“They made the little girls dance.” This is what Big Drag bassist Colin Jones
suggested be Big Drag’s epitaph, when asked. It fits like a steel condom, too.
Ever since they first skulked in from San Antonio a couple of years back, the
laconic trio has brought with them hordes of incredibly nubile women, doing
up-and-down-and-round-and-round moves that would make Chubby Checker spit green
to Big Drag’s garbage-can guitar-pop. “That’s always been my favorite part of Big Drag,” drawls Jones, who started
the band in 1991 with singer/guitarist Milton Robichaux and drummer Dillon
Phillips, following the demise of Robichaux’s similarly minded Happy Dogs.
“Generally, every show we play, the first two or three rows of people in front
of the stage are almost all girls. I dunno why, I guess it’s just that
danceable beat, that surfy-kinda beat that you can twist to or whatever.”
As their popularity’s increased, the gorgeous Dragheads still make their
pilgrimage from San Antonio with the band, but they’re now finding themselves
supplemented – at times, even supplanted – by Austin Dragheads. Perhaps it
is that twistin’ surf beat. (“By the way,” notes Jones, “I’ve never
surfed in my life! I don’t think Dillon has. I think Milton has tried, and
`tried’ is the operative word.”) Maybe it’s that guitar/vocal chord
combination, which runs through so much fuzz that it becomes pure edge,
resembling the sound of cancer itself, sounding like a hook in and of itself.
Perhaps it’s the fact that these guys write songs catchy enough to pass for
Brian Wilson’s rejects, and anyone with sense knows Brian Wilson’s rejects
would be anyone else’s masterpieces. (“I’ve always thought of Milton as the
hillbilly Brian Wilson,” quips Jones.)
Maybe it’s Robichaux’s non-style of not fronting a band, which led a friend to
squeal that he was her favorite frontman.
“Whaddaya mean?!” I head-scratched. “He doesn’t do anything!”
“Exactly!” she replied.
Maybe she gets more of the point than I do. After all, Robichaux may more
accurately depict immersion in a coma than any frontman in rock history
(except, perhaps, for Ian Curtis after he slipped on the noose). But the lack
of activity still manages to drag you in. Your eyes remain riveted, and you
have no hope of pulling ’em away.
It began humbly enough, after Jones and Phillips met in high school, playing
in a typical suburban punk covers combo, trying their hand at the repertoires
of the Descendents and the Misfits, among others. Robichaux was (and is) a full
decade older than Jones, and had been doing something not all that dissimilar
in the Happy Dogs (right down to the nuclear fuzz-out of Freddie “Boom Boom”
Cannon’s “Tallahassee Lassie,” which has graced both Big Drag’s first EP and
their just-out debut CD for Only Boy Records). They met at Robichaux’s house, a
notorious local party pad, and the three assembled as Big Drag maybe a year or
two following the Happy Dogs’ dissolution. Soon enough, the ladies were doing
those I’m-drying-off-with-a-beach-towel pantomimes to should-be hits like “She
Drives Me Crazy.” Thanks to friends like Jeff Smith and the Wannabes, they got
introduced to Austin audiences, coincidentally at the same moment fellow Alamo
City punk outfits the Sons of Hercules and the Drop-Outs made their first
inroads into the Austin clubs.
“We had friends up there that wanted to play Taco Land,” says Jones, “which
has always kinda been our home base.” Once they hooked these bands up with cool
shows down there, the Austin bands would trade for good slots here. Their
impact was fairly immediate.
“We kinda developed an Austin audience right away,” Jones agreed. “I see a lot
of the same faces when we play Austin shows. Of course, a lot of ’em are
friends who live up there, but a lot of ’em are people I still haven’t had a
chance to meet. We love playing there, it’s just difficult for us right now,
because we’re all three working full-time.” As for recent missed gigs, Jones
cites “booking problems, stupid shit like double-booking. I don’t want to name
any names or step on any toes. I’d be interested to see what the others have to
say about it.” (Robichaux and Phillips could not be reached for comment.)
“We, at least speaking for myself, feel really bad about missing those shows,”
says Jones. “We wish it hadn’t happened. We hate doing that sorta thing,
but at the time, it could not be helped. And it’s nothing against the club or
Austin, the club being the Hole in the Wall. Unfortunately, the two shows we
missed in a row were at the Hole in the Wall, which I could definitely
see being construed as having a problem with the club or Austin, which is
totally untrue.”
With a pair of singles, three tours, and a new CD under their belts, Big Drag
are being fairly modest and realistic with their goals. “There was a time where
we thought maybe we could be the next big thing, and somebody would dump lots
of money into us. I don’t think any of us think that way anymore. For now, I
think we’re just content to go on living here, writing new songs, making new
records and putting ’em out on a semi-regular basis, play around Texas, try to
do tours when we can. That’s as far as I see it going. But you never know what
could happen.”
Who knows? The little girls may stop dancing tomorrow. It does seem doubtful,
though. After all, Freddie “Boom Boom” Cannon is forever, isn’t he? n
This article appears in August 18 • 1995 and August 18 • 1995 (Cover).