As a child, Greg Ashley listened to a lot of 50s music. He says his parents never really listened to much music, except for the classical music he heard when he rode around the car with his Dad. When puberty hit, he got into some 60s music, and then, Nirvana hit the scene. He learned how to play guitar by learning every Nirvana song ever written. Then he turned a semi-circle and went back to some 60s music he loved with the emerging 60s garage scene and psychadelia emerging in the bay area in the nineties. And there you have it...the perfect formula for the twenty-five year old mastermind behind one of Oakland’s favorite 60s psychadelia bands, the Gris Gris.

I got a chance to speak with Greg Ashley as he was roaming the streets of Los Angeles in a car, driving through the chaos of the March 2006 Oscars, on the day of their concert at the LA’s Troubadour, where they were to open for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. - Caroline Partamian

SCTAS: I wanted to start out by saying congratulations on playing with the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s at Bimbos in San Francisco last week. How did that go?

GA: I think it went good. I’d never been to Bimbos before so it was kind of cool--I think people liked it. Sometimes when we open up for bands that are popular like that I look out and there’s a bunch of kids and they’re like “what the fuck is this?”-- but I think it was alright.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have such a different sound than you do. How did that come to happen that you got to play with them, with the Gris Gris being more of psychedelic 60s band, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, well, not?

GA: Well we played in New York in October [of 2005] - we did a tour or opening for the Warlocks...and the girl who sings in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Karen, she was also there. She was like ‘when we come to the West coast we want you to open for us.’ So I was like ‘cool’...and then we opened for them. We’re going to open for them in LA tonight and tomorrow night.

So you released your first solo album Medicine Fuck Dream with Birdman Records right?

GA: mhmm.

Are you going to release any other solo albums in the future or are you thinking about working on them?

GA: Yea, I might actually do one this year. I kind of have a sense of what I’m going to do. I’ve been writing a lot of slower songs that won’t really work while I’m in the band so it might happen this year.

So the ten songs you wrote about are, for the most part, about different girls. Are they based on real experiences or were they fictional?

GA: No. They’re about real people. Not all ten songs are about that but maybe seven of them; but it’s pretty much all kind of love song kind of things.

And then you formed the Gris Gris and you’re kind of like this brainchild behind the band. I first heard “Me Queda Um Bejou” on the college radio in Berkeley. On that note, I wanted to ask why you use a lot of foreign language aspects like Portuguese and Spanish and a bunch of different language aspects....why you called it the ‘Gris Gris’ and nothing else.

GA: Well about the “Me Queda Um Bejou” song...well I was in a band in Texas called the Mirrors and somebody reviewed my record and said it was influenced by the band Os Mutantes I’d never heard of them so I went to the record store and I bought a couple of their albums and I really got into it and it was really good Brazilian music. And through that I bought a bunch of other Tropicali records and I actually wanted to write Tropicali type songs...though it actually didn’t come out that way, ‘cause, I don’t know ::laughs::.. . I can’t write that kind of music. I guess I just figured out how to say “I’m wanting a kid” in Portuguese ‘cause we put the song lyrics in English and Portuguese in the CDs, so I just used it in that song.

Did you go back to Texas to record For the Season, and work on it with your band?

GA: Yea. One of the deals with the record was to go somewhere we could live really cheaply, like in the middle of nowhere so we could make a bunch of noise. We tried to do it in California but that didn’t work. My parents owned a bunch of land out in the middle of nowhere in Texas with a cabin and all that, so they let us stay in their cabin for a few months and we just did the whole record there...worked on it and recorded it there.

You were in Texas first, then you went to Oakland, then back to Texas to record the album. How would you compare the music scenes between Houston and Austin to Oakland?

GA: There is pretty much not a music scene in Houston if there is one in Oakland, and I guess that’s the biggest difference. There’s one in Austin but it’s kind of different-- everybody’s in a band there and everyone goes to a show every night so nobody comes to see you. There’s just not a scene right now in Houston. Nobody’s doing anything. Nobody’s putting on shows. Nobody’s going to shows---which is pretty much like how it was when I lived there, but it seems like it’s gotten a little worse.

The record you recorded on the 8-track...was that your solo album or are you still using that for albums with the Gris Gris?

GA: Yea. That’s what I’ve recorded all my albums on. It’s not like an 8-track tape player...it’s like a reel-to-reel 8 track.

You use a lot of different non-conventional instruments like beer bottles for percussion. What else have you used?

GA: Well, on my solo record on a couple songs I used a half-full bottle of Mad-Dog and 20/20 and I hit it with a lollipop for the percussion of the Hank Williams cover, and I just added some reverb to it so it just sounds like one of those old songs about coal-mining with a spike hitting a hammer. And I used water bottles on some stuff that were half full of water instead of shakers. There is one acoustic song that we used a bunch of pots and pans and socket wrenches to do the percussion on that.

So from the first Gris Gris album to the 2nd album I noticed a lot of title similarities ...”Raygun” became “Pick Up Your Raygun” and “Medication” became “Medication #4.”. I was wondering what your intention in doing that was?

GA: I don’t know why I did that. I don’t know. Sometimes I have a string of songs I call "Medication #1", "Medication # 3 and 4" and I named it that because I couldn’t really figure out names for the songs. I don’t know why I did the “Pickup Your Raygun” thing...the whole raygun thing...that song on the first record sort of came from playing with a bunch of words. My mom had this 7 inch from the late 60s or the 70s...it was kind of like a propaganda 7 inch that Richard Nixon put out when he was running for President ...there was this song on it called “Nixon’s the One” and so all the lyrics are like “Nixon’s the one! We believe in Nixon! N-I-X-O-N!” and it plays over and over and I recorded it on a tape and played it backwards and whenever you play ‘Nixon’s the one’ backwards it says “how is my skin” - but it’s really weird, so I used that as the lyrics to the song...and, um, then I don’t know why I used raygun in the end...it’s really stupid.

On For the Season when you listen to it, it has this psychedelic 60s feel to it. Then, you get to "Medication #4" and it has this more Billy Holly-esque feel to it and it’s really different from the rest of the album.

GA: I just decided I never wanted to write the same song twice so I ran into a lot of different styles in songs. Those are my favorite records in music--where you heard a bunch of different stuff going on, not just the same thing over and over. I never think about ‘will this style work here?’ I just kind of do whatever....see what happens.

You help produce a lot of other bands...one being local bay area band Battleship--and they’re so different from the sound of music that you make. How does that work, like collaborating with other bands and producing them and if so, how that influences you in making your own music.. .

GA: When I was younger I was in punk bands and more garage bands so I was excited to get to record somebody else’s record that I’d try to manipulate the sound like I would like a record like that to sound, and to try out different things on other people...and if it works for them maybe I’ll try it on myself; but it’s been helping me a lot. I just recorded the new Battleship record - I just finished it a week ago. It’ll come out in a month or so. Their drummer was our drummer. This guy Joe...so he played on the first Gris Gris record and the Battleship EP.