LAST CRACK'S BUDDO

IN 1991, A BAND FROM MADISON, WISCONSIN CALLED LAST CRACK RELEASED THEIR SECOND ALBUM, BURNING TIME-- AN AMAZING COLLECTION OF SONGS THAT SPANNED THE THEN-DIVIDED GENRES OF METAL AND ALTERNATIVE. THEIR SOUND WAS YEARS AHEAD OF ITS TIME, BUT THAT DID NOT STOP CRITICS AND FANS ALIKE FROM DISCOVERING AN AMAZING BAND THAT WAS POISED TO WAKE UP THE WORLD. AS THE MOMENTUM BEGAN TO BUILD, THE BAND FELL APART. FAST-FORWARD TO A REUNION SHOW AND BURNING FUNKHOUSE LIVE, THEIR NEW ALBUM OUT THIS MONTH, AND THE BAND IS BACK TOGETHER TO FINISH WHAT THEY STARTED SO LONG AGO. NIGHT WATCHMAN TALKED TO LEAD VOCALIST BUDDO TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED, WHAT LAST CRACK MEANT, AND WHERE THEY ARE HEADED NEXT.
Night Watchman: When the album Burning Time was released it seemed like Last Crack was getting a lot of critical acclaim, and everyone seemed to be very interested in the band. What happened at that point? If you guys would have continued on and become the next Pearl Jam or Jane’s Addiction, would you have been ready for that at that point in your lives?
Buddo: My answer to that would have to be no. Everything happened pretty quickly. We were signed within eight months of being together, and there were different stresses in the band. It kind of worked like a seesaw: on one end you had me, and then Don [Bakken], Pablo [Paul Schluter] was like the fulcrum, Reno [Todd Winger] would be the next, and then Phil [Buerstatte]. Phil and I had a lot of different philosophies about life and how to do the industry stuff. There was that rift; I was kind of freaking out about being singled out and getting a lot of the attention, and actually those guys were a pretty solid four-piece before I came along. They went to high school together; Don and Paul were in a band together, and Phil and Reno were in a band together, so they kind of joined forces eventually and jammed for a couple years with a couple different singers until I came along. I was in Austin, Texas for a year trying to get something going. I came back and auditioned. So I was a little bit older than them. Now, it wouldn’t matter as much; but when you’re 22 and they’re 19--
NW: Yeah, it’s a big difference.
B: Yeah, there’s a difference there. So even to start with, I was like the thumb on the hand in the band. We all got along well and it was all cool. We wrote great music together-– that was the glue. But when I started getting all the attention, the rift grew more and more, and I freaked out. I was the spokesman. I’m writing these lyrics, and I was always trying to bring humanity into the music and the lyrics. And to me that meant light, love, hope, and spirituality. I think as we went along on the tours, I became overwhelmed with the stresses of the industry and everything. Having the record company pressuring for better shows-- wanting some antics that would cause more interest in the band-- and focusing on me to do that stuff. I got more into wanting to be clean and right, you know what I mean? Phil, on the other hand, was on the opposite end of the seesaw, and he was kind of going the other way, indulging in things. I just felt like the house was divided, so there was that internal struggle with the band. And then there was the industry pressure coming on, and it seemed like no matter what we or I did it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. The critics didn’t like us on a certain show, and they’d slam us about our chemistry. Roadrunner [Records] just wanted more out of us, but we were just doing what we do. We weren’t, nor will we ever be, a big Eighties show band. We have an organic chemistry, and we just get up there and play our songs with our hearts. We had two managers, and I actually went to one of our managers about how I felt about everything, and he said, \"Well, hang on for a little bit more and we’ll just take off on our own.\" So there was dissension in the management, as well. One manager wanted to take me and leave the band. The other manager could represent the band. So all those things were contributing factors. It wasn’t just one thing. It wasn’t like there was a Peter Grant-type [Led Zeppelin manager/\"fifth member\"] manager who would say, \"You’re not quitting this band; you’re staying in this band. What’s the problem here?\" You know? (laughs) It was, \"Hmmm... I see where you’re coming from, but hang on a little bit more and then we’ll go do our own thing.\" The trouble with that was my manager wanted a quick buck.
NW: That had to be a lot to deal with all at the same time.
