Toody Cole (Dead Moon) NZ Tour Interview Part One - Drummer Kelly Halliburton (Jenny Don't & The Spurs)

Co-founder of Portland legends Dead Moon with husband Fred Cole (RIP), the long-awaited return of Toody Cole to Aotearoa New Zealand is a major event for local devotees of real deal rawk 'n' roll. For the first of a three-part feature series celebrating her nationwide tour starting later this month, drumming bandmate Kelly Halliburton — also core member of fellow Portlander tour mates Jenny Don't & The Spurs — waxed lyrical with interviewer Clean Dirt about 'Rock and Roll Grandmother' Cole, the enduring legacy of Dead Moon, his time in the Cole's post-Dead Moon group Pierced Arrows, and more...

UnderTheRadar proudly presents...

TOODY COLE & HER BAND
with special guests Jenny Don't & The Spurs

Tuesday 25th November - Whammy Bar, Tāmaki Makaurau w/ Bloodbags (under 18s admitted with parent or legal guardian)
Wednesday 26th November - Valhalla, Pōneke
Thursday 27th November - Space Academy, Ōtautahi
Friday 28th November - Harbour View Hotel, Whāingaroa w/ C.O.F.F.I.N*
Saturday 29th November - The Others Way Festival, Auckland (tickets HERE)

Tickets on sale HERE via UTR
*Whāingaroa tickets on sale HERE via UTR

You've known Toody and indeed the Coles for some time — tell us about your earliest memory of meeting them.

Kelly Halliburton: My father was involved with the music scene in Portland back in the late '60s and early '70s, and he had a band with Fred at that time called Albatross. This band never released anything, but they played quite a few shows in Portland. At one of these shows, I’m told that I got onstage with a plastic guitar and "played" along with them… so, technically, my first stage appearance ever was alongside Fred Cole at the age of two! Shortly after that, my family relocated to a small town on the Oregon coast a couple hours drive from Portland. We stayed in touch with the Coles and they came and visited us at the beach a couple of times, but eventually we lost touch. I always knew, though, that my dad had played with Fred, and we loosely followed his bands throughout the '80s – Torpedos, The Rats, and, finally, Dead Moon. (When I was ten or so, we had a Torpedos poster on our refrigerator for a while, and when I was a teen I had some Dead Moon posters on my bedroom walls).

Fast forward to the late '80s: I finished high school and moved to Portland as soon as I could. I was a young, ambitious, hopeful musician, and I wanted nothing more than to be in a "real" band. I started playing with other people in Portland, and, of course, we all knew who Dead Moon was. I would go see them at local clubs like Satyricon or the X-Ray Café sometimes, but it took me a long time to work up the courage to say hello — I was certain that they’d have no idea who I was. I was surprised, though, when I contacted Toody to order a Tombstone Records catalogue (this was the DIY record label that Fred and Toody operated from the late '80s until the early 2000s) and she recognised my name. After that our contact was sporadic, and I actually had more interaction with Dead Moon’s drummer, Andrew, since we haunted a lot of the same seedy bars. I was always an admirer of all of them, though, and all of us in the DIY punk scene held Dead Moon as an example of how to live a life dedicated to one’s craft and culture.

Ever think you would be drumming in NZ and Australia with Toody?

We had such a great time on the Pierced Arrows tour in 2008, and I’d always hoped that we’d come back. When the band called it quits in 2015 I figured that was that, but I’m stoked beyond belief that Toody and I will be coming back together almost 18 years later. We’ll all miss Fred, but he’ll be with us in spirit, through his songs and memories. It won’t be hard to imagine his ghost prowling the edges of the stage, de-tuning our guitar strings and whispering bad dad-jokes in our ears, as was his wont.

So how were you tapped on the shoulder to play with Pierced Arrows? I believe you weren't a drummer at the time.

The call from those guys came out of the blue, and was something that I never, in a million years, would have predicted. The backstory starts, more or less, in South Germany. By late 1998 I had left the United States and had decided to live in Europe. I washed up in the South German region of Baden-Württemberg, and was living in a small town called Ludwigsburg. In summer of 2001 I heard that Dead Moon was scheduled to play in nearby Stuttgart, at a now-defunct, legendary club called Die Röhre, and I decided I’d go see them. At the time I had absolutely no idea just how pivotal a moment this would be, but when I left my apartment that night and headed to Stuttgart I was setting in motion a chain of events that would effect my life for decades to come.

