Pylon - The Other Side of Athens

We caught up with Vanessa Briscoe Hay, and asked her to relive some chapters of the Pylon story and fill us in on some very interesting new developments.

Vanessa, among all the interviews you've given, is there still something you haven't managed to say that you think is important?

I'm very grateful to be in the thoughts of so many wonderful people, and to have worked and to keep working with so many wonderful people. I love my family, my friends and my bandmates... who are both!

What's the transition like, and how do you juggle the double life of art student and musician?

I've led a double life for many years, but who doesn't? (laughs, ed.) In 1978 I had just graduated in Art from the University of Georgia when two former classmates invited me to audition for Pylon. It was February '79, I was still living in Athens and working two jobs while waiting for my first husband to graduate. The whole premise of Pylon was to create an art project with the goal of going to New York City and breaking up right after playing a show and getting reviewed by the New York Rocker. I thought it sounded like fun and that it wouldn't take up too much of my time... (laughs, ed.). The B-52's, after seeing us live in Athens, helped us land our first New York date. We played at Hurray for Gang of Four and got reviewed by Glen O'Brien in Interview Magazine, so we decided to keep playing for as long as we were having fun. A tour started, and very soon I found myself a full-time musician, right up until December 1983, when Pylon broke up for the first time.

At the start of '87, I became a mother to a daughter with my second husband, Bob Hay of the Squalls. In 1988 Pylon reunited while I kept up the double life of mother and musician. After the band split again in 1992, I studied to become a registered nurse and had another daughter. The double life became mother and nurse, until 2004, when Pylon reunited and it became a triple life - mother, nurse and musician! The Pylon story formally came to an end on February 25, 2009, with the death of our guitarist Randy Bewley. I also founded a project called Supercluster from 2007 until early 2013: until his death, Randy was involved in that too. Some of those members currently play with me in Pylon Reenactment Society.

People started talking about you again when DFA Records decided to reissue your first two albums, with a few added gems: how did that collaboration come about?

When Pylon reunited in 2004, one of the goals was to get the material back in print. It was out of print, and we were happy with the sound quality of an anthology we'd released called "Hits", so we started gathering the old recordings to remaster, and that's when DFA got in touch. It turned out that for years James Murphy had been playing Pylon songs in his DJ sets, and his label was interested in having us as the first reissue in their catalogue. We liked their releases, and our bassist Michael Lachowski flew to New York to discuss it.

"Gyrate Plus" came out in 2007, getting a good response from both our fans and critics. In 2008 we did a few small tours while Randy Bewley put together the tapes for remastering "Chomp More". He passed away in February 2009, before the work was finished: the project was put on hold for a few months, coming out in October 2009. In 2016, Chunklet Records released "Pylon Live" on double vinyl, the complete recording of our first last show (laughs, ed.) from December 1, 1983. My band Pylon Reenactment Society played alongside Love Tractor for a few releases in Athens and Atlanta. Right now, we're slowly working on reissuing our entire discography, since the DFA Records releases are out of print. We're talking to several labels and hope to have everything out on vinyl next year!

Many people discovered Pylon through R.E.M.'s cover of "Crazy": which R.E.M. song would you choose to cover?

Very tough question, I love so many songs by Rem! I don't know if this fully answers your question, but "Everybody Hurts" still moves me more than the others. We suffer and we need to hold on, sometimes.

Your career has been intertwined with many major names of the early-80s alternative scene: could you have only come to life and broken through in that period?

It was a very exciting time to live through, both for our city and for the rest of the world. Music and art no longer came only from London, Paris, Rome, New York and Los Angeles, but also from smaller cities like Athens. It was the DIY culture, the do it yourself ethos. Women, people of colour, different musical cultures like African music, as well as different sexual orientations, all blended together into something new. It was contagious and fun.

Between '76 and '77, bands and artists like Patti Smith, Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, B-52s, Sex Pistols, The Clash, PIL, Gang of Four emerged, and that flowering continued unabated more or less until 1985. It was a hugely influential era, one on which artists like Madonna, Prince and Cyndi Lauper would later build their careers.

Part of the Pylon story is also part of the story of Athens, and above all of the legendary 40 Watt Club.

