"Hey look everybody, it's Jesus!"

Having repeatedly spit-up all over himself, continuously blown snot on the fans in the front row, ripped out copious amounts of his own chest and pubic hair, dry humped his guitar player's leg, his drummers head, plus numerous monitors and ripped through some of the most genuine rock'n'roll tunes in years, Col. J.D. Wilkes of The Legendary Shack Shakers was now having a Vision.

The Lord was speaking to the singer/harmonica juicer from some other dimension behind the overhead stage lights of The Abbey Pub, in Chicago, IL. The audience, lost in the stuttering two note riff of "Wild Wild Lover," rubber necked to get a peek, but this Vision belonged to the pupils of only the worthiest lamb in the divine shepherd's flock. Or maybe the lamb most in need of salvation.

"Alright! Let's hear it for Jesus! Hey, man, I really appreciate what you did." He was now down on both knees, hands earnestly clasped with a huge grin on his face, basking in the warm, gooey goodness of The Light. The band, not wanting to miss a syllable of the coming prophecy, took the volume down and awaited a sign.

"What?"

"What's that? Well, uh, I don't know Jesus. I mean, ya know, there's a lot of people here right now."

"No, no, I do appreciate it. No, I am thankful. But, come on, that was a long time ago."

"No-"

"I-"

"Well, no, come on now--"

"Oh yeah?!?" He ominously rose to his feet. With an accusing finger jutted out towards the balcony, his friendly smile faded into a gruesome frown. Whatever was being asked of him by Him was obviously too much for the pint-sized, card carrying Kentucky Colonel to bear.

"Well, let me tell you something, Jesus! I'm beginning to think there's two sides to every story!! Yeah!! Who needs ya?!?! I'm beginning to see the other side!!!

"I'm beginning to see-Satan!!! The band began to crank it up notch by hellbound notch.

"Satan!!!"

"Satan!!!"

"Satan!!!"

The Lord's sin-o-meter had been running in the red since J.D.'s earlier comment about women needing to "peel that twat back every morning like a cold grilled cheese sandwich." With this foolish-pride induced cheer for the opposing team, the notorious benevolence of The Carpenter finally gave out. Jesus was done asking this disgusting sinner to repent. He was now going to make this little gold-toothed runt atone!

"Sata---Wait!!! No!!! I'm sorry!!! I didn't mean it!!! Wait!!!!!!"

J.D. cowered and tried to hide from the Divine's wrath by crawling into the kick drum. But, he couldn't escape. As Joe Buck slashed away at his guitar strings, Pauly Simmonz dented the heads of his drums, and Mark Robertson tried to pull the strings of his upright bass off their plank, J.D. screamed bloody murder in an impotent attempt to save his soul. The psychobilly pulse of the music only fanned the flames of Hades burning J.D.'s flesh, but he couldn't get the hypnotized musicians to stop. All he could do was stick the microphone down his throat and howl.

Then, at the pinnacle of the madness, everything…stopped.

In an instant, the smoke cleared, the lake of fire receded, and there knelt The Colonel, arms stretched wide in a "Ta Da!" stance with a shit eating grin on his face.

Ol' J.D., that rascal! He was just joshin' around! He wasn't really feeling the torture of hellfire and eternal damnation! Naw, he's OK! What a card!

After the show, that crass, pompadoured little trickster from an hour ago, who'd delighted in throwing butt sweat covered paper towels at his fans, was long gone. In his place was an extremely intelligent, humble young man, with oversized horn-rimmed glasses, who stared at the floor as he spoke. Dressed in clothes ravaged earlier that night during an on-stage scissors fit, Col. J.D. lightly rocked back and forth trying to slowly sweat out the excess Red Bull in his veins.

"I only drank one tonight," said the 31-year-old former art student. "I had four last night, and I just couldn't get to sleep."

Maybe it wasn't the Red Bull, Colonel. Maybe it was the influence of another horned beast, known to favor the color red.

Dixie Tucker: There's a lot of comedy and acting in your live show. Have you ever studied theatre, or comedy?

