Twenty years after forming, The Jesus Lizard are back on the road
by Adam Gold
- Joshua Black Wilkins
- Head Shots: The Jesus Lizard
On July 1, 1989, noise-rock innovators The Jesus Lizard played their first show at Bangkok Bangkok in Chicago. On July 1, 1999, after six albums—four on Touch and Go and two on Capitol—a split 7-inch with Nirvana and a decade's worth of touring in venues ranging from clubs to arenas, the band decided to call it quits. On July 1, 2009, guitarist Duane Denison—whose angular, punishing, yet deceptively melodic riffs defined a genre—talked to the Scene (via phone) about Nashville, his former band's career and, most importantly, their reunion.
In a rehearsal space in Bourdeaux, in a part of town "where they put all the stuff they don't wanna think about," the band are tuning up their brash atonal masterpieces of American underground rock music in preparation for their first U.S. tour in more than a decade, which kicks off this week at Exit/In. They are in Nashville because of Denison. After the breakup, he accepted an offer from Shelton Williams to play guitar for Hank Williams III, bringing him to Music City—where, he says, he "just sort of liked it, stayed, got married and bought a house."
In his time here, he's played guitar for Th' Legendary Shack Shakers, Bonnie Prince Billy, Andrew Bird, Bobby Bare Jr. and Silver Jews, among others. He's also a founding member, with Mike Patton (Faith no More and Mr. Bungle), of the band Tomahawk. "I've been playing with other people and touring, and everywhere I went, people would ask about The Jesus Lizard. But to me it just seemed like, well, we had been broken up for very long, what's the point [of a reunion]?"
Last year, however, talk of such a reunion began when Patton, his Tomahawk cohort, invited the band to play at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival he was curating in London.
The offer was too sudden to be accepted, but the door had been opened—then "everything seemed to fall into place," as Denison puts it. Touch and Go decided they were going to re-master and reissue the band's T & G back catalog—Head, Goat, Liar and Down. It had been 10 years, and the band decided, "If we're ever gonna do it, let's do it now...make a party out of it." What followed were five shows in Europe, including appearances at 2009's ATP fest, and a show in Barcelona that brought out more than 10,000 people. Singer David Yow was characteristically "flying through the air with reckless abandon" and the band was back, at least for a time.
Despite the unyielding interest in The Jesus Lizard—the old fans haven't gone away, and a new generation of fans are eager to see them live—Denison says that aside from the upcoming tour, "there are no long-term plans.... We don't want to milk it, it's not going to be an ongoing thing. It's a reunion in the sense that we're gonna go out, play some shows and that's it." But he does go on to say, "I always leave the door open for things.... I know for a fact that everybody [in the band] is in good health, everybody's chops are up, we still get along great, we have fun hanging out and playing.... If good ideas present themselves [then] why not?"
Denison says that at the upcoming Exit/In show we can expect to hear "high-decibel daring doom, she-male shenanigans [laughs]" and a catalog-spanning set list—save, of course, for a full scrotum-stretching performance of the classic "Tight and Shiny."
Email agold@nashvillescene.com or call 615-244-7989 ext. 404.
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