by Kurt Orzeck
In September 2006, a band unfamiliar to the masses but beloved by fans of heavy underground music ambled onto the main stage at the Touch and Go Block Party in Chicago. Attendees could practically see a metaphorical curse being smashed, not unlike when one of their hometown baseball teams, the Cubs, finally won the World Series after 108 years. Scratch Acid, fronted by David Yow, broke the spell after fans of the little-known but highly influential band witnessed their cynical convictions vanish in thin air on that chilly evening.
To be fair, no one—not even the band members themselves—ever expected Scratch Acid to play again. The former Touch and Go band had previously promised to never reunite, but what took place made Hell freeze over, at least for an hour or so: Scratch Acid, a band whose demise led to the formation of the Jesus Lizard, left the crowd agog as they ripped into “She Said,” one of Scratch Acid’s strongest tunes. They played 14 more songs during that music festival celebrating the anniversary of their label, and their pitch-perfect performance was only outdone, arguably, by the set Steve Albini staged with his reunited Big Black.
Put simply, without Scratch Acid, the Jesus Lizard never would’ve existed, and so-called “noise-rock” might not have either, as both bands were titans in the world of punk-inspired heavy-rock. Ironically, neither band received its just deserts while they were in existence; in fact, there’s a strong argument to be made that the bands are bigger than ever now. That’s primarily thanks to younger acts inspired by Scratch Acid’s and the Jesus Lizard’s consummately unpretentious, yet artistic aesthetic that bucks fashion sense and even showmanship in favor of creating hard rock that countless other bands have tried to mimic to no avail.
The central difference between Scratch Acid and the Jesus Lizard in this decade is the same phenomenon that differentiated them in the first place. Both bands have played reunion shows in recent years (the Lizard much more so), and the latter band even released a new studio album last year, Rack, after 20 years went by. There is no indication that Scratch Acid is planning to do the same.
Additionally, the Jesus Lizard have always had more of a knack than Scratch Acid for embracing a reasonable amount of media coverage, likely due to their ample number of “reunion” shows and their new LP. While Lizard bassist David W. Sims and drummer Mac McNeilly rarely give interviews, Yow and Lizard guitarist are comfortable speaking with the press. That’s not so much the case with Scratch Acid; even though Yow fronted both bands, the other band members — Sims, drummer Rey Washam and guitarist Brett Bradford tend to keep a lower profile.
That equation changed a bit in the ’10s, when Bradford formed a new noise-rock/post-punk/psych band called Suckling in his Austin hometown. The quartet — which features Bradford on guitar, of course — slipped out a demo EP in February 2018 and then their proper debut — a self-titled full-length — five years later. Suckling still have just one LP at present, but in May of this year, they put out a most unusual double-single featuring two songs: covers of the Jesus Lizard’s “A Tale of Two Women” and “Too Bad About the Fire,” from the band’s poorly received major-label records Shot (1996) and Blue (1998).
Suckling’s decision to record Lizard covers was prompted by an invitation to participate in a Jesus Lizard tribute album, Blow, that will be released in Italy and on Bandcamp on October 3. Earlier this year, Suckling put out the two songs as a separate release around the time of their performance in late May at Caterwaul Music Gathering in Minneapolis.
In something of a godsend for Post-Trash, we scored an interview with the gentle, mild-mannered and sorely under-appreciated Bradford. Making matters even better, he told us that it was possibly his favorite interview to date. With that in mind, let’s dive into the all-encompassing conversation we had with one of the most essential formative guitarists in heavy underground music.
Scratch Acid on the set of Suckling’s “Sisyphus” music video
Thanks for chatting with me today, Brett. Scratch Acid has always been my bag, so it’s an honor to interview you. So let’s begin: Have you always been based in Texas?
Well, based, no. I was born in Dallas and moved to Salt Lake City when I was 12. I lived there until I was 14 and went off to military school. It wasn’t my choice, but my dad loved the place. His dad went there, he went there, my older brother went there, so I had to go. [The military school] was in Culver, Indiana. I did four years there.
