5 Questions with Johnny Cassidy
by Dwight Easter
Thanks for doing this Johnny, we go back a long way. You’ve been busy musically in those years. Let’s get into it.
DE- You’ve always been incredibly knowledgeable about new and breaking bands. What brought you to this passion?
JC- Growing up in the MTV generation had a huge impact on me. Those early years and videos were quintessentially an 80’s medium and impacted music and fashion so greatly and were the perfect teenage fodder. MTV’s “120 Minutes” was a Sunday night ritual airing at midnight-2am and featured up and coming buzz bands that wouldn’t see the prime-time programming, but so many great bands were discovered there. Also, we used to visit my grandparents in Peabody, MA over the summer and sometimes over Christmas vacation. I had a small single speaker radio cassette player recorder that I would bring along on these trips along with a few blank tapes and I would record late-night college radio station programs and try to find out some of the bands that way if it wasn’t mentioned. I’m pretty sure that’s how I found out about Killing Joke. I grew up near Lynnhaven Malls and would frequent “Mothers” and “Record Bar” and was drawn to their “imports” section. Actively perusing record shops in VB (Electric Smiles, Planet Blue) led me to quite a few personal discoveries as well. Pixies “Surfer Rosa” and “Come on Pilgrim” cassettes we’re plucked from the glass display cases at Electric Smiles on imagery alone. 4AD artist Vaughan Oliver had something to do with that. I also picked up a twin 7” Jesus And Mary Chain double pack there before “Psychocandy” was released (still have that). Actively seeking out bands was and still is a pursuit. Seeing live music and checking out the unknown opening bands can be a real treat as well but also having friends with great and adventurous musical tastes sharing their new faves has been enlightening and enriching.
DE- You started playing music in and around Norfolk, VA. What are some of your highlights of playing live in this area?
JC- Highlights included 2 opening slots at Norfolk Boathouse with my first band “Nine Parts Water”. We opened up for the BoDeans (Runaway, midnight hideaway) once and Dreams So Real (their hit “Rough Night in Jericho” had been featured on 120 Minutes about this time) on another occasion. To play at the Boathouse was really an incredible experience as I had seen so many shows there (Jane’s Addiction, Replacements, Husker Du, Ramones {countless times}, Pixies, Robyn Hitchcock, The Sundays) and the perspective and euphoria of being on that stage and looking out at the crowd was a particular highlight of my musical career. This wasn’t just a club, it was an institution! Before we settled on the name Nine Parts Water we had a short-lived stint as the “Meat Twinkies”. One show at 4400 Club(?) or was it Friar Tucks(?) we brought a bunch of twinkies with us and pelted the audience with them at the end of our show. Sara Trexler was there, I think it was a new music night or something, and she was MC. Anyway, after our set she took the mic and shoved a Twinkie in her mouth, licking cream off of her fingers, and said “mmmm...Meat Twinkies taste as good as they sound”. Hilarious! NPW recorded an album, “Just A Drop”, which was the first time I had ever been in a studio and heard our songs played on the radio; so that was very special to hear my recorded bands music on the airwaves. Around 1990 I met Charlton Phaneuf as he worked with NPW drummer, Patrick Beldon, at Olive Garden. Charlton and I hit it off right away and began jamming almost immediately at parties etc and eventually formed Viewmaster. We had a pretty good run of shows at Cogans and Lewis’s (and even a retirement home gig that we played after sharing a jazz cigarette...that was interesting). Shortly after, Charlton and I moved to Ghent together and took a road trip one summer to New Orleans and played an open mic night at Checkpoint Charlie’s. We were doing a cover of the Bee Gee’s “Stayin Alive” and noticed that the Beastie Boys were actually there playing pool! We spoke with them afterwards and found out they are there for a Pro-Choice benefit. Pretty cool to play for the Beastie Boys! Summer 1992 I got a visit from Rusty and Eddie of The M-80’s at the apartment where Charlton and I lived on Raleigh in Ghent. They had invited me to join The M-80’s! Fuckin’ Hell Yes! The M-80’s?!? They were garage rock gods and I had seen them many times before and was always moved at their intensity. We would practice at Rustys Mom’s house over in Colonial Place and there was always a bunch of beer and fringe parties surrounding that place. The biggest moment of playing with The M-80’s was an NYC gig at The Grand (formerly the Cat Club). We were invited up by Get Hip label owners band The Cynics. That was my first time in NYC and playing with the most Rock & Roll band in the Big Apple was pretty much as badass as it would get. The M-80’s popped my vinyl cherry with the single “Hell’s Kitchen b/w Slit My Wrist” on Dionysus records. Rumor had it we were slated to play one of the Bellingham, Washington “Garage Shock” festivals but right around that time when the vinyl was released the current lineup had imploded and as a result, the bass player credits on the sleeve read “Sean Cassidy” as some kind of joke....but it’s me. Gary Roadarmel (“Roachfarmer” as he’s credited on that Dionysus single) actually remastered a full-length M-80’s album that we had recorded back in 1993 and released it on his label in 2012 (20 years after it was originally recorded). The album’s called “Love Don’t Like You” and is an exuberant snapshot of The M-80’s from that era and lineup. Honorable mention and regret goes out to a 1990 invitation by Sergio Ponce to play bass with Buttsteak (whom I think were about to go on a European tour...did that ever happen?) which I declined based on staying faithful to Nine Parts Water who took a hiatus from playing that summer and never reformed. I could have had a BUTTSTEAK!
