» The Mother Hips & Scott Thunes

The Mother Hips have flown under the radar as true indie music pioneers for two decades. Hailed by critics for their "rootsy mix of 70s rock and power pop" (pitchfork.com) and for their unflinching ability to "sing it sweet and play it dirty" (New Yorker), The Hips' signature sound rings more genuine and relevant than ever before.

The Hips - led by co-founders Tim Bluhm (vocals/guitar) and Greg Loiacono (guitar/vocals) - have been playing music for 20 years, and in the process, have had the luxury of exploring and refining their craft. And have never been more primed to share their well-traveled tales - the long days and nights on the road, the gritty politics, the smart inward reflections and man, the music! - all delivered with a most appealing balance of Americana storytelling and their California-burnished rock.

In the early 1990s, the Mothers Hips helped lay the groundwork for California’s jam-scene, offering a improv-oriented sound which owed as much to the Beach Boys as Neil Young. Formed in 1992 while students at Chico State, the quartet--- singer/guitarist Tim Bluhm, guitarist Greg Loiacono, drummer John Hofer and bassist Isaac Parsons,---spent the next decade on stage, earning a sizeable west coast following and establishing loyal pockets of fans across the country.

In the process, the group also released a series of well received studio albums, toured with everyone from Johnny Cash to Wilco and survived enough label shuffling to rival an episode of Behind the Music. But, in 2001, after issuing Green Hills of the Earth, Loiacono decided to take a hiatus, leaving the group’s future in a state of flux. After four years in limbo, the Mother Hips retuned with renewed energy and a new bassist Paul Hoaglin, releasing an EP and, covering Neil Young’s Everyone Knows This is Nowhere in its entirety. While working on the Mother Hips’ first proper studio album since 2001, Bluhm took to break to clue Jambands.com onto how the Mother Hips learned to live by good life by “taking it easy.”

This is the line-up for Zappanale:

Tim Bluhm: Vocals, Guitars, Keyboards
Greg Loiacono: Vocals, Guitars, Piano
Scott Thunes: Basses, Bass Pedals, Vocals, Other Stuff
John Hofer: Drums, Percussion

And all Zappa fans will be glad that Scott Thunes will be on stage together with The Mother Hips.

Thunes talks about the notorious 1988 tour of the Zappa band, the demise of which he is reputed to have caused. It takes him almost half an hour to explain. He describes a secret world of "Clonemeisters," "Magic Words," and smoking and nonsmoking buses-an exotic milieu spoiled by unbelievable pettiness, mean-spiritedness, poor judgment, spite, and bruised egos. He has no problem naming names, although it's clear that despite his jocular tone he takes no pleasure in reliving the experience. The awful childishness of the Mutilating of the Laminate and the Cake lncident, for example, illustrates the inadvisability of working and touring with people for whom one feels nothing but personal animosity. Ironically, many consider the '88 band to be one of Zappa's best, strictly in terms of pure musical prowess.

Isn't the pleasure or release of playing in a great band enough to make someone strong enough to take anything, no matter how bad?

Show me a good band, and I'11 tell you why there's tension in that band. And for the people who perform it, music very rarely releases tension; it almost always increases tension. And music does not help you to be a nice person. Why should a good musician be a nice person? There's no connection there. Tension increases; we all have our issues, and everybody's human.

Frank was a special case. He put up with a bunch of shit to allow the 1988 tour to work- but he wanted all the juice with none of the blood. All of those albums I played on have blood on every track; there's danger inherent in everything on them. Even during the standardized performances, there was danger lurking behind every single note. I dig tension in my music, because I know from modern classical music that tension can coexist with normalcy. Frank was a big fan of that.

Once in Barcelona, someone in the band came up to me and screamed, "Don't you know what a privilege it is to play with Frank? How can you ruin his music?" I play a lot of lines; I pick chunks out of the air, and instead of playing bass, I play Scott Thunes's part in the orchestration. And of course the whole idea of being a bass player is not to overplay: you "play the bass." But I've never done that-and if Frank isn't asking me to do that, don't you ask me. So at that particular moment I got out my headphones and put them on, and I started listening to classical music while this guy's mouth went, [flapping lower jaw] Beh- beh-beh-beh-beh. It was delicious.

At the end of the tour, Frank decided he wasn't going to play anymore, because the rest of the band had told him they wouldn't go out with me again. When he told me that, I said, "I'll gladly quit." He said, "That's not the answer. I like you, and I like what you do -except for all the mistakes you've been making." Because every night onstage, I was surrounded by daggers and completely lost my concentration. For three months I was a wreck, and the music suffered because of my mistakes. Frank's only enjoyment was playing guitar solos, and those fell apart; he ended up not doing any. We also ended up not doing any more three-hour soundchecks. We'd play just two songs, and then he'd get out of there. He could not stand being in the same room with us. It was the worst possible combination of events for him.

http://www.motherhips.com/
http://www.myspace.com/themotherhips
http://www.geoscott.com/
http://www.facebook.com/scottthunes?v=info

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