As soon as I got out of high school, I moved to Austin, because I didn't care for Dallas. I still don't. Then the whole band thing started. Scratch Acid broke up in ’87, and my dad said, “If you want to go back to school, I'll pay for it. It was either that or get a job, so I went to Colorado State University in Fort Collins and got a degree in wildlife biology.
Then I decided it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I had a hard time in the hard sciences and struggled with calculus.
I withdrew twice, and the third time I got a B, However, then [I had to face] organic chemistry. I flunked the first semester, withdrew the next semester, and I was like, “Man, I'm never going to graduate.” I went to my advisor and said, “Hey, can I substitute ‘Indians of North America’ for organic chemistry? And he was, like, ‘Fuck no.’ You have to know organic chemistry.
So, I went over his head and met with the department head and told him I wanted to go back to Austin and play music again. He said, “Well, you know, everybody's not gonna be cut out for this.” I actually wound up getting an A and graduated, then went back to Austin and started playing music again.
You said you grew up in a military family. Did you and David Yow bond over that? He was a military brat too, right?
[Yow’s father] was a pilot in Vietnam and then a career officer after that. So he traveled the world. My dad was a World War II veteran, so we both had strict dads – but they were both cool dads at the same time. But I didn't enjoy military school; it was an academic prep school. I think that's what led me to the [rock and roll] lifestyle after I got out of high school. I was ready to not fold my underwear four inches across or be able to see my fingers in the tips of my shoes. It kind of sucked. I was in the [U.S.] Calvary, and I rode in Jimmy Carter's inaugural parade.
So, when you departed from that field, did you develop a more rebellious nature?
I guess. Because I graduated from Culver Military Academy, it was suggested to me that I could apply to West Point, especially since my dad was a decorated combat officer. I probably thought about that for two seconds. By that point, I really didn't want anything regimented in my life. I wanted the exact opposite. My younger brother, T – who, by the way, got me started playing guitar – had a friend from England, a kid named James Harrington, whose dad was a dentist that moved to Dallas for a couple years. James was from Sheffield and was very, very much a punk rocker. I discovered that music from James, my brother and their friend Mike. Later I went to a Ramones concert that made a searing impression on me. I was like, “Wow, this is fucking great. Maybe this is what I want to do.”
How old were you at this point, and what year was this?
I was 19, and summer 1979 is when I met James and discovered all this cool music that wasn’t on the radio. It’s weird to look back on it now, but punk rock – at least in this country – was discovered by word of mouth. It was hated by a lot of people. Then I went to [Western Colorado University] in Gunnison for a year, and I moved to Austin in fall 1980.
So it sounds like Ramones was the first band with which you really felt a strong connection.
Well, I didn't see Ramones for a while after I started listening to them. I had records by Sex Pistols, Clash, Buzzcocks, etc., but I hadn’t seen a punk concert. So, in fall 1980, I was at the college with my brother T, who was my roommate in the dorm there. We had a friend Rob across the hall who we shared our crazy new music with. One day, the three of us saw Ramones were playing in Dallas the next Saturday. It was a 12-hour drive over snowy mountain passes. We left Friday evening, drove 100 miles an hour through the night … there may have been some cocaine involved, but we made it to Dallas in about eight hours, slept a minute, saw Ramones blaze through their set nonstop and drove back to school, more safely, that Sunday. I think it was the most fun I’d had at that point in my life. So yeah, I was already way into music, but that was the first punk rock concert, you know, that I'd ever seen.
Do you remember what it felt like, entering that world?
It felt very free, very liberating. Before then, I liked Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and commercial FM ‘70s rock. Ramones were totally different. It was wild. I never really associated energy with seeing a concert before, from a spectator perspective anyway. I'd seen Aerosmith and Alice Cooper. They were both really great shows, but I was one of 10,000 people sitting in our assigned seats, watching and listening. There was no jumping around and engaging with the action with the band right there in your face. Going to a punk show, I felt a part of the whole thing happening around me.
My brother and I went to England in 1981 to visit our friend James, who had moved back there. We went to see a show. James and his crew took us to Bracknell to see a show. We invaded this train car out of London, and there was this group of punks, and chaos ensued. Somebody had a cereal box, and they were throwing cereal. The light bulbs got unscrewed. They were chanting shit and drinking beer in the dark. This kind of public display was unknown to me. The car was ours and it was out of control. It was great fun –except for the underlying fear of being put in a British jail. We got there, and the show was in a gymnasium and it was the Exploited, Discharge, Anti-Pasti and Chron Gen. The tour was called “Apocalypse Now,” and it was crazier than anything I'd ever seen.
