not being my brother and sisters' music, it not being older music mom and dad would listen to.

Those things were my music but it's important to point out -- it's like, yeah, I bought 16 Magazine, I bought Tiger Beat and I had pinups on my wall but it wasn't really like I was fawning over Peter Tork and the Monkees or Mark Lindsay and the Raiders -- it's like I always wanted to be them. I didn't really wanna to go out with them. Their pinups were on my wall the same way the astronauts were; they're people that I emulated and people that I wanted to be like and it wasn't like I was a fan in the sense of being slavishly devoted to them and thinking they were cute boys.

It was more like, yeah, I want to do that once I started really listening hard. It was that, that's what I want to do. I mean honestly, it never occurred to me that I couldn't, being a girl. That partially came from the fact that my mom was 12:00somebody that I was, like, running around with -- all her meetings and all of our community involvement. And there are a lot of times that I would be in a room of men and my mom would be the only woman in the room and she would be running the show and she would be asking the questions that made everybody stop and think.

And with her example, it seriously never occurred to me that that's something that would be difficult to do. And for that reason, it really wasn't for me and I think that had a lot to do with the environment that we had when I started having a band and it was always a little bit different here. I think that there were so many women on the scene that were obviously equals from the get go to 13:00men, it was just like those gender issues when we started having bands were just not gender issues.

I mean at least they didn't exist for me. And I mean, I've had to acknowledge constantly because the women in rock question has come up my entire life: I had it at a certain point, had to acknowledge the validity of other women's experiences because I think that they were different. I think that there were women that were afraid to go into a music store and felt intimidated and felt, like, "Are you here to pick out something for your boyfriend?" type of experience.

And again it's just like, I went to the Guitar Emporium when I was growing into being in a band and I was never treated that way there. It's like, to get my first gear, Jimmy Brown let me apprentice there for a couple of weeks to pay off my gear. It just wasn't an issue for me, but all my life I've had to acknowledge that it was an issue for other women but not here and not in 1978 Louisville.

CN: Okay. So, you talked about leaving the West End. I don't think you said where you went and where you went to high school.

TK: Yeah, so we moved to the East End; my mom and my dad had always been West Enders. And when we were dropkicked out of the West End, I mean, I might add, in a neighborhood that was perfectly integrating on its own. And some people left for Shively but most people didn't, however, put an expressway through the middle of a neighborhood as a way of disrupting things! So my mom wanted to move to the East End because she viewed that as a step up.

So we did and we moved to Macmore Place, which is a tiny little street just off of Frankfort Avenue close to North Bayly. And all of a sudden I went from kind of being, I don't know, a really confident kid to being in a neighborhood where it was clear everybody had a lot more money than we did. I went to George Rogers 15:00Clark, then I went to--

CN: Elementary school?

TK: Elementary, then I went to Barret Junior, and then I went to Atherton. And it was just like, all of a sudden I was around kids who were buying their clothes at Bacon's and my mom was making all my clothes. My mom was making scooter skirts for me and jumpers. Let's not even discuss how it was like pulling teeth to get me to wear dresses. But you had to then to school. But the point being that I just always felt other than.

I had some friends but I didn't have a lot of friends at different points because, I don't know, it just seemed -- I really had a problem with the economics of it. I had a problem being at St. Mark's Episcopal and being in the youth group and just really feeling really different from everybody. Now, you 16:00know, as a teenager, that's a pretty crappy situation to be in; it's a pearl formed because it really -- I can look back now and see how it just -- for somebody that was probably going to go on a vector that was a pretty individualist vector-- it just hastened that process and it just really made it -- made me ultimately stronger having undergone that hazing as a teen and as a young kid, so, it's all good! But at the time it wasn't so hot at times. It's funny how the financial part of it was so strong for me. I can remember sitting with my mom and having her divide the bills into ones we were going to pay this month and ones we were gonna kind of let slide. And I'm not sure how many households that was happening in my immediate neighborhood.

CN: Probably more than you knew but still you weren't aware of it.

TK: But I wasn't aware because they were like the manifestations outwardly were not as such.

CN: I don't want to force this connection but I think it's there. Is there a way that you relate the sense of outsiderness as you said and music or that you did at that time?

TK: Absolutely.

CN: How so?

TK: Well, it definitely made it easier for me to be a punk rocker. I mean, I feel like I already had my credentials and my membership card and it was just waiting for this manifestation of a cultural phenomenon for me to join up with all the other outsiders. So in that sense, I mean, I don't know, I mean, it reinforced my creativity and that I was creating my own perfect world as I was 18:00going along because I wasn't really finding a place in the one that I was in in the day to day.

And so I mean, I always played the guitar by myself in my room. I wrote a really regrettable folk rock suite when I was in about 10th grade that I have the tape of and I might release it as a joke someday. It was called Friends and Lovers. And so even though I was always playing the guitar, I really -- at the point that I was in high school and heading -- you know, I went to Louisville School of Art-- I always kind of thought I was going to be a painter and guitar is going to be just something I did for fun.

And that got -- that balance got way shifted, obviously, when I joined up with Tony and Bruce and we had the band, we had No Fun coming out of art school. So I also have no freaking idea of what I thought I was going to do as a painter to make money. I do think that--that gave me a lot of time on my own to create my 19:00perfect world and also frankly, I had scoliosis. And if you can imagine when everybody else is dating and you're in a body cast it gave me a lot of time to sit in my room alone and learn to play my guitar.

And it also was another feather in the cap of outsiderness because I mean, I looked really freaking weird. I mean, the cast I wore came up almost to my ears; I was in and out of body casts for about three years. Understand that prior to 20:00that time there's also a vector of my life that I was an incredibly athletic child; I played softball, I was just always playing. I mean, I would have played baseball if I would have been allowed to at that point.

I can remember being up in Columbus, Indiana with my nephew and I actually -- he was on a little league team, and I would do pitching practice. And I just really loved -- I loved physicality. And when that came together with the act of playing and being creative, I mean, it was just a neutron bomb in my life that I could combine the two. And it's just like I have never been able to separate out the strains of spirituality, physicality and this guitar being my tool to express those things.

They're all jumbled together for me. When I play the guitar I enjoy the actual act of touching the wood. I enjoy moving, I can't stand still, at the same time that I feel I'm channeling something out into the cosmos like my own personal radio transmitter. So all those things are tied together for me and they still are to this day.

CN: All right. Okay, well, let's step back just a little bit, first question is, how old were you when you had scoliosis?

TK: I was diagnosed at 15 maybe. Let's see, I was born in '57. I skipped a grade in elementary school. I graduated in '73 so I guess I started treatment in about '72. I mean I graduated in '74 sorry, so I started treatment in '72. So what 22:00would that make me -- 15, right? So I had body casts on and off and then finally, I was fitted with a hideous Milwaukee brace, which I wore pretty much -- I was supposed to wear it until I stopped growing.

I got a scholarship to Parsons School of Design when I graduated in '74 and I had it on through that year and going to New York. And I hit Parsons wearing the Milwaukee brace and as would be entirely predictable, the Milwaukee brace went by the wayside the minute I was in Manhattan and I wasn't under scrutiny and it was entirely uncool. So my two years of high school -- that's when the treatment was going on.

And man, when they put me in that -- obviously it was something that had to be treated; it's something that now at the age I'm at I'm starting to feel the ramifications of probably more than I have in at any point before in my life. 23:00But I was pissed when they put that on me. I mean, it's just like breaking a bronco or something. It made me really angry and it's really interesting to me that that anger got channeled through the guitar even at that point; there was no punk rock.

I was not angry about the world at large -- I was angry about my world. So it set me up nicely to have a way to express frustration and anger when it was kind of like then I was colliding with society and expressing that, but in my own little cosmos, it was the way that I got that anger of my situation out and I could still be physical even, albeit, sitting in my room, expressing myself with this tool.

CN: So what, just musically what, how did you get to punk rock? I mean, because there were just precursors to punk rock in 1972 and '73 and '74, right?

TK: Yeah, I mean it's funny. I mean I wasn't aware of and -- OK, I mean, I was really into pop radio up until the late 60s. I didn't really go Beatle -- psychedelic Beatles, Stones nuts, I mean, my Stones education was a little later -- it was right before punk rock. I mean I frankly went -- the first big passion was Bowie and I mean something about Bowie hit me pretty--I mean I -- I'm trying 25:00to think.

CN: When was that?

TK: Yeah, I'm trying to think, I mean it was, I know the first Bowie record that I bought in real time--man, it might have been Pinups and then I immediately went back and got everything before that. And then, like, Diamond Dogs was the one that I really super owned, like, I am waiting for this to come out and here it is and, I mean, I'm sorry Aladdin Sane and then Diamond Dogs; the point being that Bowie was my first big passion and Mick Ronson and it's just like, so that's going on.

I'm aware of Neil Young but it's funny, it's just like Bowie was it and then, like, understand, too, I was a very good girl. So the idea of Bowie and gender questions and the wild life -- that was an eye opener for me, too. So this 26:00window opens-- and, you know, I mean I'm still a good girl in comparison. But it's just like, so that window opens and I see all these possibilities and everything. So then we progress a little further. And so then I had an older friend who educated me in the world of Stones and Neil Young.

So I discovered them and became passionate through my friend Tyler. So then it was again, a process of re-education, then I go back and find all the Stones records, I go back and buy all the Neil Young records so that '73 through '76 or so time is when I caught up on everything. And so, I mean, when I do something, I really do it. It's just like, the minute I figured out Pink Floyd existed, I took one of my first paychecks, I went to W.T Grants and I literally went to the divider and picked up six records and put them on the counter.

It was just like, it was total immersion. And so that was what led up -- with a smattering of King Crimson and Yes -- but that's what led me up to being positioned for starting to listen to immediate precursors. So then the next thing that really hits me is, I'm sitting in my room at night and I was listening -- when WLRS would play a new album, at, like, midnight or something. So I was up painting and so they play Horses and I was just like, whoa -- oh man.

