Get Your Shit Together. There could not be a more fitting title for a record by Hunt Sales. For the drumming son of comedian Soupy Sales and member of David Bowie’s early nineties band Tin Machine, life at 64, after forty years of addiction and even longer as a working musician, Sales has put his life in some semblance of order. He hasn’t lost his edge, not by any means – he still cusses, he still speaks his mind quite blatantly, he still does what he wants when he wants – but he recognizes that he got lucky in many ways. For one thing, he survived. Secondly, he can still play drums and write songs and play gigs. Not everyone who might have walked in similar shoes can say the same thing.
With Get Your Shit Together, out January 25th, Sales and his band, the Hunt Sales Memorial, are raring to go in 2019. He realizes not everyone knows his name or his history with the likes of Bowie and a punk rocker named Iggy Pop; he realizes people might just see him as an old rocker dude trying to make some music. But in that lies the fun. “I’m a new artist that’s an old artist,” he said recently. “I’m a guy who’s worked with the biggest stars in the world but I’m still unknown and underground.”
The twelve songs that make up Get Your Shit Together can be intense, fun, punk, rock & roll, bluesy, jazzy and bitingly honest. Those songs form a circle around “One Day,” a soul-searching look inside of Sales as an older man still searching his inner sanctum for answers. It’s almost a shock when the song comes around on rotation, with it’s simplicity, but serves the artist well, giving him a chance to let the words really sink in.
Coming from a jazz background, Sales had the rare chance to see and learn from his idols – Rock & Roll Hall Of Famer Earl Palmer and Shelly Manne – when he was just a kid. “Those people helped me out,” said Sales. “They schooled me as a kid and shared their groove with me.” Along with his bass playing brother Tony, they became a sought-after rhythm section. They played on albums by Todd Rundgren, Pop and Bowie.
But Sales likes to live in the moment: “I’m not one to rest on my laurels or old glories. I don’t care what I did last month, much less thirty years ago. I only care about what I’m doing right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Lust For Life is fine, it’s great. But what are we doing today, motherfucker? That’s what I’m interested in.”
Making his home in the music hotbed of Austin, Texas, Sales talked with Glide before the holidays about his new album, working with Bowie, what’s wrong with the world today and how there’s too much perfection in modern music.
You’ve been living in Austin for about twenty years now. Why do you love it so much there?
Who said I loved it? (laughs) No, no, it’s nice here. I’ve lived a lot of places and you have good things about them and things about them you don’t like, whether it’s weather or this or that. But like New Orleans, there is a lot of music here and that part of it kind of got me here because I came here back in the seventies on tours. I always liked coming to Texas because of the music scene and, like New Orleans, the heritage. In New Orleans you had Allen Toussaint come out of there, the Meters, Fats Domino, some great stuff. Texas, a lot of great blues guitar players and Doug Sahm, all these different people, Jimmie Vaughan, Stevie Ray Vaughan. So Texas has kind of got it’s thing and that was one of the reasons I left Los Angeles and came to Texas years ago.
Years before that, I came here for a while working in the studios and producing some stuff. I had got a little burnt on the beat in Los Angeles, which I’ve lived on and off since the early sixties. I was going to come to New Orleans at one point but I came to Austin simply cause it’s like New Orleans where New Orleans is a town about playing gigs and musicians opposed to like an industry town, you know what I mean. It’s about the gig, it’s about the playing and that I really liked. There is a lot of live music here so that was a big reason. I lived in New York City, I lived in California, I’m from Detroit, and we know what comes out of Detroit besides cars and all that shit. Texas has a lot going for it as far as gigs all over the state. It’s such a big state. And there are great musicians here.
You’ve been living in Austin for about twenty years now. Why do you love it so much there?
Who said I loved it? (laughs) No, no, it’s nice here. I’ve lived a lot of places and you have good things about them and things about them you don’t like, whether it’s weather or this or that. But like New Orleans, there is a lot of music here and that part of it kind of got me here because I came here back in the seventies on tours. I always liked coming to Texas because of the music scene and, like New Orleans, the heritage. In New Orleans you had Allen Toussaint come out of there, the Meters, Fats Domino, some great stuff. Texas, a lot of great blues guitar players and Doug Sahm, all these different people, Jimmie Vaughan, Stevie Ray Vaughan. So Texas has kind of got it’s thing and that was one of the reasons I left Los Angeles and came to Texas years ago.
