DUCK AND COVER: Odds are Deadbolt doesn't like you, either.

by PHILIP DAWDY
pdawdy@wweek.com

The "pleasures" of Deadbolt have little to do with music, basically because these guys couldn't keep a beat to save their mommies' lives. Over the past 10 years, Deadbolt has been all about persona rock: These are men of a million faces (Tijuana hitmen, African mercenaries, voodoo truckers and more), each of them as angry as a Serbian parable. Their music, a primitive proto-rockabilly rumble interspersed with sinister jokes and vicious insults, denies all that is harmolodic about four-chord furies and tells you to take all your little pretensions about indie rock AND STUFF IT, MAN. Harley Davidson, the singer-guitarist with the angry auto-mechanic mug, recently answered a few prompts about what makes his time-bomb personality tick.

Willamette Week: For someone who has never heard Deadbolt before, describe your aesthetic, describe voodoobilly.

Harley Davidson: It is the dark, the evil side of rockabilly.

What's your problem with regular rockabilly?

Well, you know I have no problem with it, it's nice--if you like hearing songs like the hot-rod song, you know, and Jenny Sue at the malt shop and then bopping the night away.

And you'd rather have songs about killing people and drinking?

Yeah. Exactly. We like to have a different theme for the albums. How many things can you write about? There are about three things: sex, drugs and rocking. Or, if you are like Jewel, you can write how we should be as people. Talk about the homeless.

I heard you've been on television in the past few years.

Jenny Jones.

What was the deal with that?

It was my ex-wife--she was the crazy one with the tattoos. She was watching TV and it said, "Do you have a spouse who has too many tattoos and piercings...?" So I called them up and we sent the pictures off. I covered myself up, got a haircut. I had a long sleeve shirt and we made it, man. I looked like a yuppie.

In whose nightmare do you look like a yuppie?

In everyone's, man. I had to play the part. I couldn't go out there with my tattoos. We had to get on the show.

How much did they pay you for this ordeal?

Well, they flew us out there. And we got like a hundred bucks a day in credit at the hotel we were staying at. Each, like a hundred bucks each.

So that all went to the bar?

Yeah, basically the bar. And I was driving room service crazy. A bottle of bourbon, the N.Y. steak.

So your drinking has grown a lot. How have you grown musically?

Musically? Not one bit. Though I think I did learn one more chord.

And what chord would that be?

I think it's a C.

And you still play through a mile of reverb?

Yes, my man, yes. Trenchant in reverb is the voodoobilly.

Leo Fender's best friend.

We are all Fender men. We don't play those wussy Gibsons.

"Wussy Gibsons." That's going to start a fight with somebody.

Ah, tell them I like a man's guitar.

You guys used to go to San Francisco and be on the hunt for hippies after the show. What do you do now that there are all those dot-commers in San Francisco?

We go after them, man.

Why is that? Aren't they good, moral upstanding people? They're just there to make everybody rich except us.

Well, some say this whole dot-com thing is collapsing. R.A. [MacLean, Deadbolt bassist] lives in San Francisco, and we had him change our attack from hippies to the dot-commers. A lot of the fucking hippies moved. We'll hit Eugene, of course. Every place we go into, we have our rage against hippies, we bring out all the people who live there and aren't hippies.

Presented with an option between the hippies and the dot-commers, which would you go after?

One thing with the hippie is, when they wake up in the morning, they just say, "Hey, I look like shit and I'm going to stay this way all freaking day. I'm not going to comb my hair. I'm just going to slap on some fucking patchouli, OK?" It's like the Jiffy Pop thing on their head. Have you seen those things? It's like the big Jiffy Pop net. It's like yarn and shit. I hate those things. "Hey, Jiffy Pop head!" Fuck.

What about the anarchists? They wear a lot of black and you wear a lot of black.

I don't want them on my team. Just because they wear black doesn't mean they pay their dues. I hate those guys.

What are your thoughts on Blink-182?

You know, they're all right, I guess. I would like them if I was a 13-year-old boy.

So basically, you're saying once you start drinking you can't appreciate them anymore.

I guess not. You know, it's kind of funny. The thing with those cats, you know, I guess it's broke again--punk after Nirvana. And then we have Blink-182. The Green Day Blink Vortex. Punk revolution.

Well, thanks so much for talking, Harley. We're going to run some of this and just annoy people. You'll probably have a hippie protest at the show.

Well, you know, I really am pissed off. I thought the death of Jerry was going to bring it all [to an end], but I've just seen an influx of them.

Well, all this bluegrass stuff is coming back. Are you a big banjo picker?

No. Maybe those guys should quit picking the banjo and start picking the lice out of their girlfriend's hair. Maybe they should try that.

You are a bad man.

I know I am. But I just...you know, go fuck yourself.

Is that the Deadbolt philosophy?

G.F.Y.