A
Biographical Introduction to Kid Congo Powers Pt. 2
(Go
to
Pt. 1)
After
a whirlwind of back-to-back recording and touring with The
Cramps, The
Gun Club, and The
Legendary Stardust Cowboy, and The
Fur Bible, Kid found himself in London in 1986 - with
no musical work for the first time since he and Jeffrey
Lee Pierce formed The Gun Club in 1979. He was not
aware that he was about to fall into one of the greatest opportunities
of his career. At a houseboat party Mick
Harvey mentioned that bassist Barry
Adamson wouldn’t be joining Nick
Cave and the Bad Seeds on their Your Funeral, My
Trial tour. Harvey was thinking of switching over to Adamson’s
role. Did Kid want to fill in on the tour as Blixa
Bargeld’s guitar foil? Kid knew Blixa from his
early Neubauten
tours in the United States, and Mick and Nick from their Birthday
Party days, and now was also friends with Nick’s
wife Anita
Lane. Additionally, he was a big fan of the Bad Seeds.
It didn’t take long for Kid to take the band up on their offer.
Kid packed
his bags, abandoned a city that he learned to loathe, and embarked
upon a new life in Berlin in 1986. Kid’s first two jobs as
a Bad Seed were the recording of a revamped version of “From
Her to Eternity” for Wim
Wenders’ classic film Wings
of Desire (Der
Himmel über Berlin) and an appearance with
the band during the movie’s climax. The band then commenced
their worldwide Your Funeral, My Trial tour – recording
bits and pieces of Tender
Prey during the breaks.
In
1987 Kid received a phone call from Jeffrey Lee Pierce asking if
he wanted to reunite The Gun Club. Thought Kid’s plate was
fairly full with the Bad Seeds, he nonetheless accepted. Within
months Jeffrey Lee Pierce, and new members Romi Mori and Nick Sanderson
were in Hansa Studio in Berlin recording with the Cocteau
Twins’ Robin
Guthrie behind the board. The resulting album, Mother
Juno, was an overwhelming success – catapulting
the band to a new level of popularity and resulting in a couple
of sold-out tours.
In 1988 Kid
Congo Powers became even busier with a number of other projects.
During this point he began singing as a guest vocalist with Die
Haut - the accomplished instrumental German band featuring
Bad Seeds drummer Thomas
Wydler. He layed down lead vocals on two songs for 1988’s
Headless Body In Topless
Bar. He also played guitar on Hard
for You, the EP from new Australian band The
Butcher Shop – with his friends Tex
Perkins and Spencer Jones from The
Beasts of Bourbon. Kid rounded the year off acting
in The Fall’s “Hit
the North” video.
1988 also saw
the release of Tender Prey to great fanfare. As the the
Bad Seeds were touring the world once again, director Uli
Schuppel brought a film crew along for the 1989 American
leg - resulting in the 1991 documentary The
Road to God Knows Where. Not long after the Tender
Prey tour, Powers found himself moving to London with Nick
Cave and Anita Lane. Like Cave, Kid had temporarily cleaned up his
act – making his first serious effort at sobriety. There a
stripped down incarnation of the Bad Seeds recorded a stirring version
of “Helpless” for the excellent Caroline compilation,
The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil
Young.
While in London,
Barry Adamson asked Kid to add some vocal tracks on his brilliant
debut solo album Moss Side
Story. In return, Kid asked Adamson to play on
his first solo recording. In addition to Adamson, Powers recruited
an impressive band featuring London friends like The
Fall’s Marcia
Schofield, The Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie,
and Colourbox’s
Steve Young (also of M/A/R/R/S
– remember “Pump
Up the Volume”?). The resulting product, a twelve-inch
EP entitled In the Heat of the Night,
was a fusion of rock and dance music with the inimitable vocals
and guitar of Kid Congo Powers on top. The record was a critical
and artistic success but a commercial failure – partly due
to a strike in the Rough Trade warehouse that prevented its release
until long after the reviews had come and gone and the video for
“La Historia de Un Amour” was released.
Nick Cave had
written a slew of new piano-based songs in the attic of their new
home and, late in 1989, flew the rest of the band to Brazil to record
them. The resulting record, The
Good Son, was mixed as the Berlin wall was coming
down. Not long after the album, Mick Harvey decided that he wanted
to switch back to guitar - acoustic guitar. The Bad Seeds no longer
required two experimental noise guitarists with their new more accessible
sound. So Kid loaded up the truck and he moved to Beverly…
Actually, Kid
had already moved back to Los Angeles for love in 1990. Plus, he
was already thinking of starting his own band and continuing the
solo work that he embarked upon a year earlier with In the Heat
of the Night. Plans changed after a friend took him to see
actress, singer, and songwriter Sally
Norvell at a local jazz club. Kid was so taken by her
performance that he immediately abandoned his plans to sing –
he wanted to write songs and accompaniment for this striking voice.
