Photo: C.M.Laster

It would not be uncommon to hear Louisville luminary and self-proclaimed bawdy raconteur Brett Ralph approaching long before he strides into view. Recalling his first encounter with Ralph at a Big Black load-in in ’86, Steve Albini said: “suddenly, there was a ferocious banging and the door swings open. Like in a scary movie, there was a brilliant rectangle of sunlight and a bowling pin shaped dude about 6ft 3 in the middle of it – a giant dude. This bellowing voice comes from the other end of the hall, ‘which one of y'all is Houdini?’”

By Melissa Osborne

Having spent the better part of his youth playing football and singing in early Louisville hardcore bands, Malignant Growth and Fading Out, today Ralph leads a relatively less marauding, but only marginally less frenetic lifestyle in rural Empire, KY. A practicing Buddhist and a Professor of English at Hopkinsville Community College, time between running poetry workshops and sunbathing to Toots and the Maytals is mostly taken up with his country rock ensemble, Brett Eugene Ralph’s Kentucky Chrome Revue. This high-ranking assemblage has been known to include the likes of Will Oldham, Catherine Irwin, Matt Sweeney and David Grubbs, while the publication of his first full-length book of poetry, Black Sabbatical, has ensured a burgeoning new following of admirers from Johnny Depp to Harmony Korine. WMO caught up with the man himself at home over a cup of Yorkshire Tea.

What prompted you to move out to Empire? I grew up in the suburbs of Louisville, but we were the last house on the street before a big forest. I think the poet in me has always been drawn to living somewhere off the beaten path. I’m very sensitive to urban noise. Ironic for someone as loud as I am, I know. I mean, I love the big city, but the idea of getting up and working on a poem to the sound of jackhammers or sirens is not a great feeling at all.

Do you think living in the countryside has had any bearing on your work? I think it’s probably made me more of a nature poet. The variety of wildlife out here and the slow change of the seasons… I don't know if that’s something I would have been as sensitive to otherwise. It might have made me a little more introverted living out here, but I have this theory that everyone who is an only child is both very social and very solitary; I’ve always oscillated between those extremes.

Photo: Eric Lorberer

Kentuckians seem to have a lot of state pride and an almost romantic self-regard. Where do you think that comes from? Er, cus it’s awesome? I don’t want to get too sociological, but there’s still quite a stigma on the Southern United States in this country. I mean, there’s a stigma on Middle America—from the east and west coasts—as just a conservative, overweight, narrow-minded, uncultured part of America, but I think it goes even further with the South, given the enduring hangover of the Civil War.

I think for a lot of Americans, the South is, pardon the pun, the whipping boy for all of our country’s crimes, which produces a certain amount of reactionary pride. It might also be the fact that Kentucky is a border state. Kentucky was the 15th state – the second state beyond the original 13 colonies. It was the original frontier settled by fiercely, violently independent Scots-Irish in Appalachia, who wanted to get the hell away from everything and were proud to have rejected society. Daniel Boone left Kentucky for Missouri because he could hear another man’s axe, and when you could hear another man chopping wood, you were being crowded out. So I think it might be part of our heritage to see ourselves as wild, independent folks. Also there’s a real homespun, can-do, creative attitude here that you see in Appalachian history – Bluegrass, quilting and whittling are all indigenous art forms.

Photos: Betty Ralph

You got your start in music early on, how did that come about? Music was my first love. I started buying records when I was about 5 or 6. We started writing journals in my English class in 10th grade and I would write punk rock song lyrics. I didn’t play an instrument and I didn’t sing, they were just lyrics to songs that didn’t exist. My teacher was very encouraging and told me she really liked the poems I’d been writing. I said, “They’re not poems, they’re song lyrics.” She asked me if I played an instrument or if I had a band. I told her no. So she said, “Well, if there’s no music to them, and they’re not part of a song, then they’re poetry.” That totally blew my mind. That’s probably what got me interested in writing poetry, but also in not getting pigeon-holed as a poet either, which I probably still held some adolescent, effeminate connotations about.

How did you get involved in the hardcore scene? There was a Louisville movie theatre called The Vogue which showed The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where me and the two or three punk rock guys I knew used to go. Not because we were particularly into the movie but because it was a place where women in torn fishnet stockings and men with makeup went – and we might be able to meet some arty, freaky weirdoes like us.

In the parking lot before one of the shows, this guy Sid had a jam box blasting some ferocious instrumental hardcore and I said, “Man, your band throws down! How come y’all don’t have any lyrics or a singer?” Sid said, “Aw, the singer got in some trouble and had to leave town and we haven’t found a new one.” Well, being a rude, naïve 15-year-old, I was like, “Well man, if y’all ever get a new singer, maybe you’d wanna use my song lyrics?” I mean, who’s gonna let some 15-year-old kid they don’t even know write their songs for them? But he said, “Well, if you wrote ’em, you should sing ’em.” When I told him I couldn’t sing, he said, “Shit, neither could our other singer. It’s punk rock, you just gotta get up and holler like you mean it!” I was a muscle-bound football player with a shaved head, so I had the look sufficiently. They invited me to try out and that was that.

