Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

 Interview by: Seth Lyda

            

     Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is still swingin’, and they’re better than ever. With hits like “Go Daddy-O,” “You & Me & The Bottle Makes 3 Tonight,” and “Mr. Pinstripe Suit,” BBVD has been at the forefront of the swing revival for two decades. In 1996, the band struck gold when they were included in the cult-classic movie, Swingers. They’ve since gone on to play the Super Bowl halftime show, been the house band for The ESPYS, and toured the world over. Front-man Scotty Morris was recently working on some new tracks at Toes in the Sand Studio, and I stopped by to talk a little shop with him.  

What’s new with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy?

We’ve got a new record, Rattle Them Bones, and it jumped into The Billboards. It’s the first record we’ve made with a label in 10 or 11 years, we’ve been doing everything ourselves, so we put this one out just to test the waters, because we all know that the record buying public has dwindled down to almost nothing. So we put something out on a major label to see if it would make a difference, and it debuted at #2 on Billboard’s Jazz Charts and has stayed in the top 10 or 20 ever since. There was zero publicity for it, so we’re trying to get some publicity now because labels are afraid of retro. And that’s fine if they want to leave it alone, we just try to find other avenues any way we can.

Besides swing music, what other musical styles helped shape your sound?

For me, I have a sound that I’m chasing, and I’m way closer now than I’ve ever been before, and we are way closer now that when we started. But when I started off, I wanted to play guitar because of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix, because I wanted to sound like that. To be totally honestly, for what my ear likes the best, Stevie Ray Vaughan is my favorite musician in any realm, on any level. 

With such a large band, tell me about your songwriting process?

It’s basically what we’re doing today. I’ll write, and usually have the whole thing finished in my head and I’ll bring it to Josh, and he’s the arranger of the songs. I’ll play it for him, he’ll feel it out, and we’ll see what fits with the band, as soon as we’ve got a skeleton for the song, then we start demoing it, and we’ll go back and forth for months on how to arrange it, and then we’ll give it to the band, rehearse it, and take it out on the road. Or sometimes we’ll just record it and be done. Like this record, the band hadn’t even heard the tunes before the rehearsal, and we rehearsed Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, then recorded the whole following week.

You guys are pretty damn stylish on stage, and Ignition has a fashion issue coming out soon. What’s the story behind the suits?

The suits, from the very beginning, were inspired by Blue Note Records. You look at the old Blue Note record covers and those dudes look bad ass. You see Miles Davis, you see those guys on there, and they’re wearing bad ass suits; they look great. That was the thing. So with us, we were trying to play this kind of music, not so successful in the early days, but we thought it would be a way to clue people into what we’re doing by having that image. Now, it’s just trying to find bad ass vintage suits. The kind when you walk in, you just mow ‘em down with the suit alone. It’s impossible to find great vintage suits now, period. The guys in our band that are smaller, those guys have like 10 suits each, the bigger guys in the band, well they didn’t grow ‘em past 6 foot back in the day man, so they’re few and far in between. This was depression era, so these guys were little dudes. Dry cleaning bills suck, thank God for Fabreeze!

How did BBVD come together?

I started Big Bad Voodoo Daddy in 1989 when I graduated from music school. Kurt and I met in 1991, that’s when we were a 3 piece, doing Stevie Ray Vaughan, and darker stuff like Tom Waits. I think the ad looking for a bass player said ‘Imagine Duke Ellington, Jimi Hendrix, and Tom Waits in a jacuzzi doing acid. If you’re interested, here’s the number.’ By 1993, we had the lineup that we have now.  

I’m sure you get this a lot, but the first time I heard Big Bad Voodoo Daddy was on the Swingers soundtrack. How did you get involved with the movie?  

We were playing at a club called The Derby in LA. I didn’t really want to play in LA because we’ve already been playing all up the coast. But I ended up playing this Wednesday night gig at The Derby because they kept begging me and begging me to do it. So we started playing there, and the first week we played there I met Jon (Favreau). My girlfriend was the best dancer at The Derby, and Jon would always ask to dance with her, and we became really good friends. Then he introduced me to Vince (Vaughan), and this was all before those guys were famous, I didn’t even know they were actors. I just thought they were LA guys; we never really talked about it. And then about a year into our friendship, Jon says ‘Hey man, we’re gonna shoot this movie. I’ve got this script, are you interested?’ So I was thinking ‘What are you? A director’s assistant? A caterer or something? So he gave me the script to read, but I had like 6 gigs that weekend so I completely forgot about it. A week later John asked ‘Did you read my script?’ I said ‘Yeah man it was great; we’re in.’ About a month later, sure enough, we were at The Derby and we shot the scene. Then it just went away and I didn’t think anything of it. Jon called me one day and said ‘We’re gonna screen it at the $2 theatre for all the heads, and then we’ll make fun of it and you guys will go play, and we’ll come party. And then I’ll never forget the next morning he called me up and said Miramax wants to buy the movie for 5 million bucks, and all of our lives are about to change. I’m thinking ‘Yeah right, I just watched the movie, no way.’ The movie was our inside joke, that’s just who we all were, it was our group of guys. The next thing you know the whole world identified with it; and it changed everything.  

Having accomplished so much, what are you looking forward to most?  

Our 20 year anniversary is what pops out the most. We’ve just released the best record of our career in September, its’ so much more legitimate. Back then I felt like a fraud. One minute we’re playing little clubs all over the place, the next thing you know we’re playing at the Super Bowl. There just isn’t any way to prepare for it. No one can prepare your small mind for all of a sudden being thrown into this excess of money and fame and celebrity, I don’t know anyone that’s ready for that shit, for real. So when that comes you have to decide “I’m gonna eat that shit up and be that dude.” Or “I’m gonna run as far away from it and be my own dude,” and that’s what we did, for better or for worse. We had to take the longer way around, but guess what? We’re the same dudes 20 years later, still happy, still working in studios, trying to make good music. I’ll define that as something I’m proud of.   

What’s next for the band?

We’re working on a series of unplugged tunes, with the band playing stripped down versions of songs we’ve done, and we’re doing a video shoot for our YouTube channel that were working on, that will be controlled by us, so you’ll be able to get some really cool shit off that, and if you like it you can purchase it on our website. We’re also shooting a live DVD of a full blown concert with 6 HD cameras, and we’re gonna record that and make a record out of it, and have another live record to put out, put it on the net, give it to the people, whatever happens, happens. Then we’re making a new record that will be out February 2014, and we’re just now kicking around an idea to make a full blown Halloween record with crazy swing music. There just isn’t anything like that out there. Give everyone a haunted mansion experience; it’ll be a fun time.