The two embarked upon a decade-long collaboration.
Kid
was still a member of The Gun Club at this point. He took a trip
overseas to record 1990’s Pastoral
Hide and Seek album and participated in the tours
that followed. By this point he was less than enthusiastic about
the direction of the band and Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s personal
downward spiral. Longtime drummer Nick Sanderson (also of Clock
DVA fame) jumped ship and the band was going through
a series of drummers. Just when Kid had decided to follow Sanderson’s
example, Pierce enlisted Fur Bible drummer Desperate, came up with
a new interesting batch of songs unlike any others before, and they
recorded the mini-LP Divinity
(1991). The band toured extensively during this period – releasing
a live record (entitled Ahmed’s
Wild Dream in Europe, and Live in Europe
in America) and a compilation on XXX Records, In
Exile - both in 1992. not long after this point,
Kid had his fill of Gun Clubbing - quitting the band to devote more
time to his project with Sally Norvell.
Kid and Sally
decided to name their project simply Congo
Norvell. The duo began playing small informal shows
and eventually morphed into a band. Their first EP Lullabies
was released in 1992 – featuring a song that became their
greatest hit of sorts, staying with them for over a decade –
“Lullaby.”
Also in 1992
Die Haut asked Kid Congo Powers back to Germany to appear on their
star-studded tenth anniversary album, Head
On. In addition Debbie
Harry, Alan
Vega, Kim
Gordon, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, and a number of other notables,
Kid laid down some guest vocals. Both of Kid’s numbers are
duets. “Excited” is performed with Anita Lane and “Parts
Unknown” with Lydia
Lunch. Everyone had so much fun that a tour followed
– this time featuring Lunch, Lane, Powers, Nick Cave, Blixa
Bargeld, and Alex
Hacke. Two Berlin shows were recorded – one for
a live album and the other for a live video, both released in 1993
as Sweat.
By
1994, as Congo Norvell was picking up momentum, they released their
firstfull-length album, Music
To Remember Him By, on the Priority Records subsidiary
Basura!. The band toured extensively to support the album and recorded
a live EP in San Francisco entitled Live in the Mission (1995).
Things picked up to the point in which Priority, the label of NWA,
Easy
E, Ice
Cube, and number of other successful rappers, decided
to begin releasing recordings by what were then ambiguously referred
to as “alternative” bands. They picked up Congo Norvell
and the two began working on what is often considered their masterpiece,
1996’s The Dope,
The Lies, The Vaseline. While Kid Congo Powers
complains about “indie torture,” nothing was to prepare
him for big label assault. Priority decided to dissolve their “alternative”
division shortly after the promos for The Dope, The Lies, The
Vaseline had been sent out. Congo Norvell tried everything
in their power, including offers to buy the recordings, to obtain
this piece of sweat and blood they’d been laboring over for
the last year. The label refused to relinquish the masters. Due
to a fairly bad contract, Priority is still sitting on the record
to this day – therefore The Dope, The Lies, The Vaseline
has had a fairly active existence in bootleg-land.
Also during
this period, Jeffrey Lee Pierce got deported from the United Kingdom,
split with Romi Mori, and wound up once again at his mother’s
house in Los Angeles. In 1995 Mike
Martt of Tex
and the Horseheads organized a one-off pseudo-Gun Club
reunion show at the Viper Room with a new version of the band that
featured Martt, Wayne
Kramer’s rhythm section, and one Kid Congo Powers. The
show was a success and, while Kid was not prepared to commit to
reforming the band, mostly because Pierce was a mess, this lineup
played a few more gigs before splitting town.
Deciding they’d
had enough of Los Angeles and everything that went along with it
(AKA Priority Records), Kid Congo Powers, once again, loaded up
the truck - and this time moved to NYC with Sally Norvell. The duo
immediately fell in with the local music scene, developed a bit
of a following and signed up with one of the best indie labels of
the time, Jetset.
During this
period Kid began communicating with a newly clean Jeffrey Lee Pierce
- then stuck at his father's house in Utah. Kid had agreed to get
the band going again and was in the process of putting a new lineup
together when he heard the heartbreaking news that his lifetime
musical companion had passed away.
The next Congo
Norvell album, Abnormals
Anonymous, begins with a slow somber version of
Pierce’s “She’s Like Heroin to Me” and includes
an original dedicated to Kid's recently departed friend, “Body
and Soul.” Despite the success of the album, Sally Norvell
was now a single working mother and unable to devote as much time
to the band or the road. Congo Norvell slowly petered out.
