Heavy Chills
Skateboards, Magic Mushrooms, Porn Mansions, and Giant Moons: Welcome to the Heavy Chills Psych Rock Playhouse
“Moon,” the fourth track on Heavy Chills’ self-titled debut album, released in December, was inspired by an annual skateboarding party at Doug King’s ranch, about 45 miles west of Austin, Texas.
"It’s insane,’’ says Heavy Chills guitarist Nick McKillip of the annual shindig, “like walking into a circus. I was trippin’ real frickin’ hard one night and a buddy of mine was blasting ‘Kill Them All’ by Metallica out of his car stereo. I climbed up onto a car carrying a two-gallon jug of mushroom tea and started playing air guitar and dancing.’’
Heavy Chills
While boogieing away on the car’s roof, it entered Nick’s mind that it might be fun to jump onto the windshield and just slide down it. So he did…breaking through the windshield in the process. After extricating himself he went merrily on his way, leaping from roof to roof of a long row of cars.
“I felt so bad the next day,’’ he confesses. “The person whose windshield I broke left. If that person is reading this, just contact me, and I’ll settle with you."
“Anyway, the most vivid thing about that experience was how big the moon was that night. I just kept looking at it in total awe.’’
And that’s how we got the song “Moon.”
But now to backtrack . . .
Origin and evolution of a heavy psych rock band
A few years ago in Austin, three zany skateboarders met and immediately clicked, their individual madnesses joining to form an uncanny synergy. They hung out, skateboarded, partied, and eventually formed a power trio that allowed them to explore the creative possibilities of their screwy/deranged imaginations.
The universe accepted their craziness, and it wasn’t long before friendship, focus, and hard work generated enough material for an album. When they finally headed to the studio, they were ready to record seven driving, pulsing, grinding, mind-spinning songs that would one day comprise their self-titled first release.
The initial attempt to put the album together ran aground when the producer pushed the drummer until he quit. This was the second drummer to have left the band in less than two years, so it was a real kick in the teeth. Nick and bassist Mikey Carrillo put the project on ice while they tried to find a new drummer, which was not an easy feat in band-dense Austin.
Finding Scotty
Scotty Perrine happened to be in Austin around this time. Scotty was an eccentric nomad who owned little more than the clothes on his back and whose home was wherever he could find a couch. At the moment the couch was at Nick’s place.
“Scotty’s originally from Ohio,” says Nick, “but he went to school in North Carolina. He and his brother Steve are ‘the supreme team.’" They moved to Sacramento and lived under a bridge while they were managing a food spot. Eventually their mom moved to Austin, so they moved here to be with her and to find work.
“They got a gig at this one bar and would throw parties there after hours, until like 5:30 in the morning. No one paid for anything, so they went out of business. Scotty has next to no possessions, and he just kind of floats around. People take care of him because he’s a good dude.’’
One day while Nick was moaning about the dearth of drummers in the city Scotty jumped up and said, “Yo, I’ll be your drummer!” and the rest is history.
Back to the studio
There couldn’t have been a more serendipitous match. Nick and Mikey gathered the tracks they’d been working on and, wanting to make sure that nothing scared Scotty away, picked a more laid-back producer, Ian Rundell, who indulged their insanity and even added a bit of his own.
“We spent a lot of time experimenting in the studio,’’ says Nick, "and Ian was a huge help. He’d let us come in all the time, even though he knew I was broke, and he would charge me bare minimum.
“There was this certain sound I wanted. He thinks I’m fucking insane, but we built a good relationship around that. He’d say, ‘I think we’re good here,’ and I’d say, ‘No, let’s try this, this, and this.’ Then I’d come back a week later and he’d say, ‘Just delete all those tracks; I have another idea.’”
As if to signify divine approval (or disapproval), Hurricane Harvey arrived while they were recording. If you listen carefully to the first track you may hear pounding rain.
“There was this certain sound I wanted. He thinks I’m fucking insane, but we built a good relationship around that. He’d say, ‘I think we’re good here,’ and I’d say, ‘No, let’s try this, this, and this.’ Then I’d come back a week later and he’d say, ‘Just delete all those tracks; I have another idea.’”