All posters by Ralph, except for DOA by “Mooch” aka Richard Peyton

How did you make the progression from punk to country? 70s’ country radio was all you would hear in the house when I was growing up. If I wasn’t playing records in my room, I was consuming a steady diet of Charlie Rich, Freddy Fender and Bobbie Gentry. For me, the progression was my band Rising Shotgun. I moved back to Louisville for the summer of ’91 and I thought it would be fun to throw a party band together. Slint had just broken up and Dave Pajo, one of my dearest friends, was the first person I called. Then I asked my buddies Big Irv and Paul Aarstad, and Dave brought Todd Brashear in on rhythm guitar. We were definitely a kind of Stones-y, Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers, sloppy punk rock ‘n’ roll band. Slint was getting a lot of posthumous notoriety and we were incredibly well-received as a live band in Louisville. A lot of that I chalk up to Dave, who is just one of the world’s greatest, most soulful drummers.

Left: Ralph and Steve Albini at Electrical Audio, 1999. Photo: Chris Stroffolino
Right: Ralph on stage with Kentucky Chrome Revue, 2011. Photo: Jodi Shapiro

Will Oldham was the first person from my social and creative circle that started doing a form of country music. I didn’t really get into the first Palace album when it came out, but I remember buying the second, Days in the Wake, on cassette, so that I could listen to it driving back to Missouri from Louisville. I listened to it three times in a row and then turned off the stereo and wrote three country folk songs, acapella. Then I got the idea to revive Rising Shotgun as a kind of country rock band. Country music allows me to tell stories and to write songs closer to my poetry. Also it’s a kind of music that you can age into more gracefully. I mean, when I’ve sung in a punk or rock ‘n’ roll band, I’m a really physical, almost violent front man and I just can’t physically afford to do that anymore.

How close is the link between poetry and songwriting for you? They come from similar places, but my songs tend to be a little bawdier and a little more extroverted, while my poems tend to be a little more introverted and stark. I’ll say anything in a song and maybe having a gang of people up on stage when I perform makes me a little braver. The main differences are formal: my songs always rhyme, my poems almost never do. And I guess I’m conscious of cultivating a certain persona in my songs, which is just a slightly exaggerated version of myself – for the most part. Or maybe the persona in my songs is just the kind of psychological fancy footwork that one does to create the distance necessary to get up and perform in front of people. Not that I’m shy, but because of the kind of things I say in my songs, maybe there’s a need to have a trap door available.

Your last album picked up a touch of criticism for the sardonic treatment of its female characters. What do you think about that? Well, I don’t think the song Tragic Women on my new album is going to be a successful rejoinder to my naysayers, but I also don’t think I’m a misogynist and I don’t think anyone that knows me would think that either. In fact I would say that my music has more female fans than male. I think some people don’t like a warts-and-all depiction of the vagaries of romantic entanglement. Believe me, I don’t think the men in my songs get off any more lightly than the women, and it would be foolish to assume that I identify with the men in my songs any more than the women they lament loving. They both find themselves in tragic situations that are regrettable and, at times, glorious.

Your book of poems, Black Sabbatical, won the Linda Bruckheimer Series for Kentucky Literature in 2009. Is poetry confessional catharsis for you? Even if my poems or songs seem confessional, catharsis ceased to be the impetus for my work decades ago. I’m not saying that I never work out anything emotionally or psychologically in a poem, but that’s what Buddhism is for; that’s what religion is for. Don’t get me wrong, I love confessional work, but I’m an artist. My job is to make art and get it to people. It’s about the joy of making something worthwhile, not the catharsis of getting something off my chest. But here’s the beautiful part: I don’t think the personal or the autobiographical can ever be totally escaped. For instance I thought of my poem, Reindeer Games, as a kind of short story in verse and delighted in creating those characters. Long after I’d written the poem I realised that Junior, the protagonist, was a shadow version of my teenage self. I don’t know, maybe I had to detach myself in order to get at the crushing loneliness that I feel is at the heart of that poem. Our work is often confessional even when we’re least aware of it.

Brett Ralph reading from Black Sabbatical:
Reindeer Games
House Of Selected Flames

Your poems often open like the beginning of a novel, have you ever been tempted to write one? Yeah, because so few people read poetry and I want to be read. I want to have an audience and I want to have an impact on people. I don’t think it’s out of vanity, I just think it comes from wanting an opportunity to do that for people, to delight them. And I recognise that eccentric country singer songwriters and poets are always going to have cult audiences, at best.

What’s next for you? I’m currently mixing the next Kentucky Chrome Revue album at Russian Recording in Bloomington, Indiana. And I’ve already begun work on what I hope is a new book of short prose poems. I’ve also been throwing together pick-up bands in various cities around the country. I miss the camaraderie of having a full-time band, but I’ve really been enjoying playing with so many different people. It’s exciting to mount the stage with folks who barely know the songs. It definitely brings an edge to the proceedings but it seems to elicit great performances. Let me know if you know any folks in England who might wanna play some rowdy country music, and maybe I’ll come over there and try my luck.

The Whole Of The Law - Brett Eugene Ralph's Kentucky Chrome Revue

Brett Eugene Ralph on Sarabande Books

www.sarabandebooks.org/?page_id=1058

Brett Eugene Ralph's Kentucky Chrome Revue

www.myspace.com/bretteugeneralphskentuckychromerevue

Get Brett Eugene Ralph’s Kentucky Chrome Revue from Noise Pollution

http://www.louisvillenoise.com/v2/releases/noise36.htm

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