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I agree with him that smoky clubs are hard to play in. When we play we're moving around constantly and it gets really difficult to breath when everyone smokes. The worst offenders are the ones who come to the front of the stage and exhale their smoke towards us. Once we played a show in Tuscaloosa AL and a guy I knew was smoking a cigar down front and blowing it onstage. I asked him to put it out or move back from the stage some. He blew more smoke. Finally I had to remove it from his mouth and when he got upset, used my tambourine in a windmill motion against his backside (I mean I whopped him on the ass repeatedly). After the show, he apologized and said he thought I was kidding when I asked him to put it out. He thought that my gagging onstage was just a joke. I told him to be careful, because people are liable to lose their tempers when they can't breathe. Overall, people in the US don't smoke as much as they once did. In California, it is illegal to smoke in any restaurant or bar. Some bars will have an outside area where smokers can go, and some might have a separate room. So yes, I'd have to say that it is uncommon for us to play to an audience in the US where a majority of people are smokers. There are of course exceptions. In Dan Electro's home town of Tuscaloosa AL nearly everyone at the bars there smoke.

Let us change the topic for a moment: What about your new record? What can you tell me about it?

We just finished mixing our new record right before Xmas. The new album will have at least 14 songs on it. It'll come out next April on Telstar here in the US. In Japan it'll come out on the Trippin' Elephant label. We've been trying to get it out on a European label, but have had no luck so far. One Louder, who put out the "Wailin' with the Woggles" 10" would have put it out, but they are now defunct. So we're looking for someone else. Jeff Walls, who has produced all the things we've done that I like, once again manned the helm as our producer. We recorded the album in Athens GA at Maxwell Sound. We recorded the "Graveyard Woman" EP there years ago. The working title for the album is "Fractured".

You have been in Japan three times now, why more often than in Europe? Is the audience really as crazy and enthusiastic as all bands tell? Have you played with Guitar Wolf?

We've been to Japan more than Europe, only because they wanted us in Japan, while we could find no promoter in Europe to bring us. Yes, honestly, the audiences are extremely wild and enthusiastic. There are shows though here in the US and in Europe where the crowds were just as ethusiastic, but there would also be nights when the crowds aren't as crazy. In Japan, we have yet to play to an audience that isn't ready to cut loose and go wild. They seem to love to lock onto any simple refrain that we might sing and sing with us. Any song with "Heys" or "Sha La Las" or anything easy to pronounce and repetitive, they go nuts over. To be fair, Spain has always been just as wild as Japan, in terms of the audience ready to dance and get crazy right at the first song. Generally, the Woggles are pretty successful in getting people involved in the show. More often than not, we get people dancing, and if they won't dance, they best move out of the way, because we'll be coming through the audience. We just toured Germany for the first time this past November, and we all thought that given the fact we've never played in Germany and never had a record on a big label, or big independent label, the tour was a success. A couple of places we had a little over 200 folks, other shows had 80-100 and the early in the week shows had 40 each, but regardless of size people were always enthusiastic and if not right away, certainly by the middle of the set they'd be hopping and dancing around. In 1998 we toured with Guitar Wolf in Japan. That was really incredible. Each night after we played the show, and the shows had to end by 9 or 10pm at the latest, Seiji, the guitar player in Guitar Wolf, would announce it was time for Japanese style tour party. That meant we would go to a restaurant of some sort and eat and drink for the next 4 hours. The shows were only 2 hours long, but the party was always a solid 4. They have a great tradition in Japan. You never fill your own beer glass. Whoever sits next to you does, and you do the same for them. The first time I saw Guitar Wolf was in Athens the summer of 94. I had gotten him a show there, after we had met in Seattle during GarageShock Weekend. One of the fun things about the show was that there was a rare meeting of audience types. The garage rockers were there, because they knew Guitar Wolf did some Link Wray covers, and the noise rock fans were there, because they thought that Guitar Wolf was purposefully making fun of rock posturing. I'm afraid they don't understand that he is beyond posturing. There is no posturing as he is completely possessed by what he's doing. In the audience, each band member had their respective wife or girlfriend. They didn't stand together, but instead spread out in the club, and at random times would begin to scream uncontrollably. Their yelps began to whip the audience into a frenzy as the show went on. This past fall we played with Guitar Wolf as they did a US tour. I was very impressed that we managed to sell out a number of clubs with them. Cities like Chicago, Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles all were packed to capacity. They held up fairly well having to play each night, like we do, although they could afford to take a few days off. We couldn't, we had to play each night to make ends meet on the road. At the end of the tour we had a "Japanese Style Tour Party" in New York. There we were introduced to the manager of anther Japanese band. This band is called Thee Michelle Gun Elephant. Their manager is starting up a label in Japan and we'll release our new record in Japan on his label called Trippin' Elephant Records.

