One Hit Wonder ?

By Chris Rockson

I caught up with Legendary Rocker 'Texas Terri' at the recent Rebellion Festival in the UK, hung out, watched the show,
chatted and had a blast.....here's what she had to say for you lovely people out there!!!

Hey Terri, great to see you in the UK once again. That show you just played at Rebellion was a storm! You were easily the best act at the Festival. What was it like for you?

First of all, thanks a lot for doing this interview with me and it was a joy to hang out with you and Liam at Rebellion this year, a real joy!

Thanks so much for the compliment! And while you're at it, feel free to send an email to Darren (Daz) that puts on Rebellion and tell him what you just told me about TxT Bomb!....And everyone else that felt the same, let Darren know how you felt. (for everyone's convenience: info@rebellionfestival.com)

I always have such a great time playing the Rebellion Festival (formerly Wasted Festival). I have played it the past 5 years and it feels like a family reunion every year. The music fans from the UK just welcomed me with open arms from the first minute on and the mutual love and admiration just gets stronger and stronger each year.

I want to thank Jenny and Daz for having me each year and for having all the bands....they are doing a really great thing for the unity of people that love music. I am truly grateful to be a part of all of this.

And an extra thanks goes out to Stu Taylor. He is one of the coolest, most sincere, most supportive people I know. He manages 'Vice Squad' (whom I dearly love!). He has helped me out so much with things and always been such a great friend and advisor to me. I was thinking I was going to step away from being in a band in the near future, but Stu and a couple of other people that truly believe in me and what I'm doing have saved the day by being there for me. Now I am starting to have fun again. I manage my band and doing all the band business has become way too much for me (for years now, way too much for me). It's sucking me dry. But with a little help from my friends like Stu, I have gotten back some of my lost desire to continue. Let's hope it stays that way.

How do I feel about our show at Rebellion? The fans enthusiasm and love made it so easy to do what I do. I love when I look into the audience and see that we are "feeding" each other. At my shows I always tell the fans from the stage "without you, I am nothing" and that is the truth. It's not worth all of the bullshit of being in a band, but the fans make it worth it. They fill my heart and soul with the will to keep going. Thanks to all of you for that!

The band you have these days kick out the jams in fine style. Where did you recruit these guys/gals from?

Of course, without my band mates, I am also nothing! So a really big shout out to them also. I am grateful for their talent and professionalism.

On guitar is Olivier Delajot ("The Inspector"). He was in a really great band, 'The TV Killers' from Bordeaux, France. I met him in Los Angeles in 1998. My old band played with them in Bordeaux when we came over for our first Euro Tour in 1999. It just ended up we were both in Berlin and he offered to be of service and has now been working with me for over a year now.

'Beano' is on bass. He is from Ireland. He used to play with 'Blood or Whiskey' and many other bands. I actually met him my first year playing the Wasted Festival. He told me if I ever needed a drummer/bass player, he was in and he ended up being in Berlin also.

'Marina Maniac' plays drums. She was in 'Bite the Bullet' for years. She is from Berlin. We just recruited her at the end of last year. She's a great addition and it's cool to have a 'cool chick' in the band. (I just said "chick" so all the feminist would have a fit, hahahhhaha!).

We all live in Berlin. I moved here from Los Angeles 17 months ago.

You are certainly a 'live wire' on-stage, one of the great front persons I've seen in a very very long time. Where do you get your energy from?

It just comes out of me. I feel it's my duty to myself and the fans to give it all I've got. That's what I'm there for. Why hold back? It's all about having fun and bleeding from my heart and soul. I like to think that I do every show as if it's my last. Who knows? The world leaders and their egos may "push the button". Anything could happen anytime, and that's just being realistic. I'm not in fear of any of this shit, just reminds me to always live life like it's my last day on earth. No regrets that way.

You live in Berlin these days, what was the reason for moving away from the States?

