02/25/08
Dan Zig
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OK so if you heard the Creepshow’s CD Sell Your Soul, then you have already heard just a slight taste of the greatness that is Hooch of Ontario Canada’s The Matadors on the song “Doghouse”. I picked up a couple of Matadors CDs and was absolutely amazed at what I heard. I decided to bug Hooch for an interview and the following is what transpired.
So tell us a little about the Matadors and how they were started?
The Matadors began around 1992ish... at that time we were your traditional old rockabilly outfit... like Big 6 or something. Mostly we traveled around rural Ontario and played for the farm folks in and around here. We had a really big following here at that time, but it just wasn't enough for me. Then one night in 1995 I was approached by a representative of a group calling themselves The Lucifarian Brotherhood of Baphomet... The deal was basically this: we modify The Matadors music to include Lucifarian Gospel music and help harvest souls for Lucifer and we would in turn be granted super human abilities on stage and on our instruments. I mean it sounded pretty farfetched to me too, but when he showed me his resume of people he'd made this deal with, I just couldn’t say no. Who wouldn’t want to follow in the footsteps of Robert Johnson and Paganini and the list goes on and on... The down side has been that I’m the only member of this band to stay the course. I have lost every member of this band over and over again due to the Lucifarian element. Once you feel the power of Lucifer coursing through your veins it can be frightening...but the benefits have been awesome.
The Matadors have a very unique sound how would you describe your music; would you necessarily call it psychobilly?
I would call it Horrorbilly. I mean, I am WAY more influenced by Ted Nugent then I am by The Meteors... I listen to Howlin' Wolf NOT Nekromantix... When I started playing this Lucifarian Gospel music I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as 'psychobilly'. It was only until people started comparing us to psychobilly bands that I became aware of it. You gotta remember: I’m from the backwoods of Ontario, not exactly a cosmopolitan cultural Mecca... The first psychobilly band I was exposed to was Tiger Army... We opened for them on that tour they did with The Damned and I gotta tell ya my reaction was like "...wow, these guys are a bunch of fucking hairdressers...I mean that singer guy is a full-blown gender-reassignment case!! IS psychobilly a bunch of faggots playing shitty, whiny emo music?" Luckily, I didn’t give up on the genre but, needless to say I was insulted. It wasn't long after that, that someone turned me onto Mad Sin shit like that...so, I mean I like that stuff...I don't love it.
I think what makes The Matadors different is: I'm an actual musician. That is to say: I play the guitar VERY well (that is putting it modestly) also, my roots ARE in roots music. Unlike, 99% of the psychobilly bands you hear I have spent my life playing: bluegrass, blues, country REAL country, actual rockabilly. It’s not like I heard Green Day and went "shit damn...I need to get me an upright bass and sing songs about walking though graveyards and shit" There is a richness of REAL fucking music in Matadors songs that you won't find in a lot of bands like us. Not to mention WE have the Devil on our side. The Devil's Music is NOTHNG WITHOUT the Devil... where did people lose sight of that? Lucifer is as relevant today as he was in 1956. Mull THAT over.
What can you tell us about The Lucifarian Brotherhood of Baphomet?
Honestly, I can’t tell you much because I don’t actually know too much. I’m STILL on a need-to-know-basis with them. I can tell you that they are an ancient organization that has been operating since before what we know now as time. Some of them are not even human from what I have been able to figure. You wanna hear something REAL fucked up?...
History has begun and ended and infinite amount of times...because God has been trying to get the balance right over and over and over. What happens is this: history and humanity started as you know it but it was certainly not the first time and I’m doing my part to make sure that it was the last. Stay with me now... The universe is created, the man comes along (all under God's design) then inevitably we go bad...then God decides to start over and eradicates the universe. Like I said this has happened countless times. Lucifer has been trying to stop this from happening and that’s where LBOB come in. Our job is to harvest souls for Lucifer, he uses these souls to affect the magnetic polarity of the sun... I don’t get how it works.
If we can get it change in our favor, God will lose his seat and Lucifer will reign supreme...and let me tell you it’s going to be a lot more fun when that goes down.
We are working toward a date: Dec 21 2012. If we don’t get enough people toward sin and selling their souls... the universe will again be destroyed and then Lucifer has to start all over again.
Tell us a little about the scene in Canada? How often to you play out and with who?
The scene here is a little sad really... pitiable even. I feel like a big fish in a little pond here. No, I feel like a whale in fucking puddle here. No one puts on a live show, no one can play their instruments...they all show up to their shows in track pants and all-over print shirts. They all have the regulation psycho haircut, but... I don’t know. Something is missing. It’s like they are trying to give the right answer but didn’t fully understand the questions.
I can't even tell you a handful of bands I think have any merit here. The ones that I CAN mention are amazing though: The Brains, The Alley Dukes, The Gutterdemons, The Farrell Brothers, and The Creepshow... All the bands I just mentioned have opened for us. I took The Creepshow out on tour with us a few times as our support act. Then I knocked their singer up and now we don’t tour with them anymore...
Where have you toured besides Canada and when can we see you out near LA?
We just back from Europe again I’m currently looking for a bass player in California to tour with us there so if you know anybody...lemme know.
I read a little about your thoughts on downloading music, but go ahead and tell us what you think?
