Hello, My Name Is George
Hello, My Name Is George
Q&A With Catfish Haven’s George Hunter
IE: For the first album and EP, I gather most of those songs had been brewing. Was Devastator a more direct, sitdown writing session?
George Hunter: With all the touring we had time. We started listening to all this blues-oriented stuff, getting into Band Of Gypsys and shit like that. Our love of R&B and soul, it’s been married with our experiences and what we’ve caught onto. We’ve just been road warriors. I think that’s one thing this record has a lot to do with: the trials and tribulations of the road.
IE: Any specific incidents?
GH: “Trippin’ In Memphis” is self-explanatory. That was about our experience out there with good friends of ours, Lucero. Where they stay and jam is Elvis [Presley’s] old karate dojo. So we ended up crashing there and a friend of ours had hallucinogens and nobody slept. It’s all in there – read all about it.
IE: On Tell Me, there were horns and such but it seemed tentative about going outside the Catfish Haven live setup. Devastator just goes for it.
GH: Actually, as far as horns go and the big arrangements, I tried to keep things more simple this time. If anything, it’s more of a guitar record. I only [use] an acoustic on one track, and it closes it out. I’ve been having so much fun with electrics, I wanted to stomp a mudhole in the ass of the record this time. A lot of the gaps are filled now with guitars and percussion – whatever serves the song.
IE: How symbolic is the artwork?
GH: Devastator is about a woman taking advantage and sucking the life out of a person. Not necessarily a woman – in my case, I’m a guy so I have a chick on the cover. It’s easy: love at first sight, pulled in by an image. You can find a very ugly person under that.
IE: Are any of the songs holdovers?
GH: We had a bunch of songs from Tell Me that just got lost in the shuffle. The juices were just flowing and we wanted new stuff. Out with the old, in with the new. In the end, I think no matter what we try to do we end up sounding like ourselves. I guess I’d like to think everything is rooted in rock ‘n’ roll, period. On everything we do, we try to have a backbeat and try not to forget to have fun.
Catfish Haven celebrate the October 7th release of Devastator (Secretly Canadian) on the 11th at Metro. Q&A by Steve Forstneger.
