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Bob Log

Manic Slide Guitarist and One-Man Blues Explosion

Bob Log III makes a rare concert appearance this Sunday, one of only eight Canadian dates

Initial attempts to reach the mysterious Bob Log III ended in a riddle - an instrumental snatch of Gary Glitter's "Rock 'n'Roll (Part I)" on an answering machine. Repeated efforts only led me further into the echo chamber. Yet I was convinced that I hadn't misdialed because of the sample's primitive edit, stomping bass drum and unrefined guitar riffs - all quintessential Log.

When I finally reach the blues man, he's daffy and apologetic.

"I just got in a car wreck, " he says, teetering on the edge of laughter. "I'm fine, it wasn't my fault. I snapped my head back real good, though - that should teach me to wear that helmet at all times."

The helmet, if you hadn't gathered from the press photos and album jacket for School Bus, his solo debut, is something of a constant, like the Residents' ubiquitous giant eyeballs. Beyond offbeat haberdashery, though, Log's headwear is functional, fitted as it is with a microphone, allowing for privacy, snug acoustics and freedom of movement. The latter is an important consideration as Log is a one-man band.

"I play bass drum with my right foot and cymbal and two drum machines with my left foot, and I play guitar at the same time, he says. "I'm "drum running", whatever you want to call it, and I play guitar and sing into the helmet at the same time."

Estimations of the merits of Bob's stage show - merciless slide attacks, fudgy kick drums and knife-sharpening solos - vary, and it's not always easy to suss out the difference between the praise ("Mississippi Fred McDowell meets Beck meets Slayer") and the punches ("a jam session with Ministry, Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper").

Much of the material of School Bus hews closely to the skanky blues noise of Pussy Galore's Corpse Love or the addled scuzz of Royal Trux's Twin Infinitives. By turns scatological ("I want Your Shit On My Leg") horny ("Big Ass Hard On") and ornery ("All The Rockets Go Bang"), Log's debut might have come form the bad-asses at the back of the bus. Yet the session is undercut with a sophistication at odds with that adolescent smirk.

Memorably described by one critic a "a square-dancing record for the criminally insane," it's the kind of music that might be made by a musician whose formative musical experience was mistaking a shopworn pressing of Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica for a desiccated Delta blues 78. Bob's awakening was nothing quite so exotic.

"There was a guitar in my house my whole lie; I'm sure I picked it up a couple of times," he says, "but when I was 11, it was like, "oh, man, her we go." As with many males of similar age, AC/DC was to blame. Australian blues, if you will. He says that Screamin'Jay Hawkins was his first authentic blues experience, and cites Cedell Davis, Fred McDowell, "Lonesome" Dave Peverett and Bukka White as favourite slide men. The guitarist hot to underground reown as on half of Tucson, Arizona's Doo Rag, a scrappy pair of bluesy buskers favoured by Beck, who featured them as tour openers.

The fit was natural. Doo Rag deal in post-apocalyptic variety of Beck's junkstore sampladelia. Drummer Thermos Malling's kit was made of a Bud box (bass drum), a tin bucket (snare drum), a film reel (cymbal), an iron shopping basket (hi-hat) and various other devices, such as the exhaust pipe of an of Chevy. Bob sang alternately through a vacuum cleaner hose and two hairdryers with built-in microphones. A certain amount of this residual weirdness remains, but Log is adamant that it's driven by economy.

"I've McGyvered guitar pickups out of a telephone, "he says. "It's pretty much necessity - I don't sit at home and invent stuff and then try and implement it. It's like, this foot's not doing anything. What can I stick on it? All of a sudden I've been doing it for six months. With the phone mics, they're free if you go to a nearby pay phone. At most they're like a dollar at the thrift shop. It's cheap mics and cheap guitars. I get guitars nobody else wants and make 'em do stuff nobody else does." As for his drumming, understated on album, Log says that his skills have sharpened through obsessive touring.

