A Conversation with John Kruth (continued)

PM: Before we talk a little bit more about the book, I want to cover the eighth album that's been out, and the one to come.

JK: Eva Destruction.

PM: Right.

JK: Eva was a waitress in Milwaukee. I used to call her Eva Destruction because she just broke so many guys' hearts. I mean, sometimes you would go to the restaurant just to see what she was wearing--if you were hungry or not, it didn't matter. It was just to go check out Eva. So here's the funny thing--and this ties right back to when I was in the hospital--because the basic tracks for Eva were all cut in 1995, right after I got out of the hospital. I wasn't sure how long I was going to stick around for. I was in ICU for five days, and then I was recovering at home for three months.

PM: Ouch.

JK: And as soon as I could really stand up and physically had the strength to start playing again, I went back in the studio and cut eight or nine songs. And then I moved up to San Francisco, where I basically recuperated, and started a band with [violinist] Jonathan Segel and [bassist] Victor Krummenacher from Camper Van Beethoven.

PM: Right.

JK: We were called the Electric Chairmen, and we had one album. So I left the tracks in Milwaukee. And over a ten-year period of going there and playing gigs, I'd lay down some extra tracks. And maybe a member of the Violent Femmes or Die Kreuzen, or Plasticland, whoever happened to be in that area, from that area, would come by and lay down some tracks. And Paul Kneevers, he saw this thing through over this time period. I never saw an album there. In fact, I even re-recorded one of those songs on one of my later albums, because I just didn't know that that was ever going to turn into an album. And this guy, he worked it, he nursed it, he made it happen. And then a year ago January he called me and he said, "I think we got an album here. You should come out, lay down a couple more tracks, and let's mix this thing."

PM: Wow.

JK: And I went out there, and I mean, Frank, it was like this: One day I'm laying on the couch and I'm listening to these mixes, and Marylyn walks in. And she's listening to the album for a second, and she goes, "Who is this?" And I said, "Who do you think it is?" She goes, "It sounds like you." I said, "It is me." She's like, "When did you cut this?" And I told her the story of it. And she said, "This is really good!" And I was like, "Yeah, I think we're going to make a record." And then he goes to Crustacean Records, which is a hardcore label that puts out like the Crucifux and Killdozer, and plays it for them, and they love it. So I'm on a hardcore label from Madison, Wisconsin, called Crustacean. [laughs]

PM: Is this the album you described as psychedelic gypsy grunge?

JK: Yeah.

PM: Wow.

JK: I mean, there's a lot of stuff on there--like there's a song called "Goudla's Gypsy Dance." Over the years, I mean, way back in the late '80s when I was playing in the Midwest all the time, my band used to do gypsy dances to get everybody going. We used to play these like really wild gypsy dances. And I would play my Gibson A mandolin through a fuss box and grind it up. I mean, that was always a big part of my sound was an eastern European kind of gypsy Jewish, whatever-it-is, folk dance kind of thing. I did a version years ago on my record when I was on Flying Fish, Banshee Mandolin has a version of "Over Under Sideways Down" that was totally a gypsy dance. So that element has always been there.

But what happened on this record is that Paul just really gave it a certain edge that I loved. I would have liked to have done that on my own, but he did it. And then we just put the band together that was on that album, and did a tour around the Midwest a few months ago after the album came out, and it was fantastic. So the band I'm playing with right now is harder than any band I've ever played with in my life--which, by the way, my sweetheart Marylyn was like, "Hey, you're over 50, if you don't rock now, you might as well forget it."

[laughter]  continue

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