B: Yeah. It was one situation after another that contributed to the final, \"Okay, I guess it’s time to go.\" And I really figured that those guys would find a singer who would fit more of the metal genre. The way that metal and hard rock has gone now, it’s crossed over so much, but back then there were sharp differences between alternative and metal, and I just figured they’d find somebody and keep on. Well, I went off with my manager Peter Carroll, and Gary Taylor took the four guys. Roadrunner dropped the band. They kept me on and put me on a stipend for a year to write material. This is another kind of a tangent, but I’ll come back to that. The band enlisted Shawn Brown to sing, but, at that time, Phil had the taste of the big industry, and he wanted to keep going up, I think, at whatever cost. So he talked with our booking agent in New York. That agent had booked White Zombie and a few other bigger names. Phil asked our booking agent if there were any bands that were signed and looking for drummers. And, as history will show, Ivan from White Zombie was getting kicked out for heroin. So, Phil auditioned and got that gig. I think he might have jammed a couple times with Shawn before he left. But then the guys got Chris Havey, who’s our current drummer in Last Crack. So that was Last Crack 2.0.
NW: How did you feel about that? Were you all for it because that’s what you expected them to do?
B: Yeah, I did. But I think it changed radically with a different drummer and singer. In retrospect, I think they should have changed their name, but the name was garnering some attention so they decided to keep it. In the meantime, I was writing material and working with this guy from Austin that I knew when I lived there. He actually moved to Madison. We started writing, and that was the start of the band Mind Ox. I flew out to New York to meet the new A&R guy who Roadrunner was assigning me to. Roadrunner was very, very cool back then. They took Last Crack on as a potential crossover because they were essentially dealing in hardcore death metal-- all the really heavy, heavy stuff-- but then they took us. They were a great staff, and I got along with the general manager, Doug Keogh, just great; he and I were friends. We’d play squash together at The Yale Club when I’d go there.
Both: (laugh)
B: But his responsibilities were becoming too much to be so involved with me, so he assigned me to this new A&R guy they got from Capitol Records: Howie. Well, Howie and I just didn’t get along. He was into rap metal. He was looking for something like where White Zombie was heading; he was really getting into rap, and I’m not into rap at all. I think Zombie’s best album is Soul-Crusher. I hung out with Howie for three days out there, but it just didn’t vibe, so they let me go. Last Crack did have some debt when Roadrunner excused me. My manager told me it was $20,000, but I’ve heard higher numbers. I’m not even sure what the books would say.
NW: Was that something that you were stuck with, or something the band had to divide?
B: I would have been responsible for the debt. It would have come out of my potential royalties.
NW: You said that Howie was looking for something different. Has it always been like that? Last Crack was on Roadrunner, which totally didn’t fit. But even then Last Crack was a good five or six years ahead of those other bands that did eventually find that crossover alternative/metal sound. Have you always found that it’s hard to find a place for you and Last Crack to fit?
B: Absolutely! I mean, even now it seems like we’re on the periphery. Right now we’re living in Wisconsin. (laughs) Not too many original bands around. A lot of cover bands. This isn’t a center for music, so we’re still on the periphery. But because of the Internet and everything else there’s a way to reach out. But back then, that wasn’t the case. I remember going with Doug to this really big promotional company in Manhattan, and sitting down and talking to them about a possible marketing campaign, and the guy basically said, \"Well, the band is such an odd creature that it would just take a lot of money to make this happen.\" So it just didn’t work at the time, I guess. They didn’t think it would pay off because it wasn’t easily accessible. It didn’t just need a little juice, it needed gallons.
NW: They didn’t feel that it could work on more of a grass roots kind of level? I\'ve met so many people that were aware of the band and had Burning Time or Sinister Funkhouse #17, and they always found out about it from someone saying, \"You’ve got to check this out.\" I remember buying copies of the albums when they were in the cutout bins and just giving them to friends. There wasn’t a way to capitalize and market it that way?
B: Well, that takes a long time. I mean, that could take a decade. I think that’s what naturally happens if a band stays together and if they don’t get some big push behind them; like Widespread Panic, or early Metallica. That’s where Last Crack is at now. I think it\'s very grass roots. But there is something to be said about having the money behind you. Like Creed... all of a sudden-- BAM!-- you don’t know the band one day, the next day they’re in heavy rotation. So, I don’t know. The \"big\" way didn’t work for us then, and that’s about it on that aspect.