So it's a woman's voice, it's -- it just like hit me, it was just -- it was a perfect positioning of it , like, 1:00 in the morning and I'm alone in my house. I mean, I had the whole upstairs of this really big house and being the only kid 28:00at home my mom and dad-- it was incredible; I mean I essentially had a one bath, four room apartment from the age of about -- I was eight or something, until I left home -- it was just ridiculous.

And one room was a darkroom and one room was a music room and one room was my bedroom and one room was an art room. I mean, so I had this privilege. So here I am in my own apartment and it's the middle of the night and this record plays and that was just like -- for everybody; I mean it's a redundant thing -- it's just about anybody that started making music in 1977 '78 '79 had my experience it seems. But okay, so beat me up here I am too! So that really struck me and, really, in terms of hearing what was going on in New York and -- I didn't really know about the Stooges then, I just -- I just hadn't dialed it in.

So when I got to art school and there's this collective and we would be painting: me, Bruce, Tony a few other people would be, Martin Rollins and Sara Kimberlain, we would all be upstairs painting together and listening to music. It was a lot of Bruce bringing in records to play and stuff. And so I really got in that couple of--the year and the semester leading up to No Fun is when then I really got super educated about those sounds.

I can remember listening to Blondie's first record, I can remember them bringing in a bunch of stuff and that was just really awesome. That's really where I got out of mainstream sounds and via Patti and then into everything that was happening through those guys.

CN: Okay. We should give last names to Bruce and Tony.

TK: Bruce Witsiepe and Tony Pinotti, Martin Rollins were all my painter buddies.

CN: So how did you start? How did it come to be that you started playing music with Bruce and Tony?

TK: Well, Tony and I, on breaks, we both had acoustic guitars and we both had a real love of Neil Young. So we would go sit out in back by the sculpture studio in back of the building that -- where painting and drawing was, and we would just spend --we had a Neil Young songbook and he's the first person that I sat down and played music with. I'd always played on my own to that point and then, except the one time that my cousins and I just jammed a little bit together.

So Tony and I sat there and played through the Neil Young songbook. And I learned how to play with another human and just rhythm. So then those guys -- I 31:00just can't even at this point exactly remember how it all happened. I know that Bruce and Tony and Skip Koebberman, who was a teacher at LSA, Louisville School of Art, I know that they were playing and I think Dean was involved -- Dean Thomas -- involved at that time too. I know there was something going on that they asked me to come play with them.

They had played together a few times at least. And so that was -- I was like so psyched to be asked to come audition for their situation. And being a space freak my whole life, I kind of dressed up for the audition, I felt like I was dressing a combination of Patti on the cover of Horses meets Mission Control and Houston 1965, a white shirt and crisp white shirt, and a tie and this is how I 32:00show up to play. And I honestly can't remember what guitar I played which has bedeviled me, because there's early pictures I've seen on posters of me playing this thing that looks like a Gretsch, or like a Gretsch copy.

And I have no memory of where this guitar came from. And in the last three weeks, I've asked both Tony, Skip, Rik Letendre, I'm just like, what guitar am I playing, and nobody could really -- nobody said "It's mine" and I know I didn't own it. But anyway, I played that night with these guys. And at the end of the night, my hands were, I mean, my white shirt had blood on it. My hands were ripped up and I was the happiest I'd ever been in my life. And it's like, seriously: it was pretty awesome. And so then I was just in the band so--

CN: So when was this?

TK: Oh man, so--I mean, it would have been probably March or April of '78 I'm 33:00thinking, I mean, and I'm not sure when our first show was. Maybe it was Derby at art school. Is that--?

CN: That's my recollection.

TK: Can you confirm?

CN: That it was Derby or Derby Eve at the LSA.

TK: There was a party at LSA, and that's where we first played. So I mean I think we played together for a few weeks before that. So it was that spring.

CN: And was it all originals I'm I remembering correctly?

TK: We played "Stepping Stone" by the Monkees.

CN: I need to correct you that is a Raiders song.

TK: I mean, Raiders sorry. No, you do need to correct me. Or it was neither it wasn't written by them it was a Boyce and Hart song.

CN: But the Raiders did it first.

TK: Apparently right. Although it's arguable that the Monkees popularized it.

CN: Oh, no question about that.

TK: Fine, but anyway, so I think that's the only cover we did. And actually, now I'm thinking about it I think that was per my request. I know it was, in fact. So yes, "Stepping Stone" was the only cover.

CN: So who was writing the songs?

TK: Bruce was writing most of -- I mean, Bruce was writing the lyrics, were we jamming and making songs? I mean, I think we were jamming and making some songs. I also think that Bruce might have brought in some chord progressions -- I think it was mostly -- and my cohorts can dissuade me of this notion if they see so fit--if Tony talks to y'all but I think that we were making the music and Bruce was writing the lyrics.

Then Bruce and I collaborated, I mean, I know I had a hand in writing some of the music definitely because we did the song "Consummation." I think we actually 35:00collaborated on lyrics and music on that. But yeah I think the music was us coming up with it and then Bruce writing the lion's share of the lyrics.

CN: And Tony sang songs too.

TK: Tony sang songs, too. So he must have written the words for them. That's true.

CN: And then you sang "Auto Assassin."

TK: I think I might have actually written that entire song. I mean I know I wrote the lyrics to that and I think I wrote the music to that, too. I'm sure I did.

CN: Well, so No Fun, we all know, was Louisville's first punk band. How aware were you of that at that moment?

TK: That we were the first punk band?

CN: Yeah.

TK: I was very aware of it. I was aware that we were groundbreaking.

CN: So, yeah tell me just a little bit more about that feeling and the group dynamic.

TK: Oh, my God I mean, it was the whole -- I played army from the get go my entire life. And both neighborhoods I lived in, I would organize boys and I do mean I would organize boys -- there were no other girls playing army. And so I 36:00felt like I'd joined my platoon. So I really felt this feeling that we were going out into the community and we were an army platoon and we were defending the honor of creativity and expressiveness.

I mean this town then -- and in some sense, this town has been a special incubator, all things told, a pretty tolerant place. However, in our little personal drama in 1978 America, it did seem like we were going out to battle. So there was always this sense that we were spreading an epistle and doing it in a way that we were gearing up and armed and that's the reason that I would often wear -- a possibly regrettable decision fashion wise -- an army helmet when I played.

CN: I forgot. I remember the hard hat too.

TK: And the hard hat, the army helmet.

CN: That was great. I mean the hard hat I know for myself, the hard hat when I saw it I said, that's cool. That's a great idea.

TK: That's good to know.

CN: And the other thing I think about as, say, compared to your next band, you were all visual artists and No Fun made some visual statements as well. I don't know how you relate to that. But didn't Bruce maybe paint on some of his clothes?

TK: Yeah, and I ripped up things and painted them too. I mean, Bruce and Tony were more responsible for posters for No Fun and graffiti around the city and stuff. I wasn't really a participant in that, there is an aspect -- I don't 38:00know, there's that aspect to those guys involved in the band that was a little bit more subversive than me. I mean, remember, I'm the good girl. I mean it's a stretch for me to be doing what I'm doing. And in terms of my makeup and those boys always just went a little further.

CN: Okay. Well, elaborate on that a little bit. I think you're -- from my understanding of it you're absolutely right.

TK: Yeah. And I mean and that, frankly, that is part of why I stayed home when they left -- I really felt like, I mean -- and I, it's neither here nor there. I didn't envy it; I wasn't scared to do it. It just wasn't my level of expression to, to go out and agitate and be a little bit -- push the envelope a little bit further in that sense. And so when -- you're jumping ahead a little bit. It's just so crazy to think about the compression of time.

I mean, the idea that we start this band in the spring and then by the end of that summer, they're moving -- it's just like we had been this little cabal and it's all of a sudden, the cabal needed to go somewhere on a larger scale and agitate and I just wasn't as much of an agitator. I was the one that was like, "Well, can't we cover some more Raiders and Monkees songs?" And they're a little bit more -- just took it a little further.

And I mean, honestly, the agitator boys -- I mean I'm not sure I would have ever left my bedroom if the agitator boys hadn't shoved me off a cliff. And I will be eternally grateful to them for that because I was probably a little bit more of a play it safe person and they believed in me enough to shove me off the cliff and expect me to join them. And I did in the way that I was best able to do that to the point that I could do it. And then I had to realize maybe I am different -- I don't think I can go on your mission.

You have another mission that you're going on; I think that I can't go on that mission. And that's what made me stay home. I mean, I'd always wanted to move to New York, somewhere in my brain I'd always planned to live in New York somehow. Going when I was 16 and being at Parsons for that summer, I won the David Bowie Lookalike Contest; I found myself in Madison Square Garden in the Year of the Diamond Dogs seeing Bowie; I found myself in that town in 1974 when things were just starting to get riled up. And even though-- I spent nights at the Club 82 with lesbian bartenders with scary voice boxes--because this one woman who was the lead bartender there was just--had this voice box because she'd had cancer or something. And I can remember going in there the first night I went because I was camped out waiting for Davy, David and Angie to show up at the Club 82 41:00because I had been reading about it in Rock Scene and that's where they hang out.

And so I would go there and I walked up to order my first drink ever because you could drink at 16 in New York, and I knew my mom and dad had parties where people had highballs, so I just go up and go, "I'll have a --highball?" And this, like, woman barks at me and goes," Whiskey or rye?" like, "I-I don't know?" and she says it again, "Whiskey or rye?" And I'm like "Rye." It's an interesting choice for my first drink. But so I hung out there and like the only -- the closest I got to meeting Bowie was spilling a drink on Lee Black Childers coming down the stairs. So anyway, my point Tara, bring me back--

CN: Let's see I think this was about Bruce and Tony being the more subversive 42:00agitator boys.

