Your surf songs from Semi-Crazy were very popular, even got some radio play. Have you ever thought of putting out an all-instrumental record?
Yeah, I might wait for instrumentals to come back a little [laughs]. It used to be you could do that.
Between the Ventures and the Surfaris.
Exactly. You could put out a record, and it would be successful. You could get on the charts. Nah, I’ll wait for the right time to do that; I may do it.
You are often able to find a non-country audience that is prejudiced against country but present them with it in such a way that they get beyond that prejudice. But what makes them prejudiced against country to begin with?
Because it’s been worked to death. It’s been used, parodied, and reduced to a joke. It’s too bad that it’s that way, but that’s what’s happened. So there’s really not much dignity, unless of course you see an older country artist who’s been doing it awhile and has stuck to his guns and is sincere and real. There ain’t no changing this guy. He’s been around. And when you see him, he’s going to cut through all those preconceived notions you had about the corniness of country because he cuts through that with his sincerity. You don’t get many artists like that anymore except for the old ones.
Ernest Tubbs fought against watered-down country music, so that is the same fight you are fighting?
It’s been going on for a long time. I just went beyond it because I went beyond country music. You see, I play Hawaiian, rock, blues, the surf stuff . . . I’m open to anything. I got a Dixieland song on the new record. It’s more about original music. I used to say original American music, but it even goes beyond American music, because I like certain things from other countries that I am interested in. It’s just music, and I think we’re at a time now when labels don’t mean anything anymore. In the seventies, it meant something, because everyone was saying, hey, where’s our country music going? It’s been sold out. Well, that was a long time ago, and it’s been sold out for a long time. It’s been gone for a long time. It’s been a long time since I have turned on the radio and heard a country song, I don’t know about you.
Down here in Texas on KIKK, they changed formats. They play Dave Matthews along with the country. And you happen to be doing some shows with Dave Matthews this summer.
Yeah, anything goes. It’s all just music now, and I think it’s great. Yep, I’m doing some stuff with Dave Matthews, several shows. I played with the String Cheese Incident the other night. They’re great. I had a great time with them.
But if things have gone downhill for a while and there’s nothing exciting . . .
It’s not necessarily downhill, it’s just become. . . . Everything is just a distraction. You might hear a good song here and there. But there are so many distractions that it might only be on the radio for a few days. I don’t know.
People might wonder why you would play with Matthews or Stone Temple Pilots if you didn’t think their music was exciting.
That’s the whole idea. You take something that might not be exciting and make it unpredictable, therefore exciting. The whole idea of Junior Brown and String Cheese Incident playing together is exciting because it’s different. I’m different, and they’re different, so you put the two different things together and you have even more combinations. It’s all about combinations, how you present something that is exciting. If you want to get up there with your big belt buckle and tight pressed jeans, and you have five guys up there who look like they pulled the same clothes out of the same drawer and they’re all singing the same kind of song, they’re all whining through their noses and breaking their voice in the same spot, it’s predictable, right? It’s predictable. And you know, maybe some people find that highly interesting, but I think that the consensus is no, we want to see something more unpredictable and more creative. And that’s what I’m trying to do.
But now there’s a big underground of No Depression bands that are called alt-country bands, or bands that are returning to stripped-down country, including well-known bands like Whiskeytown and Son Volt. Is it really an honest move, or really just about people seeing an opportunity and grabbing it?
Yeah. It’s an opportunity, because I don’t hear any country coming out of it. Maybe there is, and I haven’t heard it. What I’m hearing is like folk rock. What they’re returning to is more acoustic-based stuff. Maybe that’s what they think they’re returning to. I don’t hear any country music coming out of those people. That doesn’t mean they’re not doing quality stuff, but I don’t hear any country.
Do you think that good music will always rise above flashiness or market trends?
I think honest music will, no matter if it’s country music or whatever, as long as it’s honest. I think that’s what they should promote that stuff as, say it’s going back to honesty rather than going back to country. Because there’s no going back to country. Those people aren’t hillbillies, and they shouldn’t pretend like they are. You got to be real; you got to be who you are. If you’re a college kid, you gotta say you’re a college kid because you sure can’t lie about it. It doesn’t work [laughs]. You can’t hide. You gotta be what you are. And if you say you’re country, and you ain’t country, you’re in trouble. That’s how I look at it. Even hillbillies don’t want to be called hillbillies. They want to drive their pickup trucks and spit Beechnut and chew, but they don’t want you calling them a hillbilly. They want to feel that they are just as sophisticated as you are. So what do they do—they go out and listen to rock music, outdated rock [laughs]. They don’t want anything to do with country music because it’s been gone for so long. They don’t want to act like Grandpa Jones or . . .
Hee Haw.
Exactly. So you’re trying to bring back something that is like 1950s rock; you really can’t bring it back. It will always be a parody of something that is gone.