At the Ramones show, people were pogoing and jumping up and down, and having a great time. But this place was much bigger and packed so tight, up to the stage. Everybody was pogoing, so you didn't even have to jump. The compression of everyone jumping up against you lifted you up off the floor. When the song would stop, everybody would run around and pick up badges off the floor. The game was to end up with more badges than you had when it started.
Badges? Like press badges?
No, little band pins that we wore on our jackets. Everybody, including me and my brother, were wearing leather jackets. It was summertime, but it didn’t matter. I still have [my jacket]. There's a bunch of tears and rips, and you can see stains on the lapels from where all the badges used to be.
[Bradford steps away for a minute and returns with a piece of clothing.]
This is my Scratch Acid jacket.
That’s badass.
The zipper’s lost some teeth, and it’s a bit of a tight fit now, but it actually still works. Also at England punk shows, spitting was very popular. It was raining so much spit that everyone's hair was wet with it. Everybody was swapping badges and bacteria. Kind of gross, but it was a lot of fun.
Scratch Acid, courtesy of Brett Bradford.
At what point did you find your creative voice?
I don't know if I still have yet.
With the regimented and structured upbringing you had, and being a guitarist, you must've had some sort of awakening at some point, no?
I think it was a lot of luck actually. I fell in love with punk rock, culture and music. When I first moved to Austin, I went to the local record store, Inner Sanctum Records, which had a poster board outside the door. I put up a flyer saying I was a guitar player looking for a band. The moment I literally pressed the tack into the cork, I heard a voice behind me saying, “We're looking for a guitar player.” I turned around and saw this little guy with an electric-blue, punk-rock haircut. And that turned out to be Chris Wing from a band called Sharon Tate's Baby.
Their claim to fame was being included on a list of outrageous punk band names that Johnny Carson read on The Tonight Show. They were a popular punk band in Austin. So I went and tried out with them, and that worked out. A few weeks later, we got a drummer, and that was Rey Washam. It all just fell into my lap; that band was my first real songwriting experience.
That band morphed into something called Jerryskids. There were a lot of bands with that name — one in New Mexico, one from Boston … probably a half-dozen or more. But ours was spelled with no break between “Jerry’s” and “kids,” and no apostrophe.
After a while Rey and I decided we wanted to venture out on our own. David Yow was already a friend. He would come to the Sharon Tate's Baby/Jerryskids shows. We’d see him playing bass in a punk-rock band called Toxic Shock. I think it was Rey’s suggestion, but we decided to get together and play and went to Yow’s house to practice. Unbeknownst to us, there was this other guy there who had a guitar already set up.
We were, like, “Oh, who's this? It was Yow’s roommate, David Sims.”
No shit!
He wasn't playing bass at that point. David Yow was. In fact, he wrote the [Scratch Acid] song “Cannibal” on bass. That might've been our first song.
That's my favorite Scratch Acid song.
Yeah. It's a lot of people's favorite.
What was your first impression of Yow?
Oh, we were good buddies even before we decided to play together. We’d go to all the shows and hang out. He was fun. He's one of the funniest people I've met in my life. There's a lot of things that sucked about [Scratch Acid] dissolving, but when I left to go back to school in Fort Collins, I [especially missed] laughing. Yow made me laugh, until my stomach hurt.
What’s the funniest moment that you recall with Yow?
I don't know. There were too many. It’s funny you ask for the funniest “moment,” because usually they were just that: a fleeting moment of outrageous humor that wouldn’t translate if I tried. He’s very quick-witted. Sometimes it was just a word or a facial expression or a weird noise in response to what someone else said or asked.
OK, here’s one that I don't think I’ve told anyone before. It was so long ago. It doesn't matter; it’s really an inside joke of sorts. We were playing in the Midwest, like Kansas City or somewhere. Back then, David used to drink a lot during the show, and then more after we played. This night there was an afterparty, so we went and hung out at the party, and he got just slobbering, shitfaced drunk. And this girl, maybe she thought him charming, maybe she was drawn to drunks, I don't know, but she was putting the moves on David, and he was responsive. Are you familiar with The Big Boys?
