DALLAS WITH BUBBA KADANE:
On Forming Bedhead:
BK: There were some cool people [in Wichita Falls], but, my personal experience was, well, I couldn’t stand school. I was fine in school — good in school, but I couldn’t stand being there, I couldn’t stand all the people. I got along with everyone there just fine, but I didn’t want to hang out with anybody afterwards but Matt. My brother had a similar experience and I think that, in a nutshell (not going into any other details or aspects), helped drive us to music, you know? Moving to Dallas was when we first started playing with other people. We didn’t play with anyone else except this one guy who we played with in Wichita Falls. We didn’t form any bands until we moved here. We formed a band with one of our good friends Mischo McKay. He’s the drummer for Macha. He formed Macha with his brother later on but I’ve known Misch since school together in ’79. He and Matt and I formed a trio band. Then, actually, after a while — I know you know who the Dixie Chicks are — do you know Marty?
EL: I don’t know the names but…
BK: Yeah well, she’s the fiddle player?
EL: Oh, Yeah. Okay.
BK: They’re all from here. She was actually in our band for a while with Matt, Misch and I. Crazy… We hooked up with Tench [Coxe] when he just wasn’t playing anymore. His band End over End had broken up. Peter [Schmidt, The New Year] had asked Tench to play in Three on a Hill and they played a few shows together. After Tench said he’d be into playing, we played this show at a club downtown. Matt was playing bass, Tench played guitar and I played guitar. We met Kris [Wheat] at the show. So we were talking to him and he seemed like a cool guy. So we go over and play this other show and we kind of just kept hanging out with him. At this point we were still trying to find what we wanted to do. We had just come off drums, bass, guitar and viola. Then Tench came in, we didn’t want to the viola anymore. So Matt and I were gradually forming the idea of three guitars, bass and drums. Originally we asked Kris… well, something came up in conversation about him playing with us, because we liked him in the short amount of time we know him. We asked if he wanted to come play and try it. He said he knew how to play guitar. He shows up and, we say, “Ok!” and we were going to start play a song, I can’t remember, it a was something like, “This one goes D A G A” or something, and he looks at us like, “What?” It turns out he couldn’t play a lick. At all. He was just bullshitting. So, he was embarrassed at the time. We laugh about it now. He admitted that he really wanted to play with us and we said, “Well, you know, practice and maybe something will work out.” At the time, the song “Bedside Table” was kind of taking shape. The basic parts were there. We were working on it. So Matt and Wheat were hanging out one night and Matt wanted to play drums and wanted someone to play bass. He said, “Hey Wheat, do you think you can play this?” Kris always had more rhythm than he had fingers or dexterity. Turns out he could play it fine. Enough to get by. And so that’s how it kind of gradually… he learned how to play bass learning those songs. He joined the band and we started playing and it worked out well. He has a good sense of rhythm. He could play drums. His love of music is bigger than his ability as a musician, and that counts for a lot. A lot of people are like that. So yeah, we started playing. Matt and I were kind of uh, being worked out in the previous band, and we learned a lot. In that ten years of going through all that, from keyboard/drum machine/guitar to playing in a trio where I’m the solo guitar and he was bass with drums, I learned what I liked and didn’t like, and because of that we learned how to fill space and work with space in that way. Then playing with a really great violin player. Marty of the Dixie Chicks, by the way, you may not know it but she’s an incredible musician. Maybe — and Matt would probably say this too — the best musician we’ve ever played with in terms of ear and ability. She’s really great. Marty’s background was in bluegrass, she used to tour with her sister and play bluegrass festivals. The viola player was a schooled player. Trini [Martinez] played in reggae bands… It was weird trying to get him to turn the beat around. He used to play snare on the one, and trying to get him to do the rock kick on the one, snare on the two was the opposite. Everything was turned around. And then Tench came from being a lead guitar player in rock bands. Hair down to here. Peter would play with his shirt off. They were full out rock bands. We had all these differences and experiences, and we all got along really well. Then you know, when we got to the point where Matt started playing guitar and Wheat was on bass, we realized this was it. All the songs we had worked on for the past four years, in my opinion, where they sounded weak before gained power from that setup. Plus it was unique, you know? We became something else than just like a band that sort of, you know, odd lineup with a cello or anything. It became something that we wanted and hoped to do. It turned out not to be that complicated but we felt like we learned a lot from playing with bowed string instruments. Those were the parts that Tench ended up playing. We still had that in our minds that sustained, bowed note melody line. So, we would try to get the guitar to sound like that. We were messing with tone and sustain and the right amount of distortion. I was playing some of those parts too. Later on there were the intertwining parts. A lot of what we have done since then was determined by those things.
