New Bomb Turks
Too Much Coffee
A minimum wage interview with Eric Davidson of the New Bomb Turks
Words/Photos by Karen Graves

Standing in a dimly lit subterranean rock club/bar/bagel joint called Bernie’s in Columbus, Ohio, New Bomb Turks frontman Eric Davidson cuts one hell of a cool silhouette. Trim, six foot something with a mock pomp greaser hairdo—somewhere between Dean Martin and a more conservatively coifed Chris Isaac— typically clad in black, jeans with 2” cuffs and a button up with rolled sleeves, he looks like a character straight out of S.E.Hinton’s secret notebook.
Having seen him at local venues, like Bernie’s, in the audience for shows like the Flaming Lips, Sebadoh, Robyn Hitchcock, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments and Guitar Wolf, but having never had occasion to speak to him, recent Turks personnel changes and rumors of a new record finally prompted me to introduce myself and set up an interview with the singer.
I had imagined that our meeting would take place in a dank campus bar or trendy restaurant. Instead, we met up at Eric’s on-the-clock part-time day job running the cash register at a cutesy, hip, cheesy, arty, fun gift shop type place in the equally cutesy, hip, cheesy, arty, fun Stonewall drag of Columbus known as the Short North. This job is in addition to his semi-regular gig writing record and concert reviews for the local weekly, the Other Paper. Initially I was surprised that Eric’s day job wasn’t at a record store like most of the other rockers in town. Later he confessed that he used to be, “the generic, Reality Bites, gen Xer. I worked at a coffee shop and a record store and was in a band—but I never, like, dated Janeane Garofalo or anything.”
This being my first interview, I was a bit nervous as I walked, almost tripping, down the stairs into the basement level store, noticing the Morrissey cd playing in the background and scanning the room for my subject as I went along. I knew things were going to be just fine when, as I reached the bottom of the stairs, I heard an excited voice shout, “Where the fuck did you get that shirt—it’s awesome!,” in reference to the construction barrel orange, vintage t-shirt sporting a photo of Steve Martin circa 1979 that I was wearing. This triggered a discussion of Steve Martin—his book Cruel Shoes, a mutual agreement that his movies have sucked for the past decade, trading lines from the Jerk (“All I need is this thermos,” Davidson barely got the famous line out before cracking up). Much talk of Saturday Night Live occurred throughout the interview—as it turns out, the title of the New Bomb Turks recent record Beruhren Meiner Affe, translates as “touch my monkey,” an obvious reference to the Mike Myers SNL skit, Sprokets. “Sprokets is going to be a movie, I can’t wait!” Davidson exclaimed, quickly adding,”I’m sure it will suck, it’ll be awful. It’ll be just really dumb, but I don’t care because I think it’s just such a funny character. Anything will be better than that Mary Margaret Whatever movie. Why don’t they ever make the movies of funny characters? The show still has some funny skits—like ‘Morning Latte.’”
After all of this, with the ice happily broken, it was time to get down to the business at hand: rock and roll. First things first, the New Bomb Turks are from Columbus. Although they grew up in the Cleveland area, vocalist Davidson, guitarist Jim Weber, bassist Matt Reber and then drummer Bill Randt met while attending Ohio State University, and formed the band circa 1990 because, “It was pretty dull around here at the time. There weren’t that many bands playing out then, and the ones that were, I didn’t really like... So we thought, ‘why don’t we just start a band? That way we can bring in friends’ bands from out of town and just have fun.’”
Following a brief pause to wait on a customer, Davidson went on to say that, “Everybody’s always amazed, especially like when you go overseas they’re like ‘Oh, well we thought you guys were from New York,’ or ‘We thought you were from L.A.,’ which is funny, because if you think about it there’s pretty much no bands from New York or L.A., they’re always transplanted from the Midwest or the South. Except maybe the Dead Kennedys, they’re all from ‘Frisco.”
In the beginning, Davidson had thought the band would dissolve after graduation, but offers of record deals and tours made the Turks rethink that notion, and ultimately stay together for some ten years, not for the money, but because it was still fun.
“One time, we were in San Francisco and Jello Biafra (ex-Dead Kennedys frontman/all around rabble rouser) came to our show, it was after those guys beat the shit out of his legs, so he was on crutches, he came in and was like, (Davidson assumes a nasal, cartoonish voice) ‘Hey, I really liked your band!’ I was like ‘whew, this is fucked up, this is crazy.’ Then when he came to town last summer for a spoken word date, I was, uh, I was out of town but when I got home and checked my phone messages I heard(again using the cartoon voice), ‘Hi Eric, this is Jello Biafra, I was just wondering...’ Oh my God!—Whenever I’m worried about how I can’t pay my rent, or my bills, for the third month in a row, I think, ‘Well, I get to have Jello Biafra call me on the phone...’ fun shit happens on tour, it’s a fun life,” or, as the ever so eloquent Davidson put it earlier (despite having lost more than one girlfriend due to being in a band and touring), “It’s been fun, I’m not complaining.— I am not Eddie Vedder! That shit makes me sooo mad.”
