Georgia Satellites AIN'T JUST WHISTLIN' DIXIE

Georgia Satellites AIN'T JUST WHISTLIN' DIXIE

by

Michael Lipton

“We were in Lexington, Ky., at the Ramada Inn lounge. The band didn’t know we were there and started (playing) ‘Keep Your Hands,’ and I thought, ‘Oh my God, it’s happening!’ The guitar player had three distortion pedals, a chorus and an echo. I could recognize the riff but it was like in a blizzard...and no, it wasn’t refreshing to hear it like that.”

—Georgia Satellites vocalist/guitarist Dan Baird

“Don’t give me no lines and keep your hands to yourself..."

That vocal line and the accompanying guitar lick gnawed its way through my skull and burrowed into my brain. Disc jockeys on the radio and in clubs ran it into the ground. Hundreds of bad bar bands added it to their repertoire. And a national study concluded “Keep Your Hands” could be performed expertly by a group of chimpanzees.

Just as I was about to dismiss the Georgia Satellites as a mindless bunch of Southern rockers, I listened past “the dumb catch line, the silly lyrics and the neo-classic guitar

solos” of the single. What I found was an album that made me smile, tap my foot and reach for the nearest guitar.

And yes, quotation marks do surround the above description. The quotee is Dan Baird, and he’s allowed to talk that way because, after' all, he wrote the song.

“It’s just a fun song I wrote years ago. People are going to roll their eyes and say, A fun song, what a horrible thing to have done — why couldn’t he be like Morrissey.’

“It’s not like we’re out there searching for some new thing, I tried that in my 20s,” he shrugs. “It doesn’t have to have that bitter cynical quality that says, ‘heh heh heh, I’m so smart.’ But someone needed to write a song like that again — and I was just stupid enough to be smart.

“But is it art? No, I don’t think so.”

Baird’s simple song, however, had little trouble cutting through last year’s stagnant charts, and paved the way for an unexpected Grammy nomination for the Sats. And by the time you read this, “Open All Night,” the first single from the new LP of the same name will be drawing the growing number of Satellite fans to their nearest record emporium.

Let’s set the scenario. Basic tracks for the album are done. Porn star Johnny Wadd has just died and the band is in Austin, Texas, laying down overdubs with producer Jeff Glixman. Dan Baird is on the horn. First off, Baird says he is happy that the band has been able to record at a leisurely pace and that the studio time has been less expensive than in Atlanta.

Hold on a minute — you mean the Satellites still worry about studio costs?

Yup. They may be the most congenial and unaffected bunch of guys to ever wear a hit record, but the Satellites are no dummies. With a gold record and a decade or so of false starts to their credit, the band also has pocketed a little knowledge of the music biz.

“If you’re given a quarter million dollar budget and you use it all on recording, don’t come around later saying, ‘Hey, we sold a million records, how come we ain’t got no money?,’ ” Baird says. “When the band begins to make a profit you pay for everything. If you can’t, that’s great. Take as much money from the record company as you can. But if you’re going to be able to pay it back you’re spending your own money.

“It’s like a real business, except they don’t pay interest on the money they hold and you don’t pay them interest on the money you borrow,” Baird snickers. “Like real good friends doing business with one another.”

Keeping that in mind, Open All Night was completed inside two months. The band cut 17 or 18 basic tracks that they pared down to the 11 best — and all of the tracks were laid down in three or four takes.

“I think people tell a lot of lies about that first take shit,” Baird sneers. “If it comes off with the energy of a first take, they say, ‘Yeah, it’s a first take.’ It’s one of those agreed-upon lies.”

Like the first LP, Open All Night has that first take energy. It is filled with the rough and ready sound of greasy white kids trapped in a cheap Southern subdivision. The band proffers basic three-chord rock ’n’ roll, drinks quarts of ice-cold Colt .45 and eats plenty of rock’s major food group — pork rinds. Outside the garage you can hear grinding guitars overdrive cheap well-worn Radio Shack speakers. Cars sit idle on concrete blocks.

In the ’60s, the Sats’ latest could’ve been made in a day by a dozen different bands — in almost any city. Think back on the Swingin’ Medallions, the 13th Floor Elevators, the Sonics. Before the big-time engineers or hot-shot producers it all boiled down to just one hot, sweaty day of recording. But what makes this record different is that 1990 is just around the corner and the Sats will soon be on the backside of their 30s.

Still, the only other bands putting out records with as much pure energy are young hardcore bands — and stick most of them in a well-appointed studio and that energy grows stale as fast as you can say digital multi-track.

“Yes, there’s some pressure after the first album, from everywhere,” Baird admits. “It would be a joke to say there wasn’t.

“It’s weird. You want to have another successful record. It may be stupid but you do. You want it to be good first, but you also want people to buy it. The same number that bought the first one would be nice, thank you. All the people that bought the first one — please buy the second one.”