Years before that, I came here for a while working in the studios and producing some stuff. I had got a little burnt on the beat in Los Angeles, which I’ve lived on and off since the early sixties. I was going to come to New Orleans at one point but I came to Austin simply cause it’s like New Orleans where New Orleans is a town about playing gigs and musicians opposed to like an industry town, you know what I mean. It’s about the gig, it’s about the playing and that I really liked. There is a lot of live music here so that was a big reason. I lived in New York City, I lived in California, I’m from Detroit, and we know what comes out of Detroit besides cars and all that shit. Texas has a lot going for it as far as gigs all over the state. It’s such a big state. And there are great musicians here.
You had a lot of jazz influences from an early age but I hear some of that New Orleans music on this new record as well.
Yeah! Some of the tracks on there sound like, to me, like Motorhead meets Fats Domino. Of course, recording the record in Memphis may have had something to do with it. Like I said, I’ve recorded all over the place. I remember I was producing some band in New Orleans and there was a producer living there at the time, he produced U2’s records, Daniel Lanois. This was a while back and I needed a roll of two-inch tape and I needed it real fast and I went over to his studio and they sold me a roll of tape. He had a beautiful studio there in New Orleans.
But talking about the record, yeah, I kind of did that Fats Domino thing with a bunch of saxes on it and kind of that sensibility opposed to like, horn-wise, that other kind of thing where they are jumping all over the place, you know what I mean. The saxes kind of sound like a Harley-Davidson or something, this really crazy low-end, holding notes and stuff in the background. It kind of gives it an interesting twist, wouldn’t you say.
I’ll tell you something, I was very influenced by a lot of different music. The Meters, Allen Toussaint, a bunch of different people out of New Orleans really influenced me as a youngster and that’s probably part of the mixture in my sound. Some people would say, “You played with Iggy Pop so that’s all you do.” And that is farthest from the truth. So I am glad that you picked up on that and the different influences. I was a big fan of Duke Ellington and Count Basie and what does that have to do with rock & roll! Well, nothing and everything. Music, for me, is made up of all different kinds of things and that’s the great thing about music. There is all kinds of great music out there.
There is this guy that I really used to like, Frankie Ford, and I was turned on to him at a really young age and what a badass he was, seriously. Then you have Irma Thomas who had the original version of “Time Is On My Side.” She’s from New Orleans and the Rolling Stones covered that song. You know, the Rolling Stones, man, they came to this country and they heard some really great music, and basically a lot of these bands from Europe, they just took our music and sold it back to us. And she’s a perfect example with that song of hers. It’s a great song but I bet 98% of the people would go, “Oh that’s a Rolling Stones song” and it is not! (laughs). Music is interesting, it really is; it still is.
Are you going to be out playing with your band in the new year?
Yeah, we’re going to try to be on the road soon. We’re not playing too big places. We’re going to keep it to like 400 seaters, 300 seaters, you know what I mean.
I understand you wrote a lot of songs for this record. Did you realize you had this many songs in you right now?
I’ve got hundreds of songs, okay, and most of the time I sit around and write music for practice or work in the studios, either producing people, playing on some sessions and stuff. So I’m constantly writing. I’ll write a song and then put it away, forget about it, and then I’ll write another one. I’ve been writing for years but I’d say the last fifteen/twenty years I took it more serious as a craft and just started putting more time into it. It’s like painting or even a tailor. It’s time intensive work, working on songs, and to me, and I’m sure this is the same for a lot of people, you get an idea for something and sometimes the whole idea will come to you or you’ll get a little part of an idea and then you’ll sit down and do some work on it and cultivate it into something.
With Tin Machine, when we did those records, and this isn’t an original thing, a lot of people do this, we would do like forty/fifty songs per record and then pick twelve or sixteen out of them to release, feeling like we maybe picked the best ones out of the group. It’s like everything you write obviously isn’t going to be the greatest. Sometimes you get lucky and you get a song and you go, wow, that’s really good! Then you’ll write another one and you go, well, I kind of missed the mark.
