 Honky interview. April 26, 1998 One O’clock I had seen Daddy Longhead two times before I had heard of Honky. Southern Rock was their shtick.I met up with Jeff Pinkus and Lance Farley (Carson was not present) of Honky one Sunday afternoon after church. They were practicing for a punk rock kareokee which was to be held at Emo’s the following wednesday, and the conversation follows:
TRM: Oh, Sweet. Jeff: 's for frustrated musician TRM: Is there going to be a song list? Lance: There’s going to be a song list, and at the first one we are going to have a list so people can write down what they want us to play in the future. TRM: Are there going to be old Austin punk rock stars showing up to play in it? Jeff: Me and Doug played in a couple of bands that were international for quite a while, and lance has played in a lot of bands. Lance: I have played in every band in Austin for at least two weeks it is a require requirement. Jeff: That is it, just a three piece band. TRM: And who is going to play guitar? Jeff: Doug, He is the bass player from the Digits. you know it is going to be extremely limited, we are going to have to do stuff that is easy and has no guitar leads and that has very few words.
Lance: Yeah, and there will be go-go’s type drum solos, do-do-ta-ta-do-do-ta-ta. Jeff: Basically I cannot hold a job, so I am trying to utilize my craft. TMR: What do you all do? Jeff: These are good (the double chateaus) TRM: I know aren’t they? You have other jobs too? Lance: I have a top level government job, I can’t tell you anymore than that, high security clearence. Too many women already know about me. TRM: Ok so, I wrote out some questions, pretty pre-fab, first question is when you all started. Lance: March 24 1986, and I know that because it was the day after my wife the second wedding. TRM: That was when the idea of the band started? Lance: That was the first time the three of us got together March 24, 1986. Jeff: 1996 Lance: Yeah, ’96 are these cigars laced or something. Jeff: They are fresh, they are not dried out or anything. TRM: I got them at that place up on the Guadalupe, News and Smokes something like that. Lance: Yeah, they got a walk in humidor. Jeff: Oh, yeah I think I’ve been there. I go to this place in town called the Hill Country Humidor. TRM: I’ve heard an ad for them and they are only open on days that end in "y". Jeff: That is every day isn’t it? Lance: You got to go to this place it is on the drag or actually above the drag around 32nd or something. TRM: They have a killer magazine selection and porno. Lance: Cigars and Porno, two necessities. TRM: so you guys have known each other for a long time or what?
Lance: Really at the same time what Jeff said was going on, Carson and I were playing some, he said that he wanted to play, but I was kinda slow to it because I was in three bands at the time. Some friends of mine were having a party and we got on the play list as a Grand Funk cover band called "Grand Funk Rimjob". and me and Carson and this other guy Jim, and that was my first time playing with Carson in a live setting and it went really really well, and I thought that this might be a good thing, after I turned Jeff down to play in Longhead. TMR: I met Carson at perfection tattoo about two years ago, and that is when he was talking about Honky, and I would ask him when you all were going to play and he would give me a date six months in the future, and I was like, fuck, I don’t know if I will be able to make that. Jeff: Yeah, that is how it was at first. TRM: I heard that in the Merriam Webster’s 1999 edition of the dictionary, they are going to contain the terms "nigger", "cracker" and "kike", but they did not mention anything about Honky.. Jeff: It’s already in there. TRM: It’s already in there? Jeff: Yeah, I don’t know what the definition was, but it was because of the spelling of it, when we were doing the stickers for the sticker guy, we didn’t realize that we were going to have to spell out "Honky" for him and he put the "e" in there, and then later we learned that you could spell it with the double "e", isn’t that how the monkees spelled it? Lance: Hey, hey we’re the Honkees. TRM: So there are stickers out there with the "e" in them? Jeff: Yeah, Lance: They are very rare collector’s additions. Jeff: If you see a car with that sticker, you should steal that car. TRM: What are some band influences. Jeff: Well everything influences you if you love it or you hate it, we just happen to like Southern Rock and Texas Boogie. Lance: I completely agree with that, I started to play drums listening to that and it is actually harder for me to play fast punk rock like we are going to do here in a bit than play some thing grooving, but you know Carson likes The Cure. Jeff: You weren’t supposed to say that. Lance: Yeah, he’s growing his hair out. Actually Carson is listening to Wu Tang a lot at the tattoo shop. TRM: I saw them at that mtv thing and only have the band showed up and you couldn't tell the difference, they were still