Tav Falco exploded like a hand grenade into the staid Memphis music scene of the late 1970s. Along with his friend Alex Chilton, he founded Panther Burns, the anarchic ensemble which defied norms and defined Memphis punk. Now, he has an acclaimed new album, Desire on Ice, which revisits some of the best tracks of his storied career with the assistance of an all-star cast of collaborators. The Memphis Flyer interviewed Falco via email from his home in Bangkok, Thailand. The following Q&A has been edited for length.
Memphis Flyer: The reviews for Desire on Ice have been very good, with Mojo awarding you a perfect five stars. How rewarding does that feel?
Tav Falco: Not sure our records have ever received such critical accolades. Typically our stage shows are greeted with howls of contempt on the one hand and squeals of ecstasy on the other.
Your musical relationship with Mario Monterosso has been very fruitful. How do y’all work together? What do you think he brings to the Tav Falco table?
Mario allowed himself to become a collaborator rather than simply fill the role of a guitarist. When we met in Rome, I don’t think he was ready for that, but after a few sessions in the recording studio, I knew he was ready. I also realized Mario had the musical ability and sensitivity to become a producer, and the kind of producer my music needs: a producer who can work outside the box and not look back.
Our intent on this new album, I might add, was to create new, cross-genre treatments of a selection of my songs beyond the originally recorded versions. This led us to drown the songs in undercurrents of beat jazz, ’60s Italian movie themes, and deviant folk blues. Mario was crucial to conflating this mix of genres and their nuances. The treatments reflect where we’re at today, while reimagining the thematic contours of the originals, then hurling the entire album into the future.
You have a huge variety of guest stars on this record. How did you go about recruiting talent for the record?
We thought to invite those who’d had involvement with the music either directly on stage, on record, or in some spiritual or political way over the course of my performing career. It is indeed a staggering array of artists who responded to the panther howl I am know for, yet who were willing to embrace the concept Mario had explained — of capturing the original import of the songs while exploring how those songs resonate in today’s turbulent times. Turns out the resonance was deep and wide.
Artists from Kid Congo Powers to the inimitably exquisite performance artist Ann Magnuson brought a willingness combined with insight into how to interpret my visions of hilarity, absurdity, love of lost causes, fetish, and sexual fantasy, all soaked in the rhyme and ritual of Orphic mysteries. Among them, our original Memphis drummer, Ross Johnson, probably knows my moves and motivations better than anyone.
How did your deep history with Memphis music influence Desire on Ice?
Aside from the cultural cross-currents adrift in the city, and the process of association they engender, it was Phillips studio itself that mattered — a kind of temple we call our recording home. Walking through those studio doors again to record this album as I had done so many times before, I felt other Memphis artists were walking with me. Not only musicians like Teenie Hodges and Roland Robinson who had also played with me, but other kinds of Memphis artists whose influence was formative, like the photographer William J. Eggleston, sculptor John McIntire, filmmaker Carl Orr, and others who cumulatively colored what, how, and why we recorded what we did.
What I learned from them was starting in the middle and working your way out. That’s how it is done in Memphis, learning by doing. Also echoing in my mind as I entered Phillips studio to record Desire On Ice was the advice of another Memphis mentor, Sun recording artist Charlie Feathers: “If you’re not doing anything different, Tav, you’re doing nothing at all.”
The Flyer’s Alex Greene will be doing a live score for your film The Urania Trilogy, at Crosstown Theater on November 20th. What was your inspiration for making the transition into film? How does it feel to trust someone else with the music for your film?
The transition was actually from film to music. When I came down to Memphis from the hills of Arkansas riding on a Norton motorcycle, I came because of the poets, painters, writers, and archivists who lived and worked there. I came to join that community and to become a filmmaker. I got a job making movie titles at Motion Picture Laboratories on South Main Street, and for two years I learned 16 mm film working there. Doesn’t matter really because I have only one song to sing, whether it is film or music or writing. For I have but one persona. It is the secret eye of the persona that matters, and that’s all that interests people in an artist. The themes, the narratives, the abstractions, the psychic thrusts, and fractals are all a product of that secret eye.
My movie, The Urania Trilogy, is an experimental feature film now to be seen in its re-mixed, color-tinted, and definitive form. It has a disembodied soundtrack, but on the 20th of November at Crosstown Arts Theater Film Series, Alex Greene and the Rolling Head Orchestra will deconstruct that soundtrack and infuse a live soundscape on stage of their own creation. Cinema is a collaborative medium. This sui generis projected moment of The Urania Trilogy and the Rolling Head Orchestra together will be proof of that.