Interview: Slaves of Spanky @ The Grad Club, Sept. 30
If there is any chronically slept-on local band, it has to be Slaves of Spanky, even if your only criteria
is seniority. Dropping rhymes since 1996 up in Tamworth, the Limestone City’s burger-chomping, velcro-shod, leg-lifting, trailer trash rap champions went to highschool with Ryan Malcolm and lived to tell the tale.
If you aren’t swiftly offended by the 18 vulgar seconds of “Track One” from 2005’s Gas Money, you have 14 more chances to turn tail and run from places where other novelty rap bands have feared to tread (such as the menswear section of Wal-Mart). But courage will reward you with more than just occasionally gleeful obscenity—MCs Chuckulous B. and Captain Footbags have skills in spite of themselves, they are often genuinely hilarious whether or not they’re being offensive, and the funk band backing them might be worth seeing on their own merits. Slaves of Spanky play The Grad Club for free on Saturday night as part of Brent Pike- Nurse’s Rock Photos! exhibit with Mississippi Grover, Dead Messenger and JP Houston. The Journal sat down with half of the SOS crew—MC Chuckulous B., keys player Suganutz, and bassist Speedgrease—at Gusto’s, and under the civilizing sonic influence of Duncan Sheik, Primitive Radio Gods and lite jazz, they mostly behaved themselves, sort of.
The Journal: How did you guys get together?
Chuckulous B.: Captain Footbags and I just started in like Grade 9, a regular rock band with like 12
guitars, and then we just started making hot rap jams, and played with a whole bunch of different people, and cultures collided, and then got some surly townies, and just sort of—we’d been winging
it for a long time, without any real songs or anything like that. And these guys wrote a bunch of music.
How long do you think it would take you to eclipse Ryan Malcolm’s not former, but current, level of fame?
Speedgrease: Well, we’ve never played the Wal-Mart parking lot, so that’s a tough one.
Suganutz: We could just show up and do it tonight. Is there power out there?
CB: I’d say we’ll probably have it done by the end of the week. You guys have been together for 10 years. Where do you expect yourselves to be 10 years from now?
CB: Probably the same place, the way things are going.
SG: I can’t see anything changing.
SN: Maybe the Canadian Tire parking lot?
CB: We’ll probably have gone through eight minivans, and I’m sure one of us will be dead by then. Could be me … Yeah, I’ll probably be dead in seven years. If we’re still doin’ it in ten years … most of us will be dead by then.
SG: We’ll probably have more than eight songs.
CB: We’ll have at least 12 songs if we’re still around. They’ll probably be pretty good songs. And one
of them will be really long. So 12 songs, eight minivans, and probably two of us will be dead.
SG: How many burgers do you think we’ll have eaten by then?
CB: At least, [Suganutz] will have eaten 900 burgers.
Speaking of minivans, what has your touring experience been like?
SN: Last tour, we sold two CDs. That was pretty cool.
SG: We try to focus all our gigging on the Kingston market and the Halifax market. We try not to play
any shows in any other cities, other than Kingston and Halifax.
CB: We actually just realized last weekend that there’s other towns we can play in Ontario. We played
in Trenton. It turns out there’s a whole bunch of towns in Ontario, and there’s people in them.
SG: We sold five CDs! That’s twice as many CDs, and we drove for probably 50 or 60 hours less to do that.
SN: And we got to keep the van running.
SG: And the windshield was intact at the end of the tour.
CB: Upon the realization that there’s actually other towns in Ontario, not having to go to Halifax for the weekend is really going to make things easier.
What are some of the weirdest acts you’ve played with, or if none of them are as weird as you, who were you most mismatched with?
All: Everyone.
CB: I think 98 per cent of the gigs we’ve played have been sorely mismatched, by no fault of our own. I don’t know who the weirdest person is …
SN: There was that Meatloaf tour two years ago. Meatloaf has mobility issues, you see. There was that time with the lotion …
CB: Aside from a wedding in Oshawa, the tour with Meatloaf, that was probably the weirdest.
SG: That wedding was really strange.
CB: Played to a room full of really well-dressed children and their grandparents.
SN: With no swearing.
SG: Grandparents really liked us.
CB: We’re actually huge with the grandparental crowd.
How would you characterize the local Kingston music scene, maybe as it’s evolved or devolved over the years?
SG: We really, really, really need a good venue in Kingston.
SN: And not an LVEC [Large Venue Entertainment Centre].
SG: Yeah. We need a Small Venue Entertainment Centre in Kingston in a major way. There’s nowhere
to play—The Grad Club does a lot of booking with acts from out of town, but there really isn’t a venue
that’s helping and developing local acts. The Merchant will book local bands, but doesn’t really spend a lot of time and money on developing local entertainment, and if there is no place for local acts to learn how to play and how to write better songs, then we’re going to keep on seeing a decline in the quality and quantity of local music.
CB: There’s way more talent here than in a lot of towns. Is it possible to have the title of this article be
“Fuck the LVEC,” or maybe “Slaves of Spanky fuck the LVEC?”
SN: And you can a pride fight between us and the mayor. Harvey Rosen can fight us. Pride
fight, Harvey Rosen, Slaves of Spanky, Sunday night.
CB: For the future of the LVEC, a pride fight. In Market Square.
SN: Springer Market Square.
SG: Slaves of Spanky is down with municipal politics!
CB: This right here is the most political we’ve ever gotten, in any assembly of any of us together.
SG: This is also the politest I think we’ve ever been.
Why should people come to see your rap show?
CB: First off, because it’s probably going to be too much sweet. Probably because it’s not something
they would expect from going to see 90 per cent of other bands. A lot of people would probably be
surprised if they came and saw us, what goes on.
SN: Four words: hot raps, fresh jams.
CB: Who said you could talk? Let’s make it more exciting. They should come and see our rap show because when have you ever seen a guy named Captain Footbags, wearing giant parachute pants, bite
the head off of a chicken? That might happen. Might.
Anything to add?
CB: Put our website in there. www.slavesofspanky.com, and we have a MySpace, myspace.com/
slavesofspanky. And people should stop fucking around, they should start coming out to our goddamn
rap shows, and start buying all kinds of stuff, because we’ve got all kinds of stuff for sale.
SG: We have coffee mugs.
CB: We have T-shirts. We have dirtbikes with our name on them. If you don’t have one, we’ll make
one for you.
SN: We have old minivans on blocks with our name on them.
CB: We’ll cook a sandwich foryou, anything.
SG: If you want a car with “Slaves of Spanky” written on it, we’ll be happy to write “Slaves of Spanky”
onto your car.
CB: It doesn’t even have to be your car.
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