[CULT TALK] Danny Kroha of The Gories

I remember the day I was first introduced to The Gories. You would think it would have been in Detroit, the band’s hometown and just outside the city I grew up in, but in fact it was in somewhere a bit more remote: Salem, Oregon. I had just turned nineteen and was visiting my soon to be ex-boyfriend. One day while exploring downtown I wandered into a local record store, Ranch Records. I struck up a pleasant conversation with a guy working there, and asked him to pick out three records for me. He nodded willingly and after about ten minutes returned handing me, Sun City Girls Torch of the Mystics, R.L. Burnside First Recordings, and The Gories Houserockin. I thanked the guy, purchased the records, and walked into a coffee shop across the street. Of the three records, I only recognized R.L. Burnside, and as I drank my hot toddy I remember pulling out HouseRockin and eyeballing it with a strange curiosity. The cover really struck me. I remember thinking, man, these guys seem cool. It wasn’t until I actually got back to Michigan that I had a chance to listen to it, but as soon as I did, I remember the record hitting me like a tidal wave, one song after the next mercilessly crashing into my bambino ears. It was raw, unpolished, and pissed, a proper rite of passage for my budding adolescent angst.

Fast forward to 2005, when I first met Danny Kroha, who started the band along with Mick Collins and Peggy O’Neil. Danny was dating my good friend Tia at the time, and I was invited over to their house for dinner. Danny struck me the same way Houserockin initially did: I knew there was something special about him, some kind of magic going on in his head. Again, my intuition proved true. Danny is one of those people you feel privileged to know, not on account of his triumphs, but because of his enigmatic spirit. He seems timeless, his demeanor and sincerity stemming from some place unscathed by any debauchery or misfortune. You can feel his loyalty to his work, to his city, and to his music, just by talking to him. I recently caught up with Danny, fresh off his European tour, and listened as he talked about Detroit in the late eighties, using cake decorations as stage wear, and when exactly his legacy began.

When did you first start playing music?

I first started playing music when I was in the fourth grade. I played the sousaphone in the school band. It’s the marching version of the tuba, except we didn’t march. There was a special chair that held it up and I’d crawl into it. The instrument was too big for me to carry, so I had an eighth grader carry it up from the band room for me.

I started playing guitar when I was 19. I was already the lead singer in a band called The Onset at that time, this would’ve been 1984-85. We were a mod band, we played some Jam songs at first, then we started getting more into the R&B the original 60s mods were into. We covered songs by Bo Diddley, The Contours, and Slim Harpo, and also wrote our own songs, which were pretty bad.

 

What was the first record you ever bought?

The first record I ever bought was a couple of 45s, “Pinball Wizard” by The Who, and “Philadelphia Freedom” by Elton John. I got them at a record store at the mall, probably Northland.

 

Do you remember your first gig?

I think the first gig I did was a house party. My band, Start (which turned into The Onset), played probably like five or six songs at this party. The bass player was so disgusted with the performance that he threw down his bass at the end and stormed off, and I think he quit after that.

 

What was the Detroit scene like in the mid 80s when The Gories first came together?

In the mid-eighties there were a bunch of bands in Detroit. The Gories got their start playing this open mic night that was hosted by Rob Tyner (of the MC5). It was called the Community Concert Series and it was at St. Andrew’s church on the Wayne State campus. Rob played electric autoharp and sang socially conscious songs about Vietnam P.O.W.s and stuff. This bored us to no end, but it was very cool of him to let us get up there and play. I’m very proud to say that he gave us our start. There were all kinds of bands in Detroit from experimental noise bands, to straight up punk, poppy punk, power pop, hardcore, new wave synth pop stuff, blues, rockabilly, heavy metal, hair metal, surf, garage, etc. It was all here.

We had a cool little garage scene. There was a band called The Hysteric Narcotics who did Pebbles type garage. They were a few years older than us and really good. They were great songwriters. They had a guy who doubled on organ and twelve string guitar. They did vocal harmonies. Just a great band. Also there were the Vertical Pillows who were a straight up all girl rock band. All good players (Mary Cobra was the rhythm guitar player). There were the Zombie Surfers who wore masks and played surf music really well. This was like five years before masked surf bands became a thing. The same guys also had a band called The 3-D Invisibles and they had these great punk/power pop songs that were all monster or science fiction themed. There were a couple of local D.I.Y. labels that put out comps of local bands Tremor Records and Wanghead Records. The guy who ran Wanghead, Lenny Puch, had a rockabilly-ish band called, Snake Out. We had a local band news paper called Jam Rag run by this Ferndale guy, Tom Ness. I made my first recordings in his basement with Start. We had a thriving little scene then.

