“I would always look towards my older cousins or neighbours or my older sisters who were all into rock’n’roll and they would always be so excited about getting new records or going out to a dance or going out to see a band,” he reflects. “To me, at a really young age, I didn’t know where they were going or what they were doing, but I know they were really excited about music. That’s been my Holy Grail ever since. I thought ‘I’m going to be involved in music and I’m going to love music too.’
“I’ve always done kind of whatever it takes to be near it and to get closer to it,” he continues. “I was sneaking out of my parent’s house when I was 13 and 14 to go to nightclubs, just to be near music and people who like music. It’s funny, because in Hollywood and LA, I found a whole slew of other 13 or 14 year olds who were doing the same thing. That turned into a community of people I still know today.”
Powers’ music fandom went beyond digging through record crates and going to gigs. In his late teens, he was president of The Ramones fan club and he also started distributing a fanzine dedicated to LA punk band, The Screamers. Eventually, being surrounded by so many music obsessives, Powers was pushed towards becoming a musician. Prior to joining The Cramps, he helped form The Gun Club with another LA scenester, Jeffrey Lee Pierce. Being veritable music nerds was one thing, but Powers says his evolution to the role of music-maker was somewhat unexpected.
“I thought maybe I would be a journalist or an A&R person or something like that. But Jeffrey Lee Pierce just one day shoved a guitar in my hands and said, ‘OK we’re having a band,’ and immediately we were in a band. But we had done the work. We spent our life collecting records, hanging around music, so it’s no wonder that we would end up as musicians ourselves.”
After spending three years with The Cramps, Powers returned to The Gun Club and played on three records during the second half of the ‘80s. Following this, he contributed guitar to two Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds records, after which he started cultivating his own artistic vision with the projects Congo Norvell, then Knoxville Girls.
For the last decade, Powers has been standing out front of Kid Congo and The Pink Monkey Birds. His ascension to bandleader was perhaps a long time coming, but he’s certainly not ruing lost time. “From the earliest days I’ve always been writing songs,” he says. “Then I just got involved – I like collaborating. It was more important for me to learn from people for a while, and I was in very, very good situations with The Cramps and with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. What better school could you go to? It was very clear that in The Cramps and with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, it was someone else’s vision. Their vision was very strong, it was already well established and I felt fortunate and lucky to be able to put some colour into that and play with them. I’ve always gone with whichever way it was going and this is where it has gone and I’m pretty thrilled and honoured.”
This week, Powers will bring his Pink Monkey Birds down to Australia for the very first time. The band’s just wrapped up recording a fifth LP, which will follow 2013’s Haunted Head. While Powers’ name sits at the top of the banner, he’s not a domineering commander.
“The rhythm section, Ron Miller the drummer and Kiki Solis on the bass, we’ve been together since 2007,” he says. “We’re like The Monkees or The Beatles. We have Ron songs and Kiki songs, my songs, Mark’s [Cisneros] songs – our guitar player. They’re great. They help me so much. Ron is from Georgia; when he grew up he was very into The Meters, so I was like, ‘Wow, this is the guy,’ and Kiki has a very soulful background. They’re just great, they’re like-minded, and they’re younger than me, which is always good to keep me from becoming a nostalgia act or something. Their input is different from someone of my generation.
“I’m a collaborator, I like to collaborate,” he emphasises. “I was always interested in working with other musicians. I wasn’t sure that [The Pink Monkey Birds] was going to become a long-lasting band. That just happened. But once we performed together, there was no reason not to keep going.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
