The Immortal Lee County Killers Make Jon Spencer and Jack White Look Like a Couple of Blues Prudes

For fans of garage rock that's stripped down, amped up and delivered raw as a bloody steak, the Immortal Lee County Killers offer some punk-ass garage-blues. Lots of primitive rock fans have been doing cool shit with the works of elder bluesmen?Jon Spencer, the Dirtbombs, Zen Guerrilla, the Soledad Brothers, the White Stripes and the King Brothers, to name a few. These guys are reinterpreting the music of legends and unknowns from Chicago to the Mississippi Delta and beyond, ripping through covers and originals and adding plenty of Detroit dirt a la the MC5. But sometimes, as in the case of the Immortal Lee County Killers, they're smashing the blues to pieces like a two-dollar guitar.

The Killers make Jon Spencer and Jack White look like a couple of blues prudes. A two-piece from Auburn-Opelika in Lee County, AL, the Killers violently slash and burn through the blues with nasty noise. Chet "the Cheetah" Weise leads the duo, playing one guitar through three amps and screaming like he's about to scrape the flesh right off the back of his throat. On the band's aptly named debut, The Essential Fucked Up Blues (Estrus), Weise hollers about everything from killing big cockroaches to burning himself while frying fish. Weise named the band as an homage to both his current hometown and to Jerry Lee Lewis, a man he calls "the original killer," and whose dual middle-finger salute decorates the Killers' homemade t-shirts. I recently talked to Weise and his cocksure new drummer, Mr. JRR Tokien (aka Tokien One) about the dangerous swell of punk blues and the Tokien One's recent Jerry Lee revelation.

The first time I saw the Killers play live was at the Vegas Shakedown. That was a pretty amazing show?it was over 110 degrees in that little club and everyone was hot and tired and you guys took over the whole event in just one set. Chet Weise: Well, I guess first I've gotta tell you that the Tokien One is the new drummer for the Killers.

So you're no longer with the Boss... Tokien One: Oh, I'm the boss, baby.

CW: He's the new boss. That was Doug ["the Boss" Sherrard] who played the Shakedown and that was his last show. The Tokien One has played four shows with the Killers, but we played together in the Quadrajets for years. But yeah, the Shakedown was fun. I was disappointed that some bands canceled and quite a few folks that I know didn't come to the show 'cause of the terrorist stuff. It was understandable but disappointing too.

TO: Lots of bands are canceling tours and stuff and that just don't need to happen. People need to step up to the plate. It's entertainment and our job as professional entertainers is to go out there night in and night out and make people forget about their shitty little lives. If we can make them forget about their shitty little lives for, you know, 10 minutes, then we've done our job.

Chet, watching you play is crazy because you get totally possessed by the music. When I saw you in Vegas you were like an electrified sweatrag with a guitar. CW: Playing is kind of my therapy. I don't think I'd be alive today if it wasn't for playing music. I don't lose my shit offstage very much because I lose it onstage. [Laughs]

Before you started playing music you were losing your shit a lot? CW: I can't remember when I wasn't playing music. Growing up in Memphis helped me out a lot 'cause I used to go downtown and see the blues performers and they used to let me?when I was 14 or 15 years old?come into the blues bars and serve me liquor and I'd watch, like, Albert King and that left quite an impression on me. And if there's any record that really got me going it was probably a record by John Lee Hooker called Lonesome Mood. They've repackaged John Lee Hooker so much that now I think the record's called If You Miss 'Im, I Got 'Im.

How'd you start going down to the blues bars in the first place? CW: Good question. I guess I was trying to find something different to do. I actually grew up in a suburb called Germantown?pretty typical upper-middle-class boring stuff. So going down to Beale St. and seeing all those street parties and music was quite exciting.

What do you think about all these current bands mixing punk and the blues, bands like the White Stripes and the King Brothers and in some ways Delta 72? TO: We're the only band that matters! The other bands are just jumping on the Killers' bandwagon. We emit electricity and entertainment 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, seven days a week, and that's including leap year too. We're king shit of fuck mountain. Why would anybody want to fuck with us?

I like that attitude. You've only played with the band a couple times and already you're the best. TO: It's real simple for El Cheetah and El Tokien to pull this off 'cause all those other bands that you mentioned, they're not from the South. They don't have any idea.

CW: Delta 72 has more of the Philadelphia soul kind of sound and the White Stripes, I really like their records too, but they're a lot different from what we do. It's more country-blues-oriented and a little louder, messier, dirtier. The White Stripes are kinda like Motown and we're kinda like Stax. I think the punk blues that's going on now is going full circle, where the music's ended up back where it started and it's stripped down?like the White Stripes are a two-piece, the Soledad Brothers are a two-piece, we're a two-piece.

TO: We're the best two-piece, by the way, if I did not say that before. We're the best damn two-piece the world has ever seen.

Different bands have their different takes on the blues, but what I love about the Killers is that your songs are some of the fastest and craziest. CW: I think the speed comes from being in the South and listening to, like, Mississippi Fred McDowell and some of the people from the hill country. They really get things moving as far as their tempos go and that's something that I've been really into.

TO: The Tokien One has come to the conclusion that people, whether they like to admit it or not, like their rock 'n' roll music like they like their sex?they like it fast and they like it hard.

CW: But just like sex, every once in a while we'll throw in a good gospel ballad just to switch positions [laughs]. The next record that me and the Tokien One are gonna do, it's gonna be pretty rocked out but we are also gonna put in some acoustic stuff, some gospel stuff, an Otis Redding song and maybe a Washington Phillips song. We'll probably slow this next one down for a couple of tunes.

Now, Tokien One, I know Jerry Lee Lewis has been kind of the patron saint for the Killers. Are you a fan of the man as well? TO: The Tokien One likes the Killer. We see eye to eye on a lot of things. The other night the Tokien One went down to Beale St. and he looked over and Jerry Lee was just dancing on the ivories and he looked over and said, 'Tokien one, you, too, have great balls of fire!'"

The Immortal Lee County Killers play Fri., Nov. 16, at CBGB, 315 Bowery (Bleecker St.), 982-4052, with Nebula and Atomic Bitchwax.