TK: Right, and so I have no idea of what -- okay, so I wanted to move to New York. But when they moved to New York, I knew in my heart it wasn't the right time. And it wasn't the right setting to do it. And I figured I'd get there someday but this wasn't the equation.

CN: Okay. Well, so to go back to No Fun, like when you were playing. So you played the party. And then was the next gig the Center for Photographic Studies?

TK: Yeah, I think it was.

CN: So I only missed one No Fun gig. That's great.

TK: Yeah, and then the Cloisters was next I guess.

CN: Right. Well, so talk about -- I mean, do you have any sense of any memory of the audience and the response you all got from -- we didn't ask about the response you got at the Derby party?

TK: Well, that was a great response but it was like preaching to the converted. It's like all of our art friends were there. And when we played the second show, it was for an artist, Jan Arnow, and I didn't know her and I guess those guys might have known her I think. And so it was in a more official gallery and I can 43:00just always remember that Bruce borrowed, I didn't have a Les Paul at this point, I had an Ibanez copy which, incidentally, Cathy Irwin bought from me as her first electric guitar to play in the Dickbrains.

So we showed up and Bruce had this borrowed white Les Paul which, even not really being tuned into the channel of the value of guitars and stuff, I could tell it was a really expensive guitar, and he had this huge belt buckle on that night. And at the end of the night, he'd worn off the finish off the back of the guitar. And not only that, I forget what happened -- some kind of mayhem resulted and I'm getting the impression that the gallery was not super happy with us.

And I can't remember why that was, I don't think we broke anything or knocked anything over. I just think that our expression racket was maybe not in tune 44:00with some more serious artists that were there. So that was a collision and our experience through most of the band and frankly, carrying over into the Dance Band, there was just this idea of carrying an epistle into the world at large and having collision experiences, which is super exciting.

I mean it was -- it made me feel very alive and for my little mini-agitator role, it gave me a lot of confidence, oddly, and you're at the Vogue and people are throwing things at you -- I was, just like, bring it on!

CN: Okay. All right so and I mean, to a certain extent your venues are getting bigger. I mean, it's a party with your friends, then the Center for Photographic Studies. I was there and my recollection was it was a fairly small back room. 45:00There was no far from the band -- that's what I recall. But then the Cloister I mean, just because of the physical-- this is a courtyard in this building that was being used for a variety of purposes at the time, like restaurants and galleries and other things.

TK: Right. And a little sidebar to that which I'll make very brief. My great, great aunt was a madam in the late 1800s and I came to realize only recently that she had gone to the Ursuline Academy, which was that building where I was playing and she had walked through that courtyard, I'm sure, countless times where we set up to play and is that -- am I correct that that's the first place Tim saw me play?

CN: Right. Marc and I went to -- Marc Zakem and I went to see you at the Center 46:00for Photographic Studies. Tim was working and I think that's right.

TK: Yeah, so that's really the first time Tim Harris laid eyes on me that I can recall, although I did not meet him that night. But I just always thought that I mean, the year or so I've had this information I kind of marveled at the fact that my Aunt Fannie was walking through this very spot, that was the very spot where our ectoplasms connected for the first time.

CN: Okay, all right. Well, so I mean, my recollection is that No Fun did make kind of a splash.

TK: Yeah, we did. And it was funny-- then all of a sudden, there's articles in the paper about us in the Scene, there were a couple of articles about us. And then, I'm kinda like, huh, okay so I'm doing something and I'm getting written about in the paper here. So it was an interesting feeling and I kinda liked it. I liked the idea that now -- I wouldn't have put it in these terms then -- but 47:00the feeling I can ID right now is an influencer of taste and I really--just then it was just, "Hey, my name's in the paper." But that public validation that was exciting to me.

CN: Okay. And so then there was the big party at Nedelkoff's barn. I don't know if you recall anything specific about that.

TK: Well, it was the night I met Tim. I mean, I went on Google Earth not too long ago and zoomed in on Nedelkoff's farm and I could actually pinpoint the fence post that we stood at and had a conversation. I mean, I'm a big one for symbols and talismen and stuff so I'm like, that's our fence post, from Google Earth satellite. No, we met that night and we talked and he made a big impression on me. And I can also ID that night with you all playing -- was that 48:00gig before the Main Street gig -- it was, right? Yes, it was -- of course it was.

CN: Yeah, because that was our second gig.

TK: Yeah, right. So that night, I gotta say that seeing you guys play and y'all were doing covers and y'all obviously shared my taste in radio and music, I can kind of pinpoint that night of--not dissatisfaction with my band, but feeling a kinship to what you guys were doing. Tuning in the channel is just like, okay, this is cool. I like these people and I like my people too. But I can tell the difference a little bit between our missions.

CN: So, this is a great big party. I'm just going to do the précis here of--

TK: You're going to do what?

CN: The précis of the -- just explaining about the event.

TK: The précis?

CN: What's that?

TK: Précis, P-R-E-C-I-S it's like the short summary. There is this big party at Robert Nedelkoff's barn in Floyd's Knobs and No Fun played, the I-Holes, whom we should talk about, played. And then it was the first show of the Babylon Dance Band, also Chris Lee's band. I believe if I'm remembering correctly, his band Robot Skull Face was supposed to at midnight transform into Boomerang Pi, P-I, at any rate. But this was this was one, this was a big public event, lots of people, there seemed like there was a pretty decent crowd there.

TK: There was a lot of people as I recall and it was a pretty seminal scene event. I mean, lot of people met for the first time that night. It that feeling that was just a landmark moment. And there were also some people there like some of my cousin's friends that weren't necessarily tuned into the punk channel yet 50:00that kind of got it that night. It was a night of the net being cast a little bit wider.

CN: Right and I guess the other thing to say about it is that this barn and we're -- the bands play up in a loft and most of the audience is either down below on the dirt floor of the barn or in the loft opposite. It's a very interesting venue. I also seem to recall that the microphone was not particularly well grounded. But at any rate and like, okay, so somewhere along here I think it was--maybe it was even before -- who -- when did Dean Thomas 51:00start playing drums with you all? Was he at the Derby party or was he--?

TK: Yeah.

CN: Oh he was okay.

TK: Yeah, I can't recall anyone else being on drums.

CN: Okay. And then when to Cardy Bledsoe replace Skip on the bass?

TK: Let me see--is it possible was at that show, was she at the -- she was at the Cloisters. So no it wasn't, it was like -- I think Skip was playing with us at the Jan Arnow show. Do you recall?

CN: I think that's quite possible. Cardy spoke to Marc and myself at the -- she said we should calm down or something. It was really annoying.

TK: She said what?

CN: She says, "You all should relax." or something like that.

TK: Oh, please. Anyway no, think, I mean, Bruce and Cardy were in a partnership at that time, so then I guess Cardy must have joined for the Cloister show. I'm pretty sure I don't think Skip played that show. So then that would have been our second show together.

CN: Right, okay. So then, like you say I think-- was the Cloisters the first 52:00time I-Holes show?

TK: Yeah, I think so.

CN: So just talk about them. I mean I want to talk to Sandy and Rik.

TK: Are you going to talk to Rik and David?

CN: I'd like to.

TK: Well, they were kind of our brother band because they were art school connected too -- I mean, the Letendre brothers were -- and they were really cool. I mean, I'd known Rik a little bit from he was also at Parsons School of Design for that. I forget where he went to high school in the South End. So he got--

CN: Maybe Iroquois, I think.

TK: Really? I'm not sure.

CN: Maybe not. I thought I had that association.

TK: Anyway so he was actually in New York that summer I was there as a fellow scholarship winner. And we knew each other a little bit then; not too much. But I mean, I-Holes were a reinforcement of the agitator aspect of No Fun. And there 53:00was a real kinship there with Bruce and Tony in particular and then the Letendre boys.

CN: Dave was not in the I-Holes, right; he was in Circle X?

TK: Yeah.

CN: I thought the I-Holes were Rik, Sandy Campbell and Dean.

TK: And Dean right yeah, that's right. But David was around a lot so, auxiliary member. And then David started playing when -- the point being that the boys moved to New York: Bruce, Tony, David, Rik and made Circle X. And there was a -- I don't know -- there was something shared between those guys. And that was becoming apparent to me. And it wasn't -- I mean I didn't feel excluded by them; 54:00I felt excluded by myself in a way. I mean, they were always-- I don't mean to give that impression at all.

I mean, I could have gone to New York -- it was me choosing not to go. But I could recognize that those guys shared something that wasn't exactly my vision. So I-Hole's sound was -- I mean, it was a great band. I just-- at the time-- yeah, so -- so I could see that -- I could see those relationships developing and folding together. And I was seeing that I was maybe not on the same page the closer all those guys got through that summer.

CN: All right. Two other things I remember: you briefly mentioned playing at the Vogue, but maybe talk a little bit about that because that was probably your biggest gig.

TK: Yeah, that was the biggest. So here we are: we've gone from the barn when we 55:00were--the earlier gigs. The proscenium is always broken, we're standing two feet apart from each other, and we go to the barn, then we go to the Vogue. And I honestly have no memory of how that gig was obtained. I did not have anything to do with obtaining it. But it was kind of amazing.

So now we go from this net being cast a little wider at Nedelkoff's barn to a serious, like, this is the community -- people who -- there was a showing of Fritz the Cat scheduled so--

CN: Midnight movie.

TK: Midnight movie. So we're playing before that. And so all of a sudden, here we are, and this is an event that a lot of people talk about having seen us for the first time, it was a bigger magnet draw to people who were hearing punk and hearing music coming from elsewhere and then having a chance to see this representation of it. So those people are there peppered through the audience 56:00meeting each other, in some cases, for the first time.

And then the overwhelming amount of the audience are stoners who have come to see Fritz the Cat. So it was kind of awesome. I mean, I love the idea that there was shit being thrown at us. And I kind of anticipated it, having worn my combat garb to the show. And I mean, as I recall, did we not start the set with the song "Breaking Glass" and Bruce breaking glass? I'm just -- I mean, for my toy rebellion version of it, it was like -- this is great!

