(Photo courtesy of Tyler Hubby)

Michael Simmons is a veteran journalist who has written for the likes of MOJO, LA Weekly, The Huffington Post and Rolling Stone. Light in the Attic commissioned Simmons to write the liner notes for its latest release, Please Don’t Tell Me How The Story Ends: The Publishing Demos 1968-72, a collection of the early demos of Kris Kristofferson. Also an accomplished musician, the Los Angeles-based Simmons is at work on a solo album – Last Call At The White Horse – that he hopes to complete by year’s end. In the 1970s, Simmons fronted the band Slewfoot, whose sound his close friend Kinky Friedman called “metallic cocaine hillbilly bebop.” Simmons, 55, spoke recently with Light in the Attic, and what followed was an insightful, thought-provoking conversation. The New York native talked about working on the liner notes for Please Don’t Tell Me How The Story Ends, Kristofferson’s career and legacy, and a range of other topics. Below is the second half of the two-part interview:

Light in the Attic: You’ve witnessed popular music change considerably over your career. What to you is contemporary music about? What do you see happening?
Michael Simmons: I don’t know how much I can say, because I don’t listen to (contemporary music) too much. I listen to it enough to know I don’t like it. I don’t have any desire or motivation to go any further into it. It’s a waste of my time. I’m not entertained by it. I’m not uplifted by it. I’m not educated by it.

LITA: Are there any artists that grab you? What was the last artist or song you felt compelled by?
MS: I’ve dug Bjork. I’ve dug Jeff Buckley. I think the greatest of the so-called contemporary artists is Steve Earle. But Steve Earle is my age. Younger artists? There was a singer named Lhasa de Sela. She was unbelievable. Sadly, she died of cancer recently (in January). Occasionally, people like that come up and grab me emotionally. It seems most musicians are more interested in updating their Facebook pages than learning their craft. There are exceptions, but so few. A lot of it is so underwhelming.

LITA: Tell me about your band Slewfoot. How does a guy growing up in New York get into country music?
MS: It was a two-fold phenomenon. One side of the answer was, I was basically a rocker. But by the late ‘60s, a lot of rock and roll people – The Byrds with Sweetheart of the Rodeo, (Bob) Dylan with Nashville Skyline – were playing country music. We started digging this stuff. I had this friend, Barry Parker, who was into shortwave radio, which was the Internet of its day (laughs). I don’t know how exactly he got into Nashville country, but he became the only New York teenage Jew who was an expert in Nashville country music. He started playing me this stuff, and I loved it. I thought it was simple, direct, honest, fun music. I saw it was a relative of rock and roll. I saw why it moved The Byrds and Dylan. I got into it, and in fact, I got into Kris because Barry and I knew Roger Miller’s version of “Me and Bobby McGee” before I ever heard Kris’ solo album. As rock music started to become more commercial, I was looking for something to get excited about musically. Country music touched me the most, and I started playing country music with my rock band. By the early ‘70s, there was a club in New York, O’Lunney’s, and they had straightforward, redneck country bands. Here was the real thing. I started hanging out there, and started going on stage singing country songs. I started learning the history of country music, and eventually formed a country band called Slewfoot. I played country music for many years, and it remains one of the great loves of my life.

LITA: Do you still play?
MS: I gig occasionally and will be playing live more often. I’ve recorded a solo album that’s more or less in the can. I hope to release it soon, possibly this year. It’s got a working title of Last Call At The White Horse.

LITA: I read somewhere that someone called you “The Father of Country Punk.” Care to elaborate?
MS: (Laughs) I think it was kind of a joke. I founded Slewfoot, and initially we played straightforward hardcore country music – Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Waylon (Jennings), Willie (Nelson), George Jones. We were sitting at a bar after rehearsal one afternoon about 1976. Springsteen was on the radio, and punk was in the air. I was missing my rock and roll edge, and I wanted to rock. I had this idea of playing country music, but playing it really loud and fast. We were playing this bar in New York called The Bells of Hell, where a lot of the rock critics hung out. I don’t remember who first dubbed me “The Father of Country Punk,” but in print it was Robert Duncan, who was an editor at CREEM Magazine. They did an article where they said the best punk bands in New York were “The Dictators, The Ramones and Michael Simmons and Slewfoot.” We thought it was very funny because we didn’t consider ourselves a punk band.

LITA: Can you talk about your transition to journalism?
MS: I’d written from a young age, and that turned into writing songs. Then some things happened in my personal life, and I needed work. I figured I could make a couple bucks writing. I wrote screenplays and I wrote for my father’s magazine – National Lampoon, where in the mid ‘80s I was an editor.

LITA: How was your experience at National Lampoon?
MS: It was a mixed bag. It was something in retrospect that was a mistake. But you can’t look back. Anyway, in the ‘90s I started writing for LA Weekly. I wrote this one article about the Hollywood vice squad of the LAPD, who were going into bars and busting bartenders for allegedly serving intoxicated customers. I found out about this sitting at a bar with my then-girlfriend, who got hauled out of the bar by the LAPD for being intoxicated. I wrote an expose about it, and it ended up winning the Los Angeles Press Club Award in 1996.

LITA: What are some of the other projects you’re currently working on?
MS: I just signed with a book agent to write a book on the Outlaws, about the whole Outlaw country scene. The idea came when I was working on the Kristofferson notes. But I already have the sample chapter that you give to publishing companies, and that chapter is actually the liner notes (laughs).

LITA: I loved your inclusion of Merle Haggard and Kinky Friedman in the liner notes. You and Kinky Friedman are old friends right?
MS: I became friends with him when he was playing at the Lone Star Café, a club in New York I was also playing at. We became pals, and remain pals to this day. I’m opening up for him in July in Los Angeles at McCabe’s as part of a West Coast tour.

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