OHMS: You guys, we’re gonna ask the same questions, OK?

Sugar: like he remembers those?

(laughter)

OHMS: We can make it sound semi-intelligent thru the magic of computer technology.

Sugar: Excellent.

OHMS: So go ahead and lie lie lie.

Mike: So your mouth might not completely synchronize…

Sugar: Yeah, can we overdub?

OHMS: This is just for documentary….

Dennis: So this is going to be a clip on your website?

OHMS: Well, its mostly just gonna be written, but we were thinking maybe it would be nice to start doing little CDs of the things we do, cause I just did the Bizarros, I interviewed them, so if it happens, I have tons of ideas. Now what really happens… (laugh) But definitely we’re gonna type it out and present it to the Village Buzz, and a friend of ours does Noise Zone down in Atlanta, GA and I think he might run it, and we’ll have it on our site, stuff like that - if you guys, once we get it typed up, wanna use it somewhere that will be cool too.

OHMS: And if we get ambitious, it’ll be a video production, so we’ll see.

Sugar: Yeah, right.

OHMS: So basically, I guess we start with the past, just as far as here’s the band, where it is, how it’s changed, just in general.

Dennis: Mike, take it away.

OHMS: Yeah! We want to direct most of the questions toward you anyway since you’re the newest member and have most….

Sugar: Is it rollin’?

OHMS: I think we’re rollin’.

Sugar: I’ve been sittin’ here primpin, like pickin’ my nose…

OHMS: Good.

Sugar: Ok, good, you can use some of that.

OHMS: So (to Mike), how’ve you changed the band?

Mike: That’s a good question, you would know that better than I would…..

Sugar: Polka! That’s what I love about Mike, is how he was weaned on polka, he toured with polka bands in his teens. You’ve gotta love that influence.

OHMS: What polka bands?

Mike: One of the bigger ones was Pan Jozef, and its Polish for Mr. Joseph and he had his own, he used to draw from the old gorale (?) which was the mountain music, the fiddle music, there was no drums, it was all these old melodies that would travel throughout Europe, and he would just extrapolate from that.

OHMS: Wow, sounds like a good band.

Mike: It was cool.

Mike: We used to travel out east, used to go anywhere north of West Virginia and pretty much east of Ohio, in this big pocket and Chicago, I hadn’t really played much in Chicago and Michigan, it was interesting. We’d go out each weekend. You know, we’d go out to Massachusetts, play Jersey, then come back over the weekend.

OHMS: Wow, yeah there’s quite a lot of polka fans. I do the website for Cleveland International Records. Polka’s very big….

Mike: Do you know Ron Gangle? He has a radio show here in Akron. I think it’s on the Summit.

OHMS: I know they have the all day thing on Sunday, I don’t know their names though.

Mike: I’m sure that’s them, Ron and Kaylene.

OHMS: Oh yes, I’ve heard that show

OHMS: Cool, well that’s a great start to the interview.

OHMS: That was one of our questions though, is what was any of ya’lls first projects, that you remember. You know, first band, first project? Cause I’m really into archiving and documenting, someday I’d like to do a band family tree - you know, where people are, where people came from, how they got to where they are now, you know, just in Kent alone its not a tree, its like this wild busy vine.

Mike: Totally interwoven

Sugar: Well, my first project was called the Sweetbreads and we did love songs for dysfunctional romances, and appropriately enough I was in that with my ex-husband.
(Laughter)

Sugar: That’s how I learned to play the electric bass, that’s where I came up with the name Sugar - I was Sugar Sweetbread. Once I left that band Sugar just stuck through all the bands. That was my first project. How about you Dennis?

OHMS: Was that in Ohio?

Sugar: That was in Columbus, it was like a pop band, that was fun stuff! Yeah, I wouldn’t mind playing it again someday. But electric bass, that band with the pop stuff, you couldn’t do an upright. I’m not ready to go back to an electric, I don’t know if I could ever go back.

OHMS: yeah.

Sugar: Can’t go back.

Mike: You didn’t happen to know Andy Eisel do you, cause he played with some bread group…..

OHMS: Some bread group.

(laughter)

Mike: He plays drums and bass.

Sugar: (to Dennis) What was your first group?