NW: Have you been surprised over the years how many people remembered or knew of the band?
B: Very surprised! I never knew it had reached so many people. Even in Greece or Italy, many different places. And people logging onto the website that are now checking us out. It\'s ten years later, and they’ve been looking and waiting and wondering what happened with the band. My friends will travel somewhere and they’ll come back and say, \"I met a guy down there that was totally into Last Crack.\" One of my students in Japan had a friend who was a Crack fan. Very surprising. I never realized we had that broad of an effect.
NW: Was that one of the things that led to the reformation of the band?
B: I think the real root of it is that we all just respect each other a lot as musicians. We have all played with many, many other musicians, but when it comes down to it, man, the chemistry is just so natural. It’s like a love that you had that you lost when you were younger, but it was always \"The One\". You went out and had other people or whatever, but there was nothing that fit like that chemistry. So I think that’s really the reason we’re back together. Just because, with each other, we do it the best.
NW: Did it always feel like things were left unfinished?
B: Oh, yeah, on many levels. I wanted to \"make it\". First of all, I wanted to be a signed major-label musician; it’s been my life goal. That was unfinished. And then the breakup of the band-- that was unfinished. So, yeah, there were big feelings of incompletion and failure. God, I remember walking around in Madison four years after the band broke up and people would recognize me. I mean, they all know me around here. And I was just feeling like, \"What am I doing here?\" I’m the guy that could-have-been and everybody knows it. I’m kind of past that now. It doesn’t really matter. You’ve just got to do what you do, and whatever happens with it will happen. I don’t think I or Last Crack have any big expectations now. We’re just doing what we do. Making the music; recording the music. And, yeah, it would be great if some opportunities come up. That would be very cool. It would be really nice to complete the big picture.
NW: Do you worry that maybe the ship has sailed? I hate to put it that way, but most record companies want to sign really young bands, leech onto them for a few years until they get burnt out, and then throw them away. The industry isn’t typically very supportive to people that have been around and have their own vision.
B: That’s our whole culture now: disposable. So I think the grass roots way is really the best option. We’re not relying on a label. We might get an indie or something from Europe, or even in the States, that would help us out with distribution and possibly a tour, but none of us are expecting the big hammer to drop and help us out. But that’s the way. As far as the ship having sailed, I think a lot of people in the industry, and even locally, they’re calling us old school rockers now. But I think that if something has quality, it will always have quality. Fuck the disposability and the fickle mindsets of contemporary life. I guess that could be Last Crack’s motto.
NW: That’s got to be kind of weird to be considered old school.
B: Yeah. What are you going to do? Everybody\'s just got to keep on being true to what is done. And the music just keeps being created and played. The way it should be.
NW: When you guys did the initial reunion show in late November of 2002, was it just a one-off thing, or were you thinking at that point to get the band back together and see what you could do?
B: It was kind of half-and-half. Part of it was to just get together and do it, but also, in the back of our minds, it was like it could be the start of us working together again.
NW: Where do you see it going from here? I know you have the live album of that reunion show coming out on January 15th. Are there any new songs on that?
B: I don’t think there will be any new ones on the live CD. It’s just going to be Burning Time and ...Funkhouse #17. We started writing material after that show. So now we’ve probably got about ten new tunes. We’ve had five or six of them available for free on the website for download, and we just played two brand-new ones last Wednesday. We played at King Club here in Madison.
NW: Right. That was the release party for the live CD: Burning Funkhouse Live.
B: Yeah, Rokker Records has pretty much everything that we’ve done in the last ten years. All the side projects and undiscovered Crack.
NW: That was something I wanted to ask you about. How did your relationship with Rokker from Maximum Ink come about? Was he just a rabid Last Crack fan, or was he someone you knew from back then?
B: It’s the former. Rokker is/was this rabid Last Crack fan who grew in the publishing industry here. I think he initially hit it off with Pablo when Crack with Brown started. Rokker’s clout has grown. He just started doing stuff with us. Rokker is helping us out with press and getting more and more involved-- he cares. A lot of the motivation behind the Last Crack reformation is due to Rokker. We really think he cares and wants to help us out. He wants the band to grow. He wants his magazine to grow. And he wants his distribution and record label to grow. It’s all kind of integral now.