My mind and soul were starving for a change. I felt like I was stagnating. Since the first time I came to Europe, I wanted to move here. Just the lust to experience new places, other's cultures. It really opened my eyes to a lot of things that I wanted to take a closer look at, to experience more. I love being a woman of the world. And moving to a country where I do not know the language has been a real challenge. I have learned so much about myself in the last year and a half. It's been and continues to be a challenge, a really wonderful challenge.

I love being in a city where I can walk home all alone at 3 or 4 in the morning and not worry about getting bothered by someone. Berlin, at least where I hang out and live, is so safe. I mean you still have to keep your eyes open and watch your back but that's just common sense anywhere. But after living in L.A. for so many years, it's nice to not hear gun shots all night long and always having to be ready for anything when you walk down the street, day or night.

The subject matter of your songs ranges from social comment to just pure fun. You remind me a lot of Jayne County the way you write. Who and what inspires you to write like that?

Jayne County is and has always been one of my favs! What a steam roller that girl is! Unstoppable.

That's so cool that you played guitar with her! I love that. I would love to have her sing a duet with me on my next record and I'll be seeing if I can make that happen.

I used to have an amazing song writing partner. His name is 'Demon Boy' (Don Cilurso, aka El Don Hubbard). He was the guitar player in 'Texas Terri & the Stiff Ones' for 6 years. We started the band together. Unfortunately, I had to ask him to leave the band. He had some personal problems that were interfering with things, total destruction. It broke my heart to have to ask him to leave. We had the best chemistry for writing songs. You don't find that very often and I miss that so much. He was my partner in crime. We were an unstoppable team. We were never lovers.....but the kind of chemistry we had with rock & roll was deeper and more powerful than any love affair could be. We are still best friends and I speak to him often. He is in school to be a radiologist right now. I am still waiting for the day he finishes school so I can get him over here to do a tour with me....and of course write some more songs together!

What inspires me is to tell the truth. To tell things from my heart and passion. Every emotion.... love, hate, anger, curiosity, apathy, humor, silliness, death, life, insanity, innocence, terror.... you name it. Life is very colorful.

I am doing my best to find/make some time to write the next record. For 3 years now I have had many ideas but just have not had the time or right musicians to put the songs together with. I am thinking I will have to take the first 6 months of next year, 2009, off from playing live, or at least limit the number of shows, in order to put the music together. I really want to get to work on that and have it finished. I am not the kind of person that just wants to "throw something together" so it takes me longer than most of the other bands I know to put out a release. I had rather wait until I have something that I feel proud of and can always know I put my everything into it. And I just cannot run a band and write a record at the same time. It's just too much for my mind to handle and too stressful (and no fun for me).

You have often been likened to 'Iggy' and 'Wendy O', but the way I see it, there are now performers being likened to you!! You like that, right?

Oh, hell yeah! That's pretty cool! If I have made my mark on others, I've done my job, I've made a difference.

When you left the stage at Rebellion to massive applause and requests for encores, I kinda felt sorry for the remaining acts. How could anyone follow that!!??!! You put a lot of energy into your performances, and the crowd love it. What motivates you to perform the way you do?

Hahahaha! You say the nicest things!

I just love to sing and be a front person. It's just one of the things I was born to do and I am very fortunate that I get to do something that I love and comes natural to me....and how cool that I get the opportunity to do this! I am truly blessed.

Too bad we didn't do an encore. We had to skip 'Sonic Reducer' (Dead Boys) because we were out of time. That would have been the encore. Damn the luck!

And we love(d) the crowd!

If you had to choose a favourite venue, which one would it be, and why?

I don't really have a favorite venue. Hmmmm, I don't really have a "least favorite" venue. BUT there is one I would like to mention. It's 'The Mephisto' in Barcelona. The guy that runs the place, 'Jordie' (I believe that is his name) is one of the coolest lover's of music I have ever met. He is such a fan of rock & roll. When booking agents have booked me at other venues in Barcelona, Jordie still comes to the show and is right up front. The guy doesn't even speak english, but we have a super connection with the music. I hope to play there again on one of my tours through Spain.

Ok,tell me more about the upcoming concerts you have in Sweden and Finland? Dates etc..