Colonel J.D. Wilkes: No. Right before I went to college, I went to a kind of charismatic Christian school where they talked in tongues, jumped pews, had foot washings, and even had exorcisms. It was nondenominational, but it could be compared to the Assembly Of God or Pentecostal Church. There was a lot of charismatic acting going on there, I thought. I wasn't consciously studying the way these people behaved, but I think, in retrospect, it kind of influenced me. It was really fascinating. Most of my classmates were like, "We gotta get out of here! This place is stifling!" But I was having the time of my life (laughs)! It was this surreal atmosphere. And, I never tried to copy their behavior. In fact, I never spoke in tongues. I never really participated. I was just an observer, completely fascinated, and kinda liking it. I didn't know why. I played along as much as I could-did the alter call, got baptized and all that. I was very sincere about that stuff. It wasn't a joke to me. It was a wonderful education on how to dwell completely in the moment and let it flow through you. I look back on it now, and I don't know what the hell was going on there. I think it was a lot of frustrated, rural, farmer types, and talkin' in tongues was their form of scat or be-bop

DT: Did that give you any kind of a Jerry Lee Lewis complex?

JD: I did struggle with that, cause I want to be a Christian. But, you can't be Christ-like and be in a rock'n'roll band. What I had to determine for myself was that rock'n'roll was neither the Devil's music nor God's music, but man's music. Man being the balance of animal and angel, stuck somewhere in the middle, rock'n'roll is your therapy. It's what you gotta do to let it all out. To exorcise your demons. That's what it is for me. That's all I'm doin' up there. I'm not claiming to be an "artiste," or some 300 pound black guy playing my harmonica on the front porch. I'm not trying to be something I'm not. It's just my therapy, that's all. The best way I know how to fully experience the music I love-Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, those Chess sessions-and commune with it is to play it and channel it, if I can. Music so strikes me that I can't just be an audio file with a record player and my little records, and listen to them. I have to totally be inundated by it, absorb it, devour it, and spit it back out to fully appreciate it. The first time I heard it, my dad turned on the radio and it was "Mean Red Spider" by Muddy Waters. I was a little 15-year-old kid in the back seat, and I just started having these convulsions! I was like, "What the fuck is this music! I don't know what's going on with me!" I don't know too many people who experience music that intensely anywhere! But, I found them, and they're in my band now. These guys with me now, we all get collectively aggravated when we see that our music's dying. People are promoting it for the wrong reason. It's all about fashion and trends

DT: You grew up in Kentucky, right?

JD: Yes, in western Kentucky.

DT: Did you hear a lot of Appalachian music growing up?

JD: Yeah at bluegrass festivals and things like that. I also lived in Louisiana for six years, and I absorbed a lot of the Zydeco stuff that was going on down there. There'd be blues on the public radio station. My dad had a blues record collection that I inherited. So, I heard a lot of that first. When we moved back to Kentucky, and I was more of age, I was able to study the Kentucky music more. The bluegrass and the country stuff. But, I was always more into blues. Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Lightinin' Hopkins, Slim Harpo, Magic Sam, and those guys. Chicago music actually.

DT: What do you think the similarities are between blues, bluegrass, and country? It seems like radio stations and record companies, for whatever reasons, presented blues as being black music, while bluegrass and country were presented as white music.

JD:It's all passionate three-cord music with soul and fire. Soul is soul. I mean, if there's a white guy or a black guy, they both go through pain. Everybody goes through pain, everybody's got something they've gotta work out. Music, in its most primal form, is therapy for the people that play it and hear it and feel it on the most visceral level. That's why we don't really get off on the singer-songwriter stuff. It's all smartsy, pseudo-intellectual stuff, ya know. That stuff's good for people that don't have any problems. But I think you can sweat your balls off and get a lot of stuff out of your system listening to The Shack Shakers or Muddy Waters or bands that try to tap into that primal thing. It's a joyous thing, too. "Laughin' to keep from cryin,'" like Langston Hughes said. That's what its all about.

