Kid Congo Powers has had a remarkable career in music as the noisy open-tuned guitarist of legendary outfits like Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Cramps and The Gun Club, but nowadays makes music with his own outfit Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds.
The band are about to head over to Australia to tour their fourth album La Araña Es La Vida, so we took the opportunity to chat to the prolific axe-man about his time with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, the formation of his own outfit, and the seductive Spider Goddess of Teotihuacan.
Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds’ La Araña Es La Vida is out now through In The Red Records, and you’ll be able to catch Kid & Co. touring across Australia throughout August and September, dates below.
Kid Congo, we’re looking forward to welcoming you back to Australia!
I’m excited to come back! We were there about a year and a half ago and mostly did the East Coast – Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Hobart – but this time we’re also going to do Perth and Adelaide, and we’re playing a festival in Darwin. So many people have told me that Perth is a really great rock ’n’ roll town to play, and every musician I’ve talked to who’s been there has said, “Oh, there are great shows there”, so we’re making the rounds this time!
For those who may not know about your current project, how did Kid Congo And The Pink Monkey Birds all come together?
I was recently speaking with the bass player and the drummer, the rhythm section, Ron and Kiki, and we realised we’ve been playing together for ten years. So it’s a long time, it’s definitely a world record for me.
You know, like everything, it just kind of fell together. I think it was just time for me to do something on my own. After The Bad Seeds and The Cramps I started collaborating with other people, but still there was always another lead singer, a strong visionary in the band. So when all of that was coming to an end, I was left thinking that I guess I kind of have to do it now, because there’s no one else to do it with, and no music’s going to get made!
It took a long time, you know. I first had a New York version of The Pink Monkey Birds that was very much an homage to New York music – kind of scronky and Velvet (Underground) and (New York) Dolls influenced. Then, when I got together to start doing it with Kiki and Ron and really tried in earnest to start something, I just wanted to have a band that was beats, noise and beatnik poetry. That’s exactly what I told the record company; I said, “I have this new band and I want to make a record, I want you to put it out,” and they said, “What is it?” and I said, “Well, it’s gonna be New Orleans and noisy guitar and beatnik poetry,” and they said, “Okay, where do we send the cheque?” (laughs)
It was a time that I also very much realised I wanted to put into use everything I’d learned from all the other bands, and try to harness that into one thing, because although people are fans of The Gun Club and The Bad Seeds and The Cramps, they’re very, very different bands. From the inside, they’re incredibly different, and so I wanted to find something that was my part in it. What did I bring to it? What am I going to bring out of it? My common thread through it – which turned out to be what The Pink Monkey birds turned into: New Orleans, noisy guitar and beatnik poetry!
It seems like it’s possibly the most fun you’ve had in your career.
Yeas, that was the objective. When we were just starting with this lineup, I was incredibly inspired by The Cramps’ last tour. It was in 2006, they played in New York, and I had not seen them for who knows how long, 12 years or something. I actually hadn’t even seen them personally in that long either, not for any other reason than we’d lost touch and they never tour – or if they ever did, I was always out of town when they were there.
They invited me to this show, and it was like I was seeing them for the first time. I had not remembered how incredible it is, I’m like, “Wow, it’s three chords, it’s three people and a singer, and it sounds like it’s from outer space and heaven and who knows where”. It’s the most momentous thing I’ve ever seen and heard in my life, and I just realise that it’s music that’s very simple, but it’s the people playing it, and what they’re bringing to it, and how it’s coming out of them that’s the important thing. And then I thought, you know, I’m part of all of this, I’ve tapped into this, I know what it is… Just relax and be yourself and let your freak flag fly, As Jimi Hendrix said.
Speaking of the freak flag and beatnik poetry, there seem to be some interesting themes on the records. I’ve been told there’s a “spider goddess, protecting the world of underground music”?
