YOU CALL THAT MUSIC?!
(Part one of a two part interview with the HAVENOTS frontman Ryan Ace)

Have you heard the latest single from the HAVENOTS? I hope not. That's because they haven't done anything yet. As of right now, the future of the band lies on a couple of 4-track tapes in some crappy little apartment that has been called 'the bunker' studio. And let me tell you, the name is fitting, seeming since there is a sense of nuclear fallout all around you. The apartment belongs to Nathan Tackett - head of the Peoples Production Group and an all around insane individual. Tackett, feeling the local sound was growing stale began looking for something 'different', Different-he found in Ryan Ace, the 28 year old 'musician' was currently unemployed and looking for a venue. The two gentlemen got really drunk one night back in 2004 and some sort of partnership was born. If you couldn't figure it out already Ace did most of the work on Tackett's 2004 album Metrophobia.
Whereas Tackett is a self-procclaimed rennaisance man, Ace is more of a mad scientist. He's walked out on his partner more than once, only to reappear months later with some fresh concoction up his sleeve.
That would be why the HAVENOTS have NOT released anything yet. So, Tackett is locking up the eccentric artist over the labor day weekend to finally put up or shut up. Oh yeah, and he's throwing his house musician j.r. woolf to oversee production. Confused? No shit, so am I. So I recently took a trip out to the bunker to see just what the hell sense could be made of it.
I found Ryan Ace blasting some Motorhead and chainsmoking in his boxer briefs.

IK: So just what the hell is happening around here?
ACE: Good old fashioned collaboration. The vibes are great, the music is coming, and I'm sober.
IK: cool, have you finished any songs yet?
ACE: we've got a few down on tape so far, but that's it. I think J.R is out at the bar now or something. But let me tell you that guy has been a real guru to me over the past six months or so.
IK: oh yes, mr woolf, how is it working with the bluesman?
ACE: well at first when Nate(tackett) told me I was going to be working with woolf I told him to go fuck himself. I mean, I've got more of an industrial/experimental background and woolf is just straight up blues and rockabilly. Not your most likely of bedfellows. But somehow , it works.
IK:Really?
ACE: First day I meet him (woolf) he's howlin out some Johnny Cash and ripping his lungs out. I set up my equipment -all the keyboards and laptops and shit and he stops me before I can even finish. He tells me 'hey buddy, we're startin from scratch! the shit I like and the shit you like ain't that much different' So he hands me an accoustic and we start strummin out these real oldies. Half the Cash library, some Dylan, Springsteen..that kind of stuff. We probably did that for the first couple of weeks or so. And he was right, I mean you can't tell me that the man in black was not pissed off when he penned his songs or that Dylan'ss voice is not something thatis still true today. Listen to this.

Ace fumbles around with the computer for a second and soon I am hearing something that resembles Dylan's MASTERS OF WAR. It sounds sinister, It sounds like it was recorded live on the sands of Iraq. The once simple guitar line has been replaced with drum machine, twisted samples, and distorted vocals. It stirs up emotion to say the least.

After breaking out of his self-induced trance Ace is up and giddy again.
ACE:I dig it. It's important. that same idealogy he was singing about forty years ago is still something we need to hear today. You just have to change it up a bit.
IK: so woolf has been teaching you a history lesson.
ACE: exactly, it's telling me that the things that I write about better be important too. It's too dated just to be pissed off anymore. You can't cheat the listener. They're a lot more intelligent than a lot of bands make them out to be. Anybody can make a song that will get the peoples blood flowing right here and now. But will they still get goosebumps thirty years down the road when they hear that same song...

Part two of the interview includes a Q&A session with J.R Woolf and will be printed at Idiot Kingdom soon. Also, as this is being printed the EP created by these two unlikely partners will be called RIDING SHOTGUN and will consist of mostly cover songs with some original tunes by both musicians.