Take a ride in Kid Congo’s Haunted Head….

 

Kid Congo Powers will take you deep inside the depths of the mind behind the green door to a mystic swamp spooked beyond reality with the Pink Monkey Birds as the fog grows dense lit by a full moon.  Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds released Haunted Head on In the Red Records at the end of May and after touring Europe will kick off its North American leg on October 6th.

The legendary guitarist who grew up as a member and founder of the Gun Club, as well as player with the Cramps, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, The Fall, The Angels of Light, Die Haut and Divine Horsemen, is joined in the Pink Monkey Birds by bassist Kiki Solis, drummer Ron Miller, and guitarist Mark Cisneros.
The new album, 'Haunted Head', was engineered and mixed at the now well-known Harveyville Project High School in Kansas and is their third for In the Red Records.   Drummer Ron Miller lives at the high school which is a central point for the band which finds its members spread across the country to meet for recording.

Powers went from growing up a music fan and president of the Ramone’s fan club to writing about music as a journalist when he went to junior college when being in the right place at the right time turned his rock and roll dreams into reality.  And I did take journalism in the city college and dropped everything to be in the Cramps (lol)….that was a better college for me, yeah, right place at the right time….the right people I guess!  I think that what happened to me was part luck, you know, I decided early on when I started the Gun Club to be very different and that to have your own vision was the most important thing about music virtually and every step of the way with the process and then I learned playing in a different manner and it is really not that odd, just tuning in a different manner and for about everything and people usually just learn that for blues or something, but I have been using it for everything.  I learned that way and it was something that like the Cramps and with people were not hard but unique.  It was unique and special and something you could not put your finger on with your rock chords and it was something totally strange to play that way and yeah, I think that was all part of what happened with that hearing things a different way and a new way to play.“

Powers actually did not think of being a musician early on. “That is what I am writing about in my book, but the thing is I never thought I was going to be a musician, because a musician to me was some worldly thing and the rock gods and to me and I never thought I would be one and to and I was going to just write about it in journalism and be involved in it full time and then with Jeffrey Pierce started the Gun Club with him and then realized, Oh, and I am not putting journalists down or anything but I am actually putting my money where my mouth is and knew I could become the subject, but it felt right and have always been into music since being a little kid and you know, 7 year olds who want to be 15 year olds…"

Powers has kept busy over the last 35+ years in music and created his own path in music. “Yeah, I have never stopped, never stopped, and that was the thing with me, there was never a break and I made records that no one knew and I worked with a lot of different people and people knew about some of it and other people knew about other things and some things people liked and things people didn’t like, but I kept playing, you know?  I made all of these records for years, or producing, whatever, whatever capacity, stayed with music, whatever, sort of a way of life.  It is not a hobby but a career and it is strange!” LOL
 
The Pink Monkey Birds came together and released the acclaimed Dracula Boots LP which put Powers as the front person of the band. “Yeah, it was more a process of elimination.  The time was right and I wanted to learn from all of the coincidences and I ended up being the singer in different things, little projects, and we had a singer and then he quit and I had to do it and I didn’t like it and didn’t want to do it and then did records and did all kinds of collaborations with people and it was going and it has been good because the Pink Monkey Birds have been going for God knows, like for ….(years) and you know, the first incarnation of it, so I have that to learn along the way and of what it meant to be a singer and I learned from the experience o a lot of other people that Nick Cave or Ella Fitzgerald or like that but I actually had to learn what my voice is, you know and what works best for it and somewhere between talking and singing, and not pretentious because that is not the way to know it’s place, you know,  like I always think of Lydia Lunch, she was one who always struck me and rings in my head a lot like someone said, what would you say your longevity is with all of these records and all of these different medias and she did and she said, well I know my place within my culture   and I go, well that is what I need to know how to do, you know,  and that is like with all of the people that I have been in with different bands is that you know your place in the culture and you work with that and that is your way.”
 