Dennis: Pretty much Lords of the Highway.

Sugar: How ‘bout that!

OHMS: Or theater productions or any kind of such thing that got you into it…

Dennis: No, nothing.

OHMS: Lords?

Dennis: Yeah, that was it. I started out playing and I was really really bad.

OHMS: I never saw you then, that musta been a long time ago

Dennis: At the time, I wanted to play like rhythm guitar, maybe sing one or two songs here and there, maybe do some old 50’s songs, but that never happened, I could never find anyone else to play guitar and sing, so somehow I got stuck doing everything myself, so I had to start learning how to play guitar, to a certain extent. And that’s been going on for just about 10 years now. When it started off, once the band got rollin’ it was about 98 percent cover songs with like one original. I thought, man, just let me start writing stuff, and it immediately started getting further and further away from that 50’s rockabilly sound, or that 50’s pretty sound, something more grittier, dirtier, whatever you want to call it, punkish edge I guess, harder hitting edge.

OHMS: Have you seen your audiences change over the years?

Dennis: Oh yeah, there’s…. No. We just recently the past year started getting an audience.

(laughter)

Dennis: No, seriously.

OHMS: So, there has been a change.

Dennis: Yeah, now we have an audience. Before you just had to beg all your friends to come out, and, you know, bribe them with beer, whatever you had to do to get them out.

OHMS: Kids love it when you guys play the Mantis.

Dennis: Yeah, now kids are checkin’ us out and they’re like diggin’ this shit, most definitely we’re starting to get a following as of now. Two thousand and two, very early in the year.

OHMS: It’s only gonna go boooomm

Dennis: The Mantis is probably one of my favorite places to play just for the simple crowd response and the amount of people that show up and get crazy.

OHMS: A lot of people say that - when the crowds show, but you know we have wonderful bands, wonderful shows, and no one shows up equally so.

Sugar: Yeah, it happens everywhere

OHMS: But when crowds show up, people love it, I mean as far as the response.
Sugar: Yeah, it is our favorite place to play. When the Lords first played there it was Scotty the drummer, and Dennis booked a gig that we were going back there and booked it as “this is the Lords’ favorite place to play” and me and Scotty were like “what the hell are you talking about, that place is nuts man! We almost got killed! Chewed our heads off!

Dennis: And that was the beauty part about it.

Sugar: It was like the most furious thing I’d ever seen and we’re like “oh, my God, I can’t believe we’re going back!” and now I’m saying the same thing, its my favorite place to play, and I’m sure Mike’s thinking the same thing, new inductee, first time, he’s like -

Dennis: It’s Rock and Roll.

Sugar: That’s all you can say, it’s rock and roll. It’s the best.

OHMS: It’s what you make it.

Sugar: But when I’m doing a show and it’s a lackluster crowd, or I’m in the studio, and I need to think about something to get me pumped up, I think about being at the Mantis. And I just like put myself there, picture those kids and draw from their phantom energy. It works.

OHMS: Dennis and Sugar are in another band, the Red Star Rangers?

Sugar: Dennis has quit that band. I’m just in that now. We’re kinda reworking that stuff. It’s country stuff, honky tonk stuff, it’s a good project for me cause I play for 3 hours at a time, some slower stuff, just country basic stuff, and it keeps me in good practice for when the Lords get up and play and it’s like hit the accelerator *smack* go, and it’s like 90 miles an hour without any warmup at all.

OHMS: Keeps the engine…

Sugar: Yeah keeps me uh…

OHMS: Purrin‘.

Sugar: Yeah. Good practice for me. So I don’t know what the hell Dennis is doing now for practice. Practicing beer liftin’.

Dennis: I’m doing a lot of booking.

OHMS: And the other band that you’re in….

Sugar: Still in the gospel - the Broken Circle Gospel Deluxe. Yeah, that band is out of Columbus, and I still go down and practice with them, probably once a month, and we do shows once every couple of months in Columbus or Cleveland. And there’s like 9 people in that band, and it just keeps growing, it’s so much fun, I don’t know, everyone has such a good time. And we do traditionals like “May the Circle Be Unbroken”, Johnny Cash “Redemption”, pretty much any song that has the word Jesus in it is fair game. Like I do “Spirit in the Sky” and I do some Tom Waits songs about Jesus. She’s gonna be here, Chocolate Jesus. But it’s just so much fun.