On stage, Eric Davidson is a man possessed, in equal parts by Jerry Lee Lewis, Mick Jagger, Iggy Pop and, hell, maybe even Jerry Lewis(yeah, the telethon guy). Darting around stage while making faces Jim Carrey would envy, Davidson pauses for only a millisecond here and there just long enough to snatch an audience member’s hat, stuff it down his pants, then quickly pull it out and toss it back to it’s owner (a favorite move of Davidson’s), all in the blink of an eye. In light of this it was not at all surprising that for the duration of our hour long chat session, although he was seated most of the time (on a stool that, more often than not, was tipped back on two legs so he could rock back and forth and lean against the wall—y’know, the way your mom yelled at you for doing as a kid), Davidson fidgeted around, tracing imaginary lines with his fingertips on the wooden countertop and pulling at his slightly scruffy chin.
With the New Bomb Turks being a band having quite a reputation built upon their explosive live performances, Davidson seemed saddened, to say the least, when he spoke about the possible threat he thinks the Internet may play to concert attendance, and rock and roll in general, in the not so distant future. “You grow up in this whole era where it’s, ‘Don’t drink, don’t smoke and don’t do any drugs. Don’t have sex or you’re probably going to die from that,’ you have all of these different things that you’re told not to do...” At this point, brow furrowed, Davidson leaned in close to me and continued speaking, now even more hurriedly than his usual mile a minute pace, his voice hushed to a whisper, like a young boy revealing a deep, dark secret he doesn’t want his mom to overhear, “And the whole thing about rock and roll and bands playing in bars is that it’s not just music, it’s not like jazz where you study it. It should be fun, it should be communal. It should be something that you don’t really remember half of the songs because you were either loaded or hitting on some girl or whatever. It’s a communal thing. It’s like a lifestyle thing, and if kids think, ‘Well I can go to Bangladesh on my computer, why would I want to go to a smelly bar?’ Who knows? In ten, twenty years I don’t know if kids are going to want to go to a fucking bar. It’s like, “Geez, some drunk guy’s gonna hit me, someone’s gonna hit on my girlfriend, I’m gonna waste money on beer—that I’m gonna die from—breathe in passive smoke...’and you know, maybe they’ll just sit in front of the computer, I don’t know,” Davidson finished with a frustrated sigh and finally paused long enough to take a breath.
Following the Spring 1999 assemblage of an album for late 1999 release on an Australian label (a collection of remastered b-sides, assorted tracks from compilations and overseas singles and live tracks, titled the Big Combo, sort of a follow up to the earlier collection Pissing Out the Poison), drummer Bill Randt parted ways with the Turks after having grown apart from the band and its music, or perhaps having just developed a fear of spontaneous combustion. In any case, the Turks debuted their new skinsman, Sam Brown, at a 4th of July show alongside acts like local favorites, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, Scrawl and Moviola. Brown, a veteran of such bands as Gaunt and Feversmile, is currently pulling double duty as drummer for the Turks and an outfit called the (Or)Deal. According to Davidson, “Sam’s working out great...He’s a little bit different player than Bill, but just as hard a hitter. He toured with Gaunt with us, and he knew the band and he just really wants to have fun with this.” Unlike in his former bands, Sam is surprised, and very excited, to have input in the Turks’ music. “We’re not one of those so-called egalitarian punk bands,” Davidson emphasized, adding, “I mean there’s always some dictatorial guitarist or singer guy that wants to say , ‘this is my song, play it this way...’” but not in the Turks.
By this point Davidson is seething as he ponders aloud the current mindset of much of the punk world, “The whole punk scene is still pretty patriarchal, still pretty sexist and even racist sometimes. People get so weirded out by things, ‘Are you gay?’ I always get that question, and it’s just like ‘fuck off! Who cares if I am or not?’ Why do I have to answer that question? And you know, the fact that you like a Prince record or something, there’s nothing wrong with that, Prince is fine. Have you ever seen him? He’s crazy.”