DT:"Cockadoodledon't" isn't actually your first album; the first one is "Hunkerdown?"

JD:Well, no, let's see. The Legendary Shack Shakers have been whatever I have put together over the years. I just called them all the same thing. I don't consider that to be really what I'm doing now. It's kind of like an old Testament/ New Testament. This is the first official record, I would say, of the form of the band that is the pony to bet on. Everyone involved in this record, in this form of the band, is on board professionally, emotionally, and spiritually. Where as, anything that came before this was just a bunch of college guys getting together, making music just for fun, and playing some frat parties. We got lucky a couple times, and Spinout records put out "Hunkerdown." But now, we're the official real deal.

DT: How long has this version of the band been together?

JD: This version has been together about a year and a half. Joe Buck is on guitar. Pauly Simmonz is on drums, and Mark Robertson is on upright bass.

DT: How'd you guys hook up with Bloodshot?

JD: We came up and played this show in Chicago, and a couple of the people from Bloodshot were there. They'd kind of heard of me and Joe Buck playing throughout the years in Nashville, and word kinda spread around. We put together this showcase for them, and everything worked out. It was a good show, the planets were aligned, and it was just an easy marriage right there on the spot. It was just one of those magic moments. Even though we're on Bloodshot, none of us have anything to do with the "alt. country" sound. Bloodshot's a great label, and there's a lot of variety on the label. For some reason it's only known for guys like Ryan Adams and that kind of "alt. country" stuff. We're going more for a Southern gothic, rock'n'roll thing with a lot of blues in it. We aren't interested in being confused with "alt. country" or "Americana" or the "no depression" scene.

DT: How would you define the term "Southern gothic?"

JD: "Southern gothic" can be anything from Flannery O'Connor to Jerry Lee Lewis. It's anything that depicts the reality of the South as this battleground of all the various influences. Whereas "gothic" is medieval fantasy, "Southern Gothic" is reality. You have: racial strife; a post-civil war emotional battle ground for what it means to be in the "new South;" the carpetbaggers and the scalawags; the church being replaced by television; the old church being replaced by the big, fat, swollen, greedy televangelist church that's more obsessed with the size of their skating rinks than they are about the condition of the souls of their flock. A lot of these things that helped to build the South, and create a lot of the music, all kind of drew out of the strife of trying to live in two different worlds-a black world and a white world, a modern world and a traditional world, an isolated world and an integrated world. All these different influences and factors, that still exist today-and now it seems to be even more intense-create strife, and more things to have to deal with. I think the best music comes out of there because of all of that. All these cross-cultural dynamics build up and have to be released through art. It's a grotesque thing, ya know. The works of Flannery O'Connor, "A Jesus haunted South," as she put it; the life of Jerry Lee Lewis; the show that we put on. It's a grotesqueness of God and The Devil. It's all of these cross-cultural dynamics and pressures that are on your typical Southerner, black or white, and the way that they deal with it, together, or apart. It's a very dark thing, but it's beautiful too.

DT: What's your take on the Confederate Flag being flown in the South today? There was all that debate going on last year about Georgia changing their state flag and removing the Confederate stripes. And a lot of bands, like Superjoint Ritual and Lynyrd Skynyrd, have flown the flag on stage. How do you feel about it?

JD: I don't know (pause). It's one of those things (pause). It's like, I got a Confederate flag on my lunch box, but I don't show it. I try to be sensitive. This one time a black guy came up to talk to me, and I just kinda turned the thing around. I don't wanna offend anybody. But, at the same time, to me, it's not about hate. It's about Southern pride.

DT: I've had other people from the South tell me, "It's Southern values. It's Southern pride." But don't those "Southern values" harken back to a time when blacks "knew their place."

JD: That's true. But, it's not cut and dry. I'm kind of a conservative, Christian guy. I'm more of a "states' rights" kind of guy. But, when states' rights trample civil rights, that's where I draw the line. I think it [the Civil War] was a war about states rights. I don't equate the Confederate flag, or the Civil War, completely with slavery, although that was the most intense issue surrounding that struggle. That had to go. I still tend to distill things down to the local level. The long arm of the federal government can't solve everything. And, maybe they should take the Confederate flag down. I understand that some people are offended by it. I would never put it on my car, or anything.