OHMS: Plastic Jesus, do you have a plastic Jesus song?

Sugar: Yeah, we do have a plastic Jesus song.

OHMS: I thought my idols might have been forgotten there.

Sugar: Yeah, the gospel band is a true partying band. When we get together it’s always a party.

OHMS: Great, no I haven’t seen them yet.

Sugar: I could try to bring them to the Mantis but it’s like 9 people, I don’t know how we’d do that stage. And everyone sings, so I don’t know.

OHMS: Yeah, we don’t got 9 channels.

Sugar: I know, that’s what I’m sayin’ it would be tough.

OHMS: Double up, get them to double up on the mike.

Sugar: Yeah, double up.

OHMS: Sugar, you been in Lords now for what, almost a couple years now?

Sugar: Is it going on three in March? I think it’s going on three years in March, yeah three years. Although there was a bit of downtime for Scotty the drummer when he first started, he had some kind of an operation.
(laughter as operation is discussed, sound of tape winding back)

Dennis: There was no operation.

Sugar: Can you wind that back? About three years I’ve been bass player for the Lords, we’ve been playing out for about two, with the downtime of breaking in new drummers, from surgery or whatnot.

Dennis: Alleged.

Sugar: Alleged surgery.

OHMS: The Lords is maybe a little bit racier than some of your other projects you’ve had, as far as the kind of music you can do. How has that changed things for you?

Sugar: Oh, the Lords, I can really get crazy and do what I want cause as a three piece you have a lot more leeway as a three piece, each person needs to put forth a lot to make it a show. With a 9-piece band I can’t be getting all crazy , you know I’m just playing the bass with the rest of ‘em. Even with a 5-piece band there’s just not enough room to do what I can do with a three-piece. But it really brings it out, I like the three-piece a lot. I can really play it out, have some fun, put on a show.

OHMS: So, are you gonna object when this guy (Mike) brings in the
accordion?

(laughter)

Sugar: No, we’d love to have an accordion. But as far as putting on a show I played drums with the Wahoos for a while, you know those cocktail drum you stand up and play drums, and playing drums is what brought me out to just what can drive a band and what you can really come alive, and bring a band alive, playing drums is fun. We don’t let Dennis play drums, he thinks he can play drums, but it’s really bad when he does.

OHMS: Not even one song?

Sugar: Oh, it’s bad.

Dennis: My sense of timing is impeccable.

OHMS: We read about some of the shows that you’ve done, and I saw when you guys opened for Hank III, that was pretty impressive

Dennis: Very good show.

OHMS: But the one that we were wondering about is Hasil Adkins.

Sugar: Oh, man!

OHMS: We want to know ALL about that.

OHMS: We want to hear all about it.

OHMS: All of the stories about Hasil are….. True?

Dennis: I’ve seen Hasil be a drunken idiot asshole and put on the most fantastic show, and we open up for him the day he goes on the wagon.

OHMS: He wasn’t drinking?

Sugar: He showed up sober. But I think that’s why he showed up, because he hadn’t been drinking. I’d seen him play at Little Brother’s in Columbus, and it was about a 15 minute set, and he kept throwing his guitar out of tune, someone in the audience would tune it up for him, and he’d take it back he’d take it right back out of tune, and he was banging on the drums with his guitar, and kicking the drums, and it was one of the most amazing shows I’ve ever seen, I’d never seen anything like that. He wasn’t like that when we played for him. We did a set then he played, he started drinking a little bit. He’s fun to watch - the reason he plays like when he was listening to records growing up he’d hear one sound and he didn’t realize that it was a group of people making all these noises. He heard one sound and he thought it was one person making all that racket. So that’s why he taught himself to play all that rhythm and beat and goes nuts. But I did interview him a little bit between sets and it was funny, I could hardly understand him, he talks like the Cramps… you know She Said. “She Said arrr arr arr” She Said is actually a Hasil Adkins song, and that’s what he talks like, I can barely understand him. But the ladies always come up on stage when he plays, and there’s a video of women fighting, actually getting into a fist fight about who is going to get to sit on stage with him.

