Scratch Acid Makes Rare Appearance in Austin on Saturday… to Recount Escapades Past

(Right to Left) David Yow, David Wm. Sims, Brett Bradford, and Rey Washam enjoying an exchange with Buxf Parrott (crowd, front left) at the Lost Well on Saturday. (Photo by Kevin Curtin)

For the first time in ten years, all four members of Scratch Acid were in the same place. That place: onstage at the Lost Well for a Saturday afternoon event where the notoriously wild and unimpeachably lovable punk frontman David Yow interviewed his friends, mentors, and collaborators.

The engagement, organized by friend-of-Yow and Lost Well regular Jill Paolini Farris, had the mood of a cable access talk show, complete with potted ferns and a projector, but with considerably more alcohol. Over the course of three hours, the Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid screamer produced a multitude of Modelos from an elegant trunk at his side, while also accepting whiskeys from the audience, who were seated at candle-lit tables.

No guests had been announced ahead of time, but it made sense to see Macon Blair in conversation when I arrived. Blair – the actor, writer, and director – lives locally and has now twice cast Yow in his films. Blair explained that growing up as a huge Jesus Lizard fan caused him to reach out to the singer to play the chillingly intense and determined villain in his directorial debut, the 2017 thriller I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore. On Saturday, Blair praised Yow’s compelling combination of “dangerous menace” and “goofy charisma,” while also possessing a unique self-awareness.

Amid a slideshow meant to be comprised of photos from a group text the two are both on (Yow apparently uploaded the wrong folder), he and Blair recounted shooting the forthcoming Toxic Avengers reboot in Bulgaria last summer. The film, starring Peter Dinklage, also includes Yow in a role Blair characterized as a sort-of hobo Obi-Wan Kenobi who, at one point, delivers a screaming monologue. The film’s writer/director revealed that Yow’s scenes have been the highest-rating parts at test screenings and that his father was so charmed by Yow during the filming that he’s requested he sing “Ave Maria” at his funeral.

When Yow brought Buxf Parrott onstage, you got the sense that he still looks up to the Dicks’ bassist with the same hero admiration he had as a teenager watching him play at Raul’s in the early Eighties. Parrott, who now sings in Jefferson Trout (in which Scratch Acid’s Brett Bradford plays guitar), was typically hilarious – roasting the host for being terrible at singing songs how they’re supposed to go (“That’s not true at all,” Yow rebutted with exasperation). Meanwhile, Yow took some credit for Dicks’ iconic single “Hate the Police,” since he’d loaned Buxf his own bass amp for the recording. The conversation, which felt brotherly, ultimately devolved into them telling jokes with Yow offering the original one-liner: “I’ve decided to stop eating shit because it makes my vomit stink.”

Yow, who in addition to acting and being the best choice for a noisy punk band fill-in vocalist (see: Flipper’s 2019 tour) works as an art director and photo retoucher in advertising, also interviewed his college art professor. The utterly fascinating Mark Todd, who has a biker beard and is now retired from Texas State University, recalled Yow evolving from a more aesthetically straightforward youth to a guy wearing a sardine on a safety pin in his ear during the several drawing classes they shared – which led to lifelong friendship. Like Yow, Todd’s also a feline admirer and furnished photos of two of his six cats who were cloned from another one of his pets that had been killed (since you’re wondering: Yes, they look identical to their genetic progenitor and, yes, it cost $25,000 to have them – named Too and Too 2 – cloned). You might have seen Todd’s artwork on the cover of all three Scratch Acid releases, as well as Jesus Lizard’s Head LP.

Given that they collectively inhabit three far-off corners of the United States, it was surprising to see all four members of Scratch Acid in Austin and, in fact, they hadn’t been in the same room since their influential Eighties noise punk band reunited in 2011 and 2012. Scratch Acid and Jesus Lizard bassist David Wm. Sims, who has something of a mayoral presence, recounted the former band’s first practice. They’d invited Yow to play bass and he felt it was unfair that all his friends had bands and he didn’t so he devised a scheme to set up his guitar and amp in Yow’s bedroom where they were going to practice and just pretend that he’d been invited to be in the band – no one questioned it. Yow had been in on it, but it seemed as though drummer Rey Washam and Bradford were just hearing about it for the first time on Saturday.

That led into 90 minutes of increasingly free-flowing reminiscing of escapades that including multiple funny instances of Yow soiling himself, a highway incident that could only be divulged after the statute of limitations had passed, accounts of fights (including Yow being beaten up during a gag-gone-awry at a Butthole Surfers show in Austin), great missed opportunities (Bradford passing out on the floor of a women’s bathroom in Germany then waking up the next morning at the hotel to find that the rest of the band had gone late night sightseeing with Nick Cave), stealing beer from Public Image Ltd when they opened for them in Austin, and Washam donning a neck brace for days before a European tour to trick his bandmates into thinking he had a broken neck.

For fans of one of the most cult-favorite bands to ever come out of this town, it was a properly filterless lens into their history and chemistry as a group.

Sims and Yow even discussed, at length, the civil trial surrounding a 1996 Jesus Lizard show at Liberty Lunch when a woman claims she was injured when a beer can, thrown by the singer, hit her in the face. I remember their court victory being covered by MTV News at the time, along with other JL antics related to public nudity and stage-diving.

Yow remembered being on the stand when the prosecuting attorney asked: “So, Mr. Yow, what do you do well?”

“I said ‘I don’t know anyone who can’t beat me in Scrabble more than I can beat them, my wife thinks I’m a good cook, and I’ve written a few lines that I’m really proud of,” he quoted his testimony, recalling the “blue-haired old ladies” on the jury looking at him lovingly.

Sims, who served as the band’s business manager, followed with his own account of the situation.

“It was the most stressful thing I’ve ever done in my whole life,” he said. “I felt ready to throw up, I was so tense when I had to testify. He asked me all these questions about the band’s finances and I think I was up there for 45 minutes. It was terrible. And I got off and they call David Yow up and he said a couple adorable things like that and they pulled the plug, like ‘No further questions your honor.’ It was like five minutes! I was like ‘What the fuck? He’s the one who threw the can!’ “That,” he continued, “is why everybody loves David Yow.”