On this record, I basically sat down in a short period of time and wrote all those songs for this record. There was one or two that I had had for a while but the majority of them I sat down and wrote, spent about eighty hours a week writing. I thought I’d write a bunch of new stuff for the record, you know. I’ve got a lot of material cause that’s what I do, I sit around and write. I enjoy doing that. I think more than anything I am kind of driven to do that, like most musicians that play. You know, being a musician, unlike being a doctor or a lawyer, say you go to law school, right, and you go to school and you study and even a crummy lawyer can come out and make themselves thirty/fifty grand the first year, right. Well, as a musician, you can spend years and years and years working on your thing and maybe make $2 a year. There is no guarantee.
What I’m trying to say is, people that play music truly are driven, it’s a calling. Writers, musicians, it’s a calling and it’s something they have to do. It’s a part of them and they have to fulfill that, whether anyone listens to it or buys it or anything, they just do it, because that’s what they are driven to do. But there is no guarantee that it will ever see the light of day. But do you think most of these people that do this that that is their motivating factor, that it’s all about the money? I think it can get to that point but I started playing music at about six or seven years old. So I wasn’t thinking about record deals, I wasn’t thinking about picking up chicks, all the things you hear, the clichés.
So who was that first drummer that got under your skin?
The first drummer that turned me on that I saw was Earl Palmer. He had played on Little Richard records and everything. He was living in California and he was one of the bigger session drummers in California and I met him at a recording session and when I saw him play I went, man, that looks great! I want to do that! I want to be a drummer! And this is before The Beatles or any of that stuff. So he really had a big influence on me, along with Buddy Rich and Shelly Manne and a host of other drummers, mainly jazz drummers, some R&B drummers, Buddy Miles and people like that. When I was real young, I had a few people, like Earl Palmer, Buddy Rich and Shelly Manne, to really help me out as kind of mentors and would talk to me about stuff. I was lucky enough to be in their presence and be around them and see them play. Thank God. And they were very sweet to me, very nice, and they really helped me a lot, just by them taking the time and sitting down and discussing with this little boy about drums and this and that.
What was their main point? What did they want to get across to you?
I think about taking it serious, cause I knew they were serious. They had great personalities and good senses of humor but it was their artistry of being musicians. We’re talking about the cream of the crop. Of course there were periods of time where I would play some jazz, like organ trio type music and stuff, and would get away from rock & roll, but I’m a product of my age and upbringing. I came up in the rock & roll age and R&B soul age. In the early sixties, rock & roll, yeah, we could say it started with Louis Jordan and Bill Haley, the stuff from the fifties, but rock & roll really started kicking through in the early sixties, right – The Beatles, some American bands – and that’s where I hail from because of my age.
So being a little boy in the early sixties, rock & roll, man. You know the big deal back then would be to go to your record shop and buy your favorite 45 and boy I couldn’t wait to buy the new single by whoever. I guess comparable to that now would be people downloading a song on their phones, right. You know in life, everything changes but then it’s the same. It’s just different, the business is different than it was but still like it was back then. Yeah, I got a record coming out and my record, like then, is coming out on vinyl, which is cool. A lot of people, younger people, are rediscovering vinyl and the experience of that, of actually putting something on a turntable rather than listening to a telephone.
The sound was not always perfect but there is something great about all those old records, the crackles and pops; even the mistakes that ended up on those records.
Exactly! What’s more important: the vibe, the performance, or it just being totally perfect? I think in a lot of ways in certain situations that can be lost. When I did this album, we did it very fast and it was basically live in the studio with very few overdubs. And all the vocals on it, for better or for worse, are basically one-take vocals. So like what you said, you listen to some of these records and they’re a little funky with some mistakes and stuff but boy do they sound cool. And I wanted to try to do that with my record and hopefully it doesn’t feel like, when someone listens to it, that there’s a bunch of filler on it.
The album is rock & roll and punk and then all of a sudden you stop in the middle and give us this slow song, “One Day,” that has a lot of emotion in it; and then you kick back in again until you end it with an instrumental, “Cleveland Street Memphis.”
Yeah, that instrumental, I had that sitting around somewhere and I was getting ready to go back to Memphis to record and I went, you know what, I got these horn players I’ve been using on the record and I think I’ll do this instrumental. Why? Well, why the hell not! It’s kind of a little retro sounding, like it could have been done in the sixties. It has that flavor and it’s kind of a groovy little tune. So I thought I’d throw it on the record. Why not? I did not make this record going, I’m going to make this kind of record for this kind of people. I think not everyone will like it but I try to see the similarities in all of us, you dig. I don’t care if you’re Hispanic, black, white, whatever, we all have so much in common. And that goes for music. Not everyone will like it but I think if I enjoyed making it, which I did, and I wrote those songs because I enjoyed them, I think there may be one or two other people who will enjoy it too. I just made a record that was honest, a little rough sounding, I tried to keep it real and I think a lot of rock & roll has lost it’s edge. I know this record has a little bit of edge to it, which is not a bad thing.