And we were like, man, it was just like -- I mean, my whole time in Louisville and with our band, always viewed our mission as trying to do spiritual outreach. And I mean, I was trying to do it there too, but we were a little bit in your face. And I mean, I just thought it was marvelous. I mean, I don't know whether 57:00we cut our set short or not. I can't, I mean -- I think we kind of did, like maybe we ended up playing for 13 minutes of an intended 25 or something. I mean, because it was bordering on a little rock riot from my perspective sitting up there.

CN: Well, and I think that the breaking glass might have really -- is that possible -- that that upset Marty Sussman?

TK: Possibly.

CN: Who was the owner of the Vogue, and then I guess yeah, I mean, there's -- and I'm I right, Sean Mulhall was there, wasn't he?

TK: Was he? I don't know that.

CN: Maybe not. I mean, I know he went to the midnight movies at the Vogue. But anyway he might have been.

TK: But I mean that was just -- I mean honestly, adrenaline-wise that was amazing. I mean, I can kinda remember how it felt then and it was just my good girl sensibility challenged. And I felt -- I mean it was awesome to feel like 58:00such a rebel. It's like my little toy rebel feeling.

CN: You've torn your dress.

TK: What?

CN: You've torn your dress.

TK: Yes, exactly. Thank you.

CN: Well, so how many how many songs did y'all have?

TK: Let's see. I mean, I'm going to say like maybe 12 or so. I think that before those guys left town, we went out to Gary Falk's and we recorded. I mean, I think I have seven or eight on tape and I know there were a few more. I don't think we recorded "Stepping Stone" which we were doing and we did not record "Auto Assassin" that day. I'm virtually certain of it. So there was that; so I 59:00think there were maybe not more than a couple other than that if that -- they're either 10 to 12. I know there were 10, maybe 12.

CN: And I'm sure in the fashion of the time they were all two minutes.

TK: They were all like two minutes or less.

CN: And I mean what--?

TK: "Consummation" actually was an epic at probably three minutes and 30 seconds. Because it was like we put two songs together -- it was a kind of a conversation between me and Bruce. So it was longer.

CN: I remember that, that's cool. Do any of the songs stick with you in particular?

TK: Man I love "She" -- I mean, I would do "She" today in the band. I just-- the riff opening it and stuff and just Bruce's voice on the verse--I mean you know 60:00we all have our soundtracks walking down the street. That's still one of mine and it's nice to be able to summon Bruce back that way. I love that. I don't know, man. I love "Space Invader" -- I love Tony on that. I mean, he was just such a creative singer in that band.

See, I really love that, I love the way he could sound like a monkey at one point, and he could almost be a crooner at another point. I mean, it was -- I mean he had a really incredible emotional range. I mean, I look back at that band and I see the seeds of Circle X and just how awesome that band was. And it makes me really proud to have been part of the germination of that because I see where their vector went and what it became and it's very different from where my 61:00vector went, obviously. But every band from this town seems to have a really, just, unique contribution in the universe. And I mean, I think you hear No Fun in Circle X.

CN: So then you say, you actually -- you could have gone to New York. I mean, how did they--?

TK: They didn't say you can't go they said do you want to go? I said no so, yeah, that's what I mean. It wasn't like they were escaping town and leaving me behind, I just knew that wasn't quite my fit. And it was a really hard decision to make because it's somewhere I always wanted to be and I had a lot of love for those guys, but things were moving too fast. It was not -- it just did not seem right to me.

So I stayed at home and I sulked. So I didn't have a band now, I'd never thought of the idea of having a band and then I had a band. And bear in mind this is 62:00eight months. So it's like, okay, so I'm kinda just painting, I don't know what I want to do with my life. Oh man, this is what I'm going to do with my life -- oh shit it's gone. So I'm pissed off and then you call up.

CN: Okay, all right. This is the second part of my interview with Tara Key. We just ended with a phone call from a handsome mysterious young man.

TK: Oh, man, I could see where I was. I had a phone in the upstairs in one of my room in my suite -- rooms in my suite. And then I can remember you calling one afternoon and saying, you want to join the Dance Band? And it was just like, A, I had grown at seeing you more than that first time at that point to really wanting to be in your band existentially.

So in the state where my band's gone and totally not knowing--it's just having the greatest thing I'd ever have taken away and then you call up and say, you want to be in our band. It was just like, "Oh, God yes please right now can we play in ten minutes?" Right- so I guess -- I mean did you ask me if I wanted to audition or did you ask me if I wanted to be in it?

CN: I probably did say be in it. Because you had--

TK: I think you did.

CN: Because you proved what a great player you were. And I think obviously, if we had gotten together and it hadn't worked, we would have said no. But yeah, it was pretty much why would we not want to have Tara who was so cool in No Fun in our band.

TK: Yeah, so now we're entering a zone where Tara's memory is sometimes challenged and I'm sure my interviewer I hope will correct me when I'm wrong. 64:00But am I not correct that the first time we played was on my birthday out at Nedelkoff's barn?

CN: That's what I understand.

TK: Great. So that night, we go out there and we play and it's just magical. And so I can just remember Nedelkoff's barn was in southern Indiana up in the Knobs. And so to come home, you had to come across the Sherman Minton Bridge through the West End. I'm clearly a symbolism sucker. So the idea that I've found my new path, a path that I'd been kind of sending out spiritual signals to be involved with, then it happens.

Then we have this really great time playing and so I can remember you and Tim were in Tim's mom and dad's station wagon and I had this little red Opel Kadett car that I drove. And I can remember racing you guys on 64 coming out of the 65:00Knobs across the Sherman Minton Bridge, past my beloved West End, past the stupid road that veers off to go to my living room, which obviously since its come up 19 times in this interview still sticks in my craw. And that was just kind of perfect. It's my 21st birthday, yes? What year are we in or it's--?

CN: '78.

TK: Yes, it's my 21st birthday.

CN: That's right I forgot that.

TK: I am driving through my beloved land back to the West End. I'm drag racing these new friends of mine -- I was all about speed then. Considering I live in New York now and I'm terrified to drive from here to Kroger's, it's kind of an amazing thing, but back then, I was quite a speedster. And that was just one of the best nights of my life. And clearly it was second defining moment of my life.

CN: Okay, well, so I mean we'll talk about it, because I mean the Babylon Dance Band at that point had only played I don't know three or four shows I think.

TK: Yeah, right. So I'm also joining up playing with this other guitar player, Marc who's -- I mean he was a better guitar player than me, he was trained to play the guitar. And it's really interesting, I was thinking -- I mean I obviously deserve credit for finding my way and finding my style, but without spending the period of time that I spent playing with Marc and really getting the rhythm thing down pat, I mean, I just think about how lucky I was to have such a strong player to play with.

And then, I mean, my calling card is the rhythm and lead thing at the same time; I never could have gotten to the point of making that leap of doing both things and cramming them into one candy bar if I hadn't had a strong -- such a strong 67:00partner to get the rhythm thing together. I was thinking about that in the last few days and how fortunate that was. Because I mean, we're all doing this. I don't think no -- I mean had Marc played in a band with anyone ever before other than at school or something?

CN: Yeah, I think he had a friend Jimmy, God what was Jimmy's last name? Who was actually a pretty good player and I remember going with Marc to practices that Jimmy would be playing in and I think -- so I think they jammed together some. And there was a band -- I can't remember was Tim in that band? There was a band in our senior vaudeville and Marc was definitely in that.

TK: I don't think Tim was in that. But the point being that all of us that never had bands before and that all loved to play music-- I mean, we're -- it's kind of like climbing up a mountain and one person gets to a point and helps the other person up, then that person goes higher and helps the other person up -- that's what it was kind of like to help us all, each other, finding our chops as we went along.

And that's just such a different way of being in a band, if you put your back, self, back in Louisville in the '70s, I mean, most people that were in bands learned to play off of blues progressions, like, served these apprenticeships in different bands of people more experienced than themselves. But had also, that had been in bands -- here we might have had a different level of proficiency developed on our own or maybe playing with one other person or something.

But the idea of being a band and having all these basics down, that wasn't what was going on there. And so this whole communal helping each other reach our point was just a kind of ass backwards way of having a band that really--not 69:00having those basic rules may have made the sound challenging for people that weren't steeped in it. But it ultimately led to having a super unique sound, because we weren't -- it's like for myself, I mean, still if you put me in a situation with players that I've really come to grow to respect their proficiency, if you put me on stage with a band that was playing in those progressions, I mean, I still don't know what would happen because that wasn't my basis.

I've kind of come in the back door of learning stuff backwards. I mean, some of my friends in New York that had more of a traditional experience of being in 70:00bands and stuff, I mean they kick my ass in situations like that, and make me really have to work hard because I just didn't come with that vernacular imprinted on my brain. So the point being that Tony and I playing together and teaching each other, Marc and I playing together and teaching each other. Without playing in those kind of symbiosis roles with both of those guys, I would not have developed my style.

And I would not be where I am in terms of how I express myself, and I was just lucky with both of those guys to be at a similar skill level enough, that it wasn't like I felt intimidated but we helped each other to learn, a lot.

CN: So you said that it was the taste that we showed for similar kinds of rock and roll that was really appealing to you?

TK: Right because you guys obviously had the transistor radios under your pillows too metaphorically, and so all -- we can immediately have conversations about songs we heard on WAKY. The fact that WAKY existed, we only have to say WAKY and we know what we're talking about and so there's already -- even though we don't know each other very well, yet there's already a shared vocabulary. So it makes it so much easier to just know the shorthand and just be able to make songs. We all knew that we were making songs that were the songs that we wanted to hear on our own personal transistor radios.

CN: Just how would you describe the development of the Dance Band in say that first half year after you joined?

TK: The first half year obviously, like, you guys had a thing going on and I 72:00was, finding my fit in it. But that was about five minutes. I just felt after the first few rehearsals, I thought that we were creating something together. I didn't feel like something was plugged into a slot. I felt like when I joined the band, then we did something new together instead of me just following along -- the same way I changed what those guys were doing by bringing in a pop element to what they were doing.

