An Odd Sort of Animal:
An interview with Captain Spoo Diggity of The Pirates Charles
I was at the St. Roch Tavern in the Lower Ninth Ward when I first had the obscene pleasure of meeting The Pirates Charles. They were a loud lean-faced band. The men were scrappy not entirely handsome but not that bad to look at either. Fiddlewench, though pretty, looked like the kind of lass you wouldn't want to mess with. In front was their Captain, shirtless and sweaty like every lead rocker should be. It may have been the $4.50 pitchers of PBR, but I found myself suddenly set adrift in the noise that filled the room. Where have these well-dressed and gifted rock minstrels been all my life?
Captain Spoo, TOR, MAST, Deedle, David F. Gale, Fiddlewench, and Harpoon make up this band of California-based buccaneers. The crew effectively blends modern and traditional instruments. The result is alcohol-infused, seafaring storytelling tinctured with time-honored folk and southern-fried rock. As a group, their work ethic is inestimable. The Pirates Charles became synonymous with Pyratecon, a convention, and Pirate Mecca held annually in New Orleans . They are as my best mate Captain Mad Anne Dandy put it, “omnipresent;” for they're known to pull a performance out in taverns, festivals, parades, hotel hallways, and even in thundering rain in the middle of the street on a haunted pub-crawl. Everywhere you went, it seemed, there were The Pirates Charles.
As for the Captain Diggity, I found him to be more beast than man. In fact, his very existence defies all rhyme and reason in the naturally lazy ways of humanity. He has grand plans for The Pirates Charles and it is his tireless duty to push the crew as hard as they can in the present while keeping a constant eye on the future. With the ability to stay steadfast with your head bowed into the wind and a weather eye open, you could achieve almost anything.
Captain Spoo Diggity: How are you doing?
Jessica Hopsicker: Pretty good, and you
CSD: I'm pretty good, I'm pretty good.
JH: Have you fully recovered from New Orleans yet?
CSD: I finally have, yeah. It took like a week and then we had another gig the Saturday after we got back. A charity event for a sick old pirate; and now we're revving up because the next two weekends we're going to be at Escondido Renaissance Fair- a Pirate Fair, actually.
JH: How do you keep that up?
CSD: Essentially, we've got gigs booked pretty constantly. About one a week or so. We've been at that for about a year now. I'm an odd sort of animal, I guess. I'm really really high energy. When we got back from New Orleans I was ready to do another gig, that night if necessary. All the rest of the band, they were tired, done, falling over. For me, I think the tired that comes from a gig somehow excites me even more. Being tired, it reminds me about the good things that went. And that just revs me up for the next one, you know? So here, all this week I'm basically finalizing album recording and things while working on promotions for a show, our electric show at the Knitting Factory, which is going to be on May 30th. So, I'm spending all day on Photoshop, all afternoon on the phone, all night in the studio, and repeating the process Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then Friday we leave again for Escondido . So for me, going nonstop keeps giving me the energy to keep going. Whenever I slow, I fall asleep. It's hard to get going again.
JH: Damn, you are an odd sort of animal. How has the band evolved since you first burst onto the pirate scene?
CSD: When we started, we were just doing this for fun. For shits and giggles, just trying to essentially play a couple of gigs and write some music and have a fun time doing it. Unlike any other band I've ever been in, we were making money. For the first couple of months we kept having packed shows and a really good time, and then we started selling our live albums, and people kept buying them. So by the nature of it essentially becoming successful without us really trying, I guess what changed since we came onto the scene is that now we've started trying. Now we realize that with this is a good tool to start using, we can get a lot of work done. So essentially over the last year, actually, truth be told, for the entire year of 2008, we were recording, just about. Now, almost all of 2009 so far. So we haven't had time to do a lot of the things that in my head I've prepared for. We've got a West Coast tour that is probably going to embark at one point. We're planning continued activities in New Orleans . We've had such a full schedule with what, to me feels like the little that we're doing, that we haven't even been able to do the huge things that I know that we're ready for. Once Rise and Conquer have been released, which I'm not sure when the date on either of them is going to be exactly. At that point our schedule is going to completely open up and I feel like we'll be sitting on the platform we need to essentially conquer the world. With a double album debut, we are going to be shopping this around to major labels. I'm looking at Side One Dummy, Metaledge, or not Metaledge, or, yeah, I think it was Metaledge, the one that GWAR is signed under. I'm interested in getting on a label that has money for promotions. That's the most important thing. If they can get my album in stores across America , the guy in Nebraska is not going to buy my album unless he hears about it. So essentially, sitting on two really amazing albums with the time to finally tour and promote on a national level, I think how we've changed is that we've gone from being amateur friends that are in a pirate band to being the professional pirate band that we are now.
JH: When you started, was the rest of the band willing to swing that way or did you have to press gang them into pirate music?