As a band, the New Bomb Turks count among their influences acts like the Ramones, the Stooges, The Saints and the Dead Boys. Individually, tastes vary dramatically with Jim having a penchant for, as Eric put it, “old country and hillbilly music...and old metal...he even sort of liked Bon Jovi in a way.” Matt prefers noise acts like My Bloody Valentine, and even an array of pop music from New Zealand, while Eric is currently singing the praises of staples like Elvis Costello, Dead Kennedys and the Replacements, along with newer outfits like Cobra Verde, Danko Jones, Sons of Hercules and countless others. Davidson and Reber do however share a common interest in rap acts like the Ghetto Boys, Kool Keith, Public Enemy and Gang Starr. Although the band is talking about getting hometown rapper Bizzy Bone to do the introduction on the album of new material they plan to start recording in late October/early November (slated for a March release on Epitaph), Eric assured me that he has no intention of trying to rap any time soon. Actually, the Turks doing a rap song isn’t really that far-fetched an idea, after all, the Supersuckers covered Ice Cube’s “Dead Homiez.” For their part in the odd cover song category, the Turks have been known to do a live version of Chris Isaac’s “Somebody’s Crying.” The jury’s still out as to whether it’s a joke or not, and Davidson likes it that way.
The New Bomb Turks tend to have a very 1950’s feel about them, in their album cover artwork(an old 7” mirrors a vintage Sinatra sleeve), in Eric’s lyrics and throughout their music in general. “Rockabilly was one of the first musics I actually got into on my own without my brother owning it or my sister owning it. I bought a rockabilly compilation at Woolworth’s for like $1 when I was 14, and I really liked it, Carl Perkins and all that. I always liked Little Richard a lot and how he sang [Davidson refers to “Tutti Fruitti” on the Scared Straight track, “Jukebox Lean”] . I always liked how rockabilly guys hiccuped and all that crazy singin’ that they did.”
“You don’t just go out there and put on the leopardskin pants and try to do a rockabilly song, it’s cheesy. We try to update it.” Davidson went on to say that it’s cool to reference your influences but, “a lot of bands do too much of that, like the Estrus garage bands that just try to sound like they’re exactly from 1965... it becomes some goofy collector thing... about too stupid for the sort of Touch & Go crowd.”
Having inked a deal with Epitaph, Davidson thinks that in California the Turks are appreciated as a change of pace , “We’re just pretty basic dudes compared to like fucking Total Chaos who used to walk in and demand money for their rent and stuff, y’know, we never do shit like that...We’re just these guys from Ohio who just wanna hang out and have some beers and talk about music, not like if we’re gonna get a skateboard contract or whatever.” While it may help give them perspective, being from Ohio can also be a negative thing. “It’s also a hindrance in a way because we kinda have to keep on their (Epitaph) toes a little bit, because we are way out here and we don’t drop into the offices to say ‘hi’...and we’re not one of their 500,000 selling bands.”
While Davidson has released a compilation album on his own imprint, he has no real plans to start a label any time soon, although he did express a deep amount of respect for the way Dischord is run, though not for it’s imitators. “When I look at labels that they’ve sort of inspired, a lot of them are just pompous, self-righteous and annoying.” Anyone familiar with Davidson knows that the only thing sharper than his jawline is his tongue, he can be either witty or venomous, in any case, he’s going to speak his mind. “Like a lot of the bands on Kill Rock Stars or K, you fucking call them or try to get in touch with them to do shows, and it’s like you’ve got to know them, or their friends, or you’ve gotta be from the Northwest, or you’ve gotta have at least two girls. And they won’t play bars. It’s like ‘fuck off, I liked your record, I just wanted to see your band or do a show with you.’ They don’t return phone calls...What the fuck is wrong? They’re taking that wrong end of the whole Dischord thing, the kind of pompous end. Dischord was good with figuring out how to work within this capitalist society, but still keep prices low, tour consistently and make good records, but not every band is as talented as Fugazi. So what people do is, instead of saying, ‘Well, we’re not as good as Fugazi, maybe we should go on to something else in life,’ they fucking keep plowing out shitty records, and take on an attitude like they’re doing something important. If you can’t talk to people and return calls from ‘zines or bands to espouse your views, then that’s just lame. It’s all part of growing up. A lot of these bands are really young, and everyone’s stupid when they’re young, they’re stupid when they’re old, but whatever.”
Our interview ended as Eric declared that he needed to hit the john for no less than the third time over the course of our hour long chat session. “Too much coffee,” he declared. “There’s the title for your article,” he laughed leaning over to yell into the mic of my taperecorder, “Too much coffee, bigger font, to much coffee!,” and on that note, laughing at the close of the interview as we had at the beginning, we shook hands and bid adieu and I did my best not to trip on the stairs on my way out as I had on my way in.