In this case, we were all on the same page pop-wise but the guitar interplay just developed very rapidly and then I felt like what we were writing together sounded different from some of the originals that you guys had done before.

CN: I'm trying to remember the first originals that we wrote with you.

TK: Let me think. Well, what about "Jumpin' Suburbs," did that exists before me?

CN: No, "I'm Happy" did, "Will It Be Today" did.

TK: "Christianity" did. And also, choice of covers. What covers did we add after I joined, were you doing "Carpenter" before I joined?

CN: No that's true. "If I were Carpenter"," that's it. That's interesting. I specifically remember adding that up in Nedelkoff's barn. And I guess I should say that we had started practicing there right around the time Tara joined the band. And it was just a great even though--

TK: Shout out to Robert once again, the incubator for so many situations and combinations-- he really--

CN: And so, I think it's around that time although, actually maybe we done "Dirty Water" before, I can't remember. But I sort of remember that. It's hard 74:00to remember. But you feel like -- yeah, I think that--

TK: You guys had "Will It Be Today?" before me?

CN: Yeah.

TK: So there was a spate of songs written like "Suburbs" times.

CN: Right, there was -- "Get Those Orphans Rockin'", and that was vaguely--at any rate, so you felt you heard a definite change in the band -- in what the band did and the band's songwriting from after you joined it? You talked a little bit about the guitar interplay, but is there any other way that you could characterize it? No is accepted.

TK: I'm trying to think, being a self-centered individual that is the main--that was just like one step deeper when you have that Marc wasn't holding down the only role. And honestly it freed him to be more of a solo player too, you know, 75:00to have me there.

CN: And then so the other thing I remember about that time period, really the way you could put a period on that, you put an end on the time period is when we finally got Dave Bradley; we had a succession of drummers.

TK: Yes, a succession of drummers. And then that was really interesting, Dave being older than us and Dave being someone who would have been of the age to do something about it when we were listening to our songs on transistor radio, to continue to refer to that as a common denominator. Dave, when we were 21, Dave would be like 28 or something; like an older brother and so he had been in bands 76:00in the '60s in our beloved time period. So finding him was a very direct connection to what we had grown up listening to and trying to emulate. And it's funny to think of him as an old man now, my God what I wouldn't give to be 28 again--so...

CN: I guess even, probably of all the people who drummed with us up to Dave, Dean Thomas was clearly the best and he just drummed with us--I don't know if there was ever a gig with you and Dean in the band.

TK: No he wasn't, when the boys went to New York, Dean ultimately went out west. And he joined Levi and the Rockats in pretty quick order. And so we never played a show with him.

CN: But at any rate, they were all, to some degree or another rudimentary, they were learning too. But I would say that Dave was at a slightly higher skill level, would you agree?

TK: I would agree. And he also knew how to play, so we're making our style and yes, it was born out of punk. But it was pop; I guess that the change in me was when I was making music with No Fun; I think it obviously was borne out by what Circle X sounded like. They were trying to make music that didn't refer to anything and we made -- part of our love for making music was taking the collage pieces of the things that had gotten us passionate about music and doing it in our own way.

So yes, that's punk in a sense in that we don't necessarily have the skill set to do that in place. And we're developing it as we go along. But we were more like making collages of what we heard in our brains of things that existed and 78:00we were reinventing them. So it's a subtle difference, but it is a difference in sound. So having Dave be a part of that was just having that -- he, in terms of shorthand, if we would say to him, we want this to sound like the Standells, then he has a skill set that will make him play the song like he's playing like the Standells.

So it was a shorthand that that existed with him. I'm not sure how much he really dug us because to him, we must have seemed really punk rock, it's all these incremental like distinctions; in our heads I'm already playing in Paul Revere and the Raiders. In Dave's head, he's playing with some guys that had never been in a band before.

CN: He stayed for a year and he put a lot of time into it. And I guess the other thing that was significant about Dave was that he--

TK: He found the South 40.

CN: Right --that's true. But the thing I was going to say also is that he worked a third shift job. And so basically, he would practice with us, and we practiced at least four nights a week I think. And he would practice with us and then he'd go drive a car for, I think, it's First National Bank.

TK: Yeah. And bear in mind take a look at that work ethic everyone. We were approaching this with the seriousness of a fulltime job. We did practice almost every night and believe you in a position now in adulthood that, if I'm lucky I can practice once a week with my band--I crave that total immersion that we were fortunate enough to be able to have at that time.

CN: That really brings the question like, why were we putting that time in, what was--?

TK: Because we'd all like -- I know you guys had plans for your life and you chose to stay here and do this insane thing. So we were all people serious about doing something with our lives. So when we decided this is what it was, we applied the same level of expectation, of involvement and commitment that we would have if Marc had been a lawyer or if you had gone to New York and been a writer. And it's just like we expected no less of each other because we had a shared commitment to excellence.

And that's a really important lesson to have learned and a certain level of 81:00self-expectation to have had from the get go. And because it was also just fun too, it's like we get to do this. And for almost 40 years now, if not 40 years I still feel like it's a privilege to do this. And it's been hard to keep it going at some points, mostly fiscally, certainly never spiritually. But when you know how good that can feel, you just wanna do it all the time.

And I think we all felt like -- and it was like too, it's just like -- I can't speak from experience because I was never in a trad band. I was only in, not post-punk, but post-punk rock happening bands. There is such a communal feeling 82:00about it too, it was like you were all-in lifestyle wise, you were all-in art wise, you were all-in time commitment wise, it was just total immersion.

And it was hard to separate out the idea of "I'm in a band," and to this day it's just, like, as insane as it sounds with my fulltime job, if somebody asks me what I do, I don't say I work in a library, I say I'm in a band, but... So that's why we practiced four to six days a week.

CN: It's interesting though, I'm just thinking about the difference as far as people and presentation between the other members of No Fun and the other members of the Dance Band. The Dance Band pretty much just wore their regular clothes onstage, we would not have worn a shirt with words painted on them or 83:00something like that. I just wonder, did you think about that element of it and was it a weird transition or was it a natural one?

TK: Of all of us, I probably continued to do things like wear combat helmets and put my heart on my sleeve and pin collage items to myself. So I got to carry that over to you guys. But all told, for punk rockers, we were pretty straight looking which I think was a subversive element and was a real key to doing outreach. The type of outreach we wanted to do when we lived in the city and we wanted to go play in different neighborhoods for people.

It's like if we go to the Schooner in Portland and we play a show for a bunch of folks that are going to their neighborhood bar, they're not really going to see 84:00a punk rock band. And we decided to do that kind of outreach and we're wearing what we're wearing instead of coming with totally ripped up clothes, then there's something about our presentation that makes it a little easier to slip our message in.

I kind of think that that -- and also the idea too of not being somebody you're not, this idea of punk rock is not just about--well, it's not just about overt subversion, it's like covert subversion was acceptable too. And it was acceptable to have this umbrella of just "you can do it," it wasn't just all about "you can mess things up." It was more like -- the tip of like -- I just always viewed it more as positive expression, full immersion, total commitment 85:00and using those tools to make different kinds of people understand each other better.

And sometimes that's easier to do in a nice shirt and a pair of corduroys as opposed to not that.

CN: You mentioned the Schooner, that's a classic early Dance Band gig. I think it was sometime in the fall of '78. Is that right?

TK: Yeah. I think Tim found that show. Tim at that point was a pilot fish going around getting us in different circumstances. Like, did he not find the strip bar too?

CN: Oh Willo's?

TK: Willo's. He got that gig too, am I right about the Schooner, I think he got it?

CN: Yeah, my recollection is he said, "I was going to get us a gig." And maybe he was substitute teaching in that neighborhood.

TK: Or maybe it was substitute library work. Maybe I think he might have worked at the library by that time.

CN: Well, and was Dave in the band at that point?

TK: Yeah.

CN: So maybe that was even, I want to say fall, maybe was the winter. I'm trying to think.

TK: I think Dave was definitely in the band.

CN: So Tim wanted to find this place. And he found this bar, the Schooner in Portland.

TK: Yeah and when you walk in and it says check your guns at the door--it's like you are entering a different environment. So my memories of that are the mop dance that we played where we -- it's just a tradition at the bar so we're like, "OK, we will understand and honor your customs." So we're informed that you stop 87:00playing and then whoever's holding the mop has to sit down until you dwindle down in musical chairs fashion. Whoever's left is the winner of -- I forget what. But our songs are pretty fast and pretty intense. So we managed to stretch out "Eve of Destruction" to include lots of -- it did -- it was a songs with stops built in.

CN: And we kind of did it with a little bit of a cha-cha beat, kind of?

TK: We did. Kind of to stretch it out. And then I can remember the songs having stops in it when a real competition stop happened, that it was a little confusing to everyone like, "Is this a stop? I'm holding them up."

CN: But it's significant. And so, my recollection is after that show feeling like that was a really good gig.

TK: Absolutely.

CN: But we never played there again.

TK: Right. I'm not sure we needed to. We'd said our piece there. We set out to play any neighborhood we could in the city. And it's one of the things I'm proudest of. Sometimes I feel guilty for having proselytized for everybody that's good at something leaves here. We're going to stay. We're going to play every neighborhood; we're going to bring this community together. And what did Tim and Tara do? -- they leave.

CN: I'd say after doing that for five or six or seven years you're allowed to change your mind. So then as you mentioned earlier, Dave Bradley found the South 40.

TK: Yeah, which was a really important spot because now instead of having these episodic community encounters, you have a home base of sorts, at least a bar that wants us to come back and play repeatedly and bring our friends to have their bands play. And the thing I'm probably proudest about that our band did is 89:00just I came from the West End, I came to the East End -- I had an issue with it. So one of the things we did was got people together from different neighborhoods to try to understand where each respective crew was coming from.

