Heartless Bastards
By Stephen Gill



I was watching American Idol last week just to see who got voted out. After the straight white teeth, perfect hair, and sappy performances I was actually hoping for the car commercial to come on featuring the old Sonics song “Got Love, Will Travel.” I suppose American Idol is filling a niche, but squeaky clean only goes so far; sometimes you just need a good dose of a band like the Heartless Bastards. Erika Wennerstrom, singer/songwriter/guitarist for the band certainly has the pipes for Idol, but thank God she chose to play real rock and roll in a real band. I spoke with Erika, Mike Lamping, and Kevin Vaughn before their show in Boston on a recent Friday night.

Being There:  I first heard the band on the Junior Kimbrough tribute album Sunday Nights doing a version of “Done Got Old” and thought you and the Black Keys had the standout tracks, did you ever meet Junior?

Erika Wennerstrom: No, he died in 1998.

Kevin Vaughn: He’s on the Fat Possum documentary (You See Me Laughing).  Have you seen it?

EW: It’s great, they just released it.  I really like it.

BT: How did you hook up with Fat Possum? Cincinnati and Oxford, Mississippi aren’t exactly close to each other.

EW: The Black Keys, actually. We played at a club in Akron for like five people, and Patrick (Carney), the drummer ended up walking in and watched our set. We actually played with them several months before and we met them, but that particular show I don’t even know if they watched us. It gets kind of hectic on tour sometimes.

BT: When you went to record the album was Fat Possum hands off? Did they just let you go and do what you wanted?

Mike Lamping: They were pretty hands on.

EW: The sound on the CD isn’t the sound we were looking for in a lot of ways.  It is our first album and we learned a lot.

ML: They (Fat Possum) wanted it done so they could get it out; there were certain deadlines they had to meet. So they told us the tracks were good even though we thought there were some things that could have been done better as far as us playing. They were really avid about getting it out. They felt that it was fine.

EW: We’re happy that it’s gotten a good response. I guess we were kind of down at first; not knowing what the response was going to be but we knew we could have done a lot better. We didn’t know what to expect.

BT: Maybe the next time you can take your time and record the CD the way you want it. 

EW: Not even a whole lot of time, but even just like go in there and record for two or three days or take a week.

BT: Do you have some songs ready for another album? Or are you still working on them?

EW: We have probably a whole album ready. They were actually talking about us doing an EP that we would do in about six weeks, in the fall. Just to try and keep ourselves in circulation.

BT: Was there anything in particular that helped define your sound?

ML: We pretty much set up and just played the songs.

EW: It wasn’t produced at all; it wasn’t really produced by us or Fat Possum. It wasn’t what they were going for or what we were going for. We just went in and did it.

ML: The first time we played for Matthew from Fat Possum we went to New York and went into the studio and set up everything in ten minutes and we just played all the songs straight through. And they had express record on and that’s all it was. The song “New Resolution” is from that session. We just did all the songs and picked that one because the energy on it is good. Then we went to Mississippi and basically did the same thing, set up everything, did all the songs. The next day Erika did some guitar overdubs and some vocal overdubs too. That was that session and some songs were pulled from that. Then there’s a third session when we went to a friend of ours in Cincinnati and we recorded in his house. There’s a detached garage where Kevin played drums and he had snake cables running into the house and Erika is in the hallway playing.

EW: But my amp is in the bathroom.

ML: None of us could see each other. We did some of the songs we thought could be better. Even though we recorded it three times, each time was done quickly. This time we might take a little more time, setting up, playing, experimenting with sounds a little bit more, getting the tone. Once that’s done and you play a song in theory it should sound good.

EW: My amp caught on fire.



ML: But I think too just from playing a lot more we’re connecting a lot.  We’re more solid than we might have been. Even though we were playing a lot at the time the album was made. The more you play in front of people, like every day, it’s going to make a difference.

BT: You’ve been on the road for over a year now, it seems from the schedule on your website. Seems like you’ve been going pretty hard.

EW: Well we have some time off here and there, but it is pretty regular.

ML: Before we were on Fat Possum, we were playing our own shows that Erika booked, and it was every weekend. Now that we’re with Fat Possum its more like we’ll go out for three weeks straight then maybe have a two day break, or a week break and then go out again.

BT: I noticed you’re back in Cincinnati next weekend (May 28^th at the Taste of Cincinnati). Will that be like a homecoming for you?

EW: That will be a lot different; that’s not going to be our usual crowd.

ML: One nice thing about it is that it will be outside, it’s a food and music festival; it’s a really big event. We’ll be playing to people who wouldn’t normally go out to see us, and it’s also all ages. We’ve had kids that have emailed saying they like the album but they’re not old enough to get in.

EW: Some of the places we’ve played have been eighteen plus.

BT: Generally your songs seem very upbeat, about standing on you own two feet and moving forward with you life.

EW: Yeah, I would say that. A lot of them are about me maybe being down about things and then getting back up again.

BT: In the bio for the band on the Fat Possum website, it says you’ve wanted to be a songwriter and performer since you were a little girl.  When did you realize you wanted to do this for as a full time career? Was there a morning you woke up and said, “This is it, I’m going to do it?”

EW: I always wanted to be a singer. I never planned on playing guitar. My dad sent me a guitar when I was sixteen and I tried playing it and you know when you first start to play you get calluses and I was like “give it back!” Then when I was eighteen I taught myself how to play. It helped because I’m really shy; it’s good having something in front of you. I pictured myself standing up there and like what do you do with your hands! I’ve always wanted to write songs and since I’ve played guitar I realize it’s so much easier. I played bass in a band and if you’re just a singer and you get ideas and you don’t play an instrument at all, it’s really hard to shape what you want.

BT: What do you put in your CD player driving between gigs?

ML: Today we listened to some Wilson Pickett and R.L. Burnside.

EW: We’re playing Bonnaroo and we’re looking forward to seeing Mars Volta.

BT: How do you feel about being lumped into a genre? I’ve heard you called garage and blues, as well as classic rock.

EW: Technically I guess it is garage because we’re not super technical. I would think of garage as kids getting together and playing in their garage.

BT: When I think of garage I think of the sixties, the Sonics, Pretty Things.

EW: I think we have some of that.

ML: We’re definitely not a retro type of band; when I hear garage a lot I think it emulates a sound from that era. When Erika writes songs I don’t think she’s trying to necessarily fit into a specific genre. She just writes whatever she wants to.

EW: It’s kind of funny; we were playing at a bar the other night and we got booked with a band called Sun Dried Opossum. They were like a funk band, like a jam band and we were thinking we were on Fat Possum and this band is Opossum.  That would be a great match!

BT: The Heartless Bastards and the Sun Dried Opossums. I’d go see that show!


Check out the Heartless Bastards on tour through July, and visit their official website at http://www.theheartlessbastards.com/