I am totally crazy about Scandinavia. The people here are really sweet and fun. I am at this very moment sitting at a friend's flat in Gothenburg finishing this interview! I got here yesterday. Tomorrow, which is Friday, Aug. 22, we will pick up the rest of the band at the airport and drive to Emmaboda to play a festival (www.rasslepunkrock.se). Then back here to Gothenburg to play a show on Saturday. We then have a show in Helsinki at Travastia next Tuesday, Aug. 26.

The people I work with in Gothenburg and Helsinki are some of the people I was talking about in the above section of the interview.....the people that love what I do and really make things fun for me. They really want more people to see me and for me to succeed....I love them!

I have a full blown Euro Tour coming up starting Saturday, Oct. 25 in Stockholm. The tour goes until Dec. 7. Then we go home to Berlin and play the following weekend, Sat. Dec. 13 (I think?) with Drongos for Europe at the Tommyhaus.

All of these dates and places will soon be listed at www.myspace.com/texasterri.

You recorded with legendary producer Jack Douglas, and in a lot of people's minds, should have had some major success. What makes you such a dangerous act to the industry?

Hahahahhaha! Yeah, you would think I would have had a little success by now. I really did try my best to pull out all of the big guns on my "Your Lips...My Ass!" record. I had Jack Douglas (New York Dolls, Alice Cooper, Patti Smith, Aerosmith, John Lennon, etc.) producing and some real musical legends play on it. IE: Cherie Currie (The Runaways), Wayne Kramer (MC5), Ryan Roxie (Alice Cooper), Mark Diamond (The Dwarves), etc.....

I really wanted to move up to the "next level" which to me means get better known so I could actually have bigger shows, play with bigger bands, have more success so I could just do music and make a modest if not huge living from it. I am not opposed for getting paid for my work, in fact that's the only way I can continue doing this anymore. I already did my "prove it" years and did it for just "the love" of doing it, which eventually becomes very expensive and put me in a financial ruin for a while.

This is one of the reasons I ask my fans to email club/festival promoters if they really love my shows when they see me. It helps a lot to give the places feed back. I shouldn't write about this, but i'm going to anyway. Sometimes the fans don't know the truth about things so here is a little insight.....at the Rebellion Festival, we get paid just enough to cover the bare expenses which are travel and hotel, we barely break even. The only hope to make a little for ourselves is with merch sales and we all have rent and bills to pay at home like everyone else so we don't really have the luxury of going out to play shows where we don't make something to take home with us. It just the reality of it. So if people will let the promoters know they want Texas Terri Bomb to play a festival the next year, or a club, it will really help us get appreciated by the promoters and our money value will go up. See how that works? Anyone that thinks we are getting paid a shit load of money to play this festival has the wrong info. In fact, last year when I told fans that I may not be able to come back the following year because we can't afford it, they were shocked that we were not getting paid more than we are.....but I really love playing this festival and seeing the "family" of fans every year, so I keep doing it. But this festival is an exception. If we made no money off of any of our shows, we could not tour anymore and that would really suck.

For instance, my guitar player has informed me that he cannot do anymore touring with me next year because he has to get a regular job. So I will have to look for another guitar player at the end of the year which takes time to find, break in, etc....another distraction for me moving ahead with writing the next record and focusing on managing the band. It has been really nice to have the same guitar player and bass player for over a year now. The band sounds great right now and we are moving forward. But now I will have to take the time out, as I said, so the momentum will be on hold again and that really sucks. It's really exausting to always be looking for musicians. Ask any band that has to change their band member lineups. I think I have had at least 20 lineup changes in the past 10 years. But, in Texas Terri fashion, I just keep going.

And it really sucks that I am sitting here writing about this. I have a choice to leave what I just wrote or delete it at this very moment....I think I will just leave it. People need to be informed about the reality of the music business and what bands have to deal with to bring the music to the fans because that is why we do this, is to play shows for the fans. It's a fucking great time!