DT: 'Cause you never see any black people in the South walking around with a Confederate flag, and that's their home, too. Those "Southern values" apply to them, too.

JD: Oh, yeah. I mean, I understand, and I don't wanna alienate black people. That's why I'd never fly it. But, I'm not gonna be ashamed of it either. It's not a cut and dry issue, either. I don't wanna break it all down to a symbol. Like, "that's a good symbol," or "that's a bad symbol." I think that symbols can be updated and modernized, and have new meanings attached to them. Just like the swastika had a bad meaning attached to an old good luck symbol. You can diffuse the word "nigger"--I hate to even say it-but you can take that word and totally diffuse it. I think that's why blacks use it to talk to one another. You can take something horrible and reassign new values to it. You can understand that this horrible, awful, cancer called "slavery" was the major issue of the time, and, in retrospect, understand it had to go. But, you can also be a very proud Southerner and fly the flag.

I think white men fly it now because they feel that their identity was taken during the reconstruction. They feel like the Northerners came down with their values and started ridiculing them, and turning them into buffoons. And they didn't even own slaves. They were too poor. Those guys were right along side the blacks. It's not about race-it's about class. It's about the money. Maybe they feel like it has to do with the fact that we're the only people nowadays, in a politically correct forum, that can be completely lampooned on television. On any T.V. sitcom, you can't make fun of anybody except the white Southerner. So, it's their way of claiming back an identity they feel was robbed from them by not only the Northerners, but by the Southern scalawags and by the rich that profited off the war. That profited off their pain. That's why a lot of these stickers you see say, "heritage, not hate." Let's reassign this to mean heritage not hate, even though it's a Klan symbol even to this day. Anyone can take a symbol and totally ruin it for everyone else. This is one way that they can reassign a new value to it and try to feel like gentlemen again. Like, "What happened to our dignity? What happened to our collective pride as Southern gents?" I'm a Kentucky Colonel. That's one thing I like to trumpet. It's an honorary title that the commonwealth of Kentucky bestows upon certain artists, or scientists, or people who work in charity, who've done something admirable for the state of Kentucky. It's another way to reaffirm that the Southerner isn't a fuckin' hick. Even though we play up that shtick, it's all an act. That's humor. But, at the end of the day, you can still be a worthwhile Southerner and an American.

DT: Elvis got a lot of flack when he was coming up, for supposedly being a "white boy" playing "black" music. Do you think there's any kind of stigma still attached to the idea of a "white boy" playing the blues?

JD: Oh, yeah. They'll call you a "minstrel act" or something like that. The way I deal with that is through humor and comedy. Obviously, I'm some skinny, 100 pound, white kid form Kentucky. I mean, I'm not foolin' anybody! Like, there's these jokers in the blues scene that wear the Fedoras and the sunglasses, and the Hawaiian shirts. They affect a black accent without any humor attached to it. As long as you present yourself as a tragic comic character and not some sort of bad-ass-like, "if you don't dig my music, ya got a hole in your soul," that whole Beale Street, Fat Tuesday, funky blues attitude-it's not a minstrel act. All that New Orleans gumbo music is a bunch of white guys trying to present themselves as something they're not. We're definitely not a minstrel act. We're making fun of ourselves as hillbillies, too.

There was something called the Piedmont sound that came out of Virginia and North Carolina, the Piedmont area, that was a real cross cultural phenomenon back in the '20's. You had lots of acts where the black guys were playin' country music and the white guys were singin' from a different part of their throat tryin' to sound "black." But it wasn't done in a hateful way. It was the epitome of integration. It was the epitome of collaboration between the races and peace and understanding, that's what I think. That's when music is most successful-when it brings people together. But when it tries to be insulting or it tries to be an affectation, people can smell that a mile away. And that's why the blues goes underground and stays underground. Then you get these new bands that play blues, like The White Stripes. They don't market themselves as a blues act that plays the chitlin circuit. They're lettin' the blues influence their rock'n'roll. That's what we're trying to do. You get those bluesy hooks in there, and that's what people can really sink their teeth into. They start losing themselves in that trance. It's like a riff over and over. It's trance music. That's what people need to see every once in awhile. They need to see someone who can totally deliver themselves as the town pariah, the scapegoat, or some sort of archetypal trickster figure who can deliver.

