Interview: The Jesus Lizard
I enjoy playing the old songs and I know people want to hear that. But for me as a musician, it's nice to get up there and play new things.
Noise rock legends The Jesus Lizard blazed a trail in alternative music in the 1990s with a string of well loved albums, Head, Goat, Liar and Shot among them and incendiary live shows every time they played. Having released the album Blue in 1998, the band split, returning sporadically over the years to play live shows. Now the band have delighted fans by recently announcing that they will be returning with a brand new album entitled Rack in September. The record will be out on the bands new label Ipecac Recordings and has been preceded by the single ‘Hide & Seek’, a track that sees The Jesus Lizard return in style, and a tantalising taste of what to expect with Rack. As well as starting to play live extensively again, The Jesus Lizard have also announced live dates for 2025 which includes a not to be missed at any cost series of dates in the UK.
Prior to this joyous announcement, Gavin Brown had the pleasure of catching up with The Jesus Lizard guitar maestro Duane Denison to get an insight into the new album and the return of The Jesus Lizard as well as discussing his life in music which includes his work with Tomahawk and so much more.
E&D: There have been a few teasers recently from The Jesus Lizard. Can you tell us all about that?
Duane: Yeah, there’s some shows. Festivals and things are starting to get lined up. There’s new things later this year from The Jesus Lizard, and it will be announced fairly soon.
E&D: What has led to the band coming back in 2024?
Duane: Well, we’ve been doing some things here and there over the past few years already. It’s been a few years now and the last time we played was right before COVID hit. We did some stuff in 2017 and 2018, then late 2019 and January 2020. I just feel fortunate we can still do this. We’re all still in good health, physically, and mentally, we all still play regularly. I play all the time between this group and other things I’ve done and giving lessons and stuff, and we all still get along. So getting together and rehearsing and working on materials, we’ve kind of been doing it on and off for the last few years, really and the fact that there’s still interest and that people are still coming out to the shows and we can actually go out and set up a tour is pretty great.
E&D: How did those shows go? I know you played like the Riot Fest and a few other things but how did it feel playing with The Jesus Lizard again?
Duane: Yeah, really well. We still get along great and it’s still fun. We stopped originally in 1999 and we didn’t play together for about 10 years. Then in 2009, we kind of got back together and started playing around the world. Then we stopped for an almost 8 or 9 years and then we played sporadically. So I’m looking forward to it being a bit more extended this time. We’ll probably playing some new material as well, which I’m excited about. I enjoy playing the old songs and I know people want to hear that. But for me as a musician, it’s nice to get up there and play new things and not play the same set constantly. So I’m looking forward to that.
E&D: Will the new album be on Ipecac?
Duane: Yeah, unless something weird happens in the next couple of months!
E&D: What have been some of your favourite memories with The Jesus Lizard over the years?
Duane: Oh golly! We had so many ups and downs with that band. The first two or three years we did, we didn’t do very well. I mean, we struggled! I could show you my tax returns for those years and we were living at poverty level for several years and struggling. We’d go out, driving around in a rusted beat up van playing for sometimes less than $100 a night, drive all day, barely make it to the next town, sleeping on people’s floors. This went on for years. Then we started doing better and we’d all come back to Chicago and all four of us lived in a three bedroom apartment, in a not terribly nice and fairly dangerous part of town. But somehow we stuck together and we kept going and we kept coming back around, and every time we came back around, there’d be more people, a bigger show, there’d be more press. We started getting royalty checks, the albums were actually selling and we’d come home and hey, there’s a cheque for you, which meant, oh, so I don’t have to rush out and immediately beg for my job back or immediately go out and get another shitty factory job or sweeping the floor somewhere. I don’t have to rush out and do that. Eventually it became self sustaining.
There’s just so many memories attached to that and it’s a very mixed bag of good and bad, some of it is just hilarious to me. As you can imagine, the people you meet on the way up and on the way down. For some reason this popped into my mind the other day. We used to play in Phoenix, Arizona quite regularly, which is an unusual place, it’s a desert town and it’s very different from where I grew up. I grew up around Detroit, and then lived in Chicago. Now I live in Nashville but Arizona is quite different. We played a gig and we had nowhere to go. We had almost no money and we were desperate for a place to sleep that night. There was a guy working there and this guy invited us over to his apartment to drink and smoke after the show. So we did, and then I tried to talk him but he wouldn’t let us stay there. So we had to go park in a parking lot of a McDonald’s or something and we just slept in the van. When the McDonald’s opened, we all went in and went to the bathroom and brushed our teeth and all that! But that guy, he made us listen to his music while we were at his apartment. He sang and played for us and it was just awful! We thought he was going to give us a place to stay but he didn’t. Anyway, years later, we’re playing nice places. We’re playing much bigger places and we have two vehicles, and we’re staying in hotels and motels now. Then this guy shows up. I couldn’t believe my eyes and he comes riding a bicycle. And he’s like, Hey, do you remember me? And I was like, Yeah, I do. You know, what do you want? He said I was wondering if you want a cassette of my new band and he brought an entire box of cassettes, like 12 dozen. I said I don’t want this and I threw it and he goes oh, I hate you guys and he started crying, a grown man. He started crying and rode his bike off, that’s weird, right? That kind of thing. Those kinds of characters!
