News came through today that Roky Erickson is playing Golden Plains in 2012. Sand Pebble Christopher Hollow had the rare opportunity to talk the man for the release of his latest album, True Love Cast Out All Evil. Enjoy.

Roky Erickson

Interview April 20, 2010

By Christopher Hollow

Roky Erickson is rock n’ roll legend; the screaming shaman of the 13 Floor Elevators. Despite sporadic activity over the years he’s long supposed to be fried beyond rehabilitation by electroshock treatments he received in the early 1970s. Remarkably though, he still walks amongst us and can still sing, too.

Of late there’s been a flurry of Roky-related action. There’s been the exhaustive Elevators book [Eye Mind], a much welcome remastering of the Elevators catalogue, a documentary detailing his hard road to recovery [You’re Gonna Miss Me]. Meanwhile, he’s been playing well received shows and now released the album True Love Cast Out All Evil recorded with fellow Austin, Texas band Okkervil River.

The record finds Roky in good voice and it’s full of his trademark loose logic. It’s also the heaviest album of his career as the full weight of Erickson’s emotional life is explored. The record opens and closes with field recording style songs that were taped during Roky’s incarceration at Rusk Maximum Security Prison for the Criminally Insane. In between, Okkervil main man Will Scheff concentrates on the elegiac themes of grace, salvation, love, pain and chaos.

One reviewer has written that it’s more Dewey Cox’s “Beautiful Ride” than Dylan’s “Not Dark Yet” but that’s a harsh assessment. If you’re sympathetic to Roky’s story, it’s an incredibly moving affair.

And, so, to the interview. I was surprised that Roky was doing them given the way he talks in short, sharp, enigmatic sentences. But, thankfully, he was joined by Scheff, who acted as a medium.

A friend who once interviewed Brian Wilson gave some sound advice, “embrace the weirdness.” Although, it’s a shaky start [Roky seemingly forgetting that the lead single “Goodbye Sweet Dreams” is on the new album]. There’s no getting around the idea that career highlights have never come so bizarre – especially when we start talking about his love of Rick Springfield.

Congratulations on the record, what is the song that you’re proudest of?

Roky:          I like ‘em all. I like, let me see, I like “You Don’t Love Me Yet”.

Will:  No, no. He’s talking about the new record.

Roky:          That one isn’t on it, is it?
Will:  We’ve been rehearsing that for the shows, though. But on the new record I think you said you like “Goodbye Sweet Dreams” a lot, right?
Roky:          Yeah.

“Goodbye Sweet Dreams” is a great song. Who would you like to hear do a cover of that?
Roky:          Well, I just did it. They wanted me to do it and so I did it.

Will:  Roky, if you could have another artist cover “You Don’t Love Me Yet” who would you choose?
Roky:          Let me see, I don’t know, that would be a good question. Doug Sahm did one of mine one time, y’know.

Will:  Oh really? Which one did he do?

Roky:          He did this “Two Headed Dog” and “Starry Eyes”.

And what about “Goodbye Sweet Dreams”?

Roky:          Let me see. I like it, yeah. We didn’t do that one. I don’t think we did it. Could be on some kind of album or something, y’know.

Will:  Yeah, yeah (laughing).

What’s the emotional push behind that song?
Roky:          I’m sorry? Do I like “Goodbye Sweet Dreams”? I do like it. I wrote it, I guess not too long ago.

Will:  What’s that song about?
Roky:          Well, let me see, it’s kind of like a Russian song, y’know. And so, like, I wrote it like that.

Will:  You started putting imagery of Russia into your songs a while ago, right?

Roky:          Well, let me see, I’ve done it for a long time. I wrote “Two Headed Dog” and I wrote “Goodbye Sweet Dreams” and I wrote one called “Where Is He Now?”

Will:  What does the Russian imagery mean to you?

Roky:          I like writing about Russia and I like reading periodicals about Russia and everything like that.

The album starts and finishes with two songs [‘Devotional Number One’ and ‘God is Everywhere’] recorded at Rusk. Roky, what do you remember of recording those tracks?

Roky:          I like “Devotional Number One”. I don’t really remember; I could’ve recorded it. But the way I do that is I find a really cheap tape recorder and then I’d record it. It was trying to be a little bit of a scary version or a windy version or it would be, I guess, a shy, timid version. It would be a guitar string, some kind of a used guitar string going along.

Will, what did you want to say putting those songs first and last?

Will:  Well, when I got those songs and I heard them for the first time they had that quality that Roky is talking about – the sound of that cheap equipment and the wind blowing and the texture of the recording being a part of what was happening musically.

It was really powerful to stumble across that stuff because I felt it was so personal and intimate. It was like discovering a box of old, weathered Polaroids. I wanted the listener to have the same feeling as I did because it feels so authentic and it has a found artifact feeling to it and I wanted that to come across.

Roky, what’s the best story you’ve heard about yourself – be it true or false?

Roky:          The best aberration or something like that? I don’t know, I used to read articles about myself but they would be some kind of weird thing that maybe I should get help from my friends instead of reading these articles, y’know. They would bring up my feelings about myself. But it would be better to maybe get help with my friends and everything. They could rationalize what I was reading. Rolling Stone says “Roky Erickson and Doug Sahm have this new hit” and I thought “boy, that would be really something”. But it’d probably feel better to wait on that.