DT: There's a definite sideshow vibe to the live show and the album artwork. What's the fascination with the old sideshows?

JD: Its exuberant, vibrant, eye-popping, Dixie-fried Americana. I love the spectacle of it. It was all about bringing people in, bopping their eyes out and firing their imagination. They knew it was all hocus pocus and humbug, but it was in a charming form. It's the grossness of Madison Avenue and our consumerist culture distilled down to its most charming era. This was an era when it was sort of entertaining, when everyone took it with a grain of salt. It was harmless, it seems. Today the same tactics are used to sell shampoo that gives you orgasms.

DT: Would you ever allow your music to be used in a commercial?

JD: I guess it would depend on what it was. Do you get to choose?

DT: Well, yeah. OK. Let's say Budweiser comes up to you and they want to use one of your songs. Or some deodorant company wants to use "Pinetree Boogie."

JD: Oh, I don't know. Ya know what? I need some money (laughs). Ya know, man?

DT: Who wouldn't you sell your music to?

JD: Any big corporate, Nike, bullshit. Anything that's not American, or where they use slave labor, and all that bullshit. Man, Budweiser can kiss my ass too. But, I gotta eat (laughs).

DT: So you'd prefer Ace Hardware or something like that?

JD: (laughs) I guess. Something more life affirming and good for people than alcohol. I sell enough alcohol doing what I do now.

DT: Why do you think a lot of young, punk rock audiences are getting into the older country stuff?

JD: It's passionate three-chord music. It's caveman music at its most primal. It's immediate and visceral. It gives kids a sense of place that they've been deprived of growing up in the post-disco, post-new wave, post-grunge era. They've been deprived of soulful music that speaks to their humanity. Our parents got that, but they turned their backs on it. The yuppies of the '80's started mass-producing schlock. There's been this snowball affect where we can't find what it means to be human anymore. The punk rock era kicked open the doors for anyone, talented or not, to have access to being a musician. Just like the old string band era. Anyone could play. It was a "y'all come," friendly, communal attitude. It was "Grab whatever you can and jump in! Have fun!" That's the whole gist of punk rock too. Punk rock didn't invent inclusiveness. That's been around a long time. But, thank God, it came along and started letting kids have access to guitars again, and making up their own minds. I think it took awhile for the right bands to come along like X, The Cramps, The Gun Club, and those types of bands. Kids started doing their homework, and it snowballed back again the other way. Hopefully the pendulum will swing, and we'll get back to where we were, at least somewhat. Then we'll have to burn that down again (laughs). You know, it's all a big pendulum swinging back and forth, but it's important that we touch base culturally every once and awhile.

DT: Were you into punk rock as a kid?

JD: No, I'm learning about all that stuff late in life. I'm having people make me mix tapes and educate me. I grew up in kind of a churchy home. I played hymns on the piano. I listened to my dad's blues records, and Dixie land records. I was one of these weird eccentric kids (laughs). We lived in a sub-rural environment where there weren't a lot of kids. I'd go to school and they'd be talkin' up that 2 Live Crew stuff, and I was like, "I don't wanna have anything to do with that!" It's funny, but it doesn't do anything for me. So, I didn't know what to do (laughs). I had to go find for myself. Thank God my dad had a great record collection, so that's what I went for. And I wasn't alienated towards my parents. I wasn't like [adopts snotty teenager voice], "Fuck you! Your music sucks!" I just needed something for my fix. Then when I heard that "Mean Red Spider" song, I was like, "Cool! I know what I'm doin' with my life now!"

