Hippies No More (page 3)

On a midnight drive to Baton Rouge, bassist Brian Walsh reads to the band from the video prospectus of their next single, "Good to Be Gone."

I'm not lip-synching," states McKinney from the back of the van where he was thought to be asleep. Walsh giggles as he reads the auteur's clumsy prose, amused not only by the director's limited grasp of English grammar, but also by the seriousness with which the subject is treated. but his laughter is not mean-spirited, as Walsh is by far the kindest, most helpful member of the band - a trait that will later come in handy.

At a truck stop close to the Texas/Louisiana border, Walsh takes over driving duties from Cassis. McKinney, who doesn't enjoy responsibility as much as the others, sleeps through the trip. As with most discussions, with Walsh, our first conversation falls at the sleepiest of times. With any luck, though, we'll catch a beautiful sunrise as we pass over the spooky swamp foliage around the Atchafalaya Causeway.

As it turns out, the sky eases from a gray mist to a light blue haze and explodes into a dazzling, ruddy-orange glow..."Over the chemical fields of Lake Charles," walsh says with a laugh. Then true to his polite character he consoles, "It's still pretty, though."

Easy-going. Considerate. Tactful. While the others grumble off the record (of course, some people had no qualms leaving them on the record), Walsh seems to genuinely have few negative things to say. And he's also the first band member to stress the band's natural musical progression without all the ethereal gobbledegook.

The most ornery he gets is on the subject of Lake Charles, which he has hated ever since he got pulled over and searched there a couple of years ago. In his case, the injustice of probable cause is glaring. Who could suspect wrongdoing from such a genuine, honest face? "Well, it was back when I had my long hair, he says, trying to offer an explanation.

Later, after too little rest and too much sound-checking, Walsh and I conduct more drowsy interviewing in his hotel room. Having covered the Zen of Soulhat with Cassis and the insecurities of Soulhat with McKinney, it seems appropriate to do some fact-checking with Walsh (besides, he's a tough interview because he's just so damn nice.) He confirms the oft-told Soulhat legend and updates it a bit. All but drummer Smith did, in fact, attend Southwestern University and were in the same fraternity, Kappa Sigma. Walsh graduated, however, when the other two were just freshmen and lived in neighboring Leander.

Cassis had been playing with E.R. Shorts and invited McKinney to play with them for SXSW. As the Shorts gig petered out, the two guitarists worked on getting a band together. "One summer I moved to Austin," recounts Walsh, "and Kevin called me and said, 'Hey, do you want to come up here and jam? I've got a four track.'"

For a while, the threesome didn't even have a drummer, using Paul Mills and eventually Ian Bailey. "Ian was leaving for three weeks to play with Van Wilks in the Virgin Islands, and he said he'd get us a drummer." The band should be forever indebted to Bailey for the drummer he supplied them with. His quiet influence is deafening.

Drummer Smith is, at first, all that his nickname Frosty implies.
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