By Andrew Bansal
Based out of Atlanta, Georgia, Southern sleaze rock band Nashville Pussy have been around since 1996, and led by vocalist/rhythm guitarist Blaine Cartwright and his wife Ruyter Suys on lead guitar, they’ve been spreading their brand of rock n’ roll to the masses, with a strong tinge of humor in the lyrics. Now, they’re ready to release their seventh studio album ‘Up The Dosage’ in North America via SPV Steamhammer Records on Tuesday January 21. This album is very aptly titled as it certainly ups the dose of Nashville Pussy’s signature rock n’ roll, and is a worthwhile release for fans of the genre. Ruyter Suys spoke to me a few days ago to discuss the album, among other things. Read the conversation below.
It’s good to have you on Metal Assault. Tell me about this new album ‘Up The Dosage’ which is coming out soon. I think it’s pretty diverse and has a range of styles. For people who haven’t heard it yet, what can they expect?
I think people are calling it classic rock. It’s a very good example of what Nashville Pussy. We’re a fucking rock n’ roll band and we wear our influences on our sleeves (laughs). You can hear everything on this album. You can tell that we listen to Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Motörhead, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Stones and AC/DC. It’s fairly obvious that we love classic rock (laughs), and we’ve been around long enough to actually embody it. So this is kind of a distilled version of Nashville Pussy. I think it’s the most concise and diverse representation of our band. If our first album was a six-pack and the next couple of albums were cocktails, this one is a straight shot. It is 100 per cent Nashville Pussy (laughs).
That’s very well put. It’s been a while though, hasn’t it? The last album you put out, ‘From Hell To Texas’ came out in 2009. What took you that long to make this album?
Well, we recorded three albums in this time with other bands, and we’ve toured constantly. So it’s like, we’ve been busy in the studio but not with Nashville Pussy. Blaine and I have a record label and radio station called Slinging Pig that we do on the side, just when we have spare time. On the label we put out mostly our own shit, just side projects and stuff. So we put out Blaine’s country-punk band Nine Pound Hammer. They recorded an album. Blaine’s other band Kentucky Bridgeburners recorded an album and toured Europe. My metal band Dick Delicious And The Tasty Testicles put out an album and toured for it, and then we have another band called Buzzard for which we recorded an album but it hasn’t yet been released. So we’ve been really busy (laughs). But we finally got around to Nashville Pussy. It was just waiting, and it made us more pent. It was like we hadn’t had sex in a year or something like that. As soon as you get in the room, it’s like Bam! We just fucking erupted. This is probably the easiest writing and recording we ever had. It was completely not painful and it came out really fast.
That’s very cool. Because of that do you think it has a certain sense of rawness to it, even though it’s produced with modern values?
Yeah, definitely. It’s weird because it has this young spazzy energy, but at the same time it sounds mature. May be the maturity just comes from being around for a while because we’re certainly not singing about anything mature (laughs). The playing is better, and it was almost all live takes. I think 95 per cent of it was just live tracking. All my solos are live. Everything just came out really easy, and the energy got captured immediately. It was like, ‘Fuck, man. Don’t fuck with that. Just leave it alone. It’s perfect!’
You mentioned the fact that the band doesn’t really sing about mature stuff, and there’s a sense of humor of it. Where does that come from? Do you ever worry about whether it’d be funny to listeners?
Fuck no! Our whole point is just to entertain ourselves, and we’re pretty jaded. I mean, I’m in a band called Dick Delicious which sings about .. shit, literally! That’s all we sing about, farts and poops. We do not take this shit seriously at all (laughs). I think somebody starts a band either to get laid or because you’re just fucking bored, or to be the loudest person in the house and take over the world. Those are the only main reasons when you’re a teenager. But our goal is just to entertain ourselves, and if Blaine’s lyrics can make us laugh, that’s a good start. It takes a pretty bad joke to make us laugh. So, unfortunately we are not considering our audience whatsoever. But we’re grateful that you guys want to come along for the party (laughs).
That reminds me, I actually interviewed Mr. Dick Delicious a couple of years ago.
No fucking way!
Yeah, we got stoned at his house and just talked for half an hour. Good times.
Oh that fucking den of iniquity, holy shit. Jason and I are best friends. I fucking love the guy. I have to text him on a regular basis to check if he’s doing okay. Because he’s always like, ‘I’m going to kill myself!’ or ‘I just got hit by a car’ or ‘I hate this chick!’ And I’m like, dude, fucking put down the Xanax and give me a call some time. Let’s go for a walk on the beach and do something non-chemical related. I love him to death but he’s got to stop fucking posting everything. When we toured for Dick Delicious, we had to tell him to stop posting everything because he was making us fight with each other on tour, based on the shit he was putting on twitter.
I’ll be sure to send him this interview. But coming back to this Nashville Pussy album, I read that it had a low budget. Did that affect the album in any way?
No, fuck no. We’ve been recording at Nitrosonic Studios for years and we knew what we could get away with. We were hoping that we would be able to do it as fast as we did. It went so unbelievably smooth, and thank God for that, because we blew away all our budget towards getting a really nice bus for our tour with ZZ Top. We didn’t want to go out like a pack of hillbillies with ZZ Top. We wanted to go like a bunch of classy fucking hillbillies (laughs), so we had ourselves a fucking great bus and we were parked right next to all the members of ZZ Top, so we would say good night and good morning to them and brush our teeth together. It was really cool. They had the Texas flag at the front of their bus and we had a big old confederate flag in the front of ours. It was great. Money well spent. Wake up with ZZ Top? Shit, totally worth it (laughs). And we still got a great album out of it, so we did pretty good.
I guess we have to fucking play America. God damn it. I mean, yes of course, I can’t wait (laughs). But we’ll do Europe first because our label is German and we have a good stronghold over there. So we’ll be going to Southern Europe to play shows in France, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Switzerland at the end of January and throughout February. Then we go back and do Northern Europe, like Belgium, Holland, Germany and Scandinavia. I don’t know if we’re playing the UK yet, and that’s still on the books. Then we do Australia, New Zealand, Japan and North America, and then festivals in Europe! So you’re seeing me now in one spot. The next time you see me, the world will be spinning around me (laughs).
That reminds me, the only time I’ve seen Nashville Pussy was with Motörhead at Club Nokia in 2009. What was it like touring with them?
Oh fuck, we fit like a glove with Motörhead. We’ve done five tours with them and we get along great. Out of all of our friends that we’ve made on tour, we’re still friends with Motörhead’s crew and when we still run into each other anywhere in the world, we sit down for like five hours and catch up. They’re fucking fabulous people. We love Motörhead. Blaine and Lemmy text all the time. I don’t why it works, but it does. They love us and we love them, and for some strange reason I think that translates to the audience and they gets it too. We’ve never had any problem with a Motörhead audience, probably because we are the Motörhead audience (laughs).
So I’m sure you’ll tour with them again in America, then.
I hope so, man. We’ll do whatever the fuck Lemmy wants. He’s the man. I’ll follow him anywhere, even to the goddamn Rainbow!
Visit Nashville Pussy on the web:
NashvillePussy.com
facebook.com/pages/Nashville-Pussy/13091707669
twitter.com/BashfulPuppy