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AMERICAN SPEEDWAY

Interview with vocalist/guitarist Mike Kerchner and guitarist Lorraine “Dirty” McGurty

By Janelle Jones

About a month before the release of their sophomore LP, A Bigger Boat and a few days before leaving for a two-week tour, two of AMERICAN SPEEDWAY’s members (Mike and Lorraine) rang me up to discuss their blistering, wild, rock ‘n’ roll-heavy, punk album, how the band has become what it is today, and those yellow things needed to play old-school 45′s.

So Lorraine, you just joined the band last year.

Lorraine: Yeah, their previous guitarist, Johnny, decided it wasn’t for him and they put an ad out and I answered it. I tried out and had a couple auditions and I guess they just stuck with me.

Mike, what do you think Lorraine’s brought to the sound of the band with the new record and everything?

Mike: She’s brought a lot better solos than any of us would ever be capable of doing, so we have that in our pocket now. She brings a lot of shred in and a lot of flash and pizzazz. And the feminine touch that apparently we needed.

Has how you go about writing the music changed with a new member?

Mike: Not really. The new album – John did write some of the songs on there, so the new album is kind of a transition between the old band and the band with the new line-up. We’ve been doing some writing as far as stuff for a third album and it seems like it’s been going pretty much the same. Usually you just throw out a riff and try to figure out something along the line and see if it’ll be a good song or not. So there’s a lot of test period and whatnot like that. It’s going all right.

So you do all the lyrics?

Mike: Yeah, I write all the lyrics.

I have to say, I love “I Killed Laura Palmer.” The Twin Peaks tribute!

Mike: [Laughter] That’s one of the weird ones that only like five people at a show would know that reference at all, but they’re all really excited to hear a Twin Peaks reference.

I guess so many people are too young, like it’s before their time. I don’t know. What made you do that one?

Mike: I swear to god probably 80 percent of the lyrics are written about either movies or old TV shows. We have songs about Jaws, songs about Mad Max on there. I mean, there’s also songs about shitty local bars and stuff like that, you know, deep, interesting stuff. But I pretty much just watch movies and TV all day – the late 80′s and 70′s era TV and movies.

What about “Get Off The Cross”?

Mike: That’s about my favorite bar around us, it’s called the Prima Cocktail Lounge and it sounds classy when you say it like that, but it doesn’t sound classy when you describe it as a little crappy bar that’s attached to an hourly-rate motel. And it’s just full of the greatest people in the world. It also opens at seven in the morning.

Ohh, you know…! [Laughs]

Mike: Absolutely. It’s just full of like 80-year-old guys who don’t talk to anybody and just sit there and stare at their beers. They don’t give a shit about anyone else’s problems. That’s pretty much what that’s about. Kinda just like, shut up, no one cares, we’re all trying to figure out our own stuff.

So you started the band about 2007. Can you give a little background?

Mike: Before Lorraine, I wasn’t actually in the band to start with; it was Johnny, Bill, and Callahan just playing. And I hadn’t been in a band at that time for probably five years and I was getting the itch to play again, so I asked if I could just come over and jam and play rhythm guitar for whatever they were doing, just to fulfill that need in my life to play in a band. We started writing songs and we needed a singer, so we kicked around the idea of getting other people to sing, and then I eventually wrote lyrics to a song or two we were jamming around with and sang them. And then I guess I was just stuck with that part.

So did you guys know right away what you were going for or did it take a little time to get the sound?

Mike: They had about three or four songs before I even started. I’ve known John and Bill for a long time and it kinda sounded just like a progression of what they used to do in their old punk-rock band, really rock ‘n’ roll driven, SOCIAL DISTORTION driven. I listened to a lot of MURDER CITY DEVILS and LUCERO and stuff like that, so I brought that in to get a little more twanginess and story-telling. I guess when they collide it sounds like MOTORHEAD, apparently.

I haven’t heard Ship Of Fools in its entirety, but do you think there’s been a difference or progression from that album to this?

Mike: It’s definitely along the same lines, but I just think the songwriting and playing and all that is miles better than it was on Ship Of Fools. Ship Of Fools was a good, fun album, but it was kinda still a pretty raw punk-rock album, whereas this album has a lot of stuff going on if you pay attention to it. The band’s just gelling more than it did on the first album.

Lorraine you also were in bands before, like WENCH. That was from the ’90s…

Lorraine: Yup, 100 years ago.

Were you in other bands in between?

Lorraine: Yeah, I was in some other bands, nothing of note really, just jamming with friends. I also took a long break between playing and, like Mike, got the urge to play again. And here we are.

So for people who haven’t seen you guys live, what’s the live show like?

Lorraine: Chaos.

Mike: Yeah, it’s like a drunken circus. It’s really good. I’d have to say our live shows are one of the better points of the band. The album’s really good, but the live show is pretty energetic and very RAMONES-style set list of not really talking in between songs and just kinda firing them out.

I saw listed some of the bands you played with. MEATMEN, that must’ve been crazy.

Mike: Yeah, we did a week with the MEATMEN; that was a real blast. That was a complete grassroots punk-rock tour kinda thing where we were playing record stores, fire halls, small punk-rock clubs and those guys were great. We all got sick about three days into the tour which was fun. That was a really, really fun time, especially to be out with someone like Tesco Vee, who, from just myself, got about a million questions about the old Touch And Go era stuff. I talked his ear off, but he was always nice. I think at every show I cornered him and had a different question for him. He was always really nice about answering stuff and actually just a really nice dude.

Another thing I think is cool is that, like you did with the last album, you’re releasing this on vinyl [which contains the downloadable version]. Is that something you always wanna try to do?

Mike: That’s a lot of me. The last album, when we put it out, we put the CD’s in the vinyl packaging, so if you wanted a CD, you still had to buy the vinyl. Forcing kids to buy vinyl. I’m just happy that they still let me press the vinyl of the album, which is pretty awesome. That’s a pretty big thing for me.

Lorraine: The Ship Of Fools vinyl sold out, so people like vinyl.

So the 7” you put out also is “Howl (Ya Doin?)”

Mike: And the B-side was our cover of T-REX’s “20th Century Boy.” There were only 500 pressed. What’s really cool about them is they’re 45′s and they have big holes…

Oh! You need the yellow thing.

Mike: Yup, you need the yellow thing and you can also jam it in your grandma’s old jukebox or someone’s jukebox which is pretty cool. [Laughter]

Lorraine: We should’ve put a yellow thing in there with it.

Mike: We should’ve.

No, make people work for it.

Mike: That’s what we should’ve done: we should’ve sold the yellow things in addition to it and then we could’ve made more money on it. [Laughter]

Lorraine: Marketing genius.

“Plus the yellow thing.” Yeah.

Mike: We could have “The Yellow Thing Tour.”