And you didn’t care if everything was perfect
No, I didn’t. Everyone autotunes everything and everything is perfect and this and that; not everybody but a lot of people. Let’s say at an old New Orleans session and in the studio would be a bunch of musicians getting together. The guy would come in and go, “Here’s the verse, here’s the chorus.” And he’d either hand out sheet music or explain it and then within an hour or less, they’d have a song cut. Then they would mix it and it would be done. Now years ago in the music business they’d have these records where they were spending like five or six months on them, getting everything perfect, and I think, not all the time but sometimes, something can get lost. Records now are almost like movies where they work on them for like a year and then they put them out. In my case, we only had a short amount of time.
On the first session, we cut six songs in one day. After we cut a song, I did all the vocals. Then I brought in some sax players, as you can hear, and a little piano on it. On the third day, I’d do some rough mixes and it’s done. Then I went back to Memphis about five weeks later, I cut another six songs, the same thing. We did six songs in one day, I did all the vocals after each song, we did a couple, not a lot, of overdubs, it’s not tons of guitars and shit, make rough mixes and then it was done. Then the only other thing I did was I went back and we sat and actually mixed all the stuff. I think that’s pretty fast to do a record. It’s twelve songs and basically that’s twelve songs cut in two days with vocals. It’s kind of the way older records were cut, you know.
When I came up doing records with people, like I did this one record called Lust For Life with Iggy Pop and we must have done that record, the whole record, in four or five days. That’s pretty fast. Most of the songs were put together in the studio and I think it shows a certain freshness and spontaneity in recording that way.
I had forgotten that you sang with Tin Machine
Yeah, I had two songs. I wrote a lot of the other material but there were two songs I did with Tin Machine where I sang on record. One is called “Sorry” and the other one is called “Stateside,” which is like a blues song. Basically, I consider myself like a soul shouter blues singer. Now, I don’t sing about the Mississippi Delta but I may sing about some other stuff. Nevertheless, it’s blues. I’m not living in the forties or fifties and I’m not trying to recreate something from then but I try to keep it whatever modern means, I’m singing about now.
You know, whether it’s Lazy Lester or Howlin’ Wolf or the Neville Brothers, James Brown, Otis Redding, these are the people that really influenced me coming up. When I was a kid, I used to hang out at the Apollo Theatre. It was great. I used to go down there to see James Brown, and this is in the sixties, and I used to go up to the Apollo on 125th Street to see James Brown. And man, what a show he used to put on back in the day! I mean, I was into rock & roll and I liked Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones and Cream and all that other stuff. But I also liked Wilson Pickett and Frankie Ford and a bunch of other stuff. It’s all connected, it’s all just blues and soul and jazz. Johnny Paycheck, I used to like him. And Waylon Jennings. I like any music that’s good and it doesn’t have to be one bag. Some people are just into the one bag, right. It’s boring! I listen to all kinds of music.
On the track “I Can’t Stop,” who plays lead guitar?
There is a guy that’s been playing with me, a great guitar player, and his name is Tjarko Jeen and he’s been working with me for quite a few years. He’s from Holland and he played as a kid with Ronnie Dawson, who was a rockabilly singer. As a fifteen year old he toured with Ronnie Dawson and recorded with him. So he has been playing for a long time. He’s a great musician, great guitar player and a great human being. I love him to death and he has been through thick and thin with me.
A lot of these new songs are pretty blunt in what you say and how you say them. You’re not looking at life through rose-colored glasses at all.
No, no. When I was in New Orleans, I found myself down in those projects way up on the other side of town, and I wasn’t over there getting pizza, let’s just put it that way. With that life comes a lot of street activity and violence and all this and that. So I kind of lived that lifestyle and I’m not promoting it. I’m not saying like, wow, isn’t that great. I managed to not get caught and go to jail but I could’ve, you dig. And I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy but that is just the way it went. You know in life you swear, Oh, I’m never going to do this! And then you turn around one day and you go, God, I’m doing this! Never say never. You turn around and you’re going, Jesus, I am caught up in something and I’m just going to go with it and I don’t give a shit. But I got to a point where I really did give a shit and to me it was either jail, death or living. I chose to live. I was fortunate and I’ve been fortunate enough to put that behind me.