Well, the Spider Goddess, she’s amazing. We had a song which was basically a love song to the femme fatale, and I was starting to think of the femme fatale as a spider… the black widow, the kiss of the spider woman, it’s always a spider. As the fly, you’re lured into the web – but how wonderful is it to be stung by the femme fatale!
We had this song, and I started looking a little further, because I like to look further into these things and see what’s going on. I was looking at Mexican folklore, and we found this story about the Spider Goddess of Teotihuacan, which is the city of pyramids outside Mexico City, and she was the goddess to them. She protected the underworld, and she sprouted hallucinogenic morning glories that brought psychedelic visions to the people, and also created things that would scare people who were trying to get into the underworld – the wrong people.
So I thought, ‘You know, she is, for one, super badass. But two, it’s like what we do. Me and all of my friends, what we’ve always been doing: we’re just having visions, and we’re just trying to make sure that the music is good, and we don’t want people to mess with our music. We want to make the music we want to make, and there is no pandering.
That’s the thing with The Cramps and The Gun Club and The Bad Seeds – there’s never any pandering. There’s never any compromise of any sort happening, and I know them, I was with them, it didn’t even come into their thoughts. And so I just thought, that’s how a Spider Goddess is – she’s not going to let anything happen. And that’s what we kind of do: we have our hallucinations, and we make the best thing we can for our people in the city of pyramids.
It makes a hell of a lot of sense once you talk it through.
I thought about it a lot!
I can imagine – it’s a very rock ’n’ roll kind of theme, actually. On that topic, it would be remiss of me not touch on The Bad Seeds, and what sort of impact your time with the band has had on you.
I learned a lot about Australian slang.
Not all swear words, I hope!
(laughs) I learned it all living in Berlin, so it was kind of in a German accent. So Aussie slang with an Aussie, German and American accent mixed together. I heard a radio interview I did back then, and I was like, ‘What is going on!?’ I guess I’d been living there for about six years at that point, and I thought, ‘What is going on with my voice!?’
With the Bad Seeds, it was quite the incredible experience for me. It was very different for me. I’d come from The Gun Club and The Cramps, which were very rock ’n’ roll, very guitar-based, very much based on a twelve bar blues guitar kind of thing. We took excursions from there, but it all basically came from that. And so, going to the Bad Seeds, it was very eye-opening to me, and it was great because I had to learn how to do things that were led by the singer, or led by piano-based compositions. It was Berlin in the ’80s, so it was very experimental, which was really good for me.
I feel like I learned so much, and I think they picked me to be in that band for that reason, because I had an unusual style – I play in open tuning, and they appreciated that individuality in playing. And I had some good clothes! I’d been in London for a few years, so I was really excited to move to Berlin and be a part of that.
That was a great time to be in Berlin, and it was a time when there was still a West Berlin, still surrounded by the Berlin Wall, so it was a really special feeling there. It also was the first place I was where there was very close proximity and all the arts kind of met up – all kinds of music with dance, with visual art, with film – every kind of theatre performance and every kind of art mixed together.
You’ve said it’s really important for a band to think about that entire package, rather than just the music.
Yeah, it was very different coming from my rock ’n’ roll, so that really widened my palate a lot – it was a really great time.
Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds Australian Tour
THURS 18 AUG – Lighthouse Theatre, Darwin Festival, NT – Tickets
FRI 19 AUG – Mojo’s, Fremantle, WA – Tickets
SAT 20 AUG – Crown & Anchor, Adelaide, SA – Matinee and Night shows
WED 24 AUG – The Bridge Hotel, Castlemain, VIC – Tickets
THURS 25 AUG – Northcote Social Club, Melbourne, VIC – SOLD OUT
FRI 26 AUG – Friday Nights @ NGV, Melbourne VIC – Tickets
SAT 27 AUG – Caravan Music Club, Oakleigh, VIC – Tickets
THURS 1 SEPT – Oxford Art Factory, Sydney, NSW – Tickets
FRI 2 SEPT – The Triffid, Brisbane, QLD – Tickets