Yes, our drummer Curtis Crowe had named his loft in downtown Athens the 40 Watt Club after a joke by his friend Bill Tabor, since it was lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling on a wire. After some touring with Pylon and using DIY spaces scattered around the US, Curtis realised he could start a low-budget club and developed the idea with his friend Paul Scales. The 40 Watt Club has moved through several locations and had several owners: it's currently downtown and remains one of the best mid-sized clubs around. It's welcoming, accessible to everyone. It's well run, the money goes into the right things: a good stage and a good sound and monitor system. The bar is really nice too!

What are you listening to right now? Is there anything you're excited about?

I'm listening to the new The Glands box-set, just released on the New West label. The Glands weren't very well known outside Athens, and their songwriter Ross Shapiro passed away a few years ago from cancer. His bandmates worked on and pieced together hundreds of hours of recordings for a third album of unreleased material.

Yours was also an era of great, charismatic female leaders and vocalists: do you think that was a coincidence? What was your role and what set you apart from your other "colleagues"?

I saw my role from a different perspective, certainly not as the frontwoman, out in front of everyone else, but as an integral part of the band, equal to everyone. That was our sound: every instrument on the same level, the vocals weren't mixed louder than elsewhere, but they weren't buried either.

In a few words, how would you define "Gyrate", "Chomp" and "Chain"?

"Gyrate" has an angular, stripped-down sound. It was recorded live and mixed in under a week, with the vocal parts re-recorded afterwards, because the sound of the instruments was bleeding into the mic and altering my voice.

"Chomp" was recorded on and off over the course of a year. We took longer to write the songs, changing producers after the first tracks had been recorded and opting for an even more experimental direction. The sound is fuller and dirtier.

"Chain" came together after a week at Reflections Studio with producers and sound engineers who had previously worked with bands of the calibre of Pixies. The production is good, but the songs are a bit similar in style and execution. We felt the next record would be better... but we broke up before we could make it!

Which Pylon song are you proudest of?

I'm proud of all of them! Like children, how can you choose? But if I had to pick just one, it would probably be "Crazy". Over the years so many people have told me how much that song means to them.

Pylon Reenactment Society: tell us about this project!

It all started by playing a show for a series of events called Art Rox Athens, aimed at exploring the connection between art and the music scene in Athens between 1975 and '85. One of my former Supercluster bandmates, guitarist and producer Jason NeSmith, was organizing the shows and invited me to perform. He was quite surprised when he heard I wanted to play some Pylon songs: I didn't want Randy Bewley and Pylon's music to be overlooked on that occasion, given that back then we in Pylon were UGA graduates! Local indie band Casper & the Cookies served as our backing band, along with Jason and another former Supercluster member, Powerhouse bassist Kay Stanton, and drummer Gregory Sanders. I called the project Pylon Reenactment Society because we're not Pylon, but a "reenactment" that doesn't take itself too seriously of what we once were.

The Art Rock Athens audience went wild, and Pylon Reenactment Society were invited to play a longer set the following year opening for Fred Schneider's (of the B-52's) solo project Supa-Fine. We brought in a new drummer for the show after Gregory Sanders of Casper & the Cookies had shoulder surgery. We brought in seasoned drummer Joe Rowe (The Glands) and wild keyboardist Damon Denton to add new textures and sounds. The audience feedback was once again very positive. Dressy Bessy from Denver heard about us through word of mouth and invited us to play some shows. It all started as a short-lived project... and ended up making a lot of old Pylon fans happy, while winning over new ones along the way!

Over the past few years we've played small festivals and small-to-medium-sized venues on both US coasts, in the Southeast and in the Midwest. Pylon Reenactment Society has shared the stage with the likes of Love Tractor, Swimming Pool Qs, Richard Barone, Positive No, 75 Dollar Bill, Project Balderdash, Mitch Easter's Ltd, Dressy Bessy, The Tissues, Cindy Wilson, Hurry Up and many other fine independent acts. We've got a West Coast tour lined up for early December this year, and we'll be performing alongside some interesting new bands and rock legend Alice Bag.

On November 30th we released "Messenger"/"Cliff Notes", the new 7" vinyl single, along with a video for "Messenger" directed by Tony Brazier. The director is still in town, as he's currently working on a documentary, "Athens, GA ... 30 Years On", the follow-up to "Athens, GA/Inside-Out".

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