Buffalo Jack and The Parlor Snakes

Patrick demoed a group of songs that became the first Buffalo Jack and the Parlor Snakes record. I loved the songs and the musical direction but was not in a position to do anything about it since I was trying to establish my academic career.

 

Fast forward to 2011 with a different career and I was ready to bring the album to fruition. Since Patrick was in California and I was in Washington DC, followed shortly by Brazil, it was not going to be possible to form a band in the conventional sense, but rather have a band that had Patrick and I at its core with a revolving collective of friends and collaborators. In 2012, Patrick recorded in Modesto CA with old friends Josh Glidden on drums, who had played in the earliest incarnation of the Netherworld, and Rob Beltz on bass, who had played in the band the Pretty Dudes with both Patrick and I.

 

Patrick brought in Bobby Black to play lap steel on the country-influenced tunes. I recorded slide guitar in Washington DC then asked my acquaintance, Jim Duckworth from the Gun Club and Panther Burns, to contribute lead guitar. Once that was done, the record “Where Judas left his Boots” was mixed in DC and mastered in Memphis in 2013.

 

Since the songs were birthed years before they were recorded, there is a distinct mixture of Country, Blues, Rockabilly and bizarrely Goth on Judas. I like to think of it as Death & Western, Southern Gothabilly or music for a Sam Peckinpah directed film Noir – but I will let others slap the labels they prefer on the record. We released the album in the US at the end of 2014.