Q and A: Ruyter Suys (Nashville Pussy)

By PAUL SOUTHWELL

HARD rock music fans in this country with any street cred would be familiar with Nashville Pussy, as many a beer drenched, energy filled live show will see their name crop up. They’ve toured here several times, leaving a wake of dropped jaws in their wake and most recently participated in the final shows at the notorious post-gig CBD venue Frankies Pizza. They are now returning with legendary band The Supersuckers in tow on the aptly coined Superpussy tour.

Formed in Kentucky, fronted by the husband-and-wife team of Blaine Cartwright on vocals and guitar, alongside the unbridled stage presence of lead guitarist Ruyter Suys channelling AC/DC’s Angus Young, Nashville Pussy will deliver the goods and do so in spades. We spoke to Ruyter recently to get the lowdown on the incoming hoedown of doom.

Hot Metal: Hello, you’re coming back to Australia again.
Ruyter Suys: “We are indeed. That’s it. Just. Just dive right in, huh?”

HM: Yeah, why not? How was the Frankie’s Pizza venue last ever show?
RS: “Oh, how was Frankie’s? Frankie’s was historical before we even got there, man. And then we played. Have you been to Frankie’s in the past?”

HM: Yeah, it was an intriguing environment.
RS: “And a lost weekend in there one night. I think it was the first time they ever put a barrier in. In the history of Frankie’s. They put a barrier between the audience and the band about an hour before fucking stage. Because people were just, you know, they were just falling in that direction, just continuing to push that way. It was for everybody’s own good.”

HM: It was a venue with low sight lines so when it gets packed, yeah. You’re just there, listening.
RS: “But I think that night was so crazy. People in line thought they saw the fucking show, you know, as we had people telling us how great we were and what a great show we put on, when we hadn’t even hit the stage yet. So, I have a feeling a lot of the memories of that show are made up.”

HM: There’s plenty of that around, such as when Nirvana played the old Phoenician Club in Sydney, and ever since then, every man and his dog says, “Oh, I was there.”
RS: “Everybody who saw the fucking Sex Pistols in the United States, when I think there were 10 people at the show in Texas. And I’ve met at least 50 so far.”

HM: Yes, it’s odd. So, you’re touring here with The Supersuckers. Have you played with them before?
RS: “We’ve played a lot with those guys. It’s been many years since we’ve actually done a tour with them. But yeah, we’ve toured Europe with them, when we toured with Motörhead. One of the first big tours we did with Motörhead. Maybe it’s the second tour we did with Motörhead. Motörhead allowed would allow us to pick the opening band. So, we picked them, and it was phenomenal having them out there with us. They were just beside themselves, getting to do that every night. At the end of the whole tour, Motörhead finally invited The Supersuckers into their backstage, because they didn’t up until then, and Supersuckers were fucking pissed, man. They’re like, ‘what the fuck, man? You guys are in there drinking. God damn it. We want to hang out with Lemmy’. Finally, on the last night they bonded over Thin Lizzy and that was it.”

HM: Nice. It sounds like it’s pretty diplomatic thing of Lemmy to let you choose a band.
RS: “Yeah, I think he just didn’t want to bother with what’s going on. I mean, we chose. We chose for them Reo Speeddealer, a great band out of Texas area, and then a band called Lucifer that comes mainly from Sweden. It was an honour to be able to pick our friend’s bands and get them in on it as well.”

HM: Excellent work. So, are you planning on a new album anytime soon, or has the industry kind of tanked in that regard?
RS: “Well, the industry has not really ever dictated to Nashville Pussy what the fuck we’re doing. We’ve always rather independent. Even when we should have been dependent, we were still acting rather independently, like just kind of doing our own fucking thing. So, it’s business as usual as far as we’re concerned. We’re actually planning on going back into the studio in February. We’re not quite sure yet what we’re doing, but we are recording. We know that, and maybe we will be shopping it around to labels. We’ll see if labels still exist, whether they’re still interested in actual music.”

HM: Yes, it must be challenging times.
RS: “But, like I said, we’ve been doing this ourselves for so long. If they want to join in on the party, the more the merrier. And if they don’t, we’re fine.”