Dennis: And you get to sit in a chair.

Sugar: And you just sit in a chair, you just sit there and smoke, sit on stage with Hasil.

Dennis: I am Hasil’s bitch for the night.

Sugar: And I asked him in my interview, is it true that women fight to get up on stage with you, and he looked at me and said “Yeah”. That was it. That’s all he had to say, he’s like “yeah.”

Sugar: Yeah, he didn’t get that crazy. He wanted to borrow our drum kit but we said no, cause of what we’d seen before.

Dennis: No, no no.

Sugar: We didn’t think that was a good idea.

OHMS: Probably a bad idea.

Dennis: We also got to open up for that Wesley Willis guy.

OHMS: Oh yeah, Whoop Batman’s Ass.

Dennis: He’s a pretty interesting character.

Sugar: Going to kill yew…

Sugar: Dennis is working on a Wesley Willis song, he brought his little Casio to practice the other night and he was doing a wesley style song.

Dennis: Called the one-button

Sugar: Going to put us in a new direction

Dennis: Called the Rock Over Lakewood

OHMS: Rock-Over-Lakewood-Right-On

(laughter)

OHMS: Where were those two gigs?

Dennis: Well the Wesley Willis was at Blind Lemon in Lakewood, which is now the Hi-Fi, which is owned by the guys who own the Revolution, one of which is Billy, I can’t remember his last name, from the band Warrant. And I’m sure you guys remember those guys from the 80’s. And a couple of those guys settled down and bought a couple bars here in town and have the rock and roll thing going.

Mike: I grew up in that bar playing polka music, it’s hilarious.

OHMS: You grew up where?

Mike: In that bar.

OHMS: Oh really?

Sugar: The Blind Lemon.

Mike: And we played, yeah, way back at the Maple Grove, we used to play polkas. All these old stomping grounds I’m playing, now I’m playing…

Dennis: Now its rock and roll, that’s hilarious.

Sugar: The Hasil show was down in West Virginia at Charleston at the Empty Glass.

OHMS: Ah, ok right down in Charleston.

Sugar: Cause he lives down in boone county, where the famous Dancin’ Outlaw Jesco White is from Boone County as well.

OHMS: Oh, Jesco White.

Sugar: Jesco White the Dancin’ Outlaw, I’ve only heard tales. I guess he has a website, but apparently the women go crazy over him and the men fight, just cause of the way he dances, he’s just wild.

OHMS: His dancing incites a riot?

Sugar: Yeah, this guy - I wanna meet him someday.

OHMS: Jesco White?

Sugar: Jesco White, yeah.

Mike: There were rumors that he was gonna be in West Virginia, right?

Sugar: Yeah, there were rumors that he’s coming.

Mike: But he never showed up. Others showed up.

Sugar: “Others”, yeah. Cole? Clayton - Clayton was trying to stand in for him I think.

Dennis: The bar reminds me of Wilbert’s, its got the blues, rootsier rock and roll style,

Sugar: Good beer.

Dennis: But it’s got that hillbilly flavor cause it’s got a plywood floor. And some other holes in the bathroom floor.

Mike: Reminded me of the Euclid.

Dennis: Yeah, a little bit of the Euclid.

Sugar: Don’t smell as bad as the Euclid, ya know.

OHMS: So I saw on your website you’ve got some out of town dates coming up, including the Heavy Rebel Weekender?

Dennis: The Heavy Rebel Weekender, this will be our second year returning there in North Carolina, it’s a whole weekend from Friday to Sunday, last year they had approximately 50 bands. Just under 50 bands, and it’s like all weekend events, the bands probably start like five in the afternoon and play all night long.

Sugar: But it’s the full-meal-deal, I’ve never seen so many tattoos, and you can get tattoos done while you’re there, and they’ve got a hot rod car show, and they had jello wrestling, which was more like sticky colored water wrestling, it didn’t jello-fy like they hoped. But the wrestling was still fun.

Dennis: Big old hot rod car show, they closed out the street and actually had a burnout contest, it‘s pretty interesting. And it looks like we might be hopefully playing Sleazefest this year…which is one of my big goals.