I arrived at the venue, where scores of people were milling around outside, drinking beer and chatting, excited to see these garage rock legends. I noticed a guy and a woman with a camcorder and audio gear walking around filming people, and when they approached me — totally at random — I agreed to do a short interview. They explained that they were making a documentary about Dead Moon, and that they were filming fans at various shows around Europe. This was my first meeting with Jason and Kate, the filmmakers who created the now-legendary Unknown Passage documentary (among many other great projects). During the course of the interview I mentioned that I was from Portland, and that my father had played with Fred some 30 years earlier. This was pretty unexpected, and Jason mentioned that Fred and Toody would almost certainly want to meet me.

Before I knew it, I was given a backstage pass and whisked to the green room where I met Fred and Toody. The whole episode was documented by Jason and Kate and can be seen in the bonus tracks on the Unknown Passage DVD. We had a great time, drinking beer and talking about the old days in Portland, and I mentioned to Fred that I was now living in Germany and playing drums in a punk band. Little did I know that this had planted a seed in Fred’s brain which would sit there for several more years, before germinating into a crazy idea which would take us all on a pretty wild ride.

The rest of the evening was fantastic, and Dead Moon — as always — kicked ass. Afterward, the band continued on their way and I went back to my one-room apartment and got ready to go to work the next morning. I spent the next five years living in Germany, working and playing as much music as I could, but the call of Portland’s music scene was too strong and eventually I moved home. Once I was back in Portland, I started running into Fred and Toody at Dead Moon shows, and it was always nice to catch up. Nobody knew it at the time, but, for a variety of reasons, Dead Moon was collapsing from within. By late 2006 these long-running, world-class garage-rock legends had called it quits. It took several months, but by early spring of 2007, Fred was getting sick of "retirement" and was itching to make noise again.

Meanwhile, across town, I was working a lot and playing in a few bands of my own. I had put together my own small landscaping business, and on one sunny day in March of 2007 I was cleaning someone’s yard when my cell phone rang. It was Toody, and, to my surprise, she asked me if I wanted to play drums in the new project that she and Fred were putting together. I was flattered, but I was also completely gobsmacked. I spluttered something along the lines of "yeah, but I’m not a drummer…", to which Toody responded "but didn’t you say you played drums in a band in Germany?"

I explained that I had, indeed, sat behind a drum kit for some time over there, but it was mainly because nobody needed a bassist at that time, and, out of a desperate need to play music, I’d agreed to fill the only vacancy available, and thus ended up as a drummer — a terrible drummer, I might add — in a couple of noisy German punk bands. That was several years earlier, though, and I hadn’t sat behind a kit since. This didn’t seem to phase Toody, but I told her I’d give it some thought, and that we could maybe talk about it later. We ended our call, and I went back to raking leaves or trimming branches or whatever I had been doing. I did this for a few more minutes before a tiny voice in my head popped up, saying "You idiot. Toody Cole just called you and asked you to be in a band with her and Fred, and you essentially turned them down." Tossing down my rake, or my clippers, or whatever, I dug my phone out of my pocket and frantically dialled Toody’s number. When she answered I told her that I was available to play any time and place, and we arranged a practice.

That was the beginning of what turned into an adventure that continues to this day. From a rough beginning (VERY rough!) in which I had to learn, more or less from scratch, how to play a crazy new instrument, we went on to travel the world together making noise, making friends, and making records. We all grew close to each other as well, and to this day it still feels like family. Fred passed away in November of 2017, but Toody remains an important part of my life and is a part of our larger, extended family.

How do you see Dead Moon's history and legacy in the modern age — on the back of the shows you've been doing?

I think Dead Moon has remained — and WILL remain — as relevant as ever for a long time to come. There will never be another band that comes close to the spirit that was embodied by Fred, Toody, and Andrew (Loomis). Their music is timeless — raw, exuberant, and honest — and the Fred lyrics tap emotional veins that run as deep as anything you’d find in the long history of human literature and song. These themes never change, and as the world moves in a more technically advanced, modern direction, we can all benefit from the kind of grounding that comes from the almost primal, elemental sounds of Dead Moon. Even if the records go out of print, even if the garage rock genre changes and mutates into something unrecognisable, and even if the newest crops of fans never hear the name of the band, Dead Moon’s influence will still be felt for as long as loud, guitar-driven, emotive music exists. I believe, too, that there will always be a core of True Believers who will keep the music alive, introducing younger generations of music lovers to Dead Moon, and I feel like as long as I can still get onstage and make noise, I’ll keep the legacy alive the best that I can.