HM: Yeah, I imagine so. I don’t really want to go down this rabbit hole. But streaming and all the rest of it, it’s just fucked for artists.
RS: “Yeah, it’s really fucked. There’s that thing that’s floating around the Internet right now where they’re like, remember the year that Cars came out without CD players? I realised they just fucked us right there. I didn’t even think about it. But that was like a massive fuck you to the music industry, instantly. But you have to own thumb drives for music so welcome to the future if nobody buys music anymore. I didn’t even think about that.”

HM: So, maybe Lars Ulrich had a point when he was attacking Napster.
RS: “You know, everybody always attacks the new medium. There’ll be a new way, you know, there’ll be another way. I don’t know what it is, but I love the fact that music is free and Spotify, evil as it is, has a fantastic, really hard-to-compete-with platform. Their platform is really well done but I don’t think it’s so well done that they should do over the actual product. It’s like going to a restaurant and not paying for the food that you’re cooking.”

HM: But what gets me, though, is that the whole VIP things that they’re now flogging everywhere where part of the VIP experience is first in line for merchandise.
RS: “I don’t know if you saw Taylor Swift on this last tour of hers. She had days in advance set up for the Taylor Swift store. Not only were you there for the night of the concert, and you probably came in from out of town, so you stayed the night before and the night afterwards, but you came a day early, so you get four hotel rooms. The economy of that woman is just staggering. It’s amazing. They set up a whole store so you can go shopping first. Reportedly, each individual spent something $1300 to have the Taylor Swift experience. That’s not even VIP. That’s just what they spend. Amazing, man. I don’t want to listen to your music, but, fuck, wow.”

HM: In light of that, when you had a Grammy nomination [Best Metal Performance for “Fried Chicken and Coffee” from debut album, Let them Eat Pussy], did you find yourself rubbing shoulders with, I guess, power players and having a good laugh?
RS: “We did, yeah. It was pretty funny. But we still managed to find some people who rocked in that scene, thank God. We were partying with Brian Setzer from Stray Cats, and that was pretty badass. I remember the Bar-Kays, an old Memphis soul band were playing, then another band from Nashville called BR549, was also at an after party. But we wound up at Tone Loc’s house, the Funky Cold Medina guy. Why the hell are we here? I remember Courtney Love was there, as was the singer from Stone Temple Pilots [Scott Weiland], and our drummer [Jeremy Thompson] got into some kind of pissing match. Our drummer, who thought that everything was an eighties movie, jumped into the pool with all his clothes on, in his Grammys outfit, and started splashing all these people. I think he thought that if he jumped into the pool there, everybody would jump in the pool. But he jumped in the pool, and then security took him out of the pool. So, I knew he might have rubbed a few shoulders, and then rubbed them the wrong way.”

HM: Ha-ha, now you’ve just reminded me of sampling Van Halen. Moving on, what can we expect from the set list?
RS: “We’re going to do some deep cuts. I’m sure we busted out some good stuff on our last European tour, so we are a well-honed, oily machine, right now. For the last tour was we played every fucking night for six weeks, save four nights.

HM: Are you still throwing in some cover songs, such as a bit of AC/DC?
RS: “I don’t think we have any AC/DC right now.”

HM: You have to do it in Australia.
RS: “I mean, we’re going to be out with The Supersuckers so there’s a good chance that’s going to happen.”

HM: It has to be Bon era. It’s got to be the seventies stuff.
RS: “Yeah, well, of course. Of course. Bon. Maybe we’ll also do a Stevie Wright cut.”

HM: “Evie”. All parts of the song; one, two, and three, as the opener.
RS: “‘Evie’, yeah, do the whole thing, man. That’ll be great. Yeah, that would be the opening. Other than I would just watch everyone leave. Ha-ha. We might play a Rose Tattoo cover.”

