Texas psych compats Augie Meyer & Paul Leary lend a hand
Brash 6ft 5 singer Gibby Haynes, who as anarchic and enigmatic frontman
for the Butthole Surfers created a dazzling and unsettling psychedelia
meets the avant-garde and punk rock template that's unmatched to this
day, has finished work on a solo album "Gibby Haynes & His Problem," set
for August 23 release on Surfdog Records.
The album collects 11 new Haynes songs performed by a coterie of
like-minded Texas music iconoclasts: His Problem band mate`s guitarist
Kyle Ellison, drummer Shandon Sahm (the late Doug Sahm's son) and
bassist Nathan Calhoun plus friend`s keyboard legend Augie Meyers and
Haynes`s Butthole Surfers bandmate Paul Leary, who mixed half the tracks
and guests on keyboard.
From opener "Kaiser" to the last of the 11 songs, "Redneck Sex," the
album displays Haynes s provocative, absurdist lyrics, his famous
"Gibbytronix" bullhorn voice manipulator and an acid-drenched heaping
dose of heavy duty rock and roll. "Gibby Haynes & His Problem" also
features art and packaging by Haynes, who created most of the visuals
and albums covers for the Butthole Surfers' recording.
Beginning in the early 1980s with a string of albums and EP's and
literally incendiary live shows that are the stuff of legend (Haynes was
wont to spark a flaming pyre of lighter fluid using upturned cymbals),
Texas' Butthole Surfers promulgated a sound that was "jagged, brutal,
loud and nasty" according to Michael Azerrad in his chapter on the band
in 2001's "Our Band Could be Your Life.". As Azerrad wrote, their shows
were "depraved acid hallucinations of transgression and horrors that
were often physically dangerous to band and audience alike."
In the 1990s, the Butthole Surfers -- startlingly - broke through to the
mainstream with a mainstage slot on the first Lollapalooza tour in 1991,
and in the wake of Nirvana, a pair of radio hits mid-decade alongside
other unlikely South-western alt-rock chart compadres Meat Puppets and
Flaming Lips.
Haynes has recently moved back to New York's Lower East Side. After a
mythical stint there in the mid-1980s, Haynes says it's a neighbourhood
he hardly recognizes.