piss poor. Lance: I heard some at work, a guy lent me some stuff and I didn’t like it, but there is some rap that I actually like, some rap with more music in it. Jeff: I like the Ghetto Boys, that is the only one I like. TRM: I like old NWA and this guy called Paris and Public Enemy. Lance: I was going to say that I like Public Enemy as well. TRM: Any interest in Jazz. Lance: My dad likes jazz, but he is not in the band. Jeff: I am into jazz when I am making mistakes. TRM: How do you handle all of the teenage groupies? Lance: This is a rock climbing magazine right, I want to make sure my wife is not going to read this. Jeff: Lance’s main concern is not the girls, but the gay dudes coming on to him. Lance: I got this thing about me what can I say. TRM: I think if you are just in a band, for instance when I saw zeni geva all these girls were completely into them trying to speak to them, but they could not even speak english and talk to them, but they were all over them, you just have to be on stage. Jeff: No comment. TRM: Do you all have any other artistic endeavors, I know that Carson does tattooing? Lance: That is his livelihood, we can even speak for him because his big passion is cars, he’s got his charger that he is always working on, he’s amazing, a mechanical genius. Jeff: Just to get me out of the house, I am looking into becoming a narc, no kidding, I’ve made a lot of good connections. and I like nine pin bowling. Lance: And he is in the gay and lesbian alliance of San Marcos. glad. San Marcos glad, smlad. Jeff: I do some fishing, we got that boat right there. Lance: And you may not be able to tell, but I am into working out, and I got Jeff into it. Jeff: Me and my wife got married in a cave because we are like into an inverted rock climbing. TRM: oh, yeah caving? Jeff: Yeah, but I have never done that, but I would like to do rock climbing. TRM: I will take y’all out, it is a blast. Jeff: You’ve been down to enchanted rock. TRM: Yeah, but lately we have been going down to Mexico. Jeff: The one time I was there I got beat up by the cops and I am not going back. TRM: Really what part? Jeff: In Tijuana, we were playing a show down there and the club decided that they did not like us so they sicked the cops on us. TRM: That was with the Surfers. Jeff: Yeah we were playing with the Purple Limp Silly Peckers in Tijuana. Lance: I can’t believe you said that. TRM: So when did you bail on them? Jeff: Late ’94 after Independent Worm Saloon and before Electric Larry Land, thank god. TRM: I saw you in LA at the Palladium around ’92 or so, and a friend of mine saw y’all years before when you showed the sex change movie on stage. Jeff: That is a misconception, it is a reconstructive surgery, but we played it backwards, so it looked like it was getting taken apart, we would not see the movie, but we always knew when it came on by the reaction in the audience. Lance: Those were painful days. Jeff: I know, even Theresa, she would grab her crotch and go running off, but we just got numb to it after a while. Jeff: So our album cover is going to be lance in a pair of confederate flag shorts getting spanked by two girls in rising sun bikinis and a sign saying "now serving 69" and me and carson are holding up tickets 70 and 71. Lance: My wife doesn’t know about this. Jeff: We were thinking about calling the album Extreme Vanilla, which is a metrx flavor. Jeff: We have new song called st. Melanie of Vidor, which we haven’t completely finished because Carson has to learn one part, but Carson tattooed some girl named Melanie, and she was well endowed, and he called her St. Melanie and she was from Vidor and a lot of people like this song because it is easy to dance to. TRM: I have never met anyone from Vidor. Jeff: Me neither really, except for Melanie, and there is this guy down the road who comes from Vidor royalty his grand father was not only the grand Methuselah of the KKK, but he was also the mayor of Vidor. TRM: have you all toured at all? Jeff: We did a two week tour last year with REO Speed Dealer. TRM: How was that? Jeff: They were great, they are a killer band.
TRM: I won’t go see too many bands unless I know they rock, or if they come highly recommended. Lance: Some times I feel like I got to get out there to see what is going on. TRM: Any last words. Lance: Come out and see us. Jeff: If we had any last words we would be dead, and we are not dead, we just smell that way.
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Lance: That was the first time the three of us got together, March 24, 1986.
TRM: So anyone can get up there?
Jeff: Well actually I was in a band, I recruited Carson who plays in
honky, in to Skinny Lynerd, we were trying
to get a band together and he kept telling me "man, we got to jam with
Lance, we’ve got to get together and
jam with lance." and I did not know Lance at that point and he can out
and he gave me the best blow job I have ever had, damnit, ever since
then, I was
like, "I want to be in a band with this guy."