Once again we are lucky enough to hear from Powell St. John. This time he has given us insight to how his story unfolded and what his long strange trip has been like. Here it is spring break and SXSW has fired up its engines. Powell will be?appearing at the Austin Music Awards Ceremony and the? Ice? Cream Social with Roky Erickson. Tantric Sons will back Powell up at the Ice? Cream Social and the rhythm section will consist of?John Ike Walton?and Ronnie Leatherman from the original 13th FLOOR ELEVATORS.....be there!

Powell's most recent interview 2006, with Fred Mitchim

Q1. Fred M - What can you tell us about the young Powell growing up in Laredo and how you became musical so that we can get an idea of how you could so easily switch from Folk to psychedelic when the time came?

A1. Powell - My family moved to Laredo in 1943, well, actually to a farm on the Rio Grande about 10 miles south of town. I was three. I ran wild and free there for seven years at which point we moved into Laredo. One Saturday in about 1952 I rode the bus into downtown and after the matinee I toured the dime stores as I always did. At Kresses I bought a little ten hole harmonica. Probably this harmonica was intended as a toy but it was a lot better quality than the completely plastic ones they usually sold. So, just honking on it I realized that I could play a tune, what else?, a Stephen Foster song. The title was "Uncle Ned" and you are not likely to see it in any recent collections of Stephen Foster material because of it's political incorrectness. The subject of the song is a venerated and recently deceased slave. "Lay down the shovel and the hoe, hang up the fiddle and the bow, there'll be no more work for poor old Ned" etc. As I recall I awakened my parents from their afternoon nap with that harmonica,and received a good tongue lashing for it too. After that I confined my honking to the back yard for a few years while I learned to play.

My formal musical training was sparse. I first started musically by spending a year in the sixth grade band playing flute. The flute would probably have been my instrument of choice had it not been that our doctor recommended that I stop playing because of chronic ear infections which he attributed to the pressure that blowing on the flute produced. So I spent the next year learning rudimental drumming, one e and a, two e and a, three e and a, on and on ad infinitum. Needless to say I was not inspired by this. The only other musical training I had was beginning piano which I took for a year and never learned a note. But all the time I was learning informally. I guess I started playing harmonica about the time of the rudimental drumming ordeal. I liked melody you see. Hard to get that on a trap drum.

About the same time I started harmonica I also began staying up late into the night bringing in arcane radio stations from across America. KOB Albuquerque, WSM Nashville, WWL New Orleans, KWKH Shreveport. Some of these stations played hot R & B, especially KWKH. That station was also home to The Louisiana Hayride which was a competitor of The Grand Ol' Oprey and featured acts like Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys and, yes, Elvis. So I was sopping up musical influences from everywhere and also buying records. I was a member of a record club that sent me jazz oriented material of diverse genres from Sidney Bechet and his New Orleans Feet Warmers to Charlie Parker, Billie Holliday and Duke Ellington. And of course I can't leave out the ubiquitous Musica de la frontera on the radio and emanating through the swinging doors of every cantina on the boarder. There were conjuntos from Vera Cruz playing huapangos, mariachis, afro-cuban bands and of course the Tex-Mex conjuntos con accordion. This was the golden age of the "Trios", and groups like "Trio Los Panchos" simply could not be ignored. I didn't actually study that music but I didn't have to. It was part of the environment like the country and western music that was so prevalent on English speaking radio. It wasn't possible to avoid Hank Williams either.

Q2. Fred M - How did you feel in general about the course of your own song writing as it developed from folk to psychedelic and do you intend to continue writing again in both of these genres?

A2. Powell -? For me the Folk Revival was a way to get into playing music in an ensemble format. I wanted to be true to the music and play it as faithfully to the original as I could but I had no interest in stopping time or freezing the music into some rigid, this is right this is wrong frame work. When I started playing I soon found the dime store harmonica too restrictive. There aren't enough notes. One cannot play "Ruby" on a diatonic harmonica, (at least I can't), so I soon graduated to chromatic harmonica. Once I was playing old time blues and traditional country music I had to learn to play the small diatonic harmonicas that most people associate with the instrument. My playing came as much from the Harmonicas as anywhere. So Ireally did not see any controversy in moving along with the times when the times came.