CSD: When we started, it was just myself and my friend Flip Cassidy, who is no longer even with the band. I asked him, “hey, you want to play guitar in my pirate band?” “Yes!” Emphatically, of course. And everybody else pretty much responded the same way. “Hey, you want to play music in a pirate band?” “Yes, absolutely, that sounds like fun!” For the most part anybody, I think, would. It's just a generally silly, fun, upbeat idea. I hate to give away a major secret here, but if you listen to a lot of our music, we're not terribly piratey. It's my lyrics and the storytelling, and our outfits, and the total picture that add up to us being a pirate band. Beyond that, we play country, we play metal, we play blues, we play a lot of folk, and all of those musical styles keep my musicians on their toes. My drummer, Harpoon, is absolutely amazing. He's one of the most gifted drummers I've ever seen. He's confessed that we are one of the more challenging acts that he's performed with because we do such specific, strange things with our music that he's had to learn a bunch of new tricks, and at the same time, all of the many many tricks that he already had up his sleeve have come spilling out all over the music. It's wonderful. He adds a fast, dance-ability. It's almost electronica dance at some points, but it's certainly not traditional folk drumming. So if you were to ask him, he's in a pirate band, but I don't know that he would tell you that he plays piratey drums. Similarly, my guitar player, MAST, he plays rockabilly guitar and metal guitar and he solos like Pink Floyd. I didn't have to talk him in to doing that. What each of these musicians brings to the table on their own I think are a tremendous musical diversity, which is what has made our music sounds so rich. The fact that I make it piratey kind of ties it all together. If I were writing music about Indiana Jones, we would be an entirely different band. But all the musicians would probably be doing something similar.
JH: The band's stage presence is nothing short of legendary. How do you kick that into gear?
CSD: Why thank you!
JH: You're welcome.
CSD: Before I was in The Pirates Charles, I was in another band called T-Bone and the Bonerz. Bonerz with a “z.” I wasn't even a musician in the band. My character's name was Chaswick B. Poppinfresh Version 2.0, and I wore this eccentric outfit. It was my job to entertain the crowd. I was passing out goodies and throwing confetti and throwing Twinkies at the audience and all sorts of good stuff. That's where I learned how to work a crowd. I didn't even have a microphone to help me work the crowd. I had to
somehow invent this stage presence that I could entertain people without really much to go on. When that band broke up, that's what inspired me to start The Pirates Charles. Speaking personally, my stage presence comes from a very specific, strange, passion of mine. I realized being on stage that I love entertaining, but I'm not particularly interested in acting and singing, there's lots of people who sing. What I love doing most is not singing, it's the entertaining. But entertaining specifically within the realm of a band. So my stage antics and stage presence sort of lends itself to everybody in the band and I'm sure, to some degree, I set the tone and everybody else just kind of picks up on that same energy. And everybody else is just sort of on fire with their music. When TOR is playing his flute, it is one of the more passionate things I've ever heard in my life. It makes me appreciate flute music that I've never really considered before. Now, when I'm turning through the radio and I move past a smooth jazz station, it's playing music that I would never have taken interest in whatsoever. But the flutist playing, who is going all over the place and soloing his little heart out, all of a sudden, for a moment it sounds like TOR to me. I start listening to this flute player go nuts and I realize that I'm hearing another artist's passion here in a very strange way. So the rest of the music may not be my style, but I can listen to just the flute. That kind of passion that comes out of him, that's just him getting off on making music. While we're on stage, we love what we're doing so much that we can't help but to do that. When we're in our living room practicing, it feels the same to me as when we're on stage. It feels alive with this magic. Because, to the audience, we're this act. But to us, we're seven friends on stage doing what we love so much that it almost has nothing to do with being a pirate, in a strange way. Piracy is merely the spectrum that I use to paint the colors of our music.
JH: I mentioned Hunter S. Thompson and your eyes lit up like a bloody effigy. Why is that?
CSD: The good doctor is a heavy influence on the personal lives of at least half of the members of the band. Especially the Red Pirate Cassidy, a member who is no longer with us. He calls himself a weasel, and he is precisely that. When he was with us, he was a weasely pirate. And his greatest hero in all weaseldom is Hunter S. Thompson. He weaseled his way out of the band. He's weaseling his way with his new band called Weasels Exist. Hunter S. Thompson is essentially the one who taught him everything he knows. Speaking on a personal level, I wouldn't call myself a disciple of the good doctor the way Flip Cassidy is, but there's a term that fell out of Hunter's mouth during an interview. I think it was an interview. He was telling some sort of story about how he was like out on the street and he found some strange contraption. When you put your finger on it, it tells you your life span. He started maniacally grabbing people off the street and pumping his own money in there and throwing people's hands down to find the results. I don't remember the details of it, but in the article he remarked that all of the passers-by seemed unconcerned or upset as his “relentless professional behavior.” And this term, “relentless professional behavior,” is where the doctor has truly taught me. In fact, the Weasels Exist album that Fliptastic has recently released is called Relentless Professional Behavior. And it is a term that each of The Pirates Charles somewhat pride ourselves on. It's about being ready for the moment in every possible moment. Hunter was a loose sort of person who lived in his own drug induced universe and refused to ever acknowledge the real world, as far as I'm concerned. That's my take on him. And I find that quite, uh, I'm lost for words, but, I find that something to be admired. In a matter of speaking, that's how I get by in this world. I see a beautiful, beautiful place. That's where I live. In this beautiful fucking world that is filled with beautiful people and beautiful experiences and things that mankind could never possibly create that are beautiful, and likewise, things that nature could have never possibly created except by through man. I am fascinated with people. So living in my own little world, I look to Hunter S. Thompson as a perfect example of that. He lived in his own world and wrote about it. He showed people how it could be. How perception could be, how independence could be. How being a human could be. All of these ways are how he is an inspiration to many many people, including The Pirates Charles.