Your full-length records were released by different labels each time (correct me if I am wrong). Why that?

I think you are mainly directing this question at the full length releases, because 7"s often come out on labels that can do little more than that, and we like to release 7"s. It's the great equalizing rock and roll format. As for the full lengths, the first two albums came out on Estrus. We would have liked the next to come out on Estrus, but he has a big schedule of releases and sometimes that creates a backlog. For us that meant if he did release the record, it would take a while for it to come out. Secondly, we were not a priority for Estrus. Why is that? I don't know, you'd have to ask him. Telstar was more than happy to release our next full length. We came in contact with them through the rock club Maxwell's in Hoboken/New York. Todd Abramson has booked the club for years and he is also the CEO of Telstar Records. The first time he saw us he said that he really had a great time and it was a great show. I asked him when he was going to release a record by us. He said the next year. I agreed. The One Louder Record came about because we wanted to get a record overseas in Europe and try to tour there. John Esplen ran the label and he did great stuff with Man Or Astroman, Southern Culture on the Skids & the Quadrajets. So we asked him if he would be interested and he said he was. In the meantime, Telstar couldn't put out a record by us here stateside due to financial reasons, so it seemed best to take advantage of any overseas opportunities.

How are the gigs in the US like, especially those in the midwest, in the middle of nowhere?

For us the midwest includes Chicago, Madison WI, Milwaukee WI, and a number of other cities that are actually east of the Mississippi. All those places we have really great shows at. That means good sized crowds and folks are really into what we do. Eventually, wherever we are there are places or nights when very few people are going to show up because we've never played that town before and people don't know who the hell we are. Those gigs can still be a lot of fun. One of the most fun gigs we ever did was in Valdosta GA at a really tiny place and only 6 people showed up. We had those 6 folks following us across the booths and table tops as we crawled/climbed from one table to the next. There's a ska band from Washington DC called the Pietasters, who are big fans of ours. They've had us play their record release parties twice. They have not played at their own record release parties, instead they have us play, and they treat it as a party that they're throwing. I mention them, because they've had us tour with them a couple of times and sometimes it's been great and other times not so great. We played with them last spring at Maxwell's and it was a sold out show and their audience really enjoyed us and were dancing. On the other hand, we played with them in Florida in Jacksonville a year ago and a lot of kids couldn't figure out what we were. We still had a good many into it, but I could tell lots of them (there were at least 300 kids there) really didn't understand straight rock and roll.

Would you like to play with the Rolling Stones?

Hey, I'm happy to play wherever there is an audience! Having said stuff earlier about the Stones, please don't misinterpret me. I mean that I enjoy them, but not more so than many other bands, and only on a song per song basis really. For the same period of time 65-66, I'd have to say I liked the Pretty Things songwriting better overall. So sure, if the Stones want to have a real working rock and roll band play with them, I'd be happy to remind them of how it's done and help kick them in the ass a bit. We gave Johnny Cash a break several years back, when he was beginning his comeback on American Records, and we'd love to do the same for the Stones.

What about your influences? Except from the Kinks and early Rollings Stones?

Honestly I'm not that much of a Rolling Stones fan. I like them ok, and I think it's great that they covered lots of great r&b and blues tunes early on, but they've never been any sort of influence to my knowledge directly or indirectly on the Woggles. A lot of times when I'm trying to describe the musical sound of the band to an older person, who doesn't bother to listen to contemporary bands, I'll say that we sound like the early Rolling Stones or Kinks, just to try and put us into their frame of reference. This is especially handy when you're being hassled by the police. The one time we played in Italy, we were stopped at the border and the custom guards were giving us some hassle. They wanted to search the whole van etc. When one of them asked us what we sounded like I told him it was rock and roll like the Rolling Stones and he began to nod his head enthusiastically. He then took a stack of our records and dealt them out like playing cards to the other guards. So, saying we were like the Stones didn't work perfectly that time, but at least we got across the border. As for the Kinks, the early stuff at least yeah, I'm a big fan of that.