"It's come along an awful lot. The Fat Possum guys actually just saw me play, and they were like "man, why don't we record this album again?" which I would be totally into doing. I mean, I was forced into a situation where it was like, go home and shut up, or learn to play the drums with just fee, alright? Right now. You've got 12 hours.

So in 12 hours' time I learned how to kick my guitar case with my foot. That's all I was doing. And then I started going through too many guitar cases, so I got the bass drum. And then my right leg was getting much bigger than my left leg, so I needed to exercise that thing. So I got the cymbal, and then the drum machines came along to just tie it all together. Some songs have got a drum machine and kick drum, so it's like two drummers at once, sometimes it's both feet drumming. I'm always kicking something. I can't just sit there.

Because of the compact nature of his band and the anarchic spirit of live performance, Log admits that arrangements are constantly shifting. Technologically - rooted though it is, a live show hangs on the interplay between audience and performer.

"Each drum machine has one part on it, and I'll alternate with the bass drum. But none of the songs are set up like this part goes for four, and that part goes for eight; it's more like whenever the people are shakin', I'll play that part a little longer.

"It works good, "he says, "but it's real physical. I've monitored my legs, and on a fast song, two and a half minutes, it turns out I'm going damn near a half a mile - per song.

"There are some songs where it's more like a slow jog - I don't quite go the distance - but on the sprint songs, yeah, it's damn near half a mile. And some songs I just use one leg so it's kinda like I'm hoppin' for half a mile. If you've ever seen anybody do that, "he laughs, "it's a physical thing."

Log became a solo act after touring pressures split Doo Rag, if only temporarily.

"I don't like to think of it as dissolved," he says. "We've got some shows in June in Europe we might still be doing, and there's the possibility of a record. Basically, it was too much touring. One of us wanted to tour, and one of us didn't - it kinda gets in the way. I still think we're gonna be doing something. I really think if we, Doo Rag got to 90 years old, we'd be the funniest looking motherfuckers on the planet.

"I'm damn proud of both those records, " Bob adds passionately, "and if someone wants to hear it, they should be able to get it. It's hard doing that on your own, distributing worldwide - it has nothing to do with being a musician, it really doesn't."

During a week - long stint as second guitarist with R.L. Burnside (best-known for his collaboration with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, with whom Log has also worked), the guitarist fell in love with the old-school blues circuit and the label promoting it - Fat Possum. "

I really can't see how it could've worked out better," Bob beams. "Getting' in the car with these old motherfuckers, learning about how to have fun with your guitar… because that's what these guys'd be doing, Fat Possum or no Fat Possum." While Bob is a right youngster compared to other acts - R.L. Burnside is 72, the late Junior Kimbrough would have been 67 - his elders quickly warmed to his ways, and offered nothing but affirmation.

"Those guys are always telling me, "Don't change for nobody, Log." R.L. calls me Bo, sometimes Sideshow. I've been told by every one of them not to change a fuckin thing."

And how does it feel to be labelmate to Davis, a slide player he admires so much?

"I ain't met Cedell, " Log confesses. "I've probably heard the album about as much as anybody, and that's about it. Cedell doesn't get to play out as often as the rest of Fat Possum does. I don't know if I wanna call him frail, 'cause it sure ain't frail music, but yeah, he's got like a three song limit, so I ain't got to see him play. But as far as the rest of Fat Possum goes, I wouldn't trade it for the world. I love touring with those guys. It's different than touring with the broccoli eating, "where's my Evian bottle?" kinda thing.

"We gave Robert Cage an Evian bottle at the beginning of the tour," he laughs, " and every day he was filling it up ' cause he thought it was a canteen. He was filling it up in the sink, man, I swear to God. I wish I was making this up, but I ain't. We'd be like, "Robert, we'll get you a new one." And he's just like, "Why? This one's working just fine."

"I love the guitar," he concludes. "It's given me a lot, so I'm trying to give something back to it. And I think a lot of people who play guitar are maybe gonna go home and try this out. And at the same time, while you're getting better on guitar, you're also exercising. So it's good for you all around. And you get all the ladies once them leg muscles start shownin'.