It has translated to a potent formula for success for Powers who now put forth the lead with band not to follow any other trends along the way. “Yeah, I do, I mean, I am a big collaborator and it is very collaborative, you know, the band we have now has been since Dracula (Boots) was still there and it is me and the bass player and Ron Miller, the drummer.  Yeah, and we are quite a team and have made ourselves very autonomous and the thing with every band that I have been in and with the things that I do is they are all very autonomous this is what makes it work and work when we are a family and it is just a loner band and we are not really attached to other bands, or scenes, or things going on, so we have a lot of friends who are musicians and things we admire but we are not attached to any scene or whatever, you know, that is the thing that I see and I do not know if it is by choice or not, but it must be! LOL that is the way it works best for us! That is the way to make us not influenced by other things that are going on currently.  Not to be influenced by them but of course we are influenced by some things but are not held to be influenced by any current trends.
The first thing I said when I made it was I told the guys, let’s make a swampy record.  I think it needs to be swampy and everyone goes OK, and then everyone goes, what is Swampy?  And I go, just do this and like this is something we do like throw something out and they would interpret what that means, and that was the spring board and for me that was more Dr. John like, and an all-encompassing mood in general of that I actually thought a lot about the Cramps Psychedelic Jungle as very swampy as compared to the other records, and I wanted to see what other people in the band had to say about it.  Other people said, ah, Credence and other people said, oh, Blues and it was a different interpretation and the swamp was the starting point and I was thinking a lot of about how the state between sleeping and being awake was in a different world or state, like a hangover or whatever or zoning out or coming back in and that is how I wanted the lyrics to come off, a little more of a dream state."
 
After putting together a legendary career playing in some of the most intense bands around what lies ahead to be the next challenge for Powers?  “Well, the biggest challenge is satisfying ourselves, like I said, the idea of trying to say something new, and you know with older musical influences and still trying to be modern and not revivalists, you know and making sure that things aren’t seen as retro or revivalist and that is not what I am interested in and it is a difficult line and of course that is with the ear of the beholder as well if they want to hear it that way but for ourselves that is the criteria we have to speak the language that we have been speaking thus far and that is what people want to learn and want to use so that I guess is the challenge.  Yeah, like age! I am quite fit at my age and don’t consider my age very often, except when I am wearing something and I wonder if this is not right.”
 
In the works as a writer, Powers is putting together his personal memoir which will be about his days in Los Angeles before moving to Europe in 1984. “I have already done the first draft and now I am doing the second draft, and it is a story really covering my Los Angeles life and which was birth to 1984 and I actually formed the Gun Club in 1984, and we moved to England so it is going to be all of Los Angeles, so it is going to be about a Chicano who wants to be a rock star and what happens with all of the trials and tribulations that goes in with that.  It is going from my childhood to being a record fan to going into underground music and my first concert was Frank Zappa at the Hollywood Bowl when I was 13 or 14 and then it is becoming a glam rock teenager and hanging out on the Rodney Binghinhiemer scene and going into punk rock and family life growing up with music—Mexican music, what went on with the family and starting the Gun Club and being a musician and in the Cramps in that era.  Europe and beyond is another book!  I don’t know when it is going to be out but I go I am going to write this and I really don’t know what it is going to be but what the jist of it will be but when I finish it it will tell me what it is about, and that is how I make music too, usually I work really fast and intensive and it comes out later and it always makes sense!  It is strange!”

 

"There is a lot to do in Ohio. It is a big state.  I remember once we played 7 shows in Ohio, isn’t that crazy?  I met Jeffrey Curtis of the Gun Clug at a Pere Ubu show, you know?  And ohio has been a real lynch pin in my musical career, it is a real hot bed for Rock and roll. A lot of people with vision were from ohio like pere ubu, or rocket from the tombs or dead boys or devo, wow, what was in the water!  We need that…"  (The Cuyahoga River used to be on fire!)  "Yeah, that makes perfect sense!"  LOL  

 

And he also knows something about great Mexican cooking as well as delivering a masterful pscychic-guitar drenched work on Haunted Head.  KC&TPMBs will play at the Star Bar in Atlanta on October 17th as part of their US Tour before they head back to Europe for more shows.

"I look forward to playing again and forward to playing in Atlanta…there are a lot of places to play."  

There is plenty of reason to see Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds.  A fistful of music that will sweep you away and take you on an experience that is mesmerizing and intense.  Look for the Pink Monkey Birds at a local venue near you and don’t miss out on the incredible new album Conjure Man.  You will be seeking out more of this tasty musical delicacy again and again!