JH: Excellent. What is in store next for The Pirates Charles?
CSD: Hopefully in less than two months, Rise will be available for sale. Hopefully within six months afterwards, Conquer will be available for sale. And hopefully soon afterward, Burn, the free album, will be available. Once we've got those for sale on our website, thepiratescharles.com, hopefully we'll have national distribution. I'm already looking into contacts for that so our album will be in stores. In which case I am making it my personal ambition to notify everything in the world that The Pirates Charles albums are available. Frankly, I think the music on them speaks for itself. We're already getting a couple opportunities with radio advertising and air play. There's going to be sponsorships and endorsements. I've already got a couple of companies lines up and many many more to seek out. I've already got a West Coast tour planned and I'm going to be planning and east coast tour that will hopefully begin at Gasparilla next year in January if all goes according to plan. So essentially nonstop momentum. I feel like I've built a locomotive that's huge and powerful, that's moving forward faster than I can steer it. That's my task as Captain, to continue steering this beast.
JH: And don't fall asleep at the wheel.
CSD: I feel like I'm riding a snowball down a hill. It's a fun ride. It's tough to say about anything specifically because there's tons of specifics. The reason I can't answer too much about what's next is that it's so big. We're talking about new horizons and it is my personal goal that Rise and Conquer would go gold within the first year if possible. That's one hundred thousand copies. We sold two thousand copies of our independently released live albums in the first year. There are many bands I know that have never sold two thousand copies of any album ever. The fact that we did it in such a short time and entirely self driven, I find remarkable. On paper, two thousand looks like a fairly small number, but that's because you're used to hearing about albums being sold in the hundreds of thousands. The independent market has finally shifted in such a way that it's there for the taking. Any band with the initiative can simply grab all of the opportunities that you used to have to be signed to a major label to achieve. You used to have to be signed to a major label in order to open for a major act. That is no longer the case. You used to have to be signed a major label to be able to afford national distribution. That is no longer the case, nor is national distribution necessarily worthwhile, because ninety percent of our sales come from online. So with an online market, any band can post their music and any band can sell. What you need is a quality product, and that I certainly have, and initiative, which that, I certainly have. So I anticipate that within the next year, thanks to some television exposure we're going to be getting with America 's Got Talent, tentatively, we haven't filmed for that technically yet. They filmed hours of footage of us, so I will be very surprised if it is not used on the shows, but it's all up. I'm so excited for the ride.
JH: That's got to be exciting. We'll do our part at the College crier to give you a little push, and if all goes according to plan you'll be in volume two for our book
CSD: Wonderful. How copies did you move around there?
JH: None, I think I got a little too crazy while I was down there, in New Orleans as a published author to promote it successfully.
CSD: That's got to be a cool feeling.
JH: It really is.
CSD: I was just thinking the other day about how strange a thing it is to be a musician and how this business is unlike any other business in the world. It's similar to acting, but being in a band, you're on this team. Being an actor, you're alone. And being an actor is fairly like being a writer. You're just all on your own against the world. But being an author, you have the most control. As an actor, you're acting somebody else's script. As an author, you create your own world. As a band, I'm creating my own world, but I have to create my own world that people want to see in a specific way. Whereas in a book, people open the cover ready for anything. A mind is still open for any book to read in any number of ways. All of them can be best sellers. I'm a bit envious of an author's place as an artist.
JH: Interesting.
CSD: Essentially, you have now gotten signed the way many bands never will. I know many poets who have compiled their works together and now have published books of poetry. That's the dream that's unattainable for many musicians. And for many actors. To walk into a store and pick up a movie off the shelf and say, “hey! This has got me in it!” I think each one of us, as an artist, at least the artists who intend to sell, we compare ourselves to our heroes. We want to see ourselves next to our heroes. Hunter S. Thompson in on the bookshelf, you want to be on the bookshelf. My heroes of music are in the racks of stores that are closing. I want my album to be in those stores, hopefully keeping them open. I think that's a part of the emulation, to step into the role of your heroes.
JH: Indeed. I think that's about done for the interview, unless there's anything else that you want to cover.
CSD: Merely this. We started out as band that had an audience in pirates because we are pirates, we're a pirate themed band. However, at this point, we've saturated some of the pirate market. I'm interested in reaching out to pirates everywhere, but much more so, I'm interesting in exposing our music to the normal society. The six million people who are not pirates. I think what we've got created here is something magnificent. I am so far hard pressed to find an audience who doesn't enjoy it. Thank you very much for choosing to interview me. I really enjoyed it.