By the mid 60's Rock n Roll was pouring in from overseas and Bob Dylan had taken up the electric guitar. This last event split the folk community in half with one camp hunkering down and rejecting any idea of electricity in music or any other "corrupting" influence and guys like me that just wanted to play and saw a way to do it real loud so everyone would notice. Once I began to write songs that were of a proselytizing nature, calling for ego death and recommending the path of enlightenment, the reason for amplifying the music and playing loud ceased to be simple exhibitionism, it became an element necessary to the communication. It became emphatic communication. Also of importance, pop music had a wider audience than folk music, and since by the mid 60's I was writing songs with messages I wanted to spread, playing music that would attract a large audience made perfect sense. The 60's was a magic decade for me. In those days no one had too many obligations or responsibilities, or, if they did drinking beer and playing music seemed a more attractive alternative to dealing with them. That was the environment in which I began writing songs and it set the pattern for my song writing activities ever since. I write songs for a number of reasons, because I have something to say that I think everyone should hear, because I have a neat lick that I think everyone will enjoy or because of some dark obscure reason hidden deep in my psyche which it would take analysis to reveal. Will I write psychedelic material again? Who knows? We'll all just have to wait around and see what comes out.

Q3. Fred M -When you joined Mother Earth and they featured your songs and lyrics on the album covers you wrote many of your best songs....what were the factors that surrounded this?

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A3. Powell - I moved to San Francisco in the latter part of 1966 and through a lot ofhard work on the part of some very talented people plus a lot of luck and thegrace of the cosmos, by 1968 I was a member of a working band playing the famous venues and negotiating a record contract. This was fertile ground for my song writing because with my immediate future looking bright and with the messy details of the music business being handled by someone other than me I was free to practice my music and write songs. If indeed the material I turned out during that time constitutes my best work, then it must have been because I was at last achieving success and felt relaxed enough to let my thoughts come out. Paradoxically "I The Fly", which I consider one of my better works,was written later when all this was coming apart so I might be able to make a case for trials and tribulations as being a good goad to creativity as well. It probably does work both ways.

Q4. Fred M - If it was up to you what would be required listening for all young musicians and what would be required reading for developing minds?

A4. Powell - Any young person that really wants to understand music and where it came

from and how they might fit into it should listen to all the music they can. All kinds from classical to ethnic and especially, (at least if they are American) to the wealth of peoples music that is available. The Library of Congress has it Folkways Records are a good source, Arhoolie Records is a treasure of this material. And don't forget early pop. It may seem corny and outdated but Tin Pan Alley has produced some very clever songs and song writers. Lend an ear to Cole Porter. Required reading? George Orwell's 1984, (to see what is in store for us politically), Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, any and all Shakespeare's plays, poems etc., and anything by Bertrand Russell.

Q5. Fred M - What are your basic beliefs as far as life, death, God, the devil and the future?

A5. Powell - Basic beliefs:

A. life-Goes on

B. death-Inevitable

C. God-Doesn't exist

D. the devil-Same as God

E. the future-There may or may not be one

Q6. Fred M - Since you were at ground zero in Austin when things became psychedelic i.e. the Elevators, the ghetto, and the migration to San Francisco maybe you could give us a little insight to the local atmosphere and how exciting all this must have been.

A6. Powell - It's a funny thing about being at ground zero, often it is impossible to tell that is where you are. That was the case with me. Only in retrospect can I see how many watershed events crowded that decade and how Austin fit into that time. Austin grew up in that decade going from a small city to being the big city in ways that did not even necessarily involve an increase in population although that happened too.

Q7. Fred M - Recently you finished your new C.D. and the title track is a duet between you and Roky Erickson. What were the circumstances surrounding that song back when it was written and how do you feel about how the lyrics fit so many decades later to the lives and tribulations of both of you?

A7. Powell - The title song on my new CD is "Right Track Now", a song that I wrote sometime around 1966. It was written in response to my good feelings about the positive things I had learned from my journeys into the miraculous. I showed it to Roky at the time more because I was proud of it that with any idea that the 13th Floor Elevators would perform it. Indeed they did not but Roky remembered it and it is now on the Roky Anthology as an acoustic solo. When it came time to work up a play list for the CD "Right Track Now" seemed like an essential number. Not only do I still feel the same way I didwhen I wrote the song but having Roky doing a duet with me on it seemed doubly appropriate considering the long dark road we've traveled and the demons that have assailed us.