HM: Indeed. So, what got you into Gibson SG guitars?
RS: “It was kind of by accident. I learned how to play on a Telecaster, and do I still have that? I don’t think I even had it. When we started the band, I bought it from our amp guy, and it was my first SG, and he was one of those super geek, amp dudes who can only talk electronic things. He wasn’t very good with humans, and he tried to make this guitar into some kind of robot, and he had put a Kahler whammy bar and a locking nut on the top. He had sealed the fretboard for some strange reason; it was a method to all of his madness. But it was a really hard guitar to rock. It didn’t want to rock. So, finally I had him, lock the whammy bar, because I didn’t need that. Took the whammy bar off and just locked it in place and I had him remove the lock nut at the top because if I broke one string, all six strings would go out of tune, and I would have to stop for 40 minutes. So, one string break. I mean, I could do. I could change the string during the song, but at that point in time, it took an hour to retune everything, and it did not want me to rock this thing until I had him tweak a bunch of shit. Once I got it tweaked, that’s when I discovered the power of a Gibson SG, and that’s honestly when I really started getting into AC/DC. And then AC/DC started making sense to me. I’d never really indulged in it before, and then once I had the SG, I figured out why Angus walks the way he does and all that. Everything started to make sense.”

HM: Wow, so you didn’t gravitate towards the Gretsch guitars that Malcolm Young favoured?
RS: “No, but it was on my list, man, definitely. Blaine doesn’t know it yet, but I got him a Gretsch for Christmas, a streamliner, but it’s very beautiful, with a little sparkle on the finish. Quite sexy.”

HM: Nice. Are you going to bring it on tour?
RS: “Maybe. We’ll find out. He doesn’t know he’s got it yet.”

HM: Point taken. But who puts a Kahler locking system on an SG? You just don’t.
RS: “I mean, that tech sealed the neck too, which is the weirdest thing, because it is wood and needs to breathe. Put this coating over it, thinking that somehow this was going to do something to it, and so with playing, it just wore it off, thank God. But I left the Kahler on there because there was something in my brain that thought the amount of metal on it made it ring out more.”

HM: To give a bit of sustain…
RS: “Yeah, it was something that was maybe more of a placebo thing that I didn’t want to remove it, thinking that it had something, with this extra hunk of metal. Plus, it weighted it down this way, so it’s more balanced. But it was definitely like a Frankenstein guitar in a way, with the amount of that that guy had done to it. At one point, I was brand new to SGs, and it had the switch. And I’d hit it to switch to the neck pickup. And I was saying, ‘Man, I don’t like that sound. Can we just take the neck pickup out? Can we just take the switch out?’ He said yes, and then I asked, ‘Can we just take these knobs out?’ He said, ‘Yeah, we can just hardwire it on 10 if that’s the way you like the tone.’ All I want is volume knob, nothing else. I didn’t know if it was possible, and this is, you know, my first real professional guitar. So, I just went to the volume, and I figured this would be for a little while. But I’ve done it to every single one of my SGS since then. I’ve pulled out the neck pickup, just played with the bridge pickup, and pulled out all the knobs. I just play with the bottom knob. That’s it, the simplified thing.”

HM: It’ll be down to two strings soon. Do you have a similar approach to amps?
RS: “Yeah, I mean, we’re very loyal to our gear and we kind of don’t fuck around. We just stick with the best. As opposed to saying, ‘This is exactly like a Marshall Plexi.’ It’s not.”

HM: Yeah, I understand. The funny thing about amplifiers now is that everybody’s going for the Kempers, and digital gear. That’s all well and good, but you want that feel the air moving, right?
RS: “Fuck, yeah. We played a show with Alice Cooper at the beginning of our last tour, and it was this big festival in Spain, and they were watching us play, and the guitar players were saying, ‘It’s so cool that you guys have got real amps.’ And I thought, ‘What the fuck do you guys have?’ I didn’t even think about it. I hadn’t even thought about it that they were playing with in ears, no monitors. Yeah, so if you run across the stage, there’s no sound. It’s just drums. I can’t even fathom that. If you run across our stage, you know, you run across a Motörhead stage, it’s like stepping in front of jet engine. Lemmy used to say that he didn’t want the audience to go through anything they wouldn’t go through themselves.”