I fucking love it. Its music for fucks sake it should be heard right? You want my catalogue of tunes? Take it. I don’t give a fuck. I will steal yours too.
How effective do you think MySpace is to your band?
I don’t know I don’t run the MySpace. Someone else does that. I think a fan. It can be a HUGE push for a band. That’s basically how the Creepshow got their push in the start. They hit MySpace thousands of times a day and BOOM. It doesn’t hurt that they had killer songs and a super hot singer mind you.
How many releases do you currently have out and when can we expect something new?
Four records out now: Hellblazin', The Devil's Music, Live Undead One Night Only, and Horrorbilly 9000 ( I invite you to download Horrorbilly 9000 for free) and one coming out VERY soon... like in the next 8 months.
Anything else you would like to add?
Well, since you asked
I Drink Windex, suck the eyes out of new born puppies, buy porn for children, set homeless people on fire, have no regard for spelling and/or grammar, not above kicking your niece in the box, will soak a sirloin in anti-freeze and feed it to your dog, leave the house only to kill, refer to my stalking as "remote love", steal those little white crosses and wreaths from the side of the highway, am the object of desire of a rather large and randy retarded man, club babies, steal mothers allowance cheques, hate the blind, steal wheelchairs, beat the fuck out of every Amish person I see, leave the seat up, carry a copy of Catcher in the Rye at all times, trample the elderly, sodomize the dead, prey on the weak, hijack the Dickie Dee when I can, leave my cell phone on in the theatre,l augh at severe burn victims, pork those that suffer from progeria, pick fights with block parents, lure little kids into my white van, put razor blades in candy apples, sit in with The Legendary Klopeks on occasion, wear white after Labour Day, expose myself to invalids, ate rape every night of the week, give my mom a fat lip, go outside in my socks, shit upholstery nails, told the judge to "suck my dick", snort kerosene, play the accordion like a motherfucker, can eat my weight in taquitos, have a penis that is 2" long but 58" wide (it looks like a sewer lid made of meat),have my pancreas pierced, worship at the altar of Col. Harland Sanders, pissed on Elvis' grave, told Queen Elizabeth II to show me her tits (true story),deep fry everything, run with scissors, live la vida loca, heckle pan handlers, vomit from the balcony, put turpentine on my cats asshole, killed Johnny Cash, know all the words to every Morrisey song, mix paper and plastic, loosen the wheels off of 18 wheelers, visit catatonic women in the hospital posing as a relative and then I grope their unconscious boobies!, was in the kitchen with Dinah, have no guilt reflex, invite you to suck my ass, shot a man in the face for admitting to being a Doctor Who fan, feed Alka-Seltzer to seagulls, voted Reform party, think The Clash suck, set old folks homes ablaze, feed babies to the hogs while their bones are soft, hate you, cheat at solitaire, know when to fold'em, can execute one HELL of a loon call, hate The Darkness, wipe my ass with the pages of ancient holy texts, fell madly, hopelessly in love with a girl who not only doesn’t take my shit but calls me on everything, taught Bukowski how to drink, channel the soul of Paul Lynde, told Terry Fox to quit..and the fucker listened, fucked your invalid mom in her colostomy bag hole, Don’t tell anyone but some nights I used to secretly play lead guitar for the Creepshow...usually from a remote location and without their actual consent, eat vegans, shit in OTHER peoples’ pants, started playing rock and roll for the sole purpose of loading, unpacking and packing gear, still have 6 pounds of Bobby Picton's best whore-fed bacon in my freezer, wrote the McCain’s Pizza Pockets jingle, I’m the one that loosens the lid on the salt shakers, fucked your girlfriend and I’m the one she thinks about when she’s fucking you, belong to the loyal order of the white squirrel, go to house parties and shit in the tanks of toilets as a rule, laugh like hell at old ladies that can’t open the manual doors at the mall, sometimes I run around with a live chicken in my pants and it claws and pecks at me, loom about in the misty woods and peer at you just beyond your backyard, i read lips, I am master lurker, sometimes I sit outside of women's shelters screaming "NORRENE!!!...you can RUN but you can't HIDE!!..", I leave cupboard doors open and scatter random scraps of paper about my apartment just to make Jen nuts, I write an average of 45 songs a day and some of them aren’t even about child molestation, went to Europe to realize my life-long dream to live in Formula One hotels for a week and eat schnitzel, smoke the odd cigarette to remind myself how gay Sean McNab is, I am the top suspect in the 'who is the voice of Johnny Boner' case, consistently goad entire rooms of people twice my size to fight me only to have them run screaming in terror into the night..or is that laughter?... I am an extreme left winger with severe right wing leanings that I’m not proud of, I rode through the Salinas Valley in California and got the full grasp of all the Steinbeck works... and nobody gave a fuck, I’ve read Bleak House all the way through...and lived, I know what i have and if you even hint at trying to take it from me... I am the most vengeful and creative prick you will have EVER had this misfortune to fuck with, wrote a book called Hooch's Guitar Manifesto and it’s a practical guide on how to get on the road to not sucking at guitar, I can impregnate with merely a glance, would fill my own mouth with shit just to spit it in your face, would slit my throat just to ruin your upholstery, can learn to play any instrument by simply looking at it, and I play in the world’s greatest, a Lucifarian gospel band, The Matadors