And then bands start forming of people from different parts of town. And we weren't the only ones responsible for that. But it was a--if not stated mission goal, it was certainly a strong unstated mission goal or just an obvious outcome of what we were feeling goal. And so I just think that that's one of our 90:00greatest contributions was to be a big part in creating an environment where that was possible.

And so the South 40 was awesome because we're like this base of operations is not in the East End, this base of operations is in the South End. And it's a place where none of us are from, but we're coming there, and we're being welcomed to the degree that we were and everybody else is too. And so it just became -- we've all been satellites attending each other shows living in different parts of town. And for the first time, this is a place that you know you can report to every weekend and see somebody play. And so it was super important.

CN: The other thing that strikes me was really important and we were already there by the time we played the Schooner and I'm trying to remember where it happened. But when we were playing the South 40 we had to play three or four sets a night.

TK: We had to play three or four sets a night. Can you imagine? Bands that were playing around town, maybe they would do two sets a night, more blues based 91:00bands, more trad bands -- we're playing four sets a night! We had to repeat material obviously but -- Tim and I used to coat our fingers -- I don't know if Marc did, maybe he did too, coat our fingers in Nu-Skin. Because we would literally wear away our cuticles to bloody pulps after doing what we did for four hours a night and Tim dug a hole in his first bass from his pick.

And he actually sold that bass to Alec Irwin of the Dickbrains. And so the Dickbrains basically took our instruments and had their band, and the Dickbrains, who were standing outside of the South 40 listening to us because they were under age. And then on occasion, I would go out and slip Cathy Irwin 92:00my ID because we looked enough alike that she could use it to get in and stuff at that point.

Tim dug a freaking, like, inch deep hole in his bass; I mean, how could we ever lose that verve when that's where it started? We're adept enough now that we do not dig holes in our instruments but we play them no less furiously. Nothing else is acceptable.

CN: Well, it is--I think that that gets us something that is really interesting is just it really took a physical toll.

TK: Sure. You had to run outside to throw up at times. And we knew that was the time to play an instrumental, which was often a sudden occurrence so it's just like, okay it's time for--

CN: Yeah, I think I did not really understand dehydration at that point in my life.

TK: Sure. And that's what it was. But it was like playing -- it was back to one of my demands on what I did being unteasable away from physicality. And we approached it like a sports team. We approached it like a basketball game as much as it was music; this band was steeped and born into a love of basketball. We used to suspend the rehearsals and go play basketball. And that intensified when Sean joined the band. But it was taking the field every night and it was like playing until you dropped. And that was incredibly satisfying. But, yeah, 94:00we would lose you on some occasions.

CN: Right. It's a facile and incredibly self-flattering comparison to make but I always thought it was like our Hamburg.

TK: Yeah, it was. No, it's really true. It's very true -- without the Dexedrine.

CN: Right. And none of us ever sang with a toilet seat around his head. So then, let's sort of talk about -- we talked about the progress of the band, but talk about in this time period, the progress of the scene around the band.

TK: Yeah, it's just so crazy to see how compressed all this time is. So within weeks, geez I don't know, all of a sudden, we have the Blinders and we have the Endtables. And it's just like the more bands that were made, the more bands felt 95:00empowered to be made, it was just like building on each other. And so then we have the scene and we're all in all, just despite us all being in our early 20s and incredibly passionate about our own visions and our own directions, all in all, incredibly supportive of each other. There might have been differences in what we felt like our approaches where; there might have been differences, there might have been personal issues, but all in all, we all showed up pretty much in the same place to see each other play and be supportive.

CN: All right, this is part three of the interview with Tara Key on November 18th, 2016. When we left off, we were talking about the other bands and the 96:00scene generally. And you said so people start forming bands and it almost feels like bands encourage bands. I don't know if were on that.

TK: Right and we also have a place that we all know that we can report to at the same time, so then when you have a clubhouse then it's like relationships deepen. Just in terms of impressions of that place. If I'm like thinking about it I just see the Sanders sisters resplendent in their amazing garb. I see Ricky there, I see the South Enders there, I see Mark and Chris and I see Kenny and I 97:00see -- just having a place where we all know we can come every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and make new friendships and everything; that was just a real--it was not only a strengthening of band relations, but it was also a strengthening of the--going back to the idea of bringing neighborhoods together. And it's a safe space for freaks to meet in, so that it is possible for the East Enders to get to know the South Enders and then if you're running into each other week after week, then you start to discover your kinships to each other. The differences start to melt away and then you start to make art together.

CN: So we've got the Blinders. We've got the Endtables and then...

TK: We have the blossoming Dickbrains which aren't a band yet. But they're soaking it in and they're moving to that.

CN: So we've got this HQ--all right. And then when we come to the end of the year, we take our first trip out of town.

TK: And we go to Lexington. So then it's like the wagon train hits the road. And it goes to this other outpost where I don't really know how long people had been listening. I really don't know exactly what's going on when we arrived there, but it seems like a similar situation, of different campsites having a place to come and see this. Am I telling the truth that we're the first punk band to play 99:00there? That's what it said in the newspaper.

CN: I think this, we played first at this party at was at-- it Mark Cascio's farm? I think.

TK: Was that before Halle Lou's?

CN: Yeah. And we played -- the Blinders played.

TK: The Blinders played, but I don't remember how we got there. I don't know who the ambassador was.

CN: I think it's possible the Blinders were, maybe it came through Karma Records and Sandy Campbell was working at Karma Records. I'm not sure. And then there was also a group, was it Latex Interiors from Indianapolis that were more like a new wave cover group, sort of?

TK: What was the name of the band? It was Red Interiors.

CN: Red Interior was -- wasn't that the second name of the Thrust?

TK: It was so I thought it was Latex something else, not Latex Novelties -- that's what it was.

CN: Maybe it was Latex Novelties, you're right. That makes more sense. So we played there. And then my recollection is, then somebody quite possibly, Karen Vance, told us about Halle Lou's, so describe Halle Lou's.

TK: I really don't remember much about the setting or anything. And it's funny, it's almost like reading the newspaper article about it is now my memory of the show which is kind of hilarious, believing your own press. It seemed like -- how can I put this? It seemed like where we were all finding each other in Louisville--and it seemed like in Lexington when we showed up -- it's like turning on a spigot. There was a lot of people ready to be excited that already 101:00coalesced. Does that make sense?

CN: Yeah, I think so. I think in lots of ways, Lexington seemed a much more traditional punk scene. Like more people more people wearing leather jackets, but still really interesting people, really great bands.

TK: And also coming to Lexington and really tapping in to a gay friendly environment and that being super cool. That was with Bradley and crew and just like -- and also a more politicized scene too, which would later turn into having Rock Against Racism gigs and stuff. It seemed from the get go, those were two unique elements that were added to the mix that I think came from that 102:00scene, and then it's like, crosspollination. And then you find those things in Louisville and they influence each other. But I'm just talking about in terms of purely finding it.

CN: This is yet another part -- I've lost count -- of the conversation with Tara, part four. We had an operator error on the tape recorder. And I don't think we got the stuff about our eastern tour. I don't know how much it's worth saying. But at the end of 1979, the Babylon Dance Band played Boston and Philadelphia. You just want to recap that or anything?

TK: It was our first foray kind of a deal. It's just funny to see this in stages. So we've been successful regionally. We've branched out to Lexington. 103:00We've branched out to Nashville. And so then we--we're emboldened by this. So we're thinking this is maybe bigger than just our concept of knitting together neighborhoods. It's like maybe we can be a player in knitting together something bigger than even that, finding kindred souls somewhere else.

So we decided to go to the northeast and we do a show in Philadelphia, which is--I really don't remember a lot about it. I know we played with Robin Lane and the Chart Busters which was -- they seemed like really pro. So here I am in a band, which I didn't even know, like, was a realistic concept two years prior to that and I'm playing with a pro band in a big city. Then we had lost our New York gig somehow, I don't remember where we were supposed to play and what happened.

But then we go on Boston, where we played at the Rat, which was a seminal Boston, grungy, grungy place. And I don't recall a lot in particular about the show, it seemed like I have good memories of playing there. I was thinking that Boston's a tough nut to crack in a way even to this day. And it's just kind of interesting that in Lexington and in Nashville, I think that being in the region, being smaller markets, being people hungry for whatever's coming their way, it was easier to make a personal connection in both of those places and have a sense of excitement about that that just felt like you were meeting 105:00kindred spirits.

When we went to the northeast, it seemed like, in Boston, they had their own thing going on. And I felt more like an alien visitor going there. I don't have a lot of memories of that trip because nothing really is outstanding to me about that experience, just that I felt like we moved on to playing bigger cities and we hadn't exactly found our way in -- it was fine, I don't even remember a single conversation I had with anybody in Boston or in Philadelphia on that trip.

CN: I feel you might have talked to Robin Lane.

TK: Did I?

CN: Like after the show. And which of course was a big deal for Tara I'll say, if people are not familiar with the name Robin Lane, she had sung on one of the early Neil Young albums.

TK: She did.

CN: Is it Everybody Knows This--?

TK: I think that is Everybody Knows. Yeah. You might be right -- I wish I 106:00remembered. The point being we've moved to a bigger market and it wasn't as simple as we just show up and we have the same type of real connection to people that are there, they have their own thing going on. And we're another band passing through. And so it was neither here nor there. I felt it was a really good experience and that I felt challenged to go beyond my comfort zone. And I think that we acquitted ourselves fine in doing that. I don't have a negative memory of it I just don't really have any feel of the connection, particularly, on that trip.

CN: So shortly after that, Dave and Marc leave the band.

TK: Yeah. And I was thinking that that's like, it just seemed like something coming to an end of a chapter -- there wasn't any unpleasantness particularly or blow up or a feeling that we were grinding our wheels and then we'd arrived at this point and somebody felt compelled to leave; it just felt like they were 107:00ready to leave. And it wasn't at the same time, didn't feel like getting on my knees and begging them to stay -- it felt like the right thing to happen at that time. And then we, the three of us, Tim, Chip and Tara, had to reaffirm our marriage.