 

Who was influencing you at the time?

I was into The Yardbirds, Kinks, Them, The Who, The Small Faces, The Velvet Underground, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Howlin’ Wolf, R.E.M, The Dream Syndicate, Violent Femmes, The Three O’Clock, The Bangles, The Chesterfield Kings, The Fleshtones, Thee Mighty Ceasars, a bunch of obscure british 60s bands like The Birds, The Eyes, and The Creation, also the American garage comps Pebbles, and Back From The Grave.

 

Where did the bands mod aesthetic come from?

I guess we were all into mod stuff because we were Who fans and we loved the movie The Kids Are Alright. I’m not sure how Mick found out about mod stuff. He was really into British music and all kinds of stuff. He read a lot.

 

On your debut album, Houserockin, the primitive sounds of the blues influence matched by the garage minimalism really separated you guys from other bands of your scene. What inspiration went into making the album, and where did the influence come from?

When The Gories made our first LP we had already heard a bunch of 60s garage revival bands that came out in the early 80s, mostly from California. None of them had any real blues or R&B influences, or if they did listen to Bo Diddley and other Chess label blues, it didn’t really come out very raw or bluesy. We felt like we could make a really raw more directly blues/r&b type of garage. It came down to nobody was doing it the way we wanted to hear it done, so we decided to do it ourselves. It was almost a joke, because we knew we could barely play, and we’d drive people out of the bar, but that was part of the fun. We sucked, with attitude, and we had attitude because we believed in what we were doing.

 Your second album, I Know You Fine, But How You Doin’, was produced by Big Star’s Alex Chilton. What was working with Chilton like?

The great thing about Alex is he also believed in what we were doing. He told me one time that The Gories were doing for R&B what The Cramps did for rockabilly. His main goal was just to get a good quality recording of us, and that’s what he did. We went down to Memphis and recorded with Doug Easley who had converted the garage behind his house into a 16 track studio. Alex slept on the couch while we recorded. He had no interest in telling us what to do or how to play, he only wanted (in a way of putting it) a more hi-def picture of our sound. When it came time to mix the tracks down, he woke up and started mixing. We ended up mixing it together. It was fun. He played us the Troggs tape (legendary studio session gone hilariously wrong). It was a rite of passage listening to that with him. None of us had ever heard it and it wasn’t readily available (you can find it on YouTube now). He was the first person who referred to what I was doing in music as a “career”.

 

Is it surprising to you that The Gories are one of few bands that are heralded as one of the most influential bands coming out of that time, or did you guys somehow know back then that the music you were making was something special? 

We knew The Gories was something special. My goal was to be timeless, and to make the kind of music that we wanted to hear. We had no concern with being commercial or making money. It was most important that we liked what we were doing. I took a lot of inspiration from The Velvets. The book Uptight had just come out, and in it they talked about how they made music that they liked and they didn’t give a shit if anyone else liked it, and they would turn their backs to the audience if they felt like it. They didn’t sell a lot of records and weren’t considered a success at the time, but they stood the test of time. I read all that and just thought that was the way to be. So yeah, I dreamed and desired that The Gories would end up being influential. That was more important to me than immediate success. I wasn’t sure it was going to happen, I just hoped it would.

 

Your legacy in music is ongoing. I was a fan of the Demolition Doll Rods, can you tell us how that band came about?

The Doll Rods came in the wake of The Gories break up. Margaret had gone on The Gories one and only tour (Europe in Spring of ’92). When we got home the band broke up. She had gotten a taste of touring and wanted to start a band and keep doing it, so I think during the tour, or at least right after we got home, she started thinking up band names and writing down song titles. One day she told me her idea for the name, which I thought was brilliant, and she showed me a notebook page with about ten good crazy song titles on it. She also said her idea was that it would be an all girl band so she asked if I would be a girl in the band. This all sounded pretty interesting and wild to me, so I said yeah.

 

The aesthetic with this band was particularly wild. What was the idea behind the stage wear?

The image of The Doll Rods was all Margaret’s idea. At first I wore her clothes and wigs. Vinyl rock n’ roll stuff, leopard mini skirts, stuff like that. Then she started wanting to be more naked and wear g-strings and tape different toys and things to our chests. Each show had a theme. One time it was snack foods, we wore Pope stickers in Rome, rubber fudgesicle dog toys, birds, records, cake decorations, you name it, we taped it to our chests. Then we met this guy who made leather stuff, Tom the Leatherman. He made the red leather suits for The Romantics. He also made costumes for Parliament. We would design these leather pieces, just like draw them on a napkin, and he would make them for us. That was my favorite era of the Doll Rods “look”.