E&D: With having such a vast career in music, have you considered writing a memoir at all?
Duane: I can’t remember it all! We did a Jesus Lizard book from a few years ago but no, not really, because people expect dirt, they want you to dish the dirt. They want you to talk shit about people. Otherwise, it’s not interesting to them. They always expect you to have something controversial, something dealing with someone’s sex life or with their drug and alcohol consumption and negative things. I just don’t want to do it. I could drop names from here to the moon but I’d rather not.
E&D: What were some of the standout live shows that you’ve done over the years with The Jesus Lizard and did it feel genuinely dangerous at times with the band’s reputation raucous performances?
Duane: Yeah, there were some places, especially over here in the the earlier years when it was just starting to take off, and fans knew who we were, but the general public didn’t. Especially places in the Pacific Northwest or Midwest, where there was usually little or no security at gigs, and it was just mayhem, just anything going, whether it was nudity or fighting, every sort of public safety hazard you can think of happening in a room. Then on the other hand, there was just sheer excitement, you know, like playing big festivals for the first time playing Reading festival the first time We did a tour early on opening for Sonic Youth, and that was great, they were very nice to us. Those were the biggest shows I’d ever played up to that point, and then getting press and seeing yourself in a weekly or in a national magazine for the first time. I did the classic, like people do, when you buy a couple copies. This was pre internet and I’d bring them home to my mom and dad. Suddenly, I think at that point, they realise maybe there’s something to this. When they see it in Rolling Stone or Spin.
E&D: Do you still get that same excitement being on stage?
Yeah: There’s really nothing like it. It seems like you have such a heightened sense of awareness and just a heightened sense of time. It just seems like there’s just this hyper sensual kind of situation, and man, when things are going well, it’s like those songs just play themselves, and it’s over before you know it, and you’re like, what just happened?! Occasionally, when things aren’t going so well, it seems like it takes forever, everything’s taking so much longer than it should. Then, if you have an equipment malfunction or something, it seems like the biggest nightmare in the world. And it’s not, it’s neither of those things, is it? It’s just sort of happening. So yeah, I still do, even though I’m older, and I don’t play out as often as I did. I mean, there was years of playing hundreds of shows in a year, you know, two hundred shows a year regularly, and then I had a side project and I would go out and play shows with that. I was just constantly playing games out so. Now I’m not doing it as often so it still It feels fresh when you do it, believe it or not.
E&D: Going back to the new material, how did it feel to be back in the room playing with the guys again?
Duane: Yeah, great! It was just like the old days. Whenever you’re working on new material, even back when we very first started, someone might make a home demo, I would make a cassettes of just myself playing say a simple parts on an acoustic guitar with a metronome clicking away, in the back, and then people could just get a basic idea of what was happening, right? And then you all get together and you work on it. So it’s always been a sort of a gradual thing. We would call each other like, Hey, I got some new ideas. Okay, I do too. So you exchange your new things, you become familiar with it before you even get together, and then when we get together, we’d really work it out. So the process of making an album nowadays, it took several years but that’s fine. You know, we’re all married, we had some time. I don’t have a job now, but I did at the time, and jobs and families and things, you have to work around as you get older. But when we all get together and work on that batch of material and get it where we want it. Then kind of set it aside, go about your business, then you get together and you work on the next batch, and over time it accumulates. That’s kind of what it was like, which isn’t terribly different than what it always was, it just maybe takes a little longer. We don’t all live in the same city anymore, there’s one guy in New York, one guy outside of Chicago. I’m here in Nashville, and one guy in Los Angeles. So typically, everyone would come here to Nashville, because I have a my wife, and I have a big enough house, we can have people over. I have a practice space that everybody can use. So that’s typically how that would work.
E&D: Are there any plans for new Tomahawk material at all?
Duane: There’s definitely no plans. Mike has been doing other things, he stepped off the carousel for a while but now I understand. It seems like he’s doing shows again, especially with Mr. Bungle and things. He’s a fairly mercurial and enigmatic person, so with him you never can tell. There is no immediate plan. I’m always writing new things. I’ve always got something new tucked away but I don’t know there’s definite interest there. We just got asked to play some big festival with had System Of A Down in and the Deftones and we had to turn it down because I said there is no Tomahawk right now, those guys are all doing other things and I’m doing other things.
E&D: What have been some of the highlights of your time with Tomahawk?
Duane: Oh, man, we went around the world with that group. We played on television. We played on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon That was exciting. We played some huge places and we did about eight weeks opening for Tool playing arenas. That band have their own audience and I can never tell who’s going to like something, I’ve had people tell me, oh is that you’re band too! Hell, I talked to Jack White one time and he’s like, Tomahawk, that’s your band too?! Oh, man. I saw you guys at this festival. So you never know!