CN: We renewed our vows.

TK: We renewed our vows. And so that's cool. The thing was at that point, I'm gaining more and more confidence as I go along. But our first impulse was to add a guitar player to replace Marc, continuing in a four person format. And we reached out to Karen Vance from the Lexington scene. And so she came to join us before we had put the ad out. And where we put that ad; just a bulletin board at U of L?

CN: I think so, for a drummer.

TK: For a drummer?

CN: Yeah, and at the record stores and stuff.

TK: And at the record stores and stuff. And we played with -- and Sean turned up, enthusiastic ass kicker of a drummer younger than us, which is funny to think about because what were we then? Like 23 years old.

CN: Let's see it's 1980 I was 25 you would have been 23.

TK: You were 25, I was 23.

CN: Or you'd be 23, you were 22 and I was 24. And we turned 25 and 23.

TK: Right. And so Sean shows up -- he's what? 18? But it's incredible to think that that seemed like a youngster at that time. But it did, and he brought an intense kind of energy, Dave, as important as he was in our development, his level of commitment wasn't the same as ours. It was like moving from a connection to the past to moving to a connection to the future when we started 109:00playing with Sean.

And so it became -- I enjoyed playing with Karen as a second guitar player. But it was almost like, I was peeking my head out of a groundhog hole or something in terms of gaining confidence for developing a style. And I started to want to do more than just be a rhythm player. And when we're at the beginning of something new, it's more like you're finding your way through the dark and you're saying -- it's not that you're saying I don't like this, but you're saying, well I'd rather it be this.

And so I'm not sure how tactful we were about ending our relationship with Karen. I think that she had a commitment to what we were doing. And she was a 110:00really big fan of ours. And it was a really difficult situation to be in to not think that what we were doing was bad but to know it wasn't the right direction. And in a point in time when you're really early in the process of making a relationship, and you just know, it could be this but it isn't what I think I want it to be.

And being young and possibly not that skilled at communicating that in a way that doesn't make it seem like a selfish decision, which I regret, we asked Karen to leave. So at that point, we started writing material where I knew I wanted to hear melody lines from myself now. And I knew that rhythm was incredibly important in terms of playing a propulsive role. And that's a role that I had grown very comfortable with. But I also wanted to challenge myself.

And I'm a lover of rhythm playing. But let's remember that two of the seminal things that formed what I thought I might ultimately hear and what I did was, let's just narrow it down to being able to play rhythm and then break into my own spiritual version of the solo in "Cinnamon Girl," or "Moonage Daydream." So I'm wanting to do both of these things at a time -- at the same time -- and I'm knitting together a style that -- my head is--my brain is a very busy place. It's like a Grand Central Station of influences and impulses.

So the next leap forward in my development was to find a way to piece those impulses together that I could play rhythm and lead at the same time -- that I could propel something and hold together something, but at the same time, I could go out on a spelunking mission of melody and then come back to the safety 112:00of the chug. And so that's what I started doing at that point.

CN: The safety of the chug, that's something, that's a title for something. So it seems to me, by definition not an objective observer, that the style of the band really decisively changed at this point.

TK: It absolutely did. Because then Tim, rather than just playing a role of being more of a traditional bass player, Tim starts to play melody lines too and then our melody lines start helixing and that's--

CN: Give an example of that.

TK: Well, I can give you quickly an example of Tim's melody becoming the focal point in "Golden Days."

CN: Which was the first or second song we wrote in this configuration; or even before we had Sean.

TK: Right. And a really obvious example of the helixing would be later, like "My Friend Roger" when -- and it's funny, and then Sean being in the band. Sean was like a propulsive jet engine. But there would be moments that were really magical and it's just easy to point out "Roger" -- that we're all three soloing at the same time, but things aren't falling apart. It was like we go out on these quests and you can follow Tim's melody, you can follow my solo, you can follow Sean soloing but nobody's losing the thread. And it gives you a lot to 114:00listen to but it's just like it becomes more of -- it's like, the band has its moments of being, like -- I mean, I can tell you when we're soloing, it's like we're going Pollock in terms of painting. And I think those are magical moments. But you can't go Pollock, unless you have a shared trust of where true north is on the compass. And so we start to build that relationship, the rhythm section does. And then that gives you a lot of freedom too, to -- you're not like you, meaning Chip, you're not like, tied to just being locked into a cadence.

You can kinda freeform too so, I think that's what made us so interesting. We're 115:00obviously this driving thing but it's not all just about propulsion, then it explodes into Technicolor and then you draw it back in and you're propelling again, and then it goes somewhere else and opens up. So it's an open/shutting, open/shutting of the music that is a step beyond where we were, when it might have in the, in the past we're just like -- I do liken this moment in time to, like -- we're learning from the masters in our mind of pop music of the past.

And I'm not saying that we master that. But we've kind of folded that into the batter. And so then this is the sound of our future when we take it somewhere which is entirely unique, then we become a band that really has a sound that no one has made before.

CN: This is very much you describing this looking back at it. How much of this 116:00did you feel at the time?

TK: Well, I felt a sense of liberation, a personal liberation; I felt like all of a sudden I was painting with sound. And that was a really important moment for me. I felt it immediately in the first year. And our stock and trade always was a joyousness in what we did, and then I feel like there was just something about the sound we were making then that was just like joy on steroids, because of how the sound opened up and the freedom of that. And it's almost like, I feel like -- how can I put this? I feel like it was easy to pogo to our early band. I feel like it was easy to just wig out and free form, not that I'm saying hippie 117:00dancing is my goal for my audience. My point being that there's just something about -- I mean I'll tell you what it is, I started to be able to be sonic. I'm just not playing the guitar now; I'm making the guitar sound like other things. I'm making the guitar sound like a jackhammer, I'm making the guitar sound like taking flour and putting it through a sifter and making it be molecular.

I'm making my guitar all the sudden be like a spattering of paint, it really opened up what my tool was able to do. And the idea that I could do this from sound was very exciting to me. And that's just me talking about me, which is probably pretty boring. But it's just like I'm doing this over here. And then I can just hear Tim all of a sudden, there's nobody that sounds like Tim. And 118:00that's the moment in time when he's playing with a really solid drummer where, then, he has the -- he knows things, he knows that the three members of the rhythm section have settled on something so then he knows he can go on a sonic exploration. And he's doing things like he's popping his bass, he's using it percussively. He's not just playing a rhythm line.

CN: So when you're talking about using it sonically for yourself, how much of this is what you're playing on the guitar and how much of this is the feedback with the amplifier?

TK: Well, obviously it's a combination, but I can't get feedback unless I'm holding my finger in a position and now I'm understanding my instrument more. It 119:00was a deepening of my relationship to this piece of wood I have. And it's like, okay I know -- because it's just like when I'm listening to Mick Ronson and he's holding one note on "Moonage Daydream" and I know it's more than holding a note. And I know it's more than a moment of feedback.

He's making me feel something -- he's making me feel something that I can't explain. And I wanted to have that power too. So now I'm understanding that this physicality that I've been referring to, this physicality has emotional results. And the idea that I can pick and choose them and I can put them in a cadence, I can leave it out here, I can hold off here and know that if I pick this exact moment to do it, that I'm gonna make somebody possibly feel like crying.

In words that sounds really power mad. But I promise I'm only using my powers for the good of the universe. I'm saying I want to make you feel, honestly, I 120:00want to make you feel happy. And if you're crying, I want it to be crying joy. But I'm saying that now I feel like my relationship to my instrument deepens, so what I can put out there for the listener deepens too and it just becomes kind of a different animal, a more complex animal. And it takes you on journeys.

I don't have a lot to say about drugs and music, because I think it's boring. But I will say that to be able to recreate almost a drug like experience for someone, was really kind of exciting, including myself -- recreating that for myself. And I just feel like we could have made the same types of punk sounds 121:00for a period of time. And I think we would have worn that out. So it's just like to continue this journey, the journey had to go somewhere else.

And it's not like we sat there and said the journey has to go somewhere else. Because in real time we're deepening our relationship with each other and are deepening the relationship with our particular instruments and you with your voice and your brain making words come out of your mouth: the fact that we could continue to grow and progress made us keep doing it.

The point is it's impossible for me to separate making music with personal growth. And it's just like; I don't feel if I stay in the same place that I'm going to make art eventually that's going to make anyone want to hear it. But if you are invested in me as an artist and you trust me, you're going to trust that I'm going to continue to grow as a human and then my relationship to my tools and my relationship to how the tools affect myself and my emotional investment 122:00in it will continue to grow. And I will never be able to separate playing the guitar from emotional investment and from spiritual investment.

CN: There's a moment -- that was great. This is like down to a specific moment. But I remember this really vividly, sometime in that spring we did our first recording of "My Friend Roger," I think that's right to go on that--

TK: On the Hit-A-Note comp?

CN: Right. Maybe it was later. But I remember we had that first recording of my friend Roger and I remember Bruce Witsiepe was in town. And I remember you played it for him. And at some point in the real feedbacky part at the end, Bruce goes, "Jimi."

TK: That's awesome.

CN: I remember it really pleasing you.

TK: It pleases me now.

CN: Yeah. I just remember also, it sort of crystallized it for me that -- kind of ridiculous that I would have to have an outsider say it, but it really did crystallize that we are -- you're making a very different kind of music than you had made before. And I probably even had a little moment of the punk's, like, "Is that good?" "I mean, you know, that's hippie music." But then I realized how good it was. Something I was thinking when you were talking was that it is sort of interesting; in a way you could say that our music to some degree or another 124:00was veering away from punk and yet we never would have said that.