OHMS: Vegas?

Dennis: No, this is in North Carolina as well.

OHMS: Oh, ok.

Dennis: And I believe that this was originally started by Southern Culture on the Skids, and the guys that own a couple of bars down in North Carolina. And its’ that whole what do you want to call it backwoods rock, surf rock, greaser rock, 70’s glam rock, it’s that whole smiel of all these conglomerations of rock and roll put together. That’s also another weekend.

Sugar: There’s Bubbapalooza going on too in Georgia that we might get in on.

OHMS: Bubbapalooza?

Dennis: Sounds like its right down our alley.

Sugar: We need to be there.

OHMS: I wanted to ask Sugar about her tattoo. I got the nice shot of your tattoo, and I was wondering if there’s a story behind it.

Sugar: Well, Gabe, the crazy Hungarian that gave it to me is supposed to be coming out tonight so you’ll get to see him.

Mike: He was at the Mantis.

OHMS: Is he big?

Mike: You couldn’t have missed him.

Sugar: No, he’s a small guy, he’s got a shaved head, he was off to the side of the stage by me.

OHMS: Complete shaved head?

Mike: yeah.

Sugar: And he was doing that banging on the stage dance…
(laughter)

Dennis: He does a new dance every time I see him. He gets all liquored up and I see him do the stair dance by the stairs, and his stair dance is 1-2-3, 1-2-3. He’s got a dozen dances, he’s amazing.

Sugar: He’s a crazy Hungarian, he’s got no inhibitions, I mean here he is in America and he loves to cut loose, whatever chance he gets to party. But he saw the band play and he really liked what I did and and he said he’d give me a tattoo in exchange for a couple of CDs…

OHMS: Wow, that’s a deal!

Sugar: So its in trade, not a bad job if you can get it… and I saw some examples of his work, and he drew out what I wanted to… I knew what I wanted to get when I saw him draw a picture of it. It was good. He envisioned big though, he wanted to put it like, cause he’s into like sleeving, doing the whole bit. I was picturing tiny, so between our two visions we had about the right side. But I got a day job and I’ve gotta be able to wear short sleeved shirts so I couldn’t go all that big, I can be sleeved. He did a good job.

OHMS: Yeah, it’s a nice tattoo.

Sugar: Thank you. It’s actually Gina Black, from a band called the Blacks out of Chicago, it’s her design. She’s one of the first female upright bass players that I ever saw, and she completely inspired me. She showed me what a female can do on the upright. I’d just started playing, I was pretty timid just playing the upright, but then I saw her, and she was being a woman with it, ya know, and really putting the moves on the bass and I said yeah, yeah, why not. Do it like I wanna do it, like I can do it. So she really inspired me, so that’s why I thought it was cool to put her artwork on my body.

Mike: It’s in honor of her then.

Sugar: Yes, it is in honor of her.

OHMS: I wanted to ask you about the recent stuff you’ve been doing, the CD really kicks ass. We wanted to know where you got the idea to do the radio show piece of it.

Dennis: Drunken binge (laughter). That’s exactly where it came from. I’m a big time, I love old styles of entertainment, whether it’s those old radio shows, or it’s the old movies, or its vaudeville kinda stuff, whatever people used to go out and put the nice clothes on, put the hat on, and go dancing, and stuff like that, I’m totally into the older styles of entertainment. Not that this qualifies as such.

OHMS: Oh yes…

Dennis: This was created in a drunken binge.

OHMS: Probably a lot of them were, week after week.

Dennis: It was our first attempt at trying to do anything like that, and it came off very cornball, cheesy, but…

OHMS: I liked it.

Dennis: It was something different…

Sugar: You’ve gotta accept it as cheese to appreciate it, you can’t think of it as trying to be serious. I thought he was nuts when he wanted to do it, its kind of a bad idea….but after it was all said and done, I think it’s funny.

Dennis: Actually the funnest part was probably sitting there recording it, we had like a dozen people in my basement getting liquored up, we ran though it once, it wasn’t so good, we ran though it twice and it was getting better, and the third time people were getting a little beer in them, getting a little loose, and it started flowing. We ran it through a little two-track thing.