The Satellites are a second generation rock ’n’ roll band and proud ot it. The band plays a hybrid of American rock filtered through gallons of British ale and Bluebreakers’-era cross-Atlantic riffs. On Open All Night, Baird, bassist Rick Richards, Rick Price and drummer Mauro Magellan put their influences on the line.

Shades of “Monkey Man” and “Midnight Rambler” — on “My Baby,” Rick Richards cops more Keith Richards’ double stops than his HiWatt amp has watts, while the loose harmonies and Ron Wood-styled guitar solo on “Dunk ’n’ Dine” do more than tip their glasses to the Faces’ drunken, good-time rock ’n’ roll. And speaking of the Faces, the hands tinkling that rockin’ pianner belong to none other than Ian MacLagen.

Granted, the songs on Open All Night are more predictable. Gone is that endearing country twang, and in its place, the band wields saw-toothed rhythm guitars that make up the ground floor of almost every cut. There are no “Battleship Chains” (more about that later) or “Golden Lights” to break the monotony, but “Sheila,” with its instantly and infinitely hummable chorus, may be the most infectious tune to hit the radio all summer.

If l-IV-V progressions aren’t familiar enough, there’s always Ringo Starr’s “Don’t Pass Me By,” long a staple of their live show and a version of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” juiced up by MacLagen’s tinklin’ keys.

Unfortunately, neither of these compare to the Sats’ peerless version of Rod Stewart’s “Every Picture Tells A Story,” or George Jones’s “The Race Is On,” from the band’s first EP. But the appeal of the Satellites’ incessant rock ’n’ roll has crossed the Mason-Dixon line and returned a tad civilized and city-slickered after tours with REO Speed wagon, Tom Petty and Bob Seger. But proving you can take the boy out of the country but (you know the rest), it was a tour with Hank Williams Jr. that left Baird magnetized.

“There’s a lot of people on this planet who pretend not to care—but Hank does not care,” he chortles. He is so completely genuine and at the same time such a fuckin’ phony, he’s perfect.

“Literally his brains were scooped back into his head (after a 500-foot fall off a Montana cliff). When you play with Hank you know you’re going to play inside certain parameters,” he explains carefully. “The ball park is going to have a certain shape to it — and with Hank it’s a pretty weird shape.

“When we toured with Hank I thought we were heading for the biggest pack of trouble ever, but it was a fucking breeze. We’d rather tour with him than REO.”

At a time when “Made in America” began to sound like more of an excuse than a bragging right, the Satellites remain one of the hardest working bands around. They went straight from the clubs of the Southland — still their favorite venues — to arena tours that took them to Australia, Japan and Europe. At Switzerland’s prestigious Montreaux Pop Festival, the Georgians were shocked to find they had to lip-synch.

“It was a question of sounding horrible or using the fucking record,” Baird snorts. “So we used the fucking record.”

Now that Baird was rollin’, the time was ripe, as any sneaky interviewer’ll tell ya, to get tough. I wanted the lowdown on the Woodpeckers. For those of you wonderin’ just what the hell I’m talkin’ about, here’s a brief history. After being rejected by a slew of record labels over a period of years, the Satellites disbanded in 1984. For the next year, Baird became a Woodpecker, a member of a group based in Raleigh, N.C.

During that time they recorded a demo that included a Woodpeckers’ tune “Battleship Chains.” According to the Peckers, who are now simply the Woods (with a release on Twin-Tone), the demo that got the Satellites signed was actually the Woodpeckers with Baird on guitar! And Elektra stipulated that the Satellites had to record “Battleship Chains” on their first LP, or the deal was off.

As soon as Baird heard the word “pecker” he knew what was coming.

“Come clean, Baird,” I demand. “I want the truth, is it just a case of sour grapes for the Peckers?”

“There would be sour grapes if I were in their shoes,” Baird admits. “ ‘Battleship’ did help us get the deal, but you can’t say that any one thing did it. Everything involved was important. ‘Battleship’ is a classic tune — it really is, I wish I had written it. But personally, I didn’t want to do ‘Battleship’ on the record because I didn’t want to take those guys’ best shot at the, quote, ‘big single.’

“Not getting a record deal has nothing to do with being good. They’ll get there one way or the other.”

What’s to look forward to from the Sats? Besides Open All Night, there’ll be a record from the Nasty Bucks, one of Baird’s pre-Sat outfits, which will feature R.E.M.’s Pete Buck on guitar (“we got Buck to play a rock guitar solo.” Baird hoots), and the Swimming Pool Q’s J.E. Garnett on bass, a tour of small clubs and, most importantly, a Replacements/Satellites double bill (“one of the favorite things I want to do”). Largely, Baird is fighting a sometimes losing battle to keep the Georgia Satellites a fun proposition for themselves.

“Action. Organism. Reaction. You know what I’m talking about? The brain getting in the way of a good time. With us that seems to be the case. The more it comes out the better off we are. I may be stupid, but I’m not bored.” @