You’ve said the thing is to listen to a Louis Armstrong record in a new way.
Well, you don’t listen to it in a new way. I was talking about playing it in a new way. It was about interpreting it. If you are going to play an old song, for instance, you add your own thing to it, and your own thing should define you. And what should define you should not be an imitation of the past. For instance, I did this Dixieland jazz thing with horns on the new record. I didn’t call up a trombone player; I sat and I learned the trombone part on the steel. I’m doing a traditional song in a traditional way, but I’ve taken a new idea and put my Junior Brown thing on it. So, it has some originality. Yes, it’s an imitation, but not a total imitation; it’s more of an imitation as far as paying tribute to something and adding your own thing to it than just imitating it.
Although there is also a horn section on it, you’re playing part of the old horn part?
I am playing the part of the trombone on the steel, which is a different idea. It’s original. So if I were to hire a trombone player and say, okay, play exactly what’s on this record, and tell the other players to play exactly what’s on the record . . .
It’s copycat.
Yes, it’s copycat. Anybody can do that, that’s why I’m saying you can use the old ideas, but add something new to them, so make it fresh.
You were just on the Chris Isaac Show, and have been on the X-Files, so do you ever think of yourself like John Doe from X, who has both a music career and bit parts in movies and TV?
Just whatever can promote what I’m doing. The more I get my faith out there, the more that I can sell records and things. I do it as a promotional thing for myself. I’ve been fortunate, like in the commercials and things, that I try to promote products that I’m not ashamed to promote.
Lipton ice tea, the Gap?
Yeah. I get to be myself. I get to have the guit-steel and be my own character, so I’m promoting myself. It works out.
You played the Smithsonian Institution Guitar Seminar. Did you ever imagine that a kid from Kirksville with a busted two-string guitar would end up there?
I appreciate the accolades.
They aren’t what you live for, but when you get them, they’re nice, you know. I like to be appreciated because it shows that people are listening.
That a lot of different people are listening.
Yeah. It’s important because you have to try to reach all the people. I always had the dream, I always wanted to be a famous musician, and I always wanted to be good, so it helped. I hope I’m good [laughs]. If they don’t think I’m good, I’ll still believe in myself, but it’s nice when we agree.
People say your success was driven by videos like “My Wife Thinks You’re Dead,” which was number one on the Nashville Network and won the Country Music Association Award for best video. Do you agree?
I don’t know. Nothing is going to stop me, but everything that helps, helps. Every little bit that you can get. Certainly it woke up Nashville to who I was. How significant that is, I don’t know. I take the fans where I can get ’em.
As you head towards fifty, are there things you want for your music other than a bigger audience?
Oh, I think just a bigger audience and hope that it’s always increasing. I haven’t had a record out in two years, and my audience has diminished a bit. I’m still packing them in, so as long as they like the music, and I come up with fresh ideas and keep the music going, that’s enough. It will be interesting to see where music goes these next few years. It’s changing so fast, and it’s nice to know that I’m still around; there are a lot of artists that started out when I did with their success and record deals, and now you don’t hear from them anymore.
They float away.
Right. A couple of videos and they’re gone, or a couple records and they’re gone. So, I’m glad I’m not one of those and hope to have that kind of longevity like B.B. King, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, and a lot of the greats who worked until late in their years and came up with fresh ways to reinvent themselves.
Bruce Springsteen once told a reporter that he didn’t work in a factory, he couldn’t work on cars, but he could write a song. That’s who he was, but once in a while he had to take a step back, because if he lost the ability to do that, then there might be trouble. He couldn’t take such a thing for granted.
That’s very good. See, most musicians don’t think that way. They just say, oh, wow, here’s the party and it’s never going to end.
So you have some forethought?
I’ve seen a lot of guys come and go and figured out a lot about how that works before I became successful. So by the time I did, I didn’t squander anything and was very careful about how I handled it. Because I know it’s something you work on, and once you get it, it can be fleeting, so you try to milk it for all it’s worth and try to respect it. You respect it as any other business. Look at the Koreans, or the people like that, foreigners from any country that come over here and have nothing when they start, then work and work and work, then get enough to buy a little store or little business. Then they become a little more successful, maybe they buy another business. And you work your way up, and pretty soon you are self-sufficient. I mean they’ve always been self-sufficient, but they become successful. And that’s how it is with music. Tanya and I started this thing from nothing; we were living in a tent for a while. We built it up, and we cared for it. We don’t take it for granted at all.
People call you a traditionalist in terms of your music, but does the term carry over in terms of how you feel people should try to live—that people should be at one with what they do and love what they do?
I don’t tell other people how to live. I think it’s important in music. You go into a hotel and you say, “we’re musicians,” what rooms are they going to give you? They are going to give you the same ones they give to construction workers because they think you are trouble. Why do they think you’re trouble? Because musicians have brought the name down. They have brought the name of being a professional musician down. And that’s too bad. As far as what we do, we’ve got our system, and it works for us. We just try to do the best we can.