NW: You were speaking before about how you always tried to have something positive in the lyrics, which is something that always struck me as being really amazing about Last Crack. Some of your songs are about really terrible things, like drug addiction and suicide, but there was always this light and hope that you captured. Where does that come from? Do you feel a responsibility when you write a song that you have to give something more than hatred or fluff?
B: Always. What is pure hatred or fluff? I think life is a dance of dark and light. And I think good writing, be it a novel, poetry, or whatever has to have both those elements. Some people might just stay in the dark. Some people are all in the light. But you’ve got to mix them both. I need to culminate with a message of light. I don’t know why. Everybody goes through depressing parts in their life. These are burning times. But I think that there is always endless potential. So I guess that comes through in the lyric writing, too. I don’t want to leave my soul or your soul sitting in a dark closet. (laughs) That’s kind of the way I look at it.
NW: You mentioned spirituality before. The name that you go by, \"Buddo\", where does that come from?
B: It’s pretty wild. The true story is, I was born in West Allis, Wisconsin, in a little Polish area of the town. And when I was born, a few of my Dad’s friends came up and said, \"You’ve got yourself a son, Jimbo. What are you going to call him?\" \"Well, I think it’s going to be \'Craig\'.\" And they go, \"Aw, come on! You’ve got to give him a Polish name.\" And he goes, \"Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that, too. It’s going to be \'Buddo Budowski\'.\" So he just called me \"Buddo\" my whole life, and that’s petty much the name I’ve gone by through school and everything else.
NW: I’d always wondered if it was a nickname or your real name or--
B: A spiritual name?
NW: Yeah, because \"Buddo\" in Esperanto means \"Buddha\".
B: Uh-huh.
NW: So I didn’t know if it was an allusion to that.
B: It just kind of happened that way. (laughs) When I was with Roadrunner doing all these interviews, and people were asking me where I got the name, I talked to Doug and said maybe I should just tell them that my parents thought I was going to be an enlightened one, and they just decided to call me \"Buddo\". And Doug said, \"Oh, no. Don’t do that. Just tell the truth.\"
Both: (laugh)
NW: Since I’ve got this opportunity, finally, to talk to you, I have to ask you some nerdy questions about some of the old songs.
B: Can I tell you one more thing about the name?
NW: Absolutely.
B: Okay. I taught English in Japan two and a half years ago, and my closer students, ones I got to be friends with, I was telling them my name was Buddo and they pronounced it \"bu-do\". Buddo in Japan is the samurai art-- it’s Bushido or Buddo. So they\'d say, \"Buddo! Ah, good name!\"
Both: (laugh)
NW: What was the experience of teaching in Japan like?
B: Oh, man. Let’s see. I was in a tiny little town in Northern Japan, and it was pretty damn isolating. I was probably one of three English speakers within five miles, and, boy, I’ll tell you, I made so many social faux pas. And just going over there not knowing a lick of Japanese, it was like a meditation that whole year, but it was beautiful. I saw some awesome Zen temples that were thousands of years old, and I used to go to meditate in this one temple. Nobody was ever there. It was always open. They had a huge Kodo drum in there. The drum was weathered with this big, leather drum head, and I’d go in there and bang on it and meditate. (laughs) I had some really high and really low times there. But it was a very internally focused year.
NW: Was that one of the reasons you decided to go, or was that something you had always wanted to do? Had you always been interested in the culture?
B: When I was in high school I remember hearing about English teachers in Japan, and I thought, \"What a crazy thing that would be,\" and it was always kind of lodged in the back of my brain. And then I was kind of at a dead end in my life. I didn’t know what to do with my life. I was driving a truck doing a delivery job, Mind Ox was coming to an end, and my girlfriend at the time... we were having tons of problems: bipolar, etc. So all these things came to an end, and I was like, \"Shit!\" And then I saw this ad in the Isthmus [Madison-based daily paper] that said \"Teach English Abroad! We’ll Show You How!\"
Both: (laugh)
B: So I went in, had a meeting, and paid $2,000. I did six weeks for a certification program, and on the first Friday of classes Kigawa-san from Japan came in and did some interviews and hired me. And just-- BAM!-- two months later, I’m in Japan.
NW: Wow. That sounds really cool. I have a roommate that’s moving in soon, and she did that for three years.