DE- What projects are you involved in currently?
JC- Ever since I picked up a bass I’ve been active in some band / project or another with very few spurts of inactivity. I’ve recently whittled down from 3 bands to 1 here in SLC. Current projects include bass duties with new SLC shoegaze outfit IDI ET AMIN. IEA is the genius work of Rocky Maldonado and his Fiancée, Catalina Gallegos. They write and record everything and then we practice the songs for live shows with myself on bass, Jeremy Divine on drums, and Derek Fonnesbeck on extra guitars and sound manipulation. We also have a dream-pop band (more synth-driven than guitars) called Felt Lighting that has played a few shows here and is currently on the back burner with possible recordings and future shows to be actualized on an unknown horizon. My surf rock band, Sexwax Surfers, has been on hiatus for about a year now but we had a pretty good run opening for Dick Dale (RIP) in 2012 & 2013 as well as gigs with NYC Ska originals The Toasters, and surf rock deconstructors Dai Kaiju. I also spent the last 4 years playing upright bass with a rockabilly band called The Rhythm Combo. I’m currently getting my home recording setup dialed in and plan on recording new originals in the near future.
DE- Does political and world crisis influence your art?
JC- No, not really. Most of my creativity is impulsive and spontaneous with no outlying intention. I have a lot of musical ideas but the “follow-through” is a challenge for me. I don’t keep a journal or lyric book and completing songs is my biggest hurdle. I like symbolism and metaphor in songs and am a sucker for sad songs that sound happy (and vice versa) and ones that have mysterious endings or meanings. There’s definitely a lot going on in the world and an infinite pool to draw from in terms of our social and political landscape but I use music and creativity as a release from all of that.
DE- You trade, sell, and restore musical instruments, what were a few that were hard to let go of and why?
JC- On the topic of guitar sales and regrets. I really love guitars, basses, and weird gear and have had some very cool and unusual models over the years. For a while there I had quite a collection of vintage 60’s Japanese guitars and some were quite rare and collectible, but the one I’m feeling the most regretful of letting go was a Fender styled “La Cabronita Boracha” guitar custom made for and personally painted shell pink by Ian Fowles. Ian plays with The Aqua Bats and is a lefty guitarist (like myself although I learned to play with strings reversed like Dick Dale). I bought the guitar locally and the buyer presumably bought it from Ian off of Reverb.com. I didn’t know Ian and had only heard of the Aqua Bats but never followed them. I was drawn to the guitar in that it was lefty, a strange shape (picture an inverted, upside-down Fender Jazzmaster with 3 Gretsch style TV Jones pickups), and it was pink! Last summer I saw that Ian had posted on Instagram about the “one that got away” with a picture of his custom guitar that I now owned. I messaged him and told him I was the new owner of it and since then we’ve become “Insta-friends” and share a love of lefty offsets. The pandemic hit and during those quarantine days, I started listing and selling some of my collection that I hadn’t planned on letting go of so soon. I contacted Ian and offered to sell his guitar back to him at the price I paid for it and he thanked me but had to decline as he, like a lot of other artists/musicians, is struggling financially during this time. I listed the guitar on Reverb recently with quite a few watchers and interest and eventually sold it but now wished I hadn’t because it was a true, one of a kind lefty with a great provenance and story behind it. Of course, there have been many others I still wish I had, but that particular guitar was a very unique piece and can never be replaced.
About Dwight Easter: Digital folk artist, family man and bread merchant. Some of the best moments in my life are experiencing the power and influence of great art. I came up in the Norfolk era of the M80’s, Buttsteak, and Antic Hay.