Sugar: The sound effects that he put in later are the best part of the whole thing.

Dennis: And you can tell the sound effects are about three times louder than they need to be.

Sugar: But I think Ben deserves a mention. He’s the previous bass player before me in Lords of the Highway. He’s the infamous bass player that used to drop his drawers and turn around and show his bare bottom. Some people are disappointed to see me, they’re like “what’s up with the chick, where’s Ben?” But Ben, he played Truckman, he did the part of Truckman and he was also Grandma, and Granny, and he did the little boy. He was working hard that day.

OHMS: Yeah, I saw him in the credits, I was pretty impressed.

Sugar: Man of many talents. He did a good job. So we’re working on the next one, what are our ideas, Truckman meets Count Chocula? Gets slobbered on by chocolate?

OHMS: I heard when you guys did a live version of it on Zombo’s and you said you were working on this You did a live version of the song

Dennis: We did?

OHMS: Early on, you said you had an idea for this thing… I have that on tape. I like the Truckman.

Sugar: Cool. I’m glad you like it.

Dennis: I would totally dig to do a short movie, like a little 20 minute movie, but the money

OHMS: Have you seen Drumstruck?

Dennis: No

OHMS: A Michigan band did it, it’s probably only 20-25 minutes long, hardly any words - it’s really good, actually I don’t know if there are more than few words

Sugar: Is there music, are they playing music?

OHMS: It’s mostly music, this guy with his drums and this other guy with the drums, and they compete, and there’s this whole event that happens, it’s kinda surf music sounding, it’s really cool, and it looked like you could do it reasonably and have it still come out. I don’t think they put that much into it, but its good.

Dennis: Actually, even if I couldn’t make a movie, just to make a trailer for a movie is even a better idea… make a trailer for a movie that doesn’t exist.

OHMS: Excellent trailer too so people that see the trailer really want to see the movie.

Dennis: It will be like the feel good hit of the summer says Ebert…

OHMS: Three thumbs up.

Mike: Never to come..

Sugar: Never to come to a theatre near you.

Dennis: And if you can’t find this movie you’re not cool enough.

Mike: Brought to you by Biscuit World.

Dennis: Biscuit World, that’s another place we visited lately.

Sugar: Biscuit World, I love Biscuit World. I was telling Ben this week that I wanted to go live in Biscuit World. He was like “what, I hated Biscuit World, my biscuits sucked.”

OHMS: Here’s some Hoosier Hotshots information (discussion)

OHMS: Where’d the idea for the candle come from?

Sugar: It was Mike Devine’s idea, wasn’t it?

Dennis: Possibly, Mike Devine, he has a collection of all the religious candles

Sugar: He’s the root of all crazy ideas.

OHMS: I think so, at least around here.

Sugar: Cause Mike Devine did a couple of bits on Truckman.

OHMS: I know, I was listening to it thinking that’s someone trying to be just like Zombo…then I looked at the credits and I’m like oh, it is.

Sugar: I’m pretty sure that’s when it was hatched. It’s all fuzzy but I think so. I think I can blame him, he’ll go to hell, not me.

OHMS: In the Devine spirit, I’m sure.

Sugar: Right.

OHMS: Well the last question I would have would be, what do you have to anyone who lives around this area who’s never come out to see the Lords play?

(laughter)

Dennis: Well, without sounding like a rock and roll star

Sugar: Right, without being an asshole?

Dennis: You really SHOULD come out and see us. We get more people every gig by people who just happened to be there…

Sugar: Or just send the kids out, you know, we’re old, we’re all in our 30’s…

Dennis: Shut yo mouth!

Sugar: It’s true, you can’t deny it. You get people our age man they’re home with the kids, beating off watching movies, they need to just tell their kids to come out to see us.

OHMS: Your kids are in your hair, just send ‘em out to see Lords of the Highway.

Sugar: That’s right, we want your kids, your children.

Mike: Yeah, fine, sit on your ass.

Dennis: One more thing before you turn off the tape….

OHMS: What, should we get more?

Dennis: Come on….

Dennis: This is Jimi and Karen, those guys help us out a lot.

Sugar: I was afraid at what he was going to do to you guys.

Dennis: Now let’s make a movie!