Q8. Fred M - What is the most exciting late sixties TRIP story you can remember?

A8. Powell - My most exciting TRIP story doesn't involve the taking of drugs or anything like that. It happened when I was in Acapulco with some friends. It goes like this: I had come down to Acapulco from Mexico City with some friends and we were holed up in a beachfront hotel on the north side of town. There was Joe whose apartment in DF was my base of operations when I was in Mexico, Big Bill an Austin bass player that was visiting Joe, and Joe's brother Grumpy Al. The second day we were in Acapulco Manny Fernandez showed up having flown down from Austin with three empty suitcases to be filled with, what else? Acapulco Gold. The next day or two we watched as Manny borrowed Joe's Jeep, located some growers and arranged to accompany them to the fields where the crop was to be purchased and packed in the suitcases. Late the afternoon of the day the transaction was supposed to take place Manny returned with only one suitcase. "I was double-crossed!" he said. "We did the deal, I gave them my money and they filled the suitcases. I carried one and two other guys carried one each. I was walking down the trail through the brush when I looked back and the two guys were gone!" "Oh yeah Joe, I also ran your jeep into an old lady who was getting off a bus. I'm sure she wasn't hurt but everyone made a big deal out of it." So, somewhat dejected Manny packed up the lone suitcase the next morning and left in the Jeep to go to the airport. He took Big Bill with him to return the Jeep. A long time later Big Bill showed up back at the hotel, carrying the suitcase.!

"There's been a slight glitch."he said with a nervous grin. "Manny hasbeen arrested. They have him at police headquarters. It's about the old lady he hit. They are claiming she was injured and he's a hit and run driver. While they were questioning Manny the suitcase was right there by the cop's desk. I asked the cop if I could take Manny's 'luggage' and leave since I was not under investigation and the cop said sure so I walked out of the station with the suitcase and came back here". Well now we were all sweating it because we didn't know what the cops were doing to Manny and we halfway expected them to show up at the door any minute to do the same thing to us whatever it was. Then there came a knock at the door. No, not the cops but Manny.

"They took all my money!" he said. "The old lady wanted the cops to make me to pay her all my money for the accident but the cops threatened to lock her up if she didn't leave the police station and after she was gone they took all my money themselves. Then they let me go." The next day Manny got off to the airport and the rest of us went back to Mexico City. I guess Manny must have made it through customs OK because I never heard about him getting busted for it and he still lives in Austin.(This is a true story. The names have been changed to protect both the innocent and the guilty.)

Q9. Fred M - who should play you when they make a movie about your life?

A9. Powell - Who should play me when they make a movie of my life? Well James Dean is dead so I would have to say Weird Al Yankovik.

Q10. Fred M - Can music save the world?

A10. Powell - Apparently not.

?Final follow up questions

#1.Fred M - When you wrote Kingdom of Heaven the lyrics were perhaps as psychedelic as any song written at that time. During this brief period in the mid sixties many song writers when down this path then after two or three albums the subject of mind expansion was no longer a popular topic and life moved back towards the mundane. Do you think psychedelic songs and their spiritual lyrics helped elevate the spiritual awareness of the public....if only for a moment?How do you feel about the effectiveness of songs to activate the sleeping mind?

Powell - I would hope that the spiritual message helped elevate the spiritual awareness of the public, however given the dismal lack of awareness in general on the part of the public today, I have my doubts. I have received feedback from individuals that suggests that some got the message however. I would conclude that the battle to raise spiritual awareness must be waged one brain at a time.

#2. Fred M - Being part of Janis Joplins early music experiences and then writing BYE BYE BABY and having her record it seems like wonderful timing on your part but to then follow that up with fronting MOTHER EARTH with TRACY NELSON puts you in the unusual position of being part of the lives two of the late sixties greatest female singer legends. Were there any similarities in the two? What observations could you offer to young upcoming female singers?