At
this point Kid once again began devoting time to side projects,
collaborations, and guest appearances. He played in a short-lived
band with Speedball
Baby’s Ron
Ward and Honeymoon
Killers’ Jack
Martin called Bottleneck
Drag. He began touring as a percussionist with DC’s
post-Marxist gospel superstars Make-Up
and appeared in their movie Blue
is Beautiful (1998). He found his way onto Jonathan
Fire*Eater’s final album Wolf
Songs For Lambs again on percussion. He produced
the debut LP of a young band named The
Factory Press, Smoky
Ends Of A Burnt Out Day. The group soon reconfigured
as a three-piece and to this day are known as Calla.
His friendship with American
Music Club’s Mark
Eitzel resulted not only in Eitzel’s five tracks
on Abonormals Anonymous but also Kid’s guitar work
on Eitzel’s Caught
In A Trap And I Can't Back Out 'Cause I Love You Too Much, Baby
(1998). He showed up on Botanica’s
debut LP Malediction
(1999) and became an on-and-off member of the band. Kid also joined
Michael Gira’s new ten-piece ensemble
Angels of Light, appearing on their live Tonic
Benefit CD (1999). Finally, he played guitar on
the Vanity
Set’s ornate self-titled
debut – which was not released until 2000.
One
of these informal side-projects, Knoxville
Girls, featuring Martin, Barry London, Honeymoon Killers’
leader Jerry
Teel, and Bob
Bert of Pussy
Galore/Sonic
Youth fame, became Kid’s new fulltime band after
the underground hysteria induced by their self-titled
debut album. The band crisscrossed the United States
and Europe a number of times and remained together for three very
busy years. In the Woodshed
(2000) is an excellent document of their live show. They also appeared
on New Coat of Paint - Songs of Tom Waits. Disagreements
over the direction of the band led to a breakup not long after the
release of 2001’s In
a Paper Suit.
Towards the
end of Knoxville Girls, Kid continued to record and play with a
number of other projects. He assembled his first live solo band
- Kid
Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds. He produced and played
guitar on Philadelphia indie singer/songwriter Chet
Delcampo critically acclaimed Fountain
CD (2000). He played guitar on another Mark Eitzel success, Invisible
Man (2001), Angels of Light’s masterpiece
How I Loved You
(2001), and, finally, German electronic musician Khan’s
final Matador LP, No Comprendo
(2001) - quite a prestigious trio.
Kid
went on the road with Khan to support No Comprendo and
quickly became an equal partner in the act - before long the duo
was touring and recording as Kid
and Khan. In addition to collaborating with Twin
Peaks' diva Julee
Cruise with Kid and Khan, Kid played for a spell in
her backing band. Kid and Khan recorded a number of tracks in Mexico
City in 2002 that became the bulk of the duo’s 2005 debut
LP Bad English
and their dance EP Washing Machine.
The collaborations between Kid and Khan and Julee Cruise continue
to this day.
Not long after
he debuted Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds , Kid began penning
and recording a number of new songs on his own. “Power,”
which appears on Botanica’s
European release With All
Seven Fingers, and “Hang the Moon”
were recorded with the prolific musicians Paul
Wallfisch, Abby
Travis, and Jim
Sclavunos. These tracks are significant as they are
the first to prove Powers’ capabilities as a singer-songwriter.
Kid collected these, along with others dating back to 1985’s
Fur Bible EP,
as a career-spanning rarities collection emphasizing his singing
and songwriting - Solo
Cholo. But the compilation fell into limbo as
the owner of the label that was to release it ended up going MIA
and the label dissolved before Kid's eyes.
While
Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds initially primarily played the
songs collected on Solo Cholo, they eventually began coming
up with more material of their own - moving towards a glammy garage
rock sound. The Monkey Birds, again with Kid's favorite guitarist
Jack Martin, remained busy in spurts the last few years - between
Kid's other obligations. In 2005 they finally completed their debut
album Philosophy
and Underwear for the prestigious German label
Trans*Solar.
Some of the
good news that emerged from this oral history project is that, in
the process of preparing for the interview, Kid told New York Night
Train about the problems with Solo Cholo and we got together
in an effort to get the compilation to the public. Additionally,
as of last week, New York Night Train has made a licensing agreement
with Trans*Solar to ready Philosophy and Underwear for
American release. So not only did this meeting produce Kid Congo
Powers' illuminating oral history, but it has also resulted both
in the availability of Kid’s recordings in the United States
and the genesis of a new label based on this web zine.
Kid
Congo Powers Pt 2 home page | Kid
Congo Powers Oral History table of contents
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Night Train , 2006
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