E&D: Is it good to have that relationship continue with Mike now that The Jesus Lizard are on Ipecac, with you both having been in Tomahawk even though the band aren’t active?
Duane: Well, we just kind of ended up there, it sure has been a good label for me. There was Tomahawk and then I did a one off thing called The Unsemble with Alexander Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten and Brian Kotzur, and now The Jesus Lizard. We have a good working relationship and It just made the most sense. They were very enthused, there was a couple of different labels who were interested. But Ipecac just seemed like a good fit. I mean, if you think about what that label does, it does hard rock and experimental music. To me, that’s basically Ipecac in a nutshell really, and I thought, well that’s where maybe we should be then, that was what that was all about.
E&D: You played on the Revolting Cocks album, Linger Ficken Good. How was that experience and what other albums have you appeared on have you enjoyed?
Duane: If I could go back in time, I would have done it differently. It’s funny, the tracks were pretty much done, and I just played some simple things over it, really. I think they would have rather had me do something else. It was just different, really, I’ve done a lot of other sessions that I thought turned out much more interesting. There was a Jack White album from just a couple years ago, Fear Of The Dawn and I played on a song on that called ‘Morning, Noon and Night’. I played the solo on that too, and that was very interesting. All together all in one session that turned out really well. I played on a session in 2006 with the r&b singer Beverly Knight. She came to Nashville and did an album called Music City Soul. I knew the producer and so I was one of the guitar players and I’m on the whole album. I’m on cuts with Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones, so that was interesting.
E&D: You’ve also played with many bands from your own The Denison/Kimball trio and U.S.S.A to playing with the legendary Shack Shakers and guesting with everyone from Pigface to Hank III. Do you look back on your music career and feel blessed that you’ve had such an eclectic career?
Duane: Yeah, on the one hand, I feel fortunate it’s gone on for a long time. For one thing, I went for a pretty uninterrupted period where you don’t have to have a regular job. I had a good twenty five year stretch where I did not have to have a job and I wasn’t struggling, I was earning a living and actually saving money and doing stuff. It got a little slow. I took a library job, I’m done with that and now I go back to playing. It’s been varied, I was in Chicago for years and I started off in Detroit and Austin, Texas, where I met the Jesus Lizard guys, we all moved to Chicago and then things took off from there. I’ve been in Nashville, Tennessee now for twenty five years. I sometimes wonder, what if I had stayed in Chicago instead of coming here? I went through what I call my hillbilly phase, playing with Hank Williams III and then Bobby Baker Jr and the Legendary Shack Shakers. What if I had stayed in Chicago? What would I have done? Would it have been something like Tortoise or would it have been another rock thing or a jazz thing? I don’t know. You just take your roll of the dice and go with it. I certainly don’t regret anything, put it that way.
E&D: What would you still love to do musically that you haven’t done before?
Duane: I wouldn’t mind doing a more acoustic based thing. Acoustic guitar or hybrid guitar and it could be just a steel string or a resonator guitar. Something like that, maybe with an upright bass or acoustic bass guitar, maybe with mallet percussion and marimba and things like that. Not just a standard drum set. Something all acoustic it’s funny, I read interviews with people who do that and they get about halfway through and they’re like, I’m bored. I don’t know if I can finish this. So I don’t know, but that’s always been in the back of my mind and maybe someday I would like to do a full on solo album, a full solo album and play most of the instruments myself, do all the writing, and who knows, maybe even sing a little!
E&D: You are cited as such an influential guitar player. How does how does that make you feel and who your biggest influences as a guitarist?
Duane: I don’t think about that stuff. I really don’t. Obviously, some people might, but I think most guys don’t. You have to just keep going. Also, living where I live in Nashville, there’s a lot of great guitar players here. As far as a city this size, which isn’t nearly as big as, say, Los Angeles, or New York or London but just the sheer number of monstrously good, unknown guitar players, keeps you humble here. You can go downtown and go to almost any club, and you’ll hear someone that’s terrifying. There’s new ones coming along all the time, but on the other hand, that being said, it’s not all about just technique or whatever, it’s you have to have new ideas, and you have to have a sense of style and you have to have all those other things going, which maybe I have more than some of those kinds of guys. But no, it’s very flattering. Growing up, like most people when you’re playing, you have influences along the way and they might not necessarily be the best guitar players out there but they mean something to you. For me, a lot of them were from the UK, whether it was Geordie Walker from Killing Joke, or John McGeoch from Siouxsie and the Banshees and Magazine, or Keith Levene from Public Image or Andy Gill from Gang of Four. Those guys are are people I liked. McGeoch and Walker, I would say were more influential, just as far as what you can hear and compare it to what I do, there’s more similarities than the other guys but it’s just flattering to think that it just shows if you stay in the game long enough and keep things going, you can have it on your own terms.
E&D: Thank you very much for talking to us Duane. Can’t wait for the new Jesus Lizard album!
Duane: Yeah, I’m psyched. We’re all very proud and we’re all very psyched about this new stuff.