By all accounts Christopher (March) is NAILING the Fred Cole parts on the guitar... what's he like to work with in this capacity?

I’ve been playing with Christopher in Jenny Don’t and the Spurs for almost eight years, and he’s one of the best musicians I’ve played with. He’s a great guy, and he was a natural choice when it came to choosing who was going to fill Fred’s shoes as a guitarist when Toody and I decided to start playing again. Christopher takes his playing and his sound very seriously, and he spent a lot of time trying to capture, as close as he could, Fred’s guitar sound — even going as far as buying a Guild Thunderbird and modifying the wiring as close to what Fred did with his guitar to get his signature raw sound. Most importantly, he "gets it", and is just as committed to the sounds and lifestyle as we are.

What keeps Toody driven?

We won’t let her have a moment’s peace! Retirement? Not a chance!

Ha ha… but, really, I think she loves playing music and all of the positive elements that go with it: the interaction with fans, the feeling that comes with getting onstage in front of people who love it as much as you do, the creative outlet... these are some of the things that keep us all going, and I don’t think she could live without it any more that the rest of could. We’re careful not to over-extend ourselves, though. She’s been doing this for a long time, and one can only imagine how tired she is of the more tedious parts of the lifestyle, so we’re pretty careful about not overdoing things. We’re all very excited about coming back to New Zealand, and for her to be able to come back to a place one last time, a country which holds such a meaningful place in her memories, is something very special for Toody. Christopher and I are honoured beyond words to have the opportunity to be a part of this journey.

What keeps you driven? It seems you are perpetually on the road and playing two gigs in a night (with different bands) on different instruments comes second nature.

Since I can remember, this is really all that I’ve wanted to do. It was always music: listening to music, collecting music, making music, and sharing music. I’ve been playing one instrument or another since I was a child, and guitar / bass specifically since I was 14. I started putting out records at 19, and started touring at 20. I’m almost 55 now, and I can’t imagine living any other way. I think, honestly, that this is one of the fundamental elements that drew me together with Fred and Toody: we all had this single-minded drive to make music and tour, regardless of the circumstances or whether there were any kind of financial rewards or not. This is also a key part of the success of my marriage to Jenny, with whom I spend most of my time touring and playing with in Jenny Don’t and the Spurs. Jenny is just as crazy about this as I am, and our lives pretty much revolve around music. We live in a house filled with records, music ephemera, instruments, and music gear. I noticed recently that there is a musical instrument of some kind in nearly every room in our house. I guess it’s almost an obsession, but it’s one I’ll gladly embrace until I can’t.

I know you 're a vegetarian... do you think this helps with maintaining your energy levels on the road?

Oh, I don’t know about that... I don’t even give it any thought anymore. I stopped eating meat around 1989, and even though I’ll sometimes eat seafood these days (a relatively recent development that stems from a lot of time touring in places like Asia and Mexico where there seems to be an irresistible array of fresh seafood), I haven’t consciously eaten meat since then. I think that my energy levels and endurance come from a steady intake of loud Rock N Roll and caffeine!

Do you think NZ is more well known in the Portland scene through Dead Moon, and Pierced Arrows touring here over the years? Not to mention Severed Head Of State, and indeed your current band Jenny Don't & The Spurs?

It seems like, for better or worse, most people associate New Zealand’s musical output with the jangly, poppy sounds of the Flying Nun bands, the poppier stuff. Andrew Loomis, Dead Moon’s drummer, was a vocal proponent of New Zealand bands, and I’m sure there were a lot of people who took his advice to heart and listened to some of the bands that he recommended. For my part, I try to spin records by Kiwi bands whenever I have a DJ set — stuff like Toy Love, The Henchmen, the AK79 compilation, etc. — classic stuff! I also love the earlier NZ Rock and Roll. Jenny Don’t and the Spurs have even covered the instrumental song 'War Cry' by the 1960s Wellington band Tony and the Initials.