MAY 2005 - With the re-issue of POOBAH's stellar 1979 LP, "Steamroller", hundreds of heavy psych and classic rock fans will have the opportunity to enjoy this top-notch obscurity for the first time. Considering the batting average of many bands slugging it away since the early 70s, it's remarkable that POOBAH has been so consistent, delivering such a catalog free of clunkers and rich in scorching guitar worship. Jim Gustafson, the self-proclaimed evil mastermind behind the band was happy to give us some insight into the golden era of POOBAH, as well as some enticing details on upcoming music from the Wizard of Psych.

Marchman: It's great to have some time to talk, Jim.

Jim Gustafson: It's cool. I stumbled onto your site through a link from somewhere. Great to see "Steamroller" in on your essential albums page.

Marchman: Why do you think POOBAH records are so universally appreciated by even the most snobbish psych collectors?

JG: Well, my guestimation would be that we put out three albums in the seventies, whereas a lot of bands that are collectible only made one. I think that we presented ‘em with three totally different things, because “Let Me In”, “U.S. Rock”, and “Steamroller” are all very different albums, at least in my opinion.

Marchman: What were some of the circumstances that led you to phase out the Hammond organ from “U.S. Rock” to “Steamroller”?

JG: People may not realize that a lot of times, you don’t choose your sound. It’s chosen for you, in a way. I was on the road in 1975 and the band I was with, the four of us split. Two of the guys went off and formed their own band and me and the bass player (Phil Jones) were in Maryland, about five hours from home. We got the news that the two guys that had been with us for the previous two years were leaving the band and forming their own band. I got into an argument with the rhythm guitarist about his being intoxicated all the time and performing poorly for a while. I like to have a good time as much as anybody, but when it gets to the point where your performance on stage is bad, somebody’s gotta tell you about it and you’ve gotta either fix it or move on. Well, he got mad at me and quit, and took the drummer with him. So there we were about five hours from home, and we had all these jobs booked. I mean gigs up and down the east coast like upstate New York, Maryland, Delaware, all over the place. And the point is, we needed to find somebody and quick in order to honor all these contracts and avoid losing a crapload of money. You know musicians are usually not very wealthy people. (laughs)

Marchman: Not most of the ones that I know

JG: We got to the point where we had to make a decision quick. So we started holding auditions while we were up there in Maryland. There were some other bands up there that were really good.

Marchman: Specifically?

JG: Well, the keyboard player that used to play with the guys from KIX. His name is Ken Smetzer. He auditioned. Originally we were going to have two guitars, bass, and drums because that’s what we’d gone from. But we just couldn’t find another guitar player who could sing and we kind of subscribed to the mentality that if you could only play the guitar, unless you were the greatest in the world, you had limited capability

Marchman: That sure isn’t the rule these days. A lot of the singers can’t even sing.

JG: Yeah, I know. (laughs) The barkers! Well, we wanted to have a band that was chock full of talent. And we already had a certain amount of success going for us. So, because we had all these gigs booked, we didn’t want to take just anybody and settle for that. We wanted somebody brilliant or someone who could sing. So we found a keyboard player that could sing real well, and it gave us kind a URIAH HEEP vibe. We weren’t really looking to go into the jazz direction. I love jazz music, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that I didn’t want to alienate myself from the type of music I’d taught myself to like! I had some people immediately say things like, “Why would you have a keyboard player? Nothing but guitar matters!” (laughs).

Marchman: Was Ken in the band longer than a year?

JG: Actually, Ken was only in the band two years, and it’s probably my fault that he quit. I think that any band, when they have some success, until they have some kind of reality check, they just go on one hell of an ego trip. And I think that during that time period, the bass player quit after his wife convinced him to join this cult church. And they told him he was going to hell if he didn’t quit playing rock music and stuff. So after two years, he left the band and announced that he was becoming a born-again Christian, and that we were a bunch of devils! Six months later, he wanted to be back in the band, but not until he had ruined whatever momentum we had at the time. Then, the keyboard player was going to quit, too. I didn’t care if he quit at the time, because I had another guitar player that owned a bunch of equipment! So, I told him, “Go ahead and quit!” Anyway, that band broke up and for a while I meandered around with bands that I didn’t do any recording with until the late 70s.

Marchman: Are you a psych collector yourself?

JG: Yes, I am a mad collector!

Marchman: I never know. Some musicians just create music, but aren’t necessarily large consumers of music themselves.

JG: The people that aren’t into a lot of different music may end up making stuff that all sounds the same. Now I realize that may not always be true, but it’s easy to put out the old stereotype.

Marchman: Who sings those high-pitched parts in “Everybody’s Crazy” from "US Rock"?

JG: That’s me! I actually studied opera for awhile at Youngstown State University. I already had that vocal range - it’s just something you are born with. I found out at a very early age that I could sing extremely high and (in ‘cookie monster voice) extremely low! (laughs). But I find that the majority of people prefer melodic music over the barking. I’ve played some shows where I was the only band that didn’t get up there and “bark”!

Marchman: The live version of “Mr. Destroyer” was a nice addition.

JG: Yeah, that was a version recorded in Youngstown about a week before “Steamroller” came out. There probably are other live versions in my collection, because I’m such a nut. I used to carry reel-to-reels around with me and tape the shows to see what we could improve.

Marchman: I think that’s a great idea. Hendrix did a lot of that.

JG: Well, you get song ideas out of it, y’know. The bad thing is that if you die like Hendrix did, then people release the stuff that you would have never released!

Marchman: I always thought that the changing riffs in “Jump through the Golden Ring” would lead to a lot of improvisational jamming when you guys played it live. The version on the “Steamroller” reissue is pretty much the same as the record, though.