Deke Dickerson: Look Back and Wink
Originally published in Left of the Dial.
Dickerson is the alchemist of American roots music who easily blends hiccupy country with sawdust twang as well as lean rockabilly with jump blues and sly doo-wop. With untrammeled sincerity and easygoing panache, he is a kind of jukebox-made-flesh, a fountain of song that doesn’t fossilize the past; instead, he injects the past with fresh blood and enticing humor, wit, and honesty.
You’ve said that the first two shows you saw were Willie Dixon and Bill Monroe, but do the impressions of those shows stay with you?
Yeah, totally. The thing is that I think I essentially play rockabilly, but as a whole I don’t listen to that much rockabilly. I listen to a lot of country, old R&B, jazz, blues, and stuff like that. Sorta just like the old guys in the 1950s did, who weren’t really listening to rockabilly when they were making rockabilly. There were a lot of deeper influences. I’m really happy in that regard—that I was where I was during that time and could see guys like Bill Monroe and Willie Dixon.
In Missouri?
In Columbia, Missouri. There was a great club that’s still there called the Blue Note, but it was at a smaller location then, and they used to get all the acts that would come through St. Louis and Kansas City. I mean, I saw everybody.
Do you feel that the Midwest had an entirely different vibe than the coasts or the South, so when you went to California you knew you came from a very different place?
Oh, totally. I’ll just skip to one sort of specific thing about it. I agree with you that it’s a different frame of mind. In California, there was this thing with bands where one minute they’d be in the garage, the next minute they’re picked up by major labels and have videos and big promotion, then the next thing you know the band would just quit. But where I come from in Missouri, no one gets record deals. Nobody even gets paid shit for their music. To me, the idea of playing in a band and getting paid for it was an amazing idea. When I moved out to California, there were people who were essentially getting handed gold bricks on a plate, and then they’d complain about it.
When you’re in a bar and hear James Brown or Johnny Cash, the music transcends musical categories, and you want to be like those artists. You don’t want to be pegged as a rockabilly guy, but it happens anyway. How do you get away from that?
That’s a good question. There’s a pretty amazing rockabilly network across the U.S. It’s a real underground sort of thing. A band can exist for years and years by touring with a cult following, but you know, it only goes so far because those people don’t really like anything other than rockabilly, you know what I mean.
So when you do bluegrass, they veer away?
Well, with this band here, we do rockabilly, country, jump blues, some surfy stuff, and Link Ray 1960s-sounding garage stuff. I know a lot of times the real hardcore rockabilly types don’t really appreciate it that much, but to me it’s not bad music. It’s not like I’m wearing bellbottoms and playing with wa-wa on my guitar. What I’m doing is good music.
From the very beginning of your career, what is the one thing you think you have been consistent about?
The thing is, I don’t think I’m that good of a guitar player, I don’t think I’m that good of a musician, or singer. When you hear people play rockabilly, and they overplay it, they bring in seventies licks, and they bring in flangers and choruses, it’s just inappropriate stuff.
But what about Brian Seltzer, who seems to lean towards a little bit of that tendency?
I’m not going to get into Brian Seltzer.
But he is bringing nontraditional stuff . . .
I’ll say he’s a phenomenal musician that goes for the most cheesy element. It’s got a real cartoony sort of angle to it.
But does anyone who plays rockabilly, including yourself, get lumped into that caricature? Eventually, if you stick around long enough, do you outgrow the niche?
It’s hard to say. I’d like to think of myself as, o
h, I’m trying to think of the word, either you’re an innovator or a regurgitator. I don’t think of myself as a regurgitator, like redoing a perfect 1956 concert you could have seen.
But don’t some people want that?
Oh, absolutely.
So, if you’re disappointing people, it’s because you are not a perfect reflection of what they want?
It’s hard to say what people want, especially with this band. Because one night we’ll be playing in front of the whole alt country crowd, and they’ll be disappointed that we’re doing rock ’n’ roll. Then the next night we’ll play in front of a bunch of Social Distortion rockabilly greasers, and they’ll be bummed out that we’re playing country.
You feel it was a positive experience?
Yeah, because literally every night for three months we would go out in front of huge angry crowds—you know, people who were pissed off that they had to sit through an opening band. Then we took the stage, and it was like, “Who are these fucking guys on stage? I want Mike Ness on stage.” You know? But they ended up going crazy. Every night we won them over.
What was the nicest thing Mike Ness said about your band?
The very last date we did with them, at the end of the night he always introduces his band, and he said, “Let’s hear it for Deke Dickerson and the guys, they did three months all over America in a van, and that takes balls,” or something like that. I thought that was pretty cool.
What is it about roots music that turns on punk kids?
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