No.
They were one of Austin’s original punk bands, really great. The first funk-punk/skate-punk band. They're on Touch and Go too now, posthumously. You should definitely check them out. Well, their bass player was a guy named Chris Gates. and he's a big, burly guy and had really short hair. He could just as well have been an offensive lineman for the Chicago Bears. A nice guy, but he looked kind of intimidating.
I’d had a few beers too, but … that girl looked just like Chris Gates. Not just to me; David Sims, Rey and our sound man/fifth wheel Jim Chapman thought she looked like Chris too. David had his beer goggles on. A really top-of-the-line set of beer goggles. I was sincerely trying my best to talk him out of it. I said, “Man, this girl looks just like Chris Gates. You don't want to go there. You should just come with us or whatever.” But I could not talk him out of it.
He went off and had his adventure. I can only imagine what he thought about it when he woke up the next morning and saw Chris Gates' head on the pillow next to him. The look on his face when we got in the van to leave was priceless. It’s not at all funny that he had a night with a much larger girl with somewhat masculine traits, but the fact that she looked like a friend of ours, who we saw all the time, well, to the other four of us, it was hilarious. A gift that kept on giving. Sorry, David. It’s still funny though.
You got back together with Yow for Scratch Acid’s reunion set at the Touch and Go Block Party, yeah? I was there.
Yeah? That was pretty great.
Yeah. Did you have to get coerced into reuniting or were you all for it when the idea was proposed?
Well, we all love [Touch and Go Records owner] Corey Rusk. We love what that record company did for us. I think initially Corey asked if the Jesus Lizard would do it. I guess for whatever reason they couldn't, so Corey asked David about Scratch Acid. And I had been wanting to do it. I'd been wanting to get back together for something like that for a long time, but nobody else seemed interested until [the Block Party] happened.
And then everybody was like, “Yeah, let's do this.” It made sense because Big Black played instead of Shellac. Big Black, Killdozer, the Didjits, it was so cool to see my old labelmates bands again. It was surreal and fun. It all cohered.
And then you played additional shows, right?
We played one in Austin before Chicago, and then we went to Seattle afterwards. And we did L.A. in 2011. I don't know what the impetus was, but our booking agent, [David] Boche [Viecelli] of Billions Corporation, put it together. I think we played 19 shows from the end of 2011 into spring 2012.
But now your main focus is Suckling. How did this new project of yours originate?
I played in a band called Sangre de Toro for a dozen years with Max Brody and a host of bass players. The last bass player was Jeff Pinkus, and that introduction to songwriting made the band sound a lot different, so we changed our name to Areola 51. I really loved that band. We were only around for two or three years. We had a couple of CDs. That was a good band.
What happened?
Jeff went on to play in a band called Honky that he liked a lot, and he went full-time with them. They still get together for shows sometimes. After Areola 51, Max and I played in a band called Insect Sex Act for a few years, then that fell apart after Max moved to Seattle, and so I was band-less. Even before the end of Areola 51, I was a fan of, and going to shows of this band called Gorch Fock. They were popular, been on tour a few times and made a few records. They opened for Scratch Acid once, in Seattle, in 2006. Anyway, they asked me to play three or four shows with them, and I thought, “Yeah, I can see myself fitting in with this music.” Win Wallace was their bass player. He wrote all their songs.
Gorch Fock called it quits at some point, so I asked Win if he wanted to play, but he said he was moving to L.A. the next week to do his art thing. After two years, he moved back, called me up and said, “Hey, do you still want to play music?” I said, “Yeah, sure. I hadn't done anything for two years except for playing acoustic guitar, on the couch, for the dog.” I would rather play for my dog than play with people that weren't good friends of mine. Scratch Acid were, and still are, great friends. Almost everyone I’ve ever played with were friends first.
So Win came back, and we started playing, and it worked pretty well. His style and my style [are so similar], it's kind of hard to tell who wrote what song. Then we got a great drummer, Bob Mustachio. A little later we recruited our musically gifted organist Ezra Reynolds to fill out the sound. Ezra had played organ with me in three of the previous bands. Shit, I think he’s played with half the bands in Austin. He’s talented. Eventually he became our vocalist and frontman.