I bet you’re happier
I am. You know, when you’re doing that shit, whatever it is, it’s kind of like putting blinders on, like on a horse, where shit doesn’t bother you as much. Life as it is is hard enough. Then you add in some of that shit and it just makes life really hard and you do kind of realize it but once you get out of that life, then you go, Jesus, man, was I making it harder on myself. It just goes that way and this country right now, as you know, it’s really bad. There is some really bad shit going on. It’s like, “Let me have it now; I don’t want to work for it; I don’t have any integrity.” Whatever anyone does, they should have some integrity with what they do, correct?
I don’t know if it’s my age but I just see a lot of faithless shit going on and I see there are some problems in this country and I don’t see anybody getting any help. Rather than being all spun out on what I don’t have, why don’t I be grateful for what I do have. What a concept, right! That’s why it’s so important to do a checkup from the neck up and really sit down sometimes and go, well, did I eat today? Yeah. Do I have a roof over my head? Yeah, I do. Are there are some people in my life that I care about and they care about me? Yeah. Maybe I should quit my whining (laughs).
Were you ready for this record to happen?
The real situation with this record was I was prepared, cause I never stopped writing and playing and gigging and recording. When I got an opportunity to make a record, it was kind of like where preparation and opportunity meet. I was offered this deal, I didn’t go looking for a deal, but I happened to be very prepared. Some of the last major stuff people have seen me with would be the stuff I did with David Bowie, the Tin Machine stuff, which was 1990/1991. Now over the years, I’ve worked with many different people. I did this record with Los Super Seven. Gatemouth Brown is on it and John Hiatt is singing on one of the songs; a lot of different people put together. It’s one of those kinds of records. And then I did a bunch of recording with Bootsy Collins from P-Funk. Bootsy, what a great guy. Him and his wife are beautiful people. I was up in Detroit working, doing some recording, and a friend of mine hooked me up with Bootsy in Cincinnati. So I found myself in Cincinnati working with Bootsy in his recording studio. That was the first time I met him and we got along well and I cut a lot of tracks for Bootsy. So I’ve worked on a bunch of weird, different things outside of what most people know me for. A lot of people don’t know I sing. They just think I’m a drummer. A lot of people don’t know that I’m a songwriter and an arranger.
Regarding Tin Machine, how innovative did you see that band’s sound at that time? Did you think people would get what Bowie was trying to do?
I will tell you this, half of the people were going, “Wow, this is really cool,” the fact that David was kind of getting back to his roots like when he started out; you know, just a bunch of guys in a garage jamming and playing and having a good time; nothing about business and all that shit. Then there was the other group of people and they just wanted to hear him sing “Let’s Dance” and were like, “What are you doing with these other people?” The thing is, I’m one of the few people, I did not work FOR David Bowie. I worked WITH him, which is a big difference. So the good thing about Tin Machine was we were four people and we were all really honest with each other, which was good, because people who become big celebrities and stars, they got everyone telling them and bullshitting them and this and that.
I had known David back in the Iggy days; you know, he helped Iggy out, and he played keyboards on the first Iggy tour in 1976. So I had known him for years. Of course what I respected about David is he could be a really, really sweet person, which he was, and a very talented person and I didn’t confuse that with, wow, this person is a superstar and he’s got a gazillion dollars. You know, money is not my god. There is nothing wrong with money and if someone says money doesn’t bring happiness, then they don’t know where to shop, right! (laughs)
But the thing that was cool about Tin Machine, it was you had a couple of older motherfuckers and then you had David, who was a giant superstar, and it was like starting over again and the four of us sitting in a room jamming and being creative and we were making music that we liked. And there was no plan, like, we’re going to do something, cause a lot of people at the time did not understand it. I feel those records, they still sound good today. And that is really a test of time, like a good blues record or jazz record or soul record. You can listen to it twenty/thirty/forty years later and it still sounds fresh. And I think that’s indicative of what the musicians, whether it be Tin Machine or someone else, what they are laying down and that it’s real. Real is real and bullshit, well, we don’t need to talk about that (laughs).
Portrait by George Hancock; photo of Frankie Ford by Leslie Michele Derrough