DT: Has music from that era always been the stuff that appealed to you most?

JD: The '50's music seemed to be the perfect marriage of the old world aesthetic with the modern era. There was an optimism in it. There was a bounce and a pulse to the music. Before the soul started getting stripped out of things, and people started getting too big for their britches, too self important. The folk scare of the '60's ended up with everyone wanting to be little geniuses, instead of wanting to rock'n'roll. They wanted to be these tortured artists. I like Bob Dylan, but he went out of his way to play the harmonica bad. Like, "This is the way the black people play. The blues guys don't know how to play their instruments right cause they're all down here beneath me. I'm a Northern intellectual, so I'm gonna play it all down." No, no, no. Slim Harpo was a master of his instrument. And, Little Walter totally just took it over the edge. They knew how to play! If you're really interested in folk music and black music and country music, then learn how to play! It's all about downward mobility with these folkies and these singer songwriters, and these "alt. country" types. It's all about slummin' it. They're all trust fund babies. They were born with silver spoons in their mouths. All they know is putting on these airs like they're all like farmers. They're striking a pose. Why don't you lean how to play the real stuff, and maybe you can start channeling some of that same energy that you admire coming out of that music. That's the minstrel act! When you look at folk music and you think it's all quaint and real "po' mouthin'" and down in the gutter. Don't diminish it by trying to play it all down. Look at those suits they wore in the fifties like at The Grand Ole Opry. That was all about upward mobility-"Hey man, I've arrived! I'm not wearin' dungarees on stage anymore!" That's what its all about. Quit this masquerading with your John Deere hat like you're a farmer. Come on man! Of course I'm up there in like lieder hosen (laughs).

DT: What do you think happened to the "roll" in rock'n'roll? There are a lot of genres that have taken the "rock" part pretty far, like heavy metal, but they seemed to have left the "roll," the boogie, behind.

JD: Well, I think it was Keith Richards who said, "Rock'n'roll isn't from the shoulders up, it's from the waist down." I saw The Rolling Stones live, and I think they keep the "roll" in it. There are people throughout time who are lightning rods for these ancient tones that echo from creation. You can either channel it or you don't. It's not for everybody. A lot of people just over analyze. I think postmodern detachment is to blame. It's not a very communal world we live in anymore. People don't know their neighbors. There's not a whole lot of soul in our urbanized lifestyle anymore. People are out of touch with their humanity. Everything is becoming more industrial and less human. People aren't reminded of their blood, guts, and soul-the energy that animates us, the muck, dirt and earth that we come out of.

In your more agrarian areas, and eras, people are more tied to the earth. They were more in touch with their humanity. There's something about the soul and grit of that world that kept everyone more honest and communal and friendly. The church was still a factor in people's lives. Now, television has replaced the church as the opiate of the masses. Church used to be a place where people would go for fellowship and to coordinate their good works. It was a very humane thing. Now, Christianity is a joke. It's all this televangelist bullshit. They try to make the largest activity center, and it's all about how many people the can cram in. They're trying to modernize Christianity and make it hip. You don't have the old hymns anymore. It's all worship songs. It's all about a show of gaudy wealth. It used to be about the little ol' church in the wildwood where people came together to sing hymns. That might be an idealized interpretation, but I think that was a better way of living than what it is today.

Any institution - it could be the government, or the church, or schools - the larger and more conglomerate it becomes, the more debauched it gets at its core. It grows to a certain level, and it just starts to collapse on itself, under its own weight. It's built into nature for that to happen. Then it goes through a period where you have to burn off the old growth, and wait for the new growth to come. I think right now we're in a very swollen era of self-importance and postmodern detachment. It's gonna have to get to the point where we boil it all down to its roots again and break it all down to its core. It doesn't have to be a huge blowout. It could be like a massive undermining that goes on, culturally. I don't know (laughs). Maybe we can help.

DT: Bringin' the boogie!

JD: (laughs) Yeah, bringin' the boogie! Push out the funk!


For more info on The Legendary Shack Shakers check out: www.cockadoodledont.com