Bob had a lot going on with other bands, and did amazing visual effects for shows, so he was always busy. We asked our friend Joey Hook if he’d play drums with us. I’ve admired him since I first saw him playing in a band called MegaZilla. I named him “Little Big Drums.” He’s not a big guy, but you wouldn’t think that from hearing him play…kinda like if you’d only heard Mike Gerald on a Killdozer record and then went to a show and saw him doing his thing.
Then one day I met this guy at a club called The Lost Well, sitting at a picnic table with a bunch of friends of mine. His name is John Paul Keenon Orozco. It was crazy that we didn't know each other because we had a lot of common friends. Crazier still, he was an incredible, established drummer who had played with Julian Lennon and many other well-known musicians. And if it couldn’t be crazier than that, he said he wanted to play with us.
JP was with us for setting the foundation of the band, for three years, maybe. Sadly, he had to move abruptly for personal reasons. I miss him. He’s such a unique and wonderful human being. That’s why Rey Washam and Frank Gary Martin are playing drums on a couple songs of the album. They were awesome, and we’re very grateful they helped us out. Another door closes and ... the end. I also play guitar in Jefferson Trout, which is the last of us ‘80s punk-rockers from Austin that still regularly play original Austin punk rock from that time. It’s a fun band fronted by Buxf Parrot and Dotty Farrell of Dicks and Punkaroos.
Your guitar sound seems very different with your new band versus Scratch Acid. Is that because of adjustments you made, or is it just by virtue of stronger production in this day and age?
Well, the short answer is Suckling is not Scratch Acid. The production is different for sure. Scratch Acid was recorded 40-ish years ago on 1-inch tape. The Suckling album is digital, the equipment is different, and of course the people involved are different. A lot of things have changed, but I don't think my guitar “sound” has changed much. My guitar “playing” has changed with time. It’s taken a few decades, but I learned how to play guitar, sort of. I'm sure elements have changed over the years. People rub off on you and influence you. My playing certainly has morphed since 1987, but as far as the guitar sound itself, I think it’s pretty much the same. I still play the same guitar and same amp that I played then.
What do you hear in Suckling that stands out as different to you compared with Scratch Acid? I never really glommed on to the ‘80s production sound because a lot of it sounded too clean. Scratch Acid was an exception. I don't know how to describe it exactly, but Scratch Acid had an echo-y, raw sensibility. My impressions from Suckling is that it's a little more muted.
Yeah, you’re right. I mean, at present, we only have this one record, and I can’t say it’s really what we sound like. You’ll probably like the next one better. These songs had a lot of variance, and some of them we wanted to “dress up” if you will. So it was a bit of an experiment to see what they could sound like. Maybe it could have been more raucous, but a lot of those songs we recorded … one has a swing-jazz thing with a full-on horn section. Another is kind of a sad, slow ballad – for lack of a better term – with grand piano, cello, acoustic guitar and a psychedelic banjo by [Butthole Surfers bassist] Jeff Pinkus. There are many different genres expressed from song to song, and sometimes even within a song. We added a lot of extras to many of the songs, so we went pretty clean to make sure they all got heard.
This next album we're currently recording is much more straightforward, driving rock. It sounds more like we actually sound live. The engineer, Chico Jones, is a friend of ours, a very talented guy who is mostly focused on raw, independent, punk/rock-rooted stuff. He is dialed into our sound. Also, for the same reason, we are having it mastered by [Shellac bassist and engineer extraordinaire] Bob Weston. He also remastered the Scratch Acid box set. He’s so good. It’s a lot more in-your-face. We just pressed a single for this mini-tour coming up, of two Jesus Lizard covers that were engineered by Chico and mastered by Bob. It sounds so, so fucking good. I can’t wait to hear what they do with the album. Also, I have to publicly thank Mike Gerald of Killdozer for playing the part of David Yow and Brent Prager of Cherubs taking the Mac McNeilly seat for one of those Jesus Lizard covers. They were perfect.
When are the songs coming out?