 

How did the music writing shift from the Gories to The Demolition Doll Rods?

For me in the Doll Rods, I wanted to pursue more 70’s punk type stuff. More Ramones-y type stuff, but also have the blues-y thing in there. I also wanted to get more Velvets influence in there.

 

You have been in a number of bands over the years, all based out of Detroit. Was there ever a point in your life you thought maybe you could play music somewhere else? What’s kept Detroit your home base?

Well for one thing, I’ve always lived in the city of Detroit and since I was a kid Detroit was an underdog. Kids and adults who lived in the suburbs or in other towns would ask where I was from and I’d say Detroit, and they’d say, “yeah, but what part? (meaning like, “what suburb?”)”, and I’d say, “Detroit”. Then it was always, “You mean in DETROIT?!!”. I felt like Detroit got a bad rap, so I felt very loyal to it from a young age. Also, it’s cheap. You have more time to dream and do your art. It’s sort of a backwater, not trendy, things move a little slower, bands have more time to marinate. It was always like five years behind New York, but sometimes we were so far behind, we’d come out ahead.

What are your thoughts on the music scene and the kids today compared to that of when you were a young kid?

The main difference between today and years ago is the lack of mystery. So much information is at your fingertips now, any record you hear about and want to listen to it you can find it on YouTube. It killed the mystery. Kids really used to have to hunt for info, you had to hunt down records. You had to write people letters on paper and put a stamp on it and send it in the mail. You had to buy magazines, send away for record lists to addresses you got from papers and magazines. I’m a slave to convenience just like the next person, I admit it, but I’m glad I knew the days when things weren’t so convenient. I think it required more conviction and passion to pursue it.

 

And what is the music scene in Detroit like now compared to what it was in the late 80s?

The difference in the music scene is that there are more different types of bands and music now. I think there are more sub-genres. There was not a scene for rootsy Americana in the 80’s and that’s a big thing now. I think there are more bands now. More tribute bands. That didn’t used to be a thing. There didn’t used to be a school of rock. There were never bands that had parents and kids in them. There were no bands where there was more than a five year age difference among band members. Now it’s not that big of a deal to have a member who’s ten or even twenty years older than the other band members.

 

Do you feel like the music industry has taken a turn for the worst in this age of internet and excess information?

The worst part about music on the internet is that compared to traditional radio airplay, it pays peanuts, fractions of peanuts. Airplay royalties for satellite radio, Spotify, Pandora, all that stuff are just insultingly low.

 

What are you listening to right now?

What I’m listening to right now is mainly blues, hillbilly, jazz, and gospel from the 1920’s and 30’s. Plus some guys who did that kind of acoustic folk/blues in the 60’s. Some of my favorite old time artists are: Kelly Harrell, Frank Hutchison, Pink Anderson, Jimmie Rodgers, The Carter Family, Son House, Clarence Williams, Dock Boggs, Frank Stokes, Furry Lewis, and Leadbelly. From the 60’s I like Roscoe Holcomb, Hobart Smith, The New Lost City Ramblers, Spider John Koerner, Tom Rush, Eric Von Schmidt, and Dave Van Ronk.

 

Are there any current bands that you like?

Current bands I like are: The Allah Las, Liquor Store, The Pretty Ghouls, Mountains and Rainbows, (I know there’s more, just can’t think of them).

 

I know you recently got back from touring Europe. Can you tell us about your newest project, and what to expect in the future?

The newest project is Danny & The Darleans. I’m going back to my garage roots with this one. I have a very specific taste in 60’s garage. I like raw, weird records with abnormal lyrics e.g.: We Sell Soul by The Spades, We All Love Peanut Butter by The One Way Streets, Thoughts Of A Madman by The Nomads, Again and Again by The Iguanas, Destination Lonely by The Huns, Rollercoaster by The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, i by The Music Machine, One More Day, One More Night by Kack Klick, To Find Out by The Keggs, etc. So I want to have a 60’s type garage band that reflects this taste in the raw and weird as exemplified by the list of songs I just named. The band has enough songs for a new LP, so I want to record that as soon as possible, and hopefully have it out in the spring or fall. I’d like to tour Europe again and also do more U.S. dates.

 

Is there any advice you can offer to musicians who are eager to pursue their musical endeavors?

I always say, follow your heart. Do the kind of music that makes you happy. Don’t do it for money or fame, unless that’s what you want, then be prepared to sell your soul.