Getting the word out
Because the album was released in Austin, one of the major music centers of the world, it wasn’t easy to get attention for it. As Nick explains:
“There are thousands of bands here. You can’t just walk up to someone and expect them to give two shits about your band, because they already know a hundred people who are in two hundred bands. It’s also frustrating to see the monopoly on the money situation in bookings here.’’
Once the record was released, they did a few local gigs but really had no grand ambitions to tour themselves to stardom. It was an invitation from iconic skateboarder Collin Provost in southern California that lit a fire under them.
“If that dude asks you to play at his house,” says Nick, “you’d better say yes.”
They did one show at the Monarch in El Paso, Texas before heading out to spend a week with Collin, who had a mini skateboard park on his property.
“We skated every day. The weather there was pretty much paradise all the time. You can’t feel hate in a place like that. I’m sober now and I don’t party as much as I used to, but those dudes still go hard. We had a blast. It was like being in Neverland, and I felt like Peter Pan.’’
They did a show at The Poor House and waited around for the promised gig at Collin’s house until some friends told them, “The party at Collin’s? It’s probably not gonna happen, man.”
Gig at a '70s porn mansion
There was, however, another party happening. Twin businessmen were celebrating their birthday together and they needed a hard rock band to play at their house. Someone who knew someone who knew someone got the job for Heavy Chills.
“So we hear we’re getting on this show,” Nick recounts, “and everybody’s telling us about it, and they’re all saying, ‘You guys are about to play a '70s porn mansion!’ And we’re like, ‘Are they going to be filming something? I mean, what’s going on?’”
It turned out to be not quite the orgiastic snake pit that the moniker "porn mansion" brings to mind, but still, it was a good time. The three Texans did, however, feel slightly out of place among the champagne and caviar Californians. Says Nick:
“Everybody there owned like five houses, like, they’re frickin’ millionaires. There was a badass swimming pool. It was cool because we didn’t have to tell them we all made minimum wage, and they probably wouldn’t have cared anyway.We were all just hanging out. It was kind of a family gathering, and we’re not necessarily a family band. Our songs are definitely madman songs, more of a mind trip than a party trip.”
Skateboarders tearing it up with older women at Larry’s Beach Club
Later they ran into Riley Hawk, who was soon to play the infamous Larry’s Beach Club.
“Larry’s is a trip,” Nick laughs, “The place where everyone in Oceanside goes to party. There’s nothing like it anywhere else in the world. If you’re into skateboarding, every one of your favorite skaters goes to this bar, gets hammered, and tears it apart with 40-year-old ladies.
“We played the first ever homey show at Larry’s with some other bands. That was around the end of July last year. There hasn’t been a show like that there since.”
Music as redemption
The band’s roots reach as far back as '60s acid rock and as recent as fellow Texan rockers Josefus, Astral Blue, and Crypt Trip. Their sound conjures up images of motorcycle jackets, t-shirts screaming color and profanity, long hair, late nights, dark clubs, flailing limbs, the sound of distorted guitars, and the smell of leather and beer.
But far from being a descent into decadence, music for Heavy Chills has been a means of redemption and a source of fraternal contentment. Creating music is how they’ve coped, quite constructively, with the chaos of reality.
“I’m originally from Wisconsin,’’ says Nick. “I grew up there, but when I turned 18 I realized that I didn’t want anything to do with a lot of what was going on. Many of my friends had either gotten addicted to meth or ended up in jail. I didn’t want to be a part of that, so I came down to Austin.’’
The discipline of writing songs together and rehearsing them is what keeps the trio focused. The memory of losing two drummers in a short time, forcing the band to stall production of their first album, gives them a sense of vigilance. When Scotty joined the band as drummer Nick felt that he had to make it work.
“He was so good,’’ Nick explains, “that it meant something to me to keep him around. Not that we have to have something going on all the time, but I really want to have the chance to be still playing with these guys in 30 years, because playing with them is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.’’