We were asked to play the Caterwaul Festival this year in Minneapolis at the end of May. It’s a bit of a haul, so we booked five more cities to get there and back: New Orleans, Memphis, Chicago, Madison and Columbia, MO. With just the one album from a year ago, we didn’t have much to sell to help afford this trip. We had these two Jesus Lizard covers already recorded, so we mixed, mastered, and pressed 300 vinyl [copies] for the merch table. We’ll release it digitally on Bandcamp when we get home.
The album probably won’t be out until maybe the end of the year. It's half-recorded. We've already recorded the older material that we've had going for a while. The newer stuff, we're waiting till we have these six shows in a row under our belt before we go back into the studio.
How does that feel? I mean, are you enjoying it a lot?
Yeah. I mean, that's what I live for. It’s what I do.
Are you the principal songwriter for Suckling?
I write about half of our material. Our bass player, Win Wallace, writes the other half. Actually, that’s not entirely fair or correct, because Win or I will come up with something and then the whole band will work it out into a finished piece. Ezra and Joey have a lot to do with structuring, transitions, bridges, etc. And Ezra writes all the lyrics. So yeah, Ezra and Joey are instrumental to the songwriting – pun intended.
How did the Caterwaul invitation come about? Did they invite you?
I did Conan Neutron’s [Protonic Reversal] podcast about a year and a half ago. He also does Caterwaul, so I asked him if we could play last year's event. He said, “Well, we're kind of already full up, but I'll shortlist you for next year.” And he did. Also, he puts out an album of Caterwaul bands, I think every year, and he asked if we wanted to be on last year's album. We had a cover of “South Side of the Sky” by Yes already recorded, so we sent it to him and he put it on there.
Are you going to be playing mostly new material?
It's almost all new. Only two songs in the set will be off the first record.
What's the, what's the name of the new record?
Through Dog's Eyes.
Is that in reference to your dog watching you play guitar?
It's just in reference to the way dogs see the world. [In the title track,] there's a short, pretty segment that I wrote for my dog. That's the one song on the record that’s more of an epic, cinematic composition rather than a ripper.
What do you think dogs see in the world? I'm curious to hear more about this concept.
I just like the way they're not fucked up like a lot of people are when they see things. They look at things and see them as they are. They’re honest. They don’t lie in any regard … they might try to get away with stuff, like food. But they don’t have any hidden agendas except maybe to sneak a snack or something like that. They’re not twisted, evil, conniving bastards out for their own gain like so many humans and some cats. They're just out for joy.
As are you, when it comes to making music. Did you ever know what the “rules” were?
No. I know that a lot of the stuff I do has musical terms, but I don't know most of them. This probably sounds stupid –- I'm sure some musicians reading this will think it is –- but I’d rather stay ignorant of music theory. I feel it might potentially limit me or lead me not to try things that don’t fit some standard. I just want to make sounds that sound good to my ears.
Does playing a show now feel the same as it did way back when?
Yes and no. I still get excited about it. And I get butterflies sometimes. Physically, I don't jump around as much or do back bends. Actually, I never used to jump around much to begin with, but my amp seems to have gotten heavier over the years. I can't smoke weed and play guitar anymore, which I really used to enjoy, and if somebody put a line of coke in front of me, it was going in my nose. I don’t do that anymore. There's no drug use involved other than beer. I wish I could express my energy the way I used to when I was 25, but I’m 65.
Do you find ways to compensate for the toll that aging takes on your body by trying to up your game with writing?
Don’t get me wrong: The writing and my fingers are just as lively as they ever were. I’m making myself sound like I’m an old man. I’m actually in really great shape for 65, probably better shape than most 45-year-olds. I just don’t bounce around as much. I leave that to Ezra, and I'll hand it to him: He's pretty good at it. He didn't want to sing at first, but I heard him singing background vocals that he recorded on some country or folksy thing that he was helping someone out with. And I was like, “Man, you can sing.” But he doesn't just sing. He yells. He carries on. He brings it.
When are you planning to release the new Suckling record?
When it's done. Everything moves in slow motion. Hopefully sometime this fall. We don't usually play shows in the summer because of the heat, so not having to rehearse for shows will give us more time to work on the record.