Will:  Does it make you feel weird to read about yourself in these articles?

Roky:          No. I just be real careful about doing it. They used to write about me in Sluggo! [Austin, Texas fanzine] and people would say, ‘Oh my God, don’t listen to that’, you know what I mean (laughs).

I love Stacy Sutherland’s playing and songwriting in the 13th Floor Elevators.  Do you miss him?

Roky:          Uh huh, yeah, Stacy, right, uh huh. Well, Stacy, I enjoyed him. We all liked to do a not real long set, y’know. And things like that, y’know. Did you like Sutherland? Oh, good.

Will:  Oh, yeah, I love Stacy. He’s such a great guitar player and he should be remembered for his guitar playing because he was so good.

Roky:          Uh huh. Well, good, yeah, I never knew what people thought of his guitar playing but I’m glad you told me now.

What’s your favourite Stacy Sutherland song?

Roky:          I just liked, he would play little things on the deal that would be poetry to Tommy Hall’s writing.

Will, as an Elevators fan, what was the song you were most looking forward to playing with Roky?

Will:   We’re doing “Reverberation” during these shows. I love that song and it’s really fun to play. It’s such a driving song, very powerful. Relentlessly redneck. I really like the chord progression. I’ve always been a big fan of “Roller Coaster”.

Roky:          Well good, I’m glad you do, yeah.

 Are you still a fan of the Elevators songs?
Roky:          Do I still like them? First of all, I have to get help on the first thing I was talking about. And then, on this, I’d have to get guidance for help to see if I wanted to do it. When I was with Sumner [Roky’s brother] he played me the album and my God, it lasted like two hours. So I haven’t played it since then. People have been shy or timid about playing it for me, you know what I mean.

Do you enjoy playing the Elevators songs on stage?

Roky:          Well, let me see, yes I do, sometimes. They have been having me do them. They have been having me do the one song and they don’t say much about it. They believe I heard about it the first time they said, ‘boy, we sure wish we could play this song’.

Will:  We’ve been playing two, “Reverberation” and “You’re Gonna Miss Me”.

What about Slip Inside This House?

Roky:          “Slip Inside This House”, yes, I like that song a lot. It’s just a song Tommy Hall wrote and I recorded and oh, boy, that thing lasted about two hours, y’know.

When have you been most happy?

Roky:          Oh, always. Just writing my stuff and things like that. I have to get more familiar with recording when I went into the studio. Except for International Artists. They would be wrong. But the other ones they would do very easy versions of it, like that, you know what I mean.

Will:  Was it harder recording for International Artists?
Roky:          Ah, well, let me see, it could’ve been.

Will, what’s the song you’re proudest of on this record?

Will:  “Be and Bring Me Home” is my favourite song that Roky ever wrote. It has such a beautiful message of pain and endurance and hope and love and faith. It’s such a response to pain and unhappiness but it’s a happy and wonderful and spiritually resilient song. I find it really moving. It’s such a statement of purpose of how to endure in your life and it’s got a beautiful melody and perfect lyrics.  

What was the first piece of music you listened to today?

Roky:          Well, I have a bunch of things around the house. I have this one record by Rick Springfield that I just bought. 

Will:  [laughing] Oh, really?

Roky:          It’s on an album called Working Class. 

Rick Springfield is Australian.  

Roky:          He’s an Australian? I didn’t know that. Alright.

Will:  I didn’t know that either.

What songs on that record, “Jessie’s Girl”?

Roky:          That’s right, it’s on there but it doesn’t play. It just goes “BaBaBa Bup. BaBaBa Bup.”  Over and over again. It doesn’t do anything, I don’t know what the deal is. It’s really scratched up, it won’t play. My other one of his does real good but it sounds like kryptonite. It sounds like there’s some kind of buzz on it or something like that.

Who was your very first hero?
Roky:          I liked Elvis Presley a lot. I liked Little Richard. And I enjoyed this guy named Little John.

Will:  Little Willie John?
Roky:          That’s right, yeah.

Did Janis Joplin really steal your scream?

Roky:          Well, I heard she could’ve been influenced by me but I didn’t really know. Anytime I would hear the Brother and the Company I would just listen to it and wait on it to see what I should understand about it, you know what I mean. It may take a lot of guidance to understand what those screams are about.

How is the world going to end?

Roky:          I don’t know. I like to read about it a lot because I used to be very shadowy about it when I was going to church. I used to go to St. David’s you know. They would talk about it a lot and I wouldn’t be too sure what they were talking about. But now I’d like to read more about it. I’d have to have guidance on it. It reminds me of war and stuff like that.

Are you scared of dying?

Roky:          I haven’t been in contact with anything like that recently. I haven’t thought about it much. I really enjoy going into stores, I wish I could shop a little more. I have to be real careful about it, ‘cos no telling what other people might think about it.

Have you been in touch with the spirit world?
Roky:          I guess I would, I would do sometime, I would like to. We have a store near here called The Crane and it has all sorts of weird things in it and I’ve been thinking of going there. But, it might be as strange as the one over there that says, “Palm reading” you know. That looks like an interesting place, too.

Will:  Did anyone ever read your palm before?
Roky:          Let me see, no, I don’t think so. They’ve looked at it before and said I have a real, nice soft hand, a real natural kind of hand, a real relaxed hand, you know what I mean.