TK: Well, an interesting thing about pointing out the recording of "Roger" is it's the first time I did an overdub and I overdubbed feedback -- I made a chord of feedback. And that was incredibly pleasing. But it was also a quantum leap for me, it's like, okay now I'm just not making this sound. I'm making this object that I'm going to calculate and I'm going to make a record. And my record is going to have an overdub and I'm going to deploy this tool at this moment to get a certain effect.

And I'm going to do it with sound and I'm going to do it with layering. That was an incredible moment for me that I went 3D.

CN: So this is 1980?

TK: Yeah.

CN: And this is like this incredible year in Louisville because we've had the 125:00Endtables and Blinders and then this is the year that both Malignant Growth and the Dickbrains emerge.

TK: Right. So that's younger folks albeit by a couple of years. It still seemed like a generational shift. And also was like in the case of both of them, folks that had listened to the first group of bands and they were inspired to do something themselves. And so that's the lifeblood of a scene when the people who watch do, and so that was just a real strengthening of what was going on. Because now you have sympathetic ears that are now becoming sympathetic hands and voices.

And--it was just an affirmation, yes; we're on the right track. You've got to understand this is happening in a vacuum. This is happening in a city where none 126:00of us are gonna get played on the radio. It's happening in a city where it's like pulling teeth to get the newspaper to announce a gig that we're doing. The only way that we can make it known that these events are happening, is by putting posters up on telephone poles and providing breadcrumb trail maps to get to the venues.

It was a lot of work to make sure all this held together, because it wasn't easy to do it in a vacuum. So then, when you have the perpetuation of what you started doing, going on by smart people who are making music that's even a little different than you, then there's a shift in the way things sound subtly. And so we're all just telling each other it's okay, you're right, keep going.

CN: So that spring is the spring of the Windmill which, we should probably say 127:00what that is.

TK: The Windmill was a club on East Main Street and I, again, can't tell you how we ended up --.

CN: West Main Street, actually.

TK: Sorry, West Main Street.

CN: It starts at First Street.

CN: Is it at Second and Main? Almost at Second and Main.

TK: Second, yeah. Right. And so I don't know how we started that which turned into a New Wave Night. I don't know-- who did that?

CN: It's possible that that was done by the Blinders. That's what I'm thinking. So then there's a New Wave Night, every Tuesday. Monday or Tuesday?

TK: Monday or Tuesday like normally a dead night for the club I would have to assume. And so then that kind of gets some attention in the newspaper, there's an article about the new wave scene there. And so then you've gone beyond sort of preaching to the converted and there's the possibility of --if it's the draft, it's the second round of the draft. You get new people in because it's 128:00becoming a more viable thing and you're a couple years down the line from the Vogue Theater. So there's new wave music sipping into people's consciousness in the airwaves.

And if the Cars exist then it can't be all bad to some people. So then they can come see their local version of that, then they turn up and then they're educated. And they either like it or don't. But at least there's that outreach.

CN: And then the Windmill briefly goes all new wave.

TK: Yeah, for, like, nine minutes.

CN: The other thing that happens is that my best friend from college shows up for Derby, Tom Carson, who was a rock critic writing in Rolling Stone and The 129:00Village Voice. I don't know what we want to say about that exactly. But Tom--

TK: I mean, I've told Tom this in the last few years and it's just like I don't know if I would be able to still be doing -- to be in the position to be doing this now, if he hadn't written that article. And that's just a fact. Because armed with the article, we've made a trip to the northeast before and tried to break into very large cities. And we had an okay experience, but no big deal -- now we're armed with this incredible passport to get into the New York scene.

So what started out for me is-- I'm playing in my bedroom, these boys are pushing me off this cliff, these other boys are really simpatico and they're saying they want me to be with them, then we're going into regional markets, then we're getting in the van and driving up to the northeast and it's okay. But it feels more comfortable at home just because you can't break in.

Now it's like getting a passport to every country in the world. It's accepted, 130:00it's like you get to go to one of the seminal spots of the music that we have aligned ourselves with and you have the validation of one of the main points of influence in town. So all of a sudden, you call a club and it's like, of course you can play, you don't even have to send a tape. So that's incredible, and so the article meant a lot and Tom writing the article gave me my passport to the rest of my life. And that's not an exaggeration.

CN: So we didn't explicitly say it: Tom Carson wrote a cover article for The Village Voice, it was sort of spun around this idea he had that rock was no 131:00longer the sound of the city, but it was coming from the suburbs. And that people were making fun music where they were, and it was sort of interwoven with his experiences when he was here for Derby.

TK: And also with like he's been in the center of New York and New York is kind of wearing him out in terms of not seeming novel, seeming really careerist. And he comes down here and we're all kinda doing it from the heart. And that made a big impression on him. And so he writes this article that also includes the Dickbrains and Malignant Growth and mention of the Lexington scene, and mentions of other bands in Louisville. You shouldn't trust your own press certainly.

But being able to read about myself in this context was another shot in the arm 132:00to give me confidence because I see people of influence like what I'm doing so it can't be all bad. And it sounds weird to say, but it's just like, your own validation should be enough but I gotta be honest, it's like coming from a place of not even being sure I can do this and then all of a sudden, it's possible to look at myself on the cover of a magazine, I mean, a magazine, newspaper, whatever, that I had read since I had spent my summer in New York in 1974 --it was an incredibly powerful thing. And it just gave me a sense of kind of limitless possibility.

CN: So on the basis of that, as you say, that appeared in The Village Voice at the beginning of December.

TK: And if it had happened, if it had appeared a week later we'd have been knocked off the cover by John Lennon's assassination.

CN: That's right. But then we are in New York, three weeks later.

TK: Three weeks later, we call up we get a gig, Jim Fouratt books us at the Peppermint Lounge and I'm enough of a wannabe hippie, wannabe campus radical who was too young to be, for the idea that Jim Fouratt's booking us and gaining, in retrospect, a knowledge of his history, but knowing -- and not too long after that, frankly I learned about him. That was so awesome. But of course, we show up and he's no longer working at the Peppermint Lounge when we pull up to the venue. So that was kind of startling but we're resourceful people.

So we go in, our contracts honored, we play this show and it's just like after the first chord of our song people are nuts. It's like, what movie am I in, 134:00seriously? I've never played in -- maybe we played for like 150 people at a gig. And all of a sudden, I don't know how many the Pep held, but it was probably 600 or 700 people something like that. And they're going really nuts for us.

I was just like, "God is this how it works?" You work hard on something and then you're the little engine that could and then a newspaper gives you validation. And then people come and check you out, then they're going nuts over you. This is crazy, and it was just like -- I don't know. I'm not sure I can ever exactly have that feeling again. But I think we all agree we just left there that night feeling like kings.

CN: And then we played a second night, we stayed over Christmas which was really rough for Sean. He was 18, he just turned 19, I think. That was kind of rough. And then we played at Trax.

TK: Right, which was a more of an industry setting. Like, it would be where people from labels would come check you out. And it would be where writers would gather. I should interject by this time too one important thing for me is like--scroll the clock back to New Years of 1979. And Tim and I became a couple; we basically had played a New Year's Eve show at Dutch's Tavern and I was sick. And we were doing one of our traditional playing three sets a night.

And so I played the first set and I don't know whether I really passed out after the first set. But this is a athletic event playing this music and I'm sick. So 136:00I remember that an old college friend of Tim's and Cindy, Chip's to-be wife, took me home to Cherokee Road where Tim and Marc lived. And I just went to bed there and I kind of never left. We have an anniversary date that we got married on but I've always really considered New Year's Eve to be our anniversary because that's when I moved in with Harris. So I just wanted to interject that for context.

CN: Well, so '78 to '79 wasn't it, I think?

TK: Right '78 to '79. So we're there New Year's Eve '78 crossing into '79.

CN: The other thing I guess I want to say about, or want to emphasize about the 137:00gigs at the Peppermint Lounge and Trax is that, like we said before -- like you said before, we practiced a lot. But I remember the practices really going up a notch when we knew that we were going to be playing in New York.

TK: Oh sure. Yeah, definitely. We're all, like, pretty--the thing about our band is that we all had enough pride, that it was really hard for us to suck because we just didn't want to be embarrassed on stage. And we had a shared commitment to not be that because we were all very proud of what we were doing. And then when you share that kind of energy, it's almost like a prophylactic against failure, when it's all really firing on all cylinders. And so yes we did step up the rehearsals, incredible rehearsals every night of the week, like three hour rehearsals and we're practicing at 1069 by this point.

And members of the Dickbrains and also members of -- Sandy lived there from the Blinders and Tari Barr and Charles and Doug lived there. Charles and Doug eventually, Tari and Sandy were there first and so then they move and make this clubhouse. And we're practicing in the middle room in between the living room and Charles' bedroom and God love them for listening to the same songs over and over every night.

CN: That's definitely true. I'm going to correct you though, that was the second arrangement. The first arrangement we were--

TK: We were upstairs, no, that's right--we were upstairs in the beginning and that's when we started the new version of the band, we were upstairs. Then we left there and went to a couple of other rehearsal spaces, but we-- in pretty short order, we ended up back there and those guys were so supportive by just 139:00allowing that to go on.

CN: For sure. Well, I think this is a good place to stop really, but just to reflect on, so we are stopping at a high point. Where we play these well received gigs at the Peppermint Lounge, then we play at Trax and I'm going to interject my experience because I think I was the one who really had it. This-- one of the rock writers who was one of the main New York rock writers at the time, a woman named Debra Rae Cohen, came up to me after our set and said all the New York rock writers were here, and I think this probably included Robert Palmer. Definitely included Robert Christgau and I can't remember who else but she just said you just blew them all away. Which is something that Christgau confirmed the next time we came back; he said that it made such an impression on 140:00him and it ended up being in his year-end thing for his favorite -- his two favorite live experiences of the year were us and Fela, right?

TK: Right. And to end there it's just like being there, doing that, it was crazy because it wasn't like we'd had this dream and this dream was to play in New York City. We were given the opportunity of fulfilling a dream we didn't even know we had.

CN: Great place to stop./AT//

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