HM: Wow. I recall a quote from Ted Nugent about his amplifiers on stage would kill small animals.
RS: “Oh, yeah, ‘I can kill a virgin rhinoceros at 50 paces’. He made fun of me for having a half stack. He said he uses a half stack to keep regular in the morning. I was like, ‘God damn, man, that’s so cruel.’”

HM: The only person that made a Gibson Byrdland rock.
RS: “Yeah, and he has them all as well, the motherfucker. It’s like he could there. You can’t even find them now because Ted Nugent owns them all.”

HM: Yeah, I know he’s a polarising individual, but for his seventies output. You can’t really deny that it’s pretty good.
RS: “I had to tell myself a long time ago that it’s not my job in this world to defend Ted Nugent. I’m not even sneaking in just a little link to ‘Stranglehold’ so people will just shut the fuck up. I don’t even do that anymore. I can just let Ted defend himself.”

HM: But do you find that with America being the way it is, that not everyone gets your sense of humour?
RS: “Of course they don’t get it. Jesus Christ, man. I don’t get it. But that’s their loss. You know, I’m still good. We’re still going to be making the same bad joke, so I’m not really in it for them.”

HM: That that probably works quite well in places like Australia and even the UK, were sometimes they’ve got that sense of humour.
RS: “France too, where they don’t even speak English as their first language, but there is something just to rock. You don’t necessarily have to understand lyrics or anything like that, but, you know, it’s just an added bonus.”

HM: Wow. In France, the hive of electronica and indie pop to some?
RS: “Yeah. But they’re massive Nashville Pussy fans. They love American music; they love pub rock. They just go fucking nuts, man. In all ages, we get children and grandparents and great grandparents. We get them all ages there. It’s just mind boggling.”

HM: Is there a particular track that you’re most proud of, from all of your albums?
RS: “There’s a song called ‘Stone Cold Down’, which I like an awful lot. We’ve never played it live ever. That one, and ‘Pussy’s Not a Dirty Word’. They’re both pretty special to me.”

HM: Cool. So, when do you finish an album, as such? Or do you just go in there and do it?  You know how some bands, they take months and maybe years to finish an album because they keep tinkering?
RS: “Well, it’s because they’ve been given a budget to tinker. If you don’t have a budget to tinker, you get the job done, you know? Guns N’ Roses should have had an awful lot less money. In fact, I played in another band called Dick Delicious and the Tasty Testicles, who were local heroes here in Atlanta. They put out about six or seven albums, and they were one of the funniest bands. It was just the crudest humour and mean. So funny that I had an opportunity to play guitar on a couple of tracks and when I did it, they liked it so much they asked me to join the band. I thought, ‘Well, these guys never do anything ever, so of course I’ll join your band,’ so I could just say, I’m in the band. They’re not going do anything, right, and then immediately they wanted to go on tour, and we wound up touring. The album that we put out was called A Vulgar Display of Obscurity which was was mixed and mastered by the guy [Bruce Butkovitch] who I think was number six of the guys who mixed that fucking Guns N Roses epic. But they came back to him and asked him if he would do it again. By that time, he was like number 12, and they were offering him just a tonne of money. He said, ‘No, I already did it. I already did it perfectly. You guys said no. So, I’m not doing it again, you guys’. That’s hilarious.”

HM: Oh, excellent. So, with the songwriting side of Nashville Pussy, is it that you go to the rhythm section and say, ‘Here, this is song to learn,’ or is it collaborative?
RS: “I mean, obviously we have a rhythm section that has impeccable taste already. Always have, of course. They generally don’t play anything we don’t like, so it’s rare that we will argue about their choices. We’ve never recorded anything with Dusty [Watson], our new drummer. He’s been with us for what, four years? So, this [next album] should be exciting because he’s had a very illustrious past as far as who he’s played with. I think he’s mostly known for playing with Dick Dale and then he plays with the Sonics now. In the 80s he played with Lita Ford. So, he’s on the back album cover. She’s grabbing the two guys and one of them is Dusty.”

HM: I’ll have to check that out. That’s brilliant though.
RS: “Yeah, it’s going to be interesting to see what he brings to the camp.”

HM: You’re going to add “Kiss Me Deadly” to the set?
RS: “Well, let’s not go there.”