JG: Well, “Jump Through the Golden Ring” had so many changes in it; it was the kind of piece that you really didn’t want to change it any more. It’s already like 7+ minutes long! Chances are if we had continued on with that lineup, it would have evolved into some other stuff. It seems like whenever I get a band, whoever the lineup may be, that after awhile we start changing everything. If you keep traveling around and playing shows and do everything exactly the same, you get bored. We wanted to constantly improve our chops. I’ve always been such a nut about practicing.

Marchman: So you spend a lot of time just trying to improve your technique?

JG: Definitely. With some people, that’s not cool, and with others that’s the only way to go. I’ve heard people say that some of the great virtuoso guitar players of our day like Joe Satriani or Steve Vai are boring. I like that athleticism on the guitar, but I like to add more melodicism. I like to hear song lyrics, melodies in my head, etc... I have such a wide selection of music in my collection; everything from blues to folk to jazz, new age. I probably listen to Michael Hedges more than any other artist. Even though he’s no longer with us, I thought he was the Hendrix of the acoustic guitar. I bought ERIC JOHNSON’s “Alien Love Child” recently, even though I know it’s been out for awhile. I think it’s great!

Marchman: EJ seems to teeter on that fine line between genius and insanity, with taking so long to record new material, etc.

JG: I just wonder how many people would say that about me! The “mad professor”! I once had a guitar player that called me that! I’m obsessed with guitar. I subscribe to three different guitar magazines and we’ve just got piles and piles of guitar magazines in our house.

Marchman: It’s like an alcoholic can’t understand how somebody can leave half a glass of wine on the table unfinished. I can’t understand how people can leave CDs or records laying around unplayed for long periods of time.

JG: It amazes me when I go to someone’s house, and they only have two CDs or five CDs, and they’re all ones that I hate! It surprises me when somebody buys a POOBAH CD, and when I run into them a few months later, they tell me they haven’t listened to it yet! I think, “What is it that made you want to buy it”?

Marchman: Tell me about the touring environment in 1979. How did the gas shortage affect touring in the U.S.?

JG: The difference between then and now is, people were outraged then when gas went up to .75 per gallon!

Marchman: I just remember waiting in those long lines for gas for a couple of hours a clip. I just was wondering how that affected tour buses and vans and stuff.

JG: It was scary. We thought it was the end of touring? I wonder how many bands right now go out to play. Say they get a deal with an independent label, and release a CD. They get the idea to go out and tour. They buy a van and a bunch of gear, and then they start traveling around from state to state. When they get to X gig, it is cancelled or nobody shows up and the bar owner says, “I don’t have $500 to pay you, here’s $50, get the hell out of here!”

Marchman: That’s on a good day.

JG: We used to make jokes about certain clubs, if we ran into a band that was headed for a club we’d already played at, especially if the guy had ripped us off or something. You went there and the agent told you that you’d get X amount of dollars and you’d get about a fourth of it. Then the agent still wanted his cut and you had to split what was left.

Marchman: It’s not unusual for me to speak with artists that don’t even have copies of their own records. They’re too rare even for them to have any.

JG: I’ve talked to guys who will say, “There’s my album, over there” and it’s lying on the floor, in no jacket. And it’s the only copy they have. I mean, some of it can be salvaged now, put onto a machine and some of the surface noise reduced, but at the same time you’re going to lose some of your signal-to-noise ratio. The end product that people hear is going to suffer if you don’t take care of your master tapes.

Marchman: Or you could just throw them into the river like the REPLACEMENTS did.

JG: I sure am glad that my dad bought me a reel-to-reel when I was a kid, and got me interested in audio. So all this time I’ve been what you’d call an audiophile. Right about the time of “Steamroller” I had this idea that I wanted to try to fuse John McLaughlin from the MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA with BLACK SABBATH or something like that, and add some BEATLES into the soup or whatever. But I wanted the soup to be different than the individual ingredients.

Marchman: You guys played some dates with PRIEST in '79, didn’t you?

JG: We played with them at the Agora club in Youngstown, Ohio. I thought they were fantastic live. But at the same time, I thought that the guys I had with me in POOBAH were just as good musically as they were, if not better! I don’t mean it to sound arrogant. But the fact is they weren’t playing anything on their instruments that we weren’t capable of playing too. We went over really well with them. When I walked up to Glen Tipton, he ran away from me! I told him I wasn’t a groupie, but the guitar player for the opening act. Then he realized it was ok to talk to me. (laughs)

Marchman: You weren’t waving any sharp objects at the time, were you?

JG: No, I wasn't! But Ian Hill was instantly cool. We got along really well and talked for awhile. They took our dressing room and filled it up with like 20 guitars. They had more guitars than any band I’d ever seen!

Marchman: How do you feel about the current POOBAH lineup? I know you've got some new stuff in the hopper.

JG: I feel like the bass player and drummer I have right now are absolutely amazing musicians. Both play at least 3-4 other instruments, and both are lead vocalists, too! The new players I’m playing with are Woody Hupp on bass and Tom Parsons on drums. We’ve got ultra cool harmonies and that sort of thing. Plus we’ve been together for over a year now, so I’m very excited about the new stuff. Can’t wait for you to hear it.

Marchman: Same here. Well, Mr. Jim, thanks for all the great answers.

POOBAH are Jim Gustafson, Woody Hupp, and Tom Parsons. Their reissued album "Steamroller" is available through Rockadrome Records. Find out more about them via their official site, www.poobahband.com or www.myspace.com/poobahband.

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