B: Cool. That’s a good amount of time; one year is too short. What were the nerdy things? (laughs)
NW: Okay, the nerdy questions I’ve got to ask are, part of the lyrics in \"Papa Mugaya\" go: \"Papa Mugaya, you\'ve really done it this time / You\'re a man of many dreams / But not enough reality / But we believed in you-- we believed / We bought stock in every struggle / We had faith in every scheme / It\'s just too bad-- you didn\'t!\" Who is that song about?
B: That’s my worst fear, dude.
NW: Is it about you? That’s what I always thought.
B: It’s about feeling like a loser and not believing, and finally just giving up and committing suicide. So, yeah, I figured if I could write about my worst fear, maybe I could allay it. (laughs)
NW: Does it help to do things like that? To get those words out and then have to perform them every night on a tour? Is it like an exorcism?
B: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I had a band called The Din that was together for a year. The guitar player and bass player left, so it is no more. But we recorded eleven songs, and then my girlfriend-- the one that was bipolar-- she got leukemia, and she died about a year and a half ago. So, right after she died those guys asked me if I wanted to jam with them. Brandi, that was her name, she left about a hundred pages of journaling. And 90% of the lyrics for The Din are culled from Brandi’s journals, and... I mean, that is totally cathartic. I’m able to be her and understand the confusion and pain and the desperation, and the music fits perfectly because it’s surf punk. That will probably be on Rokker in early 2005. Pablo is mixing it.
NW: My second nerdy question is, the interview that you do with the woman at the beginning of \"Kiss The Cold\", who was she and how did you come to interview her?
B: It was like espionage. Last Crack was practicing out in this little town called Oregon, outside of Madison. The guy that let us jam there was a dealer of sorts, so there were sundry characters coming in and out all the time. I decided to go into the basement early that day to record on my Fostex. Crack was going to rehearse, and I wanted to get some four-track stuff done. I went in about three hours early, and there was a party going on at three in the afternoon. (laughs) I was downstairs doing my own thing, and this woman comes down; her shirt’s unbuttoned with no bra, shorts-- it was summer. She’s got a screwdriver in her hand; probably cocained up. She just sits down and starts jawing at me-- just would not stop talking-- and she was nuts and made no sense in what she was saying, but she wouldn’t shut up. I thought she was such a character that I had to get it captured. Her name was Erica. So I said, \"Erica, excuse me, but I\'ve gotta go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back. Don’t move.\" I ran upstairs and got my micro-cassette recorder out of the car, turned it on, walked downstairs, and just let it record. I got about 45 minutes on tape before it ran out. I went through it when we were in L.A. recording Burning Time, and I edited parts together. What she said there wasn’t a natural conversation. I edited parts together, and it just turned out to be perfect for the song. We had to give her a call from out there. [Producer] Dave Jerden said, \"Who is this girl? Does she know this is happening?\" \"No.\" We had to call her and ask her approval, but she didn’t even remember the conversation; she didn’t even remember talking with me.
Both: (laugh)
B: But she said, \"Sure, go ahead! What the heck. Do it!\" So, that’s it. She came to that reunion show, actually. I didn’t see her, but it was rumored she was there.
NW: How bizarre.
B: Yeah.
NW: Any other neat little facts you can share about the old albums?
B: Hmmm... I’m going through it in my mind, about different tunes.
NW: \"Mini Toboggan\" is about your childhood, right?
B: Yeah. That was Jefferson, Wisconsin. Living out in the country, just the cold and the snow-- having to take a school bus home for an hour. Again, the dichotomy: the black and the white. Here you’ve got this isolated family out in the middle of nowhere where it’s freezing cold, but you’ve got three kids who are siblings who love each other and are making the best of it.
NW: Burning Time is one of my favorite albums of all-time, and I’m so glad that you guys are back together. I’m really looking forward to hearing the new music you’re recording. One last question, and this is the question we ask everyone: in your professional opinion, do dogs have lips?
B: (laughs) Hmmm... do dogs have lips? Gosh, I’m stymied.
Both: (laugh)
B: I’ve got a pug. So, yeah, I think there are some lips on the pug. (laughs) She can actually smile, so there must be some... what is that called? What is the lip muscle?
NW: I don’t know. But there are a lot of them in there that make it so you can smile.
B: They’re the round muscles, you know?
NW: Like a sphincter?
B: There we go!
Both: (laugh)
NW: So they have a butt-mouth?
Both: (laugh)
B: Yeah. God, I don’t know if I’d want to use that word in association with the mouth or not!