And I don't want anyone to think it's only about the money for me. I think you can tell from seeing me that it's all about bringing a good time to everyone and having a good time myself! But I really don't want to spend the rest of my life having to have part time jobs doing other shit that means nothing to me and distracts me from planning for and being in the band. Being in a band is a full time job and, unfortunately, it is a business. Yes, I do wanna be different, I want my reality to be my reality. And my reality is that I would like to be a full time musician and support myself doing this. So be it.

Ok, back to the main question "what makes me such a dangerous act to the industry". Hmmmm, I can only speculate and tell you what I know from experience. If a man is as free and spontaneous on stage, they are a cool, whacky dude. When a chick does it and is also in charge of the band herself, there is that danger element. If my band was run by a male, I believe things would be different. Music industry people love that I seem to be untamable but they are intimidated by this at the same time. So anybody up for being the level headed male with a good business mind that would like to represent me to the business people? That would be killer, then I could actually focus on writing my next record and focus on the music music music! Any takers?

The funny thing about doing interviews is that I can only expose the readers to so much. If I were to tell the whole story about things, it would probably jeopardise the opportunities for the band and I'm not willing to do that.....yet. One of these days I do plan on writing a book on the life and times of Texas Terri. Just for the hell of it. It's so stupid that I have to keep so many secrets inside to protect the future of Texas Terri.

All I ever wanted to be was a singer in a band, not a band manager. I didn't really want to see the ugly reality of the business world and have to be involved in it and apparently, I'm really not that good at handling business, the artist in me gets in the way. But someone has to do it and this lifetime it just happens to be me. And believe me, I'm not writing this shit to get pity from you. I'm writing to let you know that doing the business part and running a band does not make me a happy girl. I actually used to like it ok, but after years and years of it, it just plain sucks! Hahahaha!

At least when Demon Boy was in the band with me, I had someone to bounce ideas off of and took a lot of the pressure off my shoulders. He would always take chances with me. We jumped off so many cliffs together, free falling, and then always laughing and high fiving each other when we would once again land on our feet further down the road and sitting in a better position. That was killer! Now that I have become more or less a solo artist, all of the pressure is on me. This past year is about as close as I've been to having a real band of band mates again. People that are fun to be around and believe in what we are doing but business wise, it's still on my shoulders and that part sucks. But as I said, things are getting better and I feel better about the future of Texas Terri, the artist.

Are you planning a return to the UK anytime soon?

I spoke to someone from London at the Rebellion Festival who is interested in putting 6 to 10 shows together for us in Spring 2009. So we will see what comes of that. I would love to do an extensive tour eventually, including Scotland and Ireland. But that probably won't happen for the Spring tour. And of course, I'm hoping to play Rebellion UK 2009!

Terri & Chris Rockson, Backstage, Rebellion Festival 2008

You got a message for the readers?

My first message to the readers is to thank you very much for the interest in Texas Terri Bomb and your support. I would like to continue touring for at least 3 more years. So together, let's make this happen. I think my top role models are T.V. Smith, Charlie UK Subs, The Adicts, The Damned. They are still so alive with their love for playing shows and they deliver each time. I love them dearly.

It's been funny to watch the business of music for the past few years. To watch the booking agents kiss each others asses. To watch the politics between them. To watch them book bands that haven't even earned their "prove it" years be booked on these large festivals and then the bands don't even show up to play because they don't have their shit together. While bands like myself that are reliable and ALWAYS deliver a top notch show don't get the consideration they deserve.

What ever. Let's see who is the last man/woman standing. As long as I have fans, and my fan base is still growing and growing by the way, I will be out on tour. It is and has always been about the fans. Too bad my struggle with the business part holds me back. I just don't know how to play the game and if I did, you would see more of me more often.

So just to let you know one more time, "Without you...I am nothing"......and remember NOW is NOW! so don't wait to do something, do it now, there may not be a next time.......

Cheers Terri, it's such a pleasure hangin' out with a genuine, first class act like you, and thanks for takin' time out to chat. It was great to see you looking so well at Rebellion, we'll see ya soon. Chris

Love and kisses to you, Chris and thanks again for everything!

www.myspace.com/texasterri

www.texasterri.com