But really I came into listening to rock and roll through the radio. I do not come from a very musical background. Music was not something very present in our house. Back in the early 70's I can remember my Mom listening to the AM radio a lot. My Dad has a handful of German Oom Pah Pah music, suitable for beer hall gatherings. He had gotten those records in Germany when he was stationed in Europe in the army. But outside of those, and a handful of Xmas records that was the Jones' record collection. About 1975, my folks wanted to get a stereo. For what purpose or reason I don't know, other than it just seemed the thing to do. The new stereo had an 8 track player. They wound up buying three, the soundtrack to 2001 A Space Odyssey, John Denver's Greatest Hits, and Elvis: Live at the Hollywood Bowl. So for me, stumbling into the world of music was discovering a lost world, a treasure trove of passion and excitement. My first keys and compasses to that world were a series of transistor and clock radios. I certainly listened to all of the Top 40 stuff as a young child, but I quickly found a home on the noncommercial end of the dial. For us here in the US the left end of the radio dial frequencies 87-91FM are reserved for noncommercial stations. That means a lot of college/universities have student run radio stations or community volunteer stations. There are also many religious stations. I didn't have any idea about what constituted noncommercial radio then as a kid, but I did notice that as I turned the dial all the wacky and really fun stuff was down at the left end. The shows that I enjoyed really early on happened to be oldies shows, but as these were on the noncommercial stations it was much more than Top 40s oldies. The first time I heard Bo Diddley's "I'm A Man" I literally fell out of my seat. I couldn't believe how menacing and cool it sounded. The hard rock of the day just sounded so wimpy and childish next to this gruff voice telling me how it's gonna be. I immediately called up the DJ, but I never got through. The next week, I called and called and finally got through. I asked for "I'm A Man" and they played the Yardbird's version. I was so distraught! Their version is okay, but having heard the other, the Yardbirds' version lacked the intensity of Bo's, partially I think because it was so sped up.
Instead of feeling like a wild almost feral man on the prowl, the Yardbird's version seemed like a hop scotch skipping English schoolboy. I gotta say as the 60's progressed, the Brits lost the roll, and evolved into too much rock for my tastes. After that I commandeered our family tape recorder with an external mic, and started taping songs off the radio, so I wouldn't be at the immeadiate mercy of the DJ. It still hadn't occurred to me that you could buy records. I had a turntable. It looked like those heavy duty models that all elementary schools used to have. The records I had at the time were all spoken word kid records, Peter Pan, Planet of the Apes, and GI Joe stuff. Anyway, hearing stuff on the radio led me to try and find it at the record stores and that led me to buying lots of early rock and roll, r&b, rockabilly, blues, surf stuff, garage, etc.

I really don't have a favorite group I can point to as a main influence, because what I enjoy more than groups are individual songs. Whenever people ask for lists of my favorite bands, it's much better to give them a list of what fave songs are playing on the top ten of my turntable. But to better answer the question, the Woggles strive to meld and mix a whole host of ingredients. Just the right blend of musical herbs and spices to satisfy your aural nourishment. To that end I'll say that we try to mix early r&b, blues, rockabilly, garage, surf, all the things I mentioned earlier into what we consider to be good rock and roll songwriting. Depending on who the individual songwriter is one or more of those elements may dominate, but they're all in there to a degree, across the various songs.

Did the Crypt compilations help to shape your sound as well (you have done "No Reason to Complain" on one 7", I think)?

The Crypt compilations alone did not shape our sound or influence us directly. Yes, we did do "No Reason to Complain", being familiar with it as a Lyres cover first, but liking the arrangement better on the original version that is on Back From The Grave Vol. 1. I and all the members of the band enjoy the Back From the Graves series as well as the new Teenage Shutdown series, but we listen to all sorts of different records, some are comps of garage stuff and the others are the original records themselves. We also cover "What A Girl Can't Do", which I heard first on a comp called "Signed DC", that's part of the Telstar family. Turns out that our drummer at the time, the Piledriver, has a copy of the 45 and wanted us to do a version of it. So we did and do. The influences to our sound is from a mixture of rock and roll and rock and roll related musics. We've been lucky enough to live in a time where we have greater access to those sorts of musics